Sleeping Puppies

For once we're going to stay true to our name and actually feature some deaf dogs.  And nobody can say "no" to a cute sleeping puppy picture.

I put a picture like this on Facebook a few months ago and a few days later my friend asked me "What the hell was that a picture of?  Was that a dog?"  I explained that yes it was a dog, our beloved puppy all curled up in a crazy heap of limbs and ears and rib cage and spots.

Here's a closer view of the mess.  It usually takes her a minute or two to get all untangled and wake up from a nap like this.

Here's a more normal sleeping pose.  Awww.....

PHHS On The National Stage

My alma mater, Patrick Henry High School, made the news recently for electing two lesbian girls as homecoming king and queen.  It's hard to believe that this is still a headline making event worthy of being relayed by CNN, but it's even harder to believe the number of hateful calls and e-mails the school has received from around the country.

“What is especially disappointing is that adults who have contacted the school, many of whom are not even San Diego residents, are demonstrating such a lack of tolerance and are presenting such a negative role model for children with their hateful comments,” San Diego schools superintendent Bill Kowba said Monday.

You can see the CNN Story here or read about it in the San Diego Union Tribune.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween to All!!!

I keep in touch with Michelle (she fostered our puppy for two weeks down in Texas) on Facebook and always look forward to the incredibly unique and hilarious Halloween costumes she makes for her bulldog Pearl.  This is one of the best homemade dog costumes I've seen this year and I had to share it with everyone.  

Thanks for the laugh Michelle.  And sorry for appropriating your picture of Pearl. 

Adventures In Leaf Raking

Alycia is a pretty smart cookie, but sometimes she doesn't understand basic equations.  Equations such as:

Leaf Raking + Forecast of High Winds = Sad Panda

Alycia really wanted to rake leaves, and in fairness so did I, there were tons of leaves to be raked.  But I understand the nature of wind and how it can affect leaves (it blows them far away and flattens leaf piles), and also have a strong respect for Mother Nature and her desire to humble us.  Despite all my protestations, Alycia was determined to rake leaves into piles in preparation for the leaf sucker machine that was alleged to swing by during the week.  As such I left Alycia to do all the leaf raking whilst I busied myself with chores that wouldn't be blown away by the 20 to 30mph (with gusts to 45mph!!) winds that started in the afternoon and picked up overnight.

Alycia raked this area clean of all the leaves yesterday.  The winds happily returned the leaves overnight. 

This area was also leaf free yesterday.

Homemade Ketchup/Catsup/Katsup/Kyatsoop

Due to the large amount of Roma and Amish Paste tomatoes that we planted in Spring, we recently had a proliferation of tomatoes that I no idea what to do with.  Our freezer is already overflowing with (among other things) chopped/quartered tomatoes that Alycia froze over the Summer, and we've still got a ton of pasta sauce that I made last year that we haven't worked through, so what to do?  Well I've always wanted to make my own catsup...

This is actually about half of the final tomato haul of the season that I used to make catsup.  And to clarify, these are only the ripe ones.  We harvested all the green tomatoes when we ripped out the tomato plants and cleared the raised beds over the weekend, and the green tomatoes are now sitting in a cardboard box in the cellar.  If given a dark, dry place and a few weeks, the green tomatoes will eventually ripen.  They definitely won't be as tasty as the ones that had time to ripen on the vine, but they're certainly better than store bought, and more than adequate for pasta sauce or chopped up and frozen to be used in soups, stews, chili, etc. 

Sorry for the tangent.  I took all our 'maters, heated them up, and added a few ingredients:

• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup cider vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

And brought everything to a bubbling simmer for about 10 minutes.

I pressed the tomato mixture through a strainer, which was actually a decent amount of work.

And catsup came out the bottom of the strainer, as though by magic.  OK, not really magic, more like a combination of gravity and elbow grease*.
For those not familiar with the phrase "elbow grease" (probably anyone under the age of 20), please note that this is just an expression and that I actually don't have any elbow grease, my elbows are remarkably clean and non-greasy, and even if I DID have elbow grease, I certainly would not have added it to my homemade catsup. 

I had to cook it down for a few hours to remove all the liquid and thicken up the mixture.  The recipe said it would only take an hour, but it took me more like 4-5 hours to cook down.  

Some people feel that making your own condiments is some kind of sign of larger issues, or as my Brother-in-law put it "Dude, you made your own ketchup?!?!  You have WAY to much time on your hands."  Yes, yes I do.  And it's wonderful.   

Rich People Create Jobs...

...and five other myths that must die for our economy to live.

Mother Jones Article

Some interesting reading, if you have a few minutes, from the super Liberal-Commie-Pinko magazine Mother Jones.

More Nephew Pics

A few more pictures from the family visit last week.  I'm still waiting for the rest of the family to get their individual and collective act together and send me their photos from the trip. 

Dinner time gets messy.  Actually, just about every meal with this little guy got messy.  But that was OK since...

...we had a very attentive doggy clean up crew waiting on high alert.  High alert.

Fall Garden Clean Up

This weekend was a big garden clean up weekend.  We had to get the raised beds cleaned up, veggies pulled out, and everything prepared for the hard freeze that's coming this week.  For me, fall garden chores are more urgent than Spring garden chores.  Why?  I know in Spring that no matter when I start seedlings or seeds that they'll start growing when they feel like it, so there's no sense of urgency to get anything done.  I know that un-staked tomato plants will still produce tomatoes (though they will make a huge unruly mess, more on this in another post), so there's no rush.

This year, cucumbers started from seedlings and extra seeds (that were four or five years old) that Alycia threw in the ground both started producing at the same time.  Zucchini, pumpkins, and watermelons all languished in the ground for weeks before starting to grow.  The message from Mother Nature?  You can bust your butt and get things planted right after the last frost, coddle seedlings with little mini-greenhouses, or casually throw seeds in the ground, everything will grow when it's darn good and ready. 

Fall chores spurn me to action, the hard frost hangs over my head knowing that it'll turn those "just-starting-to-turn-pink" tomatoes into frost mangled mush if I don't get them inside where they might have a chance to ripen.  And experience has taught me that potatoes and onions are much easier to harvest from ground that isn't frozen.  This should be intuitive, but sometimes I need to learn things the hard way.

Alycia snipped and pulled the remaining pepper plants.  We're hoping that, like the tomatoes, we can store the peppers in a cool dry place and they'll ripen a bit more.  If not, they're still tasty even though they might be a bit green.

We harvested onions out of this raised bed as well.  The only hard part was removing the marigolds.  Even though they were still full of blooms, they were unlikely to survive the mid-20's that were forecast for a low temp Tuesday night and Wednesday night.  It's also easier to remove everything in the raised bed at once so I can cover it with a thick layer of grass clippings, shredded leaves, and mulch for overwintering.

Sad, empty raised bed.  'Till next year.