I still have a garden

I still have a garden, I just don't have any mulch anymore!

Great thing about working from home is you can take your dog out before it rains and go back to work. At 4 I realized it was going to rain and thought I should take Sam out now. So I worked some more. Then my watch told me it was going to rain in ten minutes so I rushed my elderly dog out of his nice sleep and ran him up the stairs and opened the door just in time for BOOM!! The loudest thunderclap! Very dramatic. We did not go out for a few hours. 

In the meantime there was SO MUCH RAIN that we had a RIVER. My neighbor had a LAKE. 
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A child was grabbing his mother's arm and sleeve and whining, demanding to be given something, for fifteen minutes. There was an Iceland safety regulator there for the whole thing. Children are now allowed on the path to the volcano. 
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(Ok, I made up the first two sentences.)
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I had the loveliest and funniest day at work. I am so glad my new boss is here. I got to do interesting things yesterday. I got to do interesting things today. 
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An interesting aspect of the explosion in Crimea is that it is in Crima. Russia took Crimea in 2014. It is both a playground for Russians and now a military base. Russian tourists lounge near the baseon the beach. Witnesses heard 12 explosions. If Ukraine was involved in the attack it means they've escalated things, not just to reclaiming territory taken in 2022, but to reclaiming territory taken in 2014. Or it could simply be partisans seizing an opportunity. To reach targets deep behind enemy lines Ukraine uses guerrillas. A senior Ukrainian military official said, unofficially, they were involved, it was the work of Ukrainian forces. Russia said no equipment was destroyed and no casualties reported. This is untrue. Dozens of nearby homes and commercial structures were hit. One person was killed. More than a dozen were wounded. A video showed a shared nose cone of a fighter jet. 

Nine cargo ships have left Ukraine with grain. 26,000 tons of corn en route to Lebanon. By autumn Ukrane hopes to be a pre-war export levels. 

Ukraine has received 50 new armored vehicles from Turkey and expects another 150. 

Ukraine's experimentation has produced an array of inexpensive, plastic drones, jerry-rigged to drop grenandes or other munitions. Russsia has no effective long-range strike drone. which explains why they wanted a Bayraktar plant. In addition to the advanced military drones allies provide, it uses off-the-shelf products or hand-built ones. They have 3d printers and Ukrainian coders. One of the larger workshops in Kyiv is called Dronarnia and is financed by crowdsourcing. Other workshops have raffled off kitchenware to raise money. 

They also manufacture a high-end military one they call  Punisher which can strike from more than 30 miles away. The company, UA Dynamics, donates the drones to the military. People can pay $30 and have a written message put on the bombs the Punisher drops. Popular messages include "hello from" and someone's name. You can enter a message and pay by credit card on a website. 

Ukrainians call the drones "mosquitoes." 

A Ukrainian woman named her baby boy Bayraktar. 

There is a former pizza restaurant that is a rehab center for distressed Ukrainian cats. Hundreds of backers from around the world and the ADA Foundation helped finance it. It has a large playroom of cat trees, warm beds, toys, and petting chairs for volunteers. They have a full-time animal behavioral therapist helping the cats deal with PTSD so they can be rehomed. Some of them may be reunited with their Ukrainian families.