Steve and Judy's Travels!

There are two dome lights in the car.  One of them went out.  I couldn’t see how to pop off the cover so I could change the bulb, so I asked the dealer to do it.  The dealer said it’s a sealed unit.  The cost to replace the sealed unit is $259.  Really?  To change a defective bulb, I have to replace all the other perfectly functioning parts in that unit?  All it needs is a 25 cent light bulb and it costs $259?  Bullshit.  I’m buying a $5 flashlight.

We left that service item off the ticket.  When I picked up the car though, both dome lights worked!  They must have jiggled something while diagnosing the problem.  It wasn’t the bulb at all, but probably a connection somewhere.  We might be on the receiving end of poetic justice here, that by refusing the overpriced solution, we ended up getting the problem fixed for free!

There are more than can be counted.

With little butterflies.

We have this nice Mediterranean Fan Palm.  Multiple trunks.  Lush foliage.  It was getting a little shaggy, so I trimmed it back.

In the process, I realized that one of these things was not like the others.  All the foliage from all the separate trunks can be trimmed with loppers, but one trunk requires a palm saw.  What?

We figured out what happened.  There is an intruder in our midst.  The big cabbage palm next to us…

…dropped a seed into the middle of the little Mediterranean fan palm.  It’s like brown-headed cowbirds dropping their eggs in a songbird nest, and the exhausted songbirds end up raising a big brown-headed cowbird instead of its own chicks.  The seed sprouted and pretended to just be another stalk of the little palm, but now it’s outgrowing its host.

The solution.

We whacked off all the branches and topped the central spike of the imposter.  Removing the central spike should prevent further growth.

We’ll leave the rest of the plant there as a decorative stalk.  If the invader starts to recover, more serious measures will be taken.  The whole plant looks a little bare now, but in a couple months it should all fill out and look just right again.