Skip to main content

The price of free

I came in when I heard the thunder but was intentionally not going to write.  Couldn't live up to that commitment when Pryor Baird & the Deacons started playing Little Red Wagon. I can't find a YouTube link so I'm substituting with  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEmvBdRLg4k  and I'll leave you to find this driving rhythm.  If you're thinking I've heard Little Red Wagon done by___.  Yeah everybody done it.  Some versions are so slow and deep delta bluesish that you gotta figure heroin was on the menu.  This is I think you'd call it more Chicago blues with a staccato driving beat. No matter what you call it my hands started slapping the desk and that led to slapping this keyboard. For some technical reason beyond my imagination the stereo has flipped past the rest of the CD and gone on to John Mayall Plays John Mayall.  It's John Mayall so I'm not going to argue.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3BK8-Mmn1s&list=PL94gOvpr5yt2BTHyFMsHRkvcce0XIS43y
  The thunder was clearly premature as even tho' it's black outside the rain.... Well this is Colorado so the rain might finally show up Thursday. Mostly I hurried in as I worried I needed to bring in the tomato starts. I've got 15 good looking plants right now.  Not leggy and about a foot tall. 7 or 8 will go in the garden in two weeks with the rest being put out front on Mothers Day for sale.  I'd happily give plants to any neighbor that wanted them but the inner Libertarian decide a few years back charge two bucks.  It pays for a bag of seed starting soil and I think too often if something is free it's not thought of as valuable.  Now zucchini in July, yeah - how many will you take?  OK here's the rain, good downpour and blow!
  I don't have a transition for this and it really leads no where but the smell of purple has been on my mind.  Lilacs, lilacs have been blooming the last few weeks all around the neighborhood. Now honestly in my garden flowers take a distant second place to veggies. Our lilacs were back by the garage when I moved in and while I give them some care their only purpose is to hide the compost pile from alley view.  Compost piles might in some neighborhoods draw the ire of the neighbors. In our neighborhood it would have to be a real slow day for code enforcement to even notice.  So my use of the lilacs to "hide" anything is about as real as our cat running down the hallway to avoid the predators but it lets my mind give them a purpose in the garden.
  Last week while out walking the dogs the smell of purple just rushed up my nose.  There was a huge hedge of really full and beautiful white lilacs. I knocked on the door and asked if I could cut some of the lilacs.  The guy looked at me like I was from Mars.  So I pointed and said "the white flowers" he said,"sure" in a why would you want those tone.  Lilacs don't get the respect they deserve.  Maybe that's the link here.  I offer it as a connecting link because I know those lilacs were there long before the currant owner. I doubt anyone has ever watered, fertilized, fussed over, or spent money or time on them. - Yet they are a stunning hedge and each spring they make the neighborhood smell like purple.
  OK, the purple thing is simple. Growing up we lived on Corona st in Boston.  The house had a 20 ft hedge of lilacs (I was little and perspective might have been off but I swear 20 ft).  I was learning my colors at the time and for some weird reason would confuse orange and purple.  But the spring smell nailed it down for me.  Don't ask me the smell of red but purple hmmm!
  Unlike lilacs people fuss and fret over roses.  Nothing against them per se (or perhaps whatever is the opposite of per se!) but our roses are out front 'cause they won.  When Deb bought the house the previous owner upon moving out clear cut the front yard (after selling it!?!) She cut down all the trees except the maple and shaved the roses to the ground. When I moved in Deb had added some things but the roses looked like they had sprung back from some root stock (graft) that was never intended to give showie roses.  I mowed them without mercy for 3 or 4 years.  Life was too short for fretting over roses especially eh ones.  I guess I had a year of weakness or perhaps the mower blade just said no more but we've got two rose bushes out front. The last dozen years I've bowed to my rose overlord and each spring trimmed out the dead, weeded around them and given them some Starbucks coffee grounds.  I'm sure there is a great positive life lesson here. You'll have to forgive me as yesterday was the trim and weed the roses day thus I'm less Pollyanna and more of the 'guy who wrestled with a rose bushes' view.  Gardening is that way.
  Rain's over, Deb's back from minding her girlfriends cat, and Blues Traveler is grooving to their own unique blues sound so my typing rhythm is off and I'll stop there.  Doug A.  https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blues+traveler+straight+on+till+morning+full+album

Comments

  1. I enjoyed this a lot Doug. The smell of purple. Back in the day I had a few John Mayall albums... and the first thing I think of when I think of Corona St. Is the lilacs. I think maybe they were 20 feet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Memory is tricky but attach it to a smell and it is strong. Thanks for commenting!

      Delete
  2. I love lilacs and my sister Christine says that they remind of me because they usually bloom around my birthday. Yet hers, over there in the 600 S Lincoln area bloomed mid-month April causing her pause. Global warming? It is nice to know that in your neck of the woods, they are blooming just in time to cut me a whole bouquet. It is too bad we left on Wednesday to come home where there are none to be found.

    In Sioux Falls lilacs were used extensively for hedges to block the freeway sight and noise as well as other things. The whole town was full of them.

    As to the smell of red, I think that is tomatoes. Fresh ones, at least, to me at least. And green and pink is watermelon. Since you smell purple, did you know that fives are green?

    BTW, this is my pen name - BR

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That smell should make Sioux Falls a spring destination! Fives? Like currency fives? You shouldn't sniff your money you never know where it's been! Thanks for commenting

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Taste like cucumber

I've got to start us off with Waylon Jennings' classic.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxll2-th4Gc Deb and I went down to our cabin in the mountains for the Memorial weekend.  More exactly we went down to our tiny RV on the property next to the cabin.  The cabin floor is close to finished and thus the bed and all are stuffed in the bathroom awaiting warm weather and the final coat of shellac.  A 20' RV two adults and two dogs makes for close quarters, especially when it starts raining.  That said there is something quite wonderful about playing rummy 500 by lantern light with Deb.  It's way too easy in a marriage to get to plinking along in your little path and forget how nice it is to have a wife you love. I suggested to Deb that although the RV is getting on 40 years old we could probably get a pretty penny for it if we marketed it as a marital therapy tool.  (therapy dogs extra!)   Being a gardener I have sprinkled some seeds as the cabin has started coming toget

The tomatoes are red the gardener is blue

 I'm stuck in a loop. I think that's what software programmers call it. I know the roots of this hopelessness are firmly planted in the utter destruction of our cabin and property in the forest fire that I alluded to in the last blog's prologue. Knowing the source of a polluted stream doesn't really help if your just wallowing in it. It's the wallowing that is the loop. A sporadic series of should haves and could haves that leave you so second guessed out that I've got little mental energy to accomplish all but the littlest things. Musically speaking I got da blues!   The music is Billie Holiday - Lady in Autumn.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npoe5XeeMYE&list=PLbYb5_Imn1rsDMoIU38jxi_O0aRaYj4CG 'cause given my mood - well, it was the obvious choice.   If you're a libertarian like me it's hard not to on occasion reflect on a woman who's life included heroin abuse, alcohol abuse, abusive relationships and died at 44. The line between libert

Bleeping grackles

 I've just spent the last 15 minutes searching bird guides on-line and on paper to try to figure out what is nesting in the grape arbor.  It looks like a nuthatch or wren that has dressed to go to work for UPS.  It's incredibly tiny and quite cute but clearly not one to be pushed around.  When I first saw it at the beginning of summer it was trying to take over a bird house I had created out of an old boot.  Some chickadees had moved in and I was thrilled to see the house used.  The chickadees had dutifully carried a boots worth of material from the yard to their nest.  At a moment when both the male and female were out collecting material my little UPS bird 'discovered' the boot.  He sat at the hole pulling material out.  Clearly their tastes in furnishings were different you could almost see him (her?) shaking his head "this straw with those drapes - come on!".  The chickadees returned and a battle royal ensued with it ending with two chickadees (which are b

Winter

 Just came in from digging the kitchen scraps into the latest raised bed. The soil is essentially non-existent merely a fill of leaves, a tiny amount of grass clippings, and some wonderful chicken coop material Deb's sister had saved aside for me. The chicken poop has already started heating the pile after watering it yesterday. All very hopeful, that it might burn down into something plant-able by spring. Adding to the hope a light drizzle has begun with rain expected through the afternoon and evening. Yeah I know chicken poop and compost are kinda out there on the garden nerd spectrum.   The rain is the perfect accompaniment to the blues on the stereo. The weather outside gray and more invigorating than cold. Inside a mug of tea and a combo of Fats Waller, Howlin' Wolf and best of all the Alligator Records' 20th Anniversary Collection. The enclosed notes in the Alligator two CD edition are the story of legends of the blues. The talent list is a powerhouse going from Pinet

Three Little Birds

  It's Saturday the day before Mother's day so I'll start with a little eye candy for the ladies.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8nm_jvE_Xs   Jake is essentially the MSNBC (vs say Fox) version of the youtube movie I shared last time "Back to Eden" which emphasizes wood chip based gardening.  While the whole video is worth watching I especially liked his gardening philosophy which he touches on around the 10 minute mark.   Got to jump off topic (quelle surprise!) Jimmy Cliff has me boogieing to Let Your Yeah Be Yeah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDp_7kSli0w   Jake's 'just start making mistakes' philosophy is akin to my own.  I can't tell you how many gardening books (Permaculture books are the worst) devote chapter after chapter to 'creating your plan'.  Yeah I would have killed a lot fewer plants and my fruit trees would have been planted years ago not to mention a quality watering system.  No doubt people with 5 year life plans gar

notes from the bunker - a thought on freezes in spring

The snow from yesterday is mostly melted as I write. The only thing left to be figured out is was there any serious damage. It was really little more than a simple spring storm with a bit of a hard freeze or near hard freeze last night. Possibly again tonight. The mizuna and arugula I had put out last week under a little row cover of plastic got an added bit of fleece for protection.  I'm sure they'll be fine, pretty cold hardy stuff. A bit more of a worry is some spinach and lettuce which I'd also put out. It was being killed off by some unknown thing on my window ledges indoors and thus was at least as safe outside. I had, knowing that the storm was coming, covered these with Wall O Waters. Wall O Waters are kind of the PPEs for plants in spring. A brilliant little invention which adds a good measure of protection from temporary light freezes. Hard freezes are something again and this is a bit early for my normal sowing of spinach and lettuce, so I'll hope. If I'm

Notes from the bunker -Spring

  If you want to find the most interesting things in my garden you have to go to the edges. It's the first full day of spring.  This being Denver, after a couple weeks of 60°s to finish off winter, I'm looking out at 3 or 4 inches of snow and ice. Highs today perhaps the 30°s. Nothing really unusual in that. My desk calendar might be printed in black and white "SPRING BEGINS" but any gardener knows that it's not that binary a world. Heck it's not even analog as in a smooth gradual transition. Weather at a mile high is predictable in the sense that winter will be colder than summer but not in the sense that you can't have an 80° day in February and a freeze in July. It's more a what are the chances thing.  That gamble is part of the joy of gardening. It's also why the heart of my garden is located in the best sun, in raised beds with the best soil and best access to water. Ya gotta stack the odds some years just to have a chance.   Ah but those ed

After the Garden

  Those of you who know me know I hover somewhere between Catholic and agnostic. Thus when I say there are surprisingly few words about Adam in the Bible, you know I had to look to check. If you need to check it yourself go ahead you'll see. A little about how he came to be, a touch about Eve, a bit about that garden thing and then on to what the kids did. Really, I expected a lot more!   I mean what about that day Adam was sitting outside the garden fence thwacking a stick against a tree?! He was just thinking, I don't want any more sadness God. Yeah, yeah I know it's your plan and I'm not supposed to question it but your plan sucks! He flipped his middle finger towards heaven. As he did a hummingbird who had become blind landed on it. Yeah, see that's what I mean God. How am I supposed to fix this? Sure I can name it and that's fun but how can I fix the pain in the world?  Look at the old garden! It's an overgrown jungle. I need pruners, saws and a shovel

Pizza for one :~(

 I've got Lena Horne on the stereo. I always thought, in interviews, her personality was too snooty but I'm following her with Sarah Vaughan. I never saw an interview with Sarah but she was nicknames "sassy" so I guess who cares. Both ladies could sing. Lena's singing Stormy Weather and that's as good a place as any to start. Just finished a cool early morning walk with Cooper around a very quiet Sunday neighborhood. The clouds to the west over Green Mountain look as grey and fat as the weatherman said they would. So I'm expecting today to be a good day of rain, inside music and maybe homemade pizza, later.   The pizza won't be quite the usual thrill as Deb is in Oklahoma for her sister's 70th birthday. I've told Deb and I don't know if she gets it, I enjoy cooking but only when I have her for an 'audience'. Now mind you I'm no chef but even something simple like pizza is fun to make, if you can share the little details like &q