It Happens

Sometimes the most engaging and informative articles are also the ones that make you cringe just a little bit.  This is one of them.  And sometimes when the subject matter is taboo in society (and in sports) it makes it all the more fascinating, in a train wreck-can't avert my gaze kind of way.  Article is courtesy of ESPN.com

It Happens

I would not recommend reading this over your morning cup of coffee and breakfast bran muffin, though that would be oddly ironic.  

Gnew Gnome Home

After a long year or so hibernating in their moving boxes, the garden gnomes sent us a text message from their gnome phones to let us know they were fully acclimated to the new latitude (the defining factor for gnome living) of Grand Forks, North Dakota and ready to be unleashed unto the world.  So a few weeks ago we had a small, private afternoon ceremony and placed the gnomes in their new homes, among the blueberry and strawberry bushes in the backyard.

We've started getting the garden ready for winter by adding leaves and lawn clippings around many of the garden plantings.  The leaves insulate the delicate blueberries and strawberries, even though they're supposed to be able to to survive in our winter, we give them as much help as we can to get them through the winter. 

This is Fredrick the Garden Gnome in his new garden home, amongst the blueberry bushes and strawberry plants.  Notice his new, and super awesome, mushroom umbrella.

This is our new gnome addition, Alycia named him Furkel (the gnomes all have a name that starts with "F").  It's kind of hard to tell since his bottom is covered in leaves, but he's actually pooping.  Yes, that's right a pooping garden gnome.  It's a special kind of garden gnome called a Caganer and is a traditional Catalonia nativity decoration.  It is also rumored to be a good luck garden denizen - fertilizing the earth with his magical and mystical poopings.

Stop Injecting Your Kids With Junk

I came upon this minute-long public service announcement from some governmental authority down under.  It's a BIT over the top, but in a way enormously funny.  Just think of the heyday that the various industry groups, politicians, trade associations, and "concerned parents" would have if this ad were ever shown here in the US.  They would have a field day, and would all line up and compete to be the most offended party involved. 

Australian Public Service Announcement

I can just see Bill O'Reilly interviewing the chairwoman (it always seems to be a woman named Marcia) of the Americans For Fast Food Family Values or Moms Against Meal Manipulation (that would be a good acronym) who'd decry the ad as an attack by the hatemongering left-wing media against good family companies like McDonald's and Burger King. 

Leaves and Stuff

It's fall here in North Dakota and it's beautiful.  I take Shakk Ti on extra long walks every afternoon and just amble along the Greenway and watch the river (which is really high due to recent rains) and feel the cool wind pull the leaves from the trees.  There's nothing quite like leaves rustling as they tumble across the ground. 

Shaak Ti loves it as well since it's the height of squirrel activity, they're scurrying around making winter preparations.  She gets to run and bark and bark and run, pulling me along and chasing them back up their trees.  It's good fun, and good exercise for both dog and human. 

The park near our house.  Slowly cooling temperatures have allowed for the traditional leaf color changing, contrasted with last year where it got very cold very suddenly and many trees dropped their foliage quickly, without the requisite change to yellows and oranges and reds.  This year is very different.   

The back yard.  This wouldn't be much of an exceptional picture if not for the fact that I mowed this yesterday evening and it was fully leafless.  This is the leaf accumulation in less than 24 hours.  Impressive.  It goes without saying that we have more fall leaf raking chores on our dance card.  

The front yard, same story.  This was totally clear yesterday evening.  Notice how the Grandmamobile stands as a silent sentinel over the yard.  It makes me feel safe. 

A Little Garden Recap

It's about time to make it up to you all and post some pictures and stories about the garden.  The weather around here is still fantastic, 60's and 70's during the day and cool at night, and though there's a threat of frost Saturday morning, it shouldn't be too bad.  The zucchini are done, but the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants all still look good and are going strong. 

This was a learning year for us and some things worked: all tomatoes, especially the wild Mexican cherry tomatoes, potatoes, and zucchini.  Some things didn't work as well: peppers (just starting to produce now that weather has turned slightly cooler) and eggplant (I think they got crowded out from being planted near the tomatoes).  We'll continue learning, making improvements and trying out new veggies.

 

This was the main bed of tomatoes.  The word "unruly" cannot even begin to describe the tangled mass of tomato-ness.  I was out of town for some of their formative weeks, and they missed out on some of the necessary staking/trimming required to be organized members of a polite garden society.  Despite lacking that structure they still produced prolifically.

 

This was the first tomato harvest in mid-August, grape and cherry tomatoes.

This was two days later, cherry tomatoes and beefsteaks tomatoes along with a few eggplants. 

This was the very next day.  We got a ton of tomatoes, Alycia had the food dehydrator running  24/7 for several weeks and we have a ton of sun dried tomatoes for use all winter.  They make a delicious addition to soups, stews, chili, and on top of pizza.  The bigger tomatoes were either eaten right away or transformed into delicious pasta sauce. 

The zucchini plants were indeed prolific and we got more than we needed from just two plants (there are indeed two plants right next to each other), but unlike others who find themselves cursed with too many long green squash, we saved ours with the help of the food dehydrator.  Cut into circles and sprinkled with a bit of the sultry mistress of spice, Mrs. Dash - viola! we had zucchini chips, quite tasty and probably a healthy replacement for potato chips (which we never really eat anyways). 

For the next few weeks we'll try to keep the tomatoes and peppers warm (in case it freezes) and slowly producing more goodness.  I'll make another raised bed or two for next year and we've already taken some of the excess strawberry runners, grown new offspring plants and transplanted them around the blueberries.  We're also going to mulch over more of the lawn area in the garden, in and around the apple trees (I"ll take some pictures of this later - don't worry) so that next year we have more room for large spreading veggies like squash, cucumbers, and pumpkins. 

My Favorite Things to Read

I know everyone else is NOT like me (this is probably a good thing).  They don't have hours of free time most days to sit and peruse the wilds of the Internet, visiting various websites and reading miscellany to their hearts content.  But if you do happen to have some free time, or appreciate news and information, or simply enjoy reading well crafted magazine articles on the web, I'd like to heartily recommend the following two websites to visit.

Give Me Something To Read.  This site is without a doubt the single biggest time killer in my life, and can easily be pegged as the sole reason why on any given day I get nothing done.  Looking back, I wish Alycia had never introduced to me to the site.  My life (and her life) would be more productive and full of completed tasks, instead of chock full of useless information and a long mental to-do list.   

The site is simply a selection of the top articles from Instapaper each day.  I get the feed in my Google Reader which consists of 2-5 articles every weekday, sometimes there's more, and some days there is nothing.  It has articles from The New Yorker, The Guardian (UK), Harper's, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, GQ, The Washington Post, The New York Times, etc.  This last week alone had - "George Lucas Stole Chewbacca, but it's OK", "The Legacy of John Lennon", a new Malcolm Gladwell article, and a great analysis of the efficacy of the death penalty in America.

Another must read for me is Tuesday Morning Quarterback (aka TMQ).  This posts every Tuesday on ESPN.com during football season, roughly late August through January, and is written by Gregg Easterbrook.  If you're already familiar with the column, congratulations you're probably awesome.  If you haven't read it before and you're a football fan I can't encourage you any more to give it a read.  In addition to thorough NFL and college football analysis, Easterbrook is also humorous and informative on topics ranging from economics and politics to space exploration and physics.  It's good stuff. 

Now not only do you have a few things to read, but a deeper insight into how I waste my time every day. 

Under New Management

After an intense period of renovation, the Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes blog is pleased to announce that it has been reopened under new management.  Please visit the wonderful new facility and bask in the splendor that is - a new menu, updated/modern fixtures, helpful customer service associates, and (mostly) fungus free restrooms.

The new ownership consortium makes the following promises* to you faithful reader:

• No more four months lapses between posts!
• More doggy pictures!
• More pictures of North Dakota scenery!
• Less John, more Alycia and Shaak Ti!!
• More gluten-free, vegetarian recipes and food stories!  
• Gardening goodness galore!!!**

At the very least we will endeavor to make fewer apologies when there is a huge lapse between postings.  Rather, like a shanked golf shot that splashes into the pond, we'll just pretend it didn't happen, block it from our memory, and move forward with nary a thought of our previous transgressions. 

Stay tuned!!!

*Please note that any and all promises are subject to my whim and procrastinative tendencies, so let's be honest, they may or may not happen.
**Gardening goodness galore offer may only be valid during the months of June through September.  Management reserves the right to regurgitate previously used stories when gardening is not in season.

I'm Baaaaaack

OK, so I never really went away.  Things have been very busy here, and as such I've neglected the heck out of this blog and denied thousands of faithful readers the chance to stay updated with the happenings around here.

In the spirit of the World Cup of Football/Soccer I have prepared a comprehensive list of excuses for why I haven't posted in so long.  Consider this the blog equivalent of "flopping", the soccer practice of flailing to the ground like you've just been shot to try to get a penalty call.  This is an insidious and disgusting practice that makes soccer look like an incredibly wussy sport, and unfortunately the practice has started permeate other noble sports like basketball, but that complaint is for another post.

Without further adieu....my list of excuses:

1 - Alycia's ankle surgery. We're on week 4 of post surgery and she's in a cast and on crutches for another few days.  She's become quite an impressive one-legged hopper (we have several nicknames for her, but none I can share), but for the first few weeks she was in a large bandage-wrap and pretty much completely immobile.  I was her nurse, caretaker, errand boy, dog-walker, ice pack changer, foot elevator, foot pillow deliverer, water fetcher, and more.  It was all worth it.  She was a great patient, her recovery has been quick and her foot is healing well, but it was an exhausting couple of weeks taking care of her. 

2 - Work.  I've actually been working.  No really.  I had a trip back to CA to do actual work, of the "in an office, wearing pants and shoes" variety.  I can provide contacts of clients who will testify on my behalf for all of you non-believers. 

3 - Sunspots.  They've been bad lately.  You may have noticed.

4 - My garden and other outside work.  Once the weather gets nice, it's hard to escape the illogical-ness of sitting inside and writing a blog about my gardening instead of actually getting outside in the garden.  The last two weeks of rain and warm, humid weather have left things looking awesome.  The tomato plants grow six inches a day, it's nutty.  You can almost sit there and watch them get larger.  In a month or so when they start to ripen there will be many, many tomatoes.  My estimated daily intake of lycopene in August and September will be approximately seven hundred thousand milligrams.

5 - High winds.  Windy conditions make typing incredibly difficult.  And North Dakota gets very, very windy.    

6 - Blog inertia and the weight of expectations.  For those of you don't blog, you just won't understand (please read this in a snarky voice for full effect), but suffice to say I know how Hemmingway, Tolstoy, and the guy who writes the Garfield comic feel.  The pressure of knowing that the tome you are writing is to be digested, critiqued, and beloved by millions puts an enormous pressure to have it be perfect, and sometimes the motivation to write at that level is hard to muster.

Actually what happens is I say:

"Crap, crap Mother Hubbard (yes I swear a lot in my internal monologue), it's been two weeks since my last post, I better write something really good".  The two options are 1) buckle down and write or 2) procrastinate.  Anyone who knows me will know what option I choose. 

Scene - two weeks later:

"Crap damnit, it's been a month since my last post, I better write something good and not just tell stories about Shaak Ti chasing squirrels".  Refer to decision tree above for results from this dilemma.

Scene - another two weeks later.

"Pasta Fazool!! It's been a month and a half since I wrote anything, I'm gonna sit down right now and....wait, what's that?  The Ivory Coast vs. Switzerland world cup match is on???  Ooooh, this should be a good game".  But it isn't.  Like 90% of the games I've watched, it ends in a 0-0 tie, I mean a draw. 

So that's all we've got for now.  Hopefully with calmer winds, fewer sunspots, and no extremity surgeries, we can wrangle up some more regular posts over the summer.  But of course, no promises.