An experiment. We took cuttings of creosote, bird-of-paradise, and bougainvillea, and are going to attempt to grow them. A bonsai knife (ie, very, incredibly sharp) was used to cut them at a 45 degree angle for the maximum amount of that outside ring layer we could get (amazing how often that angle pops up, isn't it, for anyone who gets what I'm referencing). Then we dipped them in a liquid root hormone, then in a powder root hormone of a different type (which may be overkill, but it seems to work better on bonsai roots). Then, we used a chopstick to poke a hole for each stem in some rainwater soaked bonsai soil, so we wouldn't lose the powdered hormone by just shoving them in the dirt. As an alternative, we also tried putting some creosote stems in a small vase to soak, to see if the potato-principle might apply. If either method does happen to work, then people across the country'll be able to smell desert rain as soon as I get their plants to them!

Also, while we were doing that (it was twilight/dusk) we heard some planes, and so looked up. And damned if it wasn't a C-130, flying wingtip-to-wingtip....with an F-22! Had to be less than a thousand feet above us, like right there. And then they circled all the way around to come right back near us again. I think we just kind of stared with dropped jaws for a bit, then started babbling. I may have actually hopped from one foot to the other several times. The F-22 is really a beautiful machine, and I'm used to seeing A-10s in their graceful arcs (and even some F-4s and an Apache helicopter the other day!) a few hundred feet above me as I drive home and they come in to land. There was an interesting bell-toned clarity to the Raptor's sound at a certain point, distinctive enough to note, anyway. We couldn't figure out why those two planes would fly together in the manner that they were, though, it seemed a horribly odd combination.