Feline and Block

Technical Cats
by Dminor (apologies to T. S. Eliot)

Technical Cats come out to-night
Technical Cats come one come all.
My cellular phone's not acting right
It's saying something 'bout a function call

Technical Cats are gray and white
Technical Cats are big and small
Technical cats are rather bright
And pleasant to have fix a firewall

Technical Cats have business clothes
Technical Casts have glasses for eyes
They like to work on the Suns with Windows
They're fond of Apples, but not for pies.

Technical Cats don't crave attentions
Technical Cats can make phones ring
Technical Cats like their search engines
They're tops at Perl scripting and at networking.

Until a Technical Glitch appears
They pass their free time against Warcraft foes
Technicals went to school for years;
Technicals know where a router goes.

Technical Cats are old and young
Technical Cats mind their data pipe size
They know what to do when the printer's hung
Or what to do when the "UPS" fries.

They're quiet enough in the morning hours
They're quiet enough 'till they've had caffeine
It fuels their analytical powers
And brings them in tune with the troubled machine.

Technical Cats are gray and white
Technicals may (as I said) be small
If it happens to be a stormy night
You will hear them cry out "Save your work!" in the hall.
If it happens that the sun is shining bright
They might not know a thing about it at all.
They are inside applying themselves all right,
With a Technical mouse in their Technical paw.

Never, ever, ever

...ever, ever, ever...
dump old Cream of Wheat (or some unidentified substance that resembles old Cream of Wheat) down the Insinkerator.

Sigh.

Back to the town hall meeting report once I can get the sink to drain again.

The Zucchini Have Landed

Picked my first one this morning. Hopefully the deluge will be less this year as I think I bought a variety with smaller gourds.

Will attempt to actually post something later this week.

UPDATE 6/2: Oh, never mind. The darn things are just as big as last year's. Fortunately, the Mock Crab Cakes recipe from Cooks.com went over well with the gang. Tomorrow, zucchini bread.

Homemaking: Province of the Renegade

Following is another thought from St. Gil the Jocular, on the advantages of being a homemaker. While I don't mean to be Pollyannish about the job or the disadvantages many women still face, these remarks do speak to something in my constitution that really enjoys--labor intensiveness and lack of wages notwithstanding--the creative freedom and self-management inherent in huswifery.

The paragraph is taken from an article titled Woman, which was first published in 1906. It is not surprising, given the time, that the distinction is made between the average female of the species as manager of the home and the average male as a cog in some business or industrial machine. While the expansion of employment options today enables the reverse situation to be a reality as well, home management is still largely a female province. And it is still a job--though a hard one--that we can do as we like.

...the average woman is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes; the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else...The woman's trade is a small one, perhaps, but she can alter it. The woman can tell the tradesman with whom she deals some realistic things about himself. The clerk who does this to the manager gernerally gets the sack...the woman does work which is in some small degree creative and individual. She can put the flowers or the furniture in fancy arrangements of her own. I fear the bricklayer cannot put the bricks in fancy arrangements of his own, without disaster to himself and others. If the woman is only putting a patch into a carpet, she can choose the thing with regard to colour. I fear it would not do for the office boy dispatching a parcel to choose his stamps with a view to colour; to prefer the tender mauve of a sixpenny to the crude scarlet of the penny stamp. A woman cooking may not always cook artistically; still she can cook artistically. She can introduce a personal and imperceptible alteration into the composition of a soup. The clerk is not encouraged to introduce a personal and imperceptible alteration into the figures in a ledger.

G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, 24 March,1906. Collected in All Things Considered, 1908. Reprinted in A G. K. Chesterton Anthology, P.J. Kavanaugh, ed. The Bodely Head and Ignatius Press, 1985.
****

I give up

All right, I know it's been awhile and I'd committed to a couple more posts on education matters. Unfortunately, it's also Lent, Girl Scout Cookie season (they manage to make those coincide here,) Violin Workshop weekend for Baby, and time to get the garden in. To accomplish the latter will require the moving of considerable soil and creation of a raised bed as over the last couple of years the garden has been gradually shifting against the property fence and may end up, with the chain link, in the neighbors' yard if we don't do something about it now. I'm plotting to put the boys to hard labor this weekend, but am still going to have to manage the operation. (Please visualize a scene from O Brother, Where Art Thou? at this point.) So posting is not going to be happening at least through the weekend. I do intend to get back to the homeschool posts, however, and will shoot for having something up sometime next week.

my personal green revolution

I am not a lawn person. Striving for perfect turf and weighing the relative merits of Bermuda versus zoysia are not activities that interest me. I do not believe in devoting hours to uprooting every dandelion in the yard. In fact, I kinda like dandelions. I reserve the potent chemicals for the likes of fire ants (a nasty invader, anyway) and poison ivy (which isn't an invader even if it is invasive, but will make you itch. Besides, my neighbors have never really gotten the hang of identifying it, so I just do their yard too and save us both a lot of trouble.)

It therefore took about half a dozen years of living here (not counting the drought years, when trying to grow anything new would have been a waste of time anyway) for me to come to the conclusion that it was really time to try to grow some grass. Having a yard comprised mainly of a dozen different varieties of weeds didn't bother me, but having sizeable bare patches and erosion did. So did the proliferation, after a few wet years, of an annoying woody-stemmed weed I couldn't identify that threatened to take over the entire back yard and couldn't be controlled with the lawnmower. Having occasion to call a local tree surgery outfit over some unavoidable pruning, I gritted my teeth and made an appointment with their turf guy as well.

When the turf guy arrived, he surveyed the backyard.
"This'll take us a year of treatments. You've got poleanna," he announced. I was intrigued. Being an occasional listener to a Saturday morning gardening radio show, I'd heard quite a bit about poleanna. The impression I had was that almost everybody seemed to have some, and everybody was anxious to get rid of it. Other than that, I was in the dark.

When we arrived in Geawgia, it was quite a novelty to be in charge of our very own yard. The novelty wore off a bit after the numerous oaks and hickories dropped several tons of leaves on that yard over the winter, but we were determined to make a good go of landholding, even if the plantation was a mere third of an acre. So we listened to the gardening show for helpful hints. Poleanna was a topic that seemed to come up quite often. The show wasn't a whole lot of help to us in figuring out what exactly it was, although it offered plenty of remedies for it. I think Diazinon was the standard recommendation. At least, I know it got about as many mentions as poleanna. Still ignorant, we soon came to use the name for any weed we couldn't identify:
"What's this?"
"Dunno. Must be poleanna."

It wasn't until recently that I acquired some idea what the mysterious herb might be: our county Extension Service agent published a column on it on the newspaper's garden page. Poleanna, it turns out, is actually Poa annua, or annual bluegrass. Not that I would have figured that out from the standard pronunciation down here. Everybody, to include the folks with graduate degrees in horticulture and botany, seems to call it "poleanna." (I've observed that it's risky to assume too much about folks here in the South based on their diction. That guy you're talking to who sounds like he just fell off a melon truck might be a lawyer, surgeon, or college dean. Phi Beta Kappa to boot.)

"Really? Which one is it?" I asked, scanning the weeds around my feet. Finally, I was up close and personal with real poleanna! Turf Guy pointed at a vividly green clump on the ground between us. One of those that I had previously classified as "what the heck, it's grass."

I examined it. Then I stood up and eyeballed the backyard. From the looks of things, the greater part of what constituted grass in it was poleanna. I still wasn't sure why we didn't want it in the yard, since it was green and mowable. I figured if it looked like grass, I wasn't too concerned what shade it was. But he was the expert. Maybe an annual grass, even one of a genus popular with Kentucky-bred horses, wasn't the best thing to have holding down the soil in a yard prone to erosion. And there was still the matter of those darn woody weeds. Turf Guy pointed out the other delights of the yard:
"You've got dandelion," (say it ain't so!) "chickweed, nutweed..." he rattled off several others familiar and unfamiliar.
"What's this?" I queried, pointing out the dried stems of my woody-stemmed bete noire alongside the fence.
"I'm not sure, but it's real common."

The tree guy arrived, but didn't know, either. Darn, I thought. If I can't get rid of it, I'd at least have some satisfaction in being able to call it something.

We've since been pruned, Diazinoned (or some such,) and limed, so hopefully our scraggly tufts of centipede or whatever the original ground cover was will soon spread out into an attractive green lawn. I'm gonna miss the dandelions, chickweed and sorrel (but not some of the more annoying weeds,) but I have confidence that they will be back in force next spring. Whether my woody nemeses will be controlled this year remains to be seen, as it is too early for them yet. In the meantime, I suppose I should hit the field guides at the library and try to I.D. the darn things. In the worst case, I'm advised to take a sprig to the Extension Service office, where they will surely be able to satisfy my curiosity. They'll come in handy as a resource when I start on my new book idea. I'm thinking of calling it The Field Guide to Extremely Common Weeds No One Knows.

YARD ECO: While much of the country digs out from under drifted snow, I strolled out this morning and found the car lightly dusted with pollen. Ain't the South grand!

Alley Oop! and some other things

Some months ago, having read The Neandertal Enigma, I spent far too much time musing about prehistoric behavior. As I think I mentioned, the general view at time of the book's publication was that Neandertals and Modern humans (what they used to call Cro-Magnons, back when,) despite 10,000 years or so of living pretty much side-by-side and being members of the same species, apparently did not interbreed. Well, let's qualify that: either they did not interbreed or the Neandertal DNA was lost somewhere along the family tree.

This Reuters story reports on a recently-discovered skull in Romania that seems to exhibit both Modern and Neandertal traits. Notwithstanding the ads covering some of the text that I couldn't figure out how to get around despite my modern cranium, it was an informative story. Check it out, if paleo is your cup of tea.

(I always thought Ooola looked awfully patrician to be
hanging around with a Neandertal like Alley. I guess gals dug the caveman type back then, too.)
*****
I'm adding a note to the Magic Flute review below.
*****
Desmond, if you drop by and read this: I noted a news item suggesting there were some rough protests going on in your corner of the globe--I hope you're all right.
*****
Finished & sent cap for bro; still plodding along on D's vest. It's just as well it's been a mild winter down here, because I've got my sights set on next winter as a deadline for this one. Actually, it's not just as well about the mild weather; the mild weather means I'll be trapping mice out of my kitchen all summer. I normally use live traps, but if things get out of hand I may have to get nasty.

One would think I'd have learned my lesson about multiple handicraft projects at once, but I couldn't resist when I found Bernat Matrix, a very pretty knittable nylon/poly braid, at $1 a ball. So naturally I had to start on a shawl for myself. I'm finding the medium is troublesome to handle, and has an irritating tendency to slip off the spool when not constrained. As a result, I am now working out a tangle that is something to behold. This one is going to require a whooole lotta prayer just to keep me from using some Neandertal words.

New Year's Eve

It's 11:26 p.m. on the East Coast and I'm still conscious, which I guess takes me officially out of "fuddy-duddy" status. I'd have considered turning in early except the kinder have no interest in that and are making too much noise to hazard an attempt anyway. Hon. Daughter #1 has tomorrow off at her job and is making the most of it. Anyway, I've been busy working on a knit cap for a brother of mine that was supposed to have been a Christmas gift but is going to end up being an Epiphany gift instead. As I cut back severely on computer use for the last couple of weeks, it at least won't end up being a Groundhog's Day gift. As it stands now, I think I should be able to get it in the mail when the post office reopens. Then maybe I can get back to D's vest. My second sock is still on hold. I can see why finishing a pair of socks is an unpopular activity.

11:40p.m. Happy New Year in about 20 minutes!
Might as well stay up.

Return from playing hooky

After Thanksgiving I concluded I'd been logging more 'Net time than was good for me , so I decided to take a trial separation from my computer. I am pleased to report that this was fairly painless, aside from the time spent deleting spam from the inbox after having ignored it for several days. Not that some of the subject lines weren't compensation in themselves.

Speaking of things that are unintentionally funny, I figured I'd start off this week with some unintentional Christmas funnies.
I refer, of course, to the Cavalcade of Bad Nativities. It's a kapital kompendium of kopious Kristmas kitsch!

All those K's (and thinking of things unintentionally funny) remind me of something else that struck my funny bone today, though I'm sure that was not the intention. Hon. Daughter #1 came home yesterday, but still had a paper to fire off to one of her profs (some of us wish we'd had that technology when we were callow students, but never mind.) The domestic establishment of the minor premise being under the administration of Luddite moi, we have yet to take upon ourselves some of the electronic amenities that many seem to consider indispensible. This includes cable TV and a wireless connection (but hey, my hardware geek neighbor doesn't think wireless is all that, either.)

Anyhow, the result of my electronic reactionism was that I ended up dropping H. D., her Lappy, and her completed paper off at a local coffee shop so she could ether the thing in, or whatever you'd call it. While in there, I encountered a large screen tuned to cable news. I was thus in an excellent position to form some impressions of one of the day's stories that I bet were not explored on any of the news channels. The fact that the sound was off probably helped.

I therefore submit my latest news flash for general edification: David Duke has managed, after Lord knows how long, to extract another Warholian fifteen minutes out of the media. Of course, in order to accomplish this he's had to go to Tehran and gladhand a guy in front of whose house he probably would as lief had burned a cross had said individual moved in down the street from him here in the U. S. of A. And what the #$%! has Duke done to his face? I have distinct memories of the (old enough to try a run for president) guy's poisonous antics from my salad days, and I bet I've aged more than he has in the intervening years. I passed my observation along to D, who proposed that when one cuts deals with Old Scratch, such effects are likely to result. I'm amazed he hasn't already spontaneously combusted from Evil Overload on this trip.

Another day, another media sensation reduced to trivial nonsense. Maybe I'll shoot for serious next week.

NOTE 12/17: I had originally used the term "pre-salad days" to describe my memories of Duke. On reviewing history with D, however, I had to conclude that although I was aware of him at that time, his presidential run would most likely have been concurrent with my actual salad days. So I made the edit. Either way, I'm still convinced the guy's Dorian Gray.

Why I haven't been posting

I haven't been posting much lately; thus I submit the following list of my activities yesterday by way of an explanation:

Up at 5:15 a.m.; D. got Hon. Son. #2 off to drill team practice before school.
Nap. (Well, it's not as if I'm going to get another chance.)
Up 7 a.m.; got Hon. Son. #1 up for work.
Breakfast. Baby up.
Started load of laundry.
Put away clean dishes.
Started loading dishwasher again.
Started Baby at school work.
Vacuum cleaned living room floor.
Load of laundry #2.
Picked remaining green cayennes; put up in jar with vodka.
Fed dogs.
Fixed lunch.
Finished loading dishwasher, started.
Lunch.
Spelling drill; checked math assignment; sent B. off to reading assignments & music practice.
Started emptying moribund car (that now needs to be replaced) of assorted sporting equipment. Strategically positioned sporting equipment near clothes washer for load of laundry #3.
Swept & mopped kitchen floor.
Application of stain to unfinished wall shelf #1.
Unscrewed blades from hair clippers; cleaned with solvent. This was necessary because one of Hon. Son. #2's clever buds decided on Saturday (during a service project) that it would be funny to slap a glop of black asphalt paint on his head. The only way to get rid of it was to shave him bald.
Baby carved pumpkin in attractive cat design. I washed pumpkin seeds & put to soak in salt water for baking tomorrow.
Dropped Baby off at babysitting job.
Picked up Hon. Son#2 from afternoon drill practice. Got in a round of knitting (preemie hat) while waiting for it to end.
Arrived home to find that Hon. Son #2 had lost keys and gotten into house via a window. Thank goodness my neighbors are used to this.
Figured I had time to get in a grocery run, being pretty much out of food.
Loaded groceries into car; checked time. Concluded I wasn't going to have time to make dinner. Drove thru McDonalds.
Had boys unload groceries. Distributed burger & fries generally. Hon Son #1 took his to go, having an evening class.
Picked up Baby; delivered to soccer game with D. Dinner en route.
Tanked up car.
Returned home; got Hon. Son #2 for Scout meeting.
Ostensible 30 min. troop committee meeting passed 1 hour mark. Excused self and left.
Picked up Baby & D 30 minutes after end of soccer game; swung by all-night printshop to photocopy permission forms for troop.
Returned to meeting; dropped off permission forms; picked up Hon. Son.
Home. Application of stain to shelf #2.
Load of laundry #3.
Bathed 2 dogs.

We'll see about that Neandertal thing in a day or two.

Taking some time

...off to get some work done, catch up on reading. Probably be back late next week.
Yard Eco: Hummers headed to points tropical a few weeks ago, I cleaned and stored the feeders last weekend. Squirrels eschewed the feeders in favor of nuts and acorns for a while; are now back. Even the munchkins are now too big to fit comfortably inside the squirrel feeder, so the peanuts that can't be pulled through the hatch sit inside until I take them out.
Knitting: Finished baby gift--may post pictures later if somebody can show me how. Serious Second Sock Syndrome. Will have to print out that German Twisted Cast-on pictorial if I'm gonna get anywhere. Keeping supplies in car for preemie hats; have finished two more, in pink, during soccer games & such. Started knit vest for D, which is gonna be a marathon. I think I bought 6 skeins for it, if not 7. Charcoal gray wool & very nice (Cascade knits up really comfortable,) but there's a lot of area to cover.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Yard eco: Late Thursday night Alpha dog wasn't in any of her usual nap spots. She didn't come when called. Yelling from the back door availed not even an answering bark or whine. So I took a flashlight out into the backyard to look.

I found her silent and sphinx-like, at the back of the yard near the composter. Quivering with excitement, she gazed intently above, eyes fixed on something midway up a small cherry snag. She had a young opossum treed.

Didelphis virginiana, North America's only marsupial mammal, is extremely common around here and lives as well in suburbia (barring encounters with those pesky autos) as it does in the woods. It is, however, shy and largely nocturnal so unless you're up late or early in the morning, you might not know it was around save for the unlucky ones that fall to late-night drivers. It was a real treat to look up the trunk and spot this little one looking back. We figured they were in the neighborhood; now we know they're also raising litters and dispersing them throughout. Ours, I suppose, was lured by the overripe eggplants I had tossed in the composter.

Alpha, quite carried away with her find, wouldn't move. She was deaf to commands; wouldn't budge when I grasped her collar. I gave it up and hoisted her sixty pounds back to the house, gingerly avoiding the fallen branches we haven't yet cut up. Thank goodness the Nordic genes make her compact.

The 'possum can have the eggplants, with my compliments.

Harvest: No lack of bell peppers, though they are small. The insect damage seems to have stopped, but then it's been cool for a change. Still lots of cayennes, which I am drying in small bunches. Now I just need to find lots of people who like spicy food. Thinking of planting some radishes and beets tomorrow, now that the heat's mostly past. Certainly radishes, which grow quickly.

Knitting: Baby gift finished, except for snap closures and name, which I am v-stitching on. Stuck on my second sock; am going to have to relearn the German twisted cast-on.

Dr. Moreau, call your office, et. al.

According to this Lifenews.com article, a number of clinics around the world are now offering face lifts and cosmetic injections using tissue from 6-12 week gestation aborted babies. Were this not grotesque enough, the article adds:

To obtain the cells, women in underdeveloped nations are paid up to $200 dollars to carry a baby up to the optimum eight to 12 week period when the fetuses are “harvested” for their stem cells which are then sold to exclusive cosmetic clinics.

Evidence again that one woman's "choice" is another woman's exploitation.
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Cynthia McKinney's district contrived to get rid of her again; anyone could have predicted she'd go out with a bang. According to local radio reports this morning, members of her campaign were involved in a scuffle. I'll post the link when I get to it. The AJC's site has some items on it today.

Dick Yarbrough, an Atlanta-based columnist/humorist, proposed McKinney's nomination as ambassador to Outer Space during her last hiatus. Perhaps she'd be so kind as to oblige us again.
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Iraq the Model present evidence in their Aug. 9 post that the spirit of The Onion is alive and well even in the Middle East. Who'da thunk it?
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Personal: Tripped over a dog and jammed little finger of right hand day before yesterday. Don't think it's broken, but it is pretty painful and swollen. Have been keeping it taped to adjoining finger as I figure that's what a doc would do if it is broken; hoping to avoid half a day at the office. It looks better today. Thank goodness; typing with taped fingers is tricky business.
Yard eco: Squirrel munchkins have reached a size that makes them hard to distinguish from the adults; Momma was looking awfully chubby atop the feeder yesterday. A second litter? Maybe I'm overfeeding them. Hummers plentiful; I think we have a number of fledglings among them. There was a whole family at the backyard feeder yesterday: a larger female, and a smaller female and male.
Harvest: Lots of bell peppers; a sort of bruising or insect damage is common on quite a few of them. I'll have to look it up. Still have some cayennes and eggplants ripening.
Knitting: Have to pull out a couple of rows of baby gift. Should be interesting with taped fingers.
For days that couldn't be worse, from Beginning to Pray by Anthony Bloom:
Remember the psalm in which, after more restrained forms of expression, suddenly David bursts out, 'You, my Joy!'...when we can say to God 'O You my Joy!' or when you can say 'O You the pain of my life, O You who are standing in the midst of it as torment, as a problem, as a stumbling block!', when we can address Him with violence, then we have established a relationship of prayer.

A Quick Note

There has not been much time for blogging, as I have been laying a wood floor. Rabbi Boteach's opinion piece on breastfeeding has led to some interesting e-mail discussions with my sister-in-law, with some biochemical input from my brother-in-law. I am thinking of posting on these conversations as soon as I get some time. The discussion contains some insights on the history and ramifications of artificial infant feeding, and answers at least one question that was raised in theIf Breast is Best post recently on Jimmy Akin's Blog.

In the meantime:
Harvest: Tomatoes tapering off considerably (thank goodness!) Still getting cukes, most of which have fortunately been at least partly edible. Have been picking most of them small and pickling in small batches. No lack of cayenne peppers. Bell peppers coming along nicely, if small; picking about 1-2/day.
Weather: Hot and sticky, rain sporadic in isolated cells. Was relieved Friday morning before launching into some outdoor work that it was a balmy 90F and not overly humid. Of course, by late morning it was a different story.
Yard Ecology: Hummers regularly at feeders. Need to refill front yard feeder already. Have been getting some house finches back at feeders again. Noted two males in good health 7/13. Have not seen evidence of conjunctivitis in any birds recently. Observed juvenile Carolina Chickadee and Tufted Titmouse in backyard yesterday; thrashers in neighbors' yard may be nesting again. I haven't seen much of them, but they're noisy enough. Mini-squirrels bigger, more agile. Have added a squirrel feeder which is very popular.
Knitting: Broken through glut. Still have a baby gift to finish, but a nice set of 5 preemie caps done in conjunction with the honorable daughters is ready to go to the knit shop, which delivers them to the local NICU. They had a series of classes on making the hats and consequently have quite a pile in a variety of styles and colors. The preemies will be very stylish! My trekking sock is on the back burner. Second sock syndrome is not a problem, as I have yet to finish the first one. Have almost finished a felted tubular bag, though.
Reading: Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder by John E. Miller. Another find from the library's new book shelf. Having been a fan of Wilder's books as a girl, I am enjoying reading about the history behind them. Though Miller can be a bit redundant in spots, his biographical material is well-researched and related in a generally engaging manner.

Small Beer Chronicle, and a Quiz

Harvest: Eggplants, cayennes, cucumbers, tomatoes. The occasional radish. Green peppers on plants; waiting for them to change color. A gardening friend suggests I try pickling cukes next year. Picked small, mine are edible but I've been pickling most of them. Might make some raita tomorrow; I've been pestering D to try a curry with the eggplants. Big Boy tomatoes wilting rapidly.
Top uses for tomatoes:
1. salad
2. salsa
3. marinara sauce
4. cooked south asian style with something else
5. fried green
6. pickled green
7. gazpacho
8. give away to neighbors
9. give away to anyone else who will take them off your hands
10. sneak into artsy downtown pub on Open Mike night

Environment: Adult and fledgling brown thrasher flew out of front hedge in front of me yesterday evening. Fledge was still quite small but had a good set of flight feathers and ascended like a professional. I was glad to see we had some new thrashers around in view of the loss of the nest in the backyard rhodo. Occasional hummers at feeder. Am trying a second feeder out to see if it will be used. It's currently in the front yard but if nobody visits there I'll move it to the trees in back. Squirrel munchkins eating heartily, foraging farther from home. They are a good deal more shy of us now and will keep their distance. They are skillful on most trees (were still having a little trouble with the smooth-barked cherry last week) and can disappear around the other side while climbing as easily as the adults.
A wet front that lingered for a few days cooled things off (and gave everything a much-needed watering.) Nonetheless, hot and muggy are the order of the day.

Knitting: Project glut.
Reading: Checked out Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror by Mary Habeck from the new books shelf at the library. Started it twice; keep getting interrupted by knitting glut.
This old house: Kitchen walls and trim finished. D off next week; God willin' and the Creek don't riz, we lay wood flooring in the living room.


A cut-and-paste that thus far seems to have worked. Came across it on Darwin Catholic. The quiz is here.

How gullible are you? What kind of anti-Catholic novel would be most likely to reel you in?

You are most gullible when it comes to NEO-PAGAN NOVELS and books about goddess spirituality. Both argue that everything was so much better when people lived closer to nature, treated male and female as equal, and did not consider the desires of their bodies sinful. Then the Catholic Church came along and ruined absolutely everything. Ha! Even if the Catholic Church had never existed, these books would still get written--except they'd probably blame whites, or capitalism, or another easy target. Yet they still wouldn't be able to explain certain savageries of pre-Christian peoples. Wishful whining does not change either the historical record or the quality of second-rate writing. The authors of these books may love portraying themselves as the underdogs of history, but you don't have to throw money at them for it.
Take this quiz!








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I dunno about this result: I hated The Mists of Avalon and I think while reading it set a record for combinations of the term 'feminazi' with colorful adjectives. And it's not a word I often use. I think my enjoyment of Jane Austen's ridicule of Gothic novels in Northanger Abbey skewed things. (Not to mention that I've never seen any of the sci-fi movies mentioned besides Star Wars.)

Backyard Nature Report

Feeder visited by a second female hummingbird. Haven't seen much of her since so she must be dividing her time between here and the neighbors. The heat and humidity are getting increasingly oppressive now and many critters are hunkered down by midmorning, so unless I'm on the lookout at early morning or evening I'm not likely to see much.
One of the front-yard oaks has a litter of baby squirrels (3, we think) who have been getting out of the nest since mid-last week. I startled one coming out the door last week (musta been his first day out) and was surprised as he scrambled over the bagged leaves and up the siding boards of the house at how clumsy they are at that age. He's lucky I wasn't a cat. They're doing better getting up and down the trees now, and you can practically watch them grow. It helps that their tree is next door to a black cherry, of course, which must be like a pastry shop to them. (The fruit is too tart for human taste buds, though the field guide assures me that they can be used in jam.) Momma is a regular at the 'squirrel' feeder and throws down plenty of seed, so they eat pretty well. (Ditto the mourning doves.) As I have the feeder hanging on a metal post, I'll be interested to see when they master the art of climbing it.

Harvest: 2-6 cherry tomatoes ripe daily, lots of green ones on the vine. We may soon be swamped. Eggplants coming along; a small green pepper or two on each of my 7 plants. A gracious plenty of green cayenne peppers (only one plant.) Everything gets wilty if I don't water daily. Radishes are slowing down with the heat and beets aren't even bothering to come up. I'll have to try them again come fall.

Credit Where Credit is Due, and other musings

No one will ever nominate him for "Husband of the Year," but the Godfather of Soul demonstrated this weekend that he can be a real class act. Though no one would have faulted him for politely declining to perform at local wannabee politico Charles Walker, Jr's ill-conceived and abysmally organized James Brown Soul of America Music Fest--especially given that its taking place at all was no guarantee even a few weeks before--Brown, who after all is no spring chicken, flew home from a paying gig at his own expense and trekked to the Fest to perform a short program. It is too bad that the gross lack of planning and local disinclination to trust Walker's grandiose claims for the three-day event resulted in lackluster attendance. Shamefully, Walker wound up the event nearly getting it shut down by quarrelling over payment with local deputies who were working security for him. This guy shouldn't be trusted with so much as a moderate-size Tupperware party in future.
Thank you, Mr. Brown. Your community spirit is admirable.

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Dog Bud dispatched three--three!-- brown thrasher fledglings Saturday. Initially I didn't catch on to what the clever fella was up to; he figured out that he could, by pouncing on the big rhododendron bush in which they were sitting, knock them down and then scoop them up before they could recover. While he doesn't seem to have any interest other than carrying them around awhile, that itself is (unfortunately) pretty quickly fatal to them. Once I got wise to what he was doing I took off to the home & garden and picked up several fencing stakes and a roll of mid-gauge 2" wire mesh, and fenced off a 10 x 15 foot section of the backyard around the rhodo. While pounding stakes (and having my ankles eaten by the no-see-ums that have cropped up with the arriving heat) I could not but muse on comedian Jeff Foxworthy's assertion when the Olympics were held there that the locals might be inclined to bring nails and barbed wire to the Fencing venue. Future thrasher nestings should be safe now; Bud seems to have accepted that he's not gonna get past that fence. We don't have this problem with other fledglings, but thrashers are comparatively big and tend to nest and forage in low shrubbery so I guess they're more vulnerable. I don't think Donna Reed ever did fences. I may have to turn in my Domestic Goddess card.

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The Ironic Catholic has posted a news item reporting on Benedict XVI's Polish trip. It seems that take-away cream cake sales in Wadowice have been stopped during the papal visit due to fears that they might "go off" in the heat. One of the IC's commenters helpfully explained that this is a British idiom equivalent to our "go bad" or "spoil;" still, for those of us on this side of the pond the image of cream cakes exploding all over Wadowice and whipped cream raining down on the faithful is just too much fun to give up! (Gosh, I hope they do Boston Cream in Poland!)

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Harvest: Anyone out there want some zucchini? Tomatoes in fruit. Picked one large cuke today, several small ones coming along.
Environment: The fireflies are out!
House painting: Don't even ask...