The Spanish conquistadors brought spiky stabby super-mean weeds to California. One variety has seeds that can puncture car tires. They thrive where the grass died in the droughts and they are designed to snag/stab a ride on anything passing by. And then there’s the lovely, soft-leaved, soft-flowered dandelion, cheerful little bits of sun and moon in its stages. I have seriously considered sowing my yard in dandelion seeds in hopes they’ll crowd out the weeds.
Don’t put a perching stick on the outside of a birdhouse: the songbirds don’t need them, and predators like jays and crows will use them to reach inside and kill the young.
Schultz’s philandering shows in how he treated a lot of his female characters.