The Trouble With Cassia

Feathery Cassia (Senna artemisioides) is a wonderful desert shrub that looks good until it gets older and the branches become woody. It has a very strong honey-like fragrance when it blooms in the spring. Some varieties have a licorice scent, like the one I have in my front landscape. The flowers last for about six weeks.Toward March though, the shrub forms numerous seed pods. All of these seed pods need to be remove by hand, or with a shearing after the flowers are gone. I choose to hand pick the seed pods and that is a lot of work. Just about the time you think you're done, more have grown, so it's back to hand picking until about May 1.

These are new seed pods that formed just in the past week. They are very fast growing, and if left on the shrub, they eventually dry and split open. The seeds easily sprout, so unless they are eliminated before splitting, I'll be pulling up baby Cassia for months! At this stage they are attractive, but not enough so that I keep them on the shrub.

`````````````````````````````````````

They say the definition of crazy is when someone does the same thing over and over with the same bad result. I'm beginning to think I fit that definition. I continue to purchase various appliances, cameras, computers and other electronic items from one national big box electronic store with the same results. Things always go wrong with the items, and I have to have their repair squad come to fix whatever it is. They never seem to get it right the first time, so I get on a merry-go-round of returns, pickups, new repair visits, etc. In one case with my home theater system, they have been coming out for over nine months. Each repair guy blames it on a different component, and then that component needs to be sent for repairs, or else another specialist needs to come for repairs for other components. Next week, I'll see if they have finally solved the problem when they install a part on the TV. They ordered the part two visits ago, but when the guy came to install it he discovered they had ordered the wrong part. He will come with the right part (I hope) and he really thinks that will finally solve the problem.

Interestingly, these repair guys always blamed my cable company, but that was never the problem. In the last of five repair visits with the cable repair people, the cable repair guy proved the problem. I had asked the store repair people to hook up another TV to test to make sure it wasn't the TV, but they all said it couldn't be the TV, it was either the reciever or the cable signal. The cable guy finally hooked up another TV as I asked, and it is definitely the TV.

My whole point in rambling on about my problems is that my two month old computer had to be repaired as the hard drive was defective, and after that was replaced, I had to take it back twice before the thing was right. Hence, no blog posts for over a week! It's a good thing they don't sell cactus as I would have a yard full of dead plants with their record! I think I've learned my lesson, finally.