Fall gardening 2011

Well so far so good. This is my first attempt at growing cool weather crops... in cool weather. Planted everything the third weekend in August and everything seems to be coming up pretty strong. Since I had good luck over the Summer with sugar snap peas and since my family uniformly LOVES to eat them, I dedicated the two small beds entirely to peas. The larger bed I split three ways into carrots, lettuce and spinach (all considered cool weather crops).

Thank you neighbor's pine tree for the free mulch.

I used a legume innoculant on the snap peas which is supposed to produce a steady stream of nitrogen throughout the growth cycle... seems to be doing its job!

A young carrot top... before his career tanked!


A baby lettuce... the lettuce and spinach both have been somewhat frustrating in that even though I planted the seeds all at the same time, the sprouts just came up haphazardly over the course of a few weeks, so I have plants in varying stages of development.

Spinach... my favorite salad.

One of the larger lettuce plants (still only half grown)

The big uprights are from my tomatoes... just never took them down.

The sugar snap pea vines are looking very good and I hope we have a bumper crop (the peas freeze well so we'll get stocked up for the winter).

A sea of carrots! I made sure to use phosphorus this time and NO extra nitrogen... last year my carrots were giant bushes of green with pathetic little orange lumps the size of grapes under the surface.

I will report again when I have something to harvest.

Political Spectrum quiz

My Political Views

Right: 5.97, Libertarian: 6.11

Political Spectrum Quiz

I've considered the possibility that my Ron Paul posts on facebook irritate more people than enlighten...

SO just for my own edification I shall post the new ad here in my personal space...

Some can see it coming while others, not so much....

The Dollar: I'm not feeling well... could one or both of you guys give me a break?

The Left: Hey it's the Right that is making you work your butt off with the Military Industrial Complex. They have something like 900 miltary bases in over 100 countries... we give billions to countries all over the world and we are fighting in four wars simultaneously not to mention the ones we don't know about.

The Right: Oh Bollocks! The Left is making you feed millions who can't or won't feed themselves. They are making you work overtime by funding failed programs like Medicare and and Social Security and even come up with new programs like Obamacare. The Left needs to back off and let you recover.

The Left: Shut up! Obamacare protects those who can't get healthcare!

The Right: whatever dude... even illegals can get freaking healthcare! You guys are bankrupting our country with your ludicrous spending!

The Dollar: Umm hey guys? ...

The Left: No your warmongering is bankrupting our country with your insane HAWKISHNESS!

The Right: Obama sucks!

The Left: GW sucks! No oil for blood!!!

The Dollar: ...guysss ...

The Right: George W Bush was a great president!! Hope for change, my ass!

The Left: @%^&^@$ $^(*@ (*@ $^&^&^#!)&#$~!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Right: You kiss your mother with that mouth??? Hey what do... wait... ummm Dollar?

The Left: ...Dollar?

The Dollar: .... X-(

The Left: ...

The Right: ... Oh F&%@ !

How to eat steamed clams

Step 1 - Fly to Boston on business.

Step 2 - Find a good seafood restaurant

Step 3 - Order steamers with fries

Step 4 - Select a clam (if the shells are closed then the clam
was dead when steamed so DON'T eat that one!)

Step 5 - Gently remove the clam from the shell


Step 6 - Remove the skin from the clam's 'foot'
(After being steamed the skin comes right off like a sock)


Step 7 - Rinse the clam in the blue bowl of warm water
(This removes any sand... though you usually still get a little bit
of sand every few bites. Its just part of the experience.)

Step 8 - Dip the rinsed clam into the yellow bowl of warm butter.

Step 9 - ENJOY!!!

Reminds me a bit of the Federal Reserve

So this little snippet is from a comedy sci-fi book called Life, the Universe and Everything and though it comes without any real context it sort of speaks for itself. OK I will give a little context... the prehistoric Earth was in the story discovered not to have been populated through the mechanisms of evolution but rather by a crashlanded alien spacecraft full of the rejects of an alien society from a far off world and these advertising execs, telephone sanitizers, hair stylists etc are discussing their plans for surviving on this new world and building a new society...

The commentary is provided by Ford Prefect, a sort of unwilling third party observer.
----------------------------------------------------------------

At this point he decided he would not wait all day after all, he would merely pretend that the last half hour hadn't happened.

He rose to his feet.

"If," he said tersely, "we could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy ..."

"Fiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect, "Fiscal policy!"

The Management Consultant gave him a look that only a lungfish could have copied.

"Fiscal policy ..." he repeated, "that is what I said."

"How can you have money," demanded Ford, "if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know."

"If you would allow me to continue ..."

Ford nodded dejectedly.

"Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich."

Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.

"But we have also," continued the Management Consultant, "run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut."

Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The Management Consultant waved them down.

"So in order to obviate this problem," he continued, "and effectively revaluate the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and ... er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances."

The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the Management Consultant a standing ovation. The accountants amongst them looked forward to a profitable Autumn.

"You're all mad," explained Ford Prefect.

Nice to see a fan...