small gardens & small government

Hi all, I'm starting the music off today with The Beach Boys - California Girls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8yph3rb27o The Beach Boys are kinda the musical equivalent of the bag of Oreos I had for dinner last night.  I know I'll enjoy it, but is it really good for you?    The weird thing is I scored a 6 CD Beach Boys set at the Friends sale. I didn't know the Beach Boys had that many songs.  It could be the equivalent of finding a da Vinci codex or alternatively the collected blogs of Doug A. This is certainly a we'll see.   Deb is taking some garden goodies to a couple of friends who live down by our cabin (Hi Sandy & Bob).  Sadly, the tomatoes I'm sending are small and could use another day on the vine. I had some big ripe ones but Elvis (see last blog for translation) ate the bottom half of them.  Who knew Elvis even liked tomatoes.   While I'm talking tomatoes I haven't mentioned the Silver Fir.  Silver Fir was one of the Sib...

I've put a rather odd mix of artists on the stereo but I think it will work, we'll see! First up is 'The King' Elvis Presley's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzQ8GDBA8Is Hound Dog.   I'll freely admit that while I like Elvis I'm starting off with him as a segue. Back when my Brother Glen and I owned some apartments down in Houston I noticed on the 'to do' white board a note "friend apartment #33". I asked him about it assuming a tenant had a friend that had gone beyond visiting and need to be reminded about how many people we were renting to. Glen explained no the friend was actually a rat that had been seen by the tenant. He just figured it was unwise to put "RAT!" on a board that prospective tenants might see.  Seemed like good logic to me. Quite some time later I happened to be opening a ceiling panel for an AC unit in that apartment and a long dead and desiccated rat fell from the panel. It hit me square in my open mouth. I...

Let's start with three little jokes; Mama Tomato, Papa Tomato and Baby Tomato are walking down the street.  The Baby tomato falls behind and Papa steps on him and says - Ketchup! (Thank you Quinton Tarantino)  You heard of a Libertarian salad?  It's just lettuce alone!  OK, OK I'm on a roll.  The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza place and says - "Make me one with everything!"   The music today is a little scattered with jazz, blues, & swing elements. I started with The Mighty Blue Kings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xas9GtPyAk&list=PLDiUGVS0lOvTYk9U_zZ4Of570wlnRnplu   Cadillac Boogie. I've got a couple on the stack I don't know Art Hodes & The Bob Gillis Group The cover art and playlist look good but we'll see.  I'm finishing it up with a local group The Hot Tomatoes Dance Orchestra. I've heard cooking should be like jazz, improvisational, and baking like science. So like a good soup it's got some stuff I know I'll like and...

 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 ...

An important thing happened in 1776.  I stole this line from the linked video I hope you'll have time to watch it as you enjoy your Independence weekend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpnFeyMGUs8   This weekend for me is an opportunity to catch up on a whole list of odds and ends in the garden.  Thus in order to get to it today I'm going to allow the video to stand on it's own (which I think it does quite well).  I have tried to sneak in a few blogs between sending out links.  Thus if you for some reason find a bit of extra time, I hope you'll scroll down to some previous brilliance, pop a comment on, or perhaps check out a link time didn't allow for previously.  And gosh get out in the garden!  Doug A.