Garden Watch 2008

Well. I had to terminate a couple of my tomatoes today. I know it happens in the best of families but it is always a disappointing development -  Blossom End Rot. I should have known, the two offending fruits didn't look as much like the other developing tomatoes, like smaller, greener versions of the adult selves, these appeared to be pumpkins. Cute, little green pumpkins, but not at all like tomatoes. I should have known.

Cute, little green pumpkins with flat, black bottoms.

I wasn't going to say anything to them, I mean what do I know about tomatoes? I just thought that maybe it was some new tomato fad that was going around with the kids. I'm hopeing since they are all further away from the offending branch that spawned the BER  that the others will not be affected.

Despite my unhappy tomatoes, I do have some good cuke news. There had been a sad little baby cuke just sitting on the vine for a while, it wasn't doing much since the vine was also supporting three adult cukes and the plant didn't have much left over for its youngest. I harvested the three adult cukes and had given up on the non-maturing baby one and honestly, I was about thisclose to pinching off the misbegotten little cukey in hopes of forcing the vine to produce more - when I noticed it had changed, it was growing!!  It just hung there and did nothing for the longest time and now every time I go and visit the garden the little cuke that could  it has gotten a little longer and a little thicker. I am very proud of it. Now if the vine would just grow some more flowers and give little cuky some brothers and sisters I would be even more thrilled.

Speaking of thrilled!

And that is just the most senior! Every day when I go out to visit the garden in the morning before I leave for work there are new little pepper buttons waiting to greet me and what was buttons the day before have matured into something more spool sized . When they get big enough they flip themselves around and begin to look more like conventional peppers.

My friend the eggplant is also perking along after a long wait

And of course, the best producers of them all, the tiny tomatoes

Of course, mine are nothing like my Mothers tiny tomatoes that produce like bait fish. My parents get pints of tomatoes a day off of two plants! I haven't harvested a pint total from my single plant all season.

Edited to add: Cab thief shot by police the cab thief wasn't a Dix patient and it didn't happen where I had assumed it happened, i.e the out of the way spot I eat my lunch everyday and where I often see cabs parked eating their lunches.

Apparently a taxi cab driver was mugged and his car stolen on the Dix campus this afternoon. The driver of the cab received a few scrapes but is o.k. Campus police were notified and spoke with the victim and are investigating. Please be careful when walking and about the campus and when going to your cars. I recommend, when at all possible, to not walk alone but to walk with one or more people. Do not hesitate to report any suspicious activity to campus police at: .

"Report suspicious activity", for the time being, this is a campus of a STATE MENTAL HOSPITAL as well as a work place for hundreds of State Employees, you can't swing a cat without bumping into someone doing something that looks "suspicious". I feel so comforted and safe that they notified the CAMPUS POLICE about this. Shouldn't a car jacking fall under the real police?

Edited to add:

Police have blocked off an area near Lane and McDowell streets in downtown Raleigh after a chase with a yellow cab. WRAL has a crew on the way and will have more information as soon as it becomes available.

Yea! Tuesday!
I found out how many hours a weeks worth of scanning is: Three and a half hours give or take. I discovered this because the scanner at work broke and instead of opting to just mail all these documents last week, to the people who needed them, we opted to let them sit until the replacement scanner came in - Which could have taken Gawd knows how long to arrive and all the time, more and more documents would stack up doing no one any good. There is a worst case scenario scanner up stairs but the less said about that scanner the better, there is nothing "wrong" with that machine it's just even less up for the task than mine is and I don't want to set any precedence of using the lesser machine when ours is out of service.

In a perfect world I would have just emailed all the interested parties and told them the scanner was out of service and for the next amount of time that I would mail them their material and they would just have to work with only having a hard copy of whatever it is instead of both a hard copy and a scanned copy. Life would be hard but if we all pulled together and all we would have to fear is fear it self and we would all be home for Christmas when it's over, over there.

I think they would have been fine having a hard copy, as that is all they have had forever and its been good enough, and getting that material ASAP instead of waiting around and getting their documents a week and half late but scanned. I guess I've had worse Mondays but I was like a jack-in-the-box all morning. I decided to look at it as being in motion is better than standing still, bodies in motion and all that.

Speaking of jack's in-the-box, I am still up and down, up and down. I agreed to make dog cookies for a find raiser for my friend at works' dog assistance group. They buy toys for shelter dogs and arrange for adoptions and take dogs to places like Petsmart and Petco for adoption fairs. They do good work Well, the fund raiser is going to be held while I am away on vacation so my donated dog cookies would have to be competed before I left - Which is now only three or so weeks away and I needed to get moving on it so I got moving. I made one batch of cheese and one batch of bacon and I'm pretty sure I'm going to make another batch of each.

I bought these little plastic containers for them and I thought they will be the right size but they turned out to be a leetle deeper than I thought they were. Before I started, I filled a test container with some store bought dog cookies to see how many it would hold and Answer? More than I had planned... so I'm going to end up making a few more cookies than I had originally planned on and Dogger is going to get fewer than she had hoped for - But that's all right because I'm pretty sure that she prefers the store bought kind to my home made anyway. The custom shoe makers' doggy prefers mass market shoes.

Lets talk about Polls, baby

I answer a lot of online polls. A lot. In Dallas it was phone polls and for a while I controlled the music on the radio. The pollsters would call me, play a few bars of whatever and I would either say I liked it or I didn’t or it was over played or underplayed and then another pollster would call me and ask the same questions about the same songs and then a few days later a third one would call me and so for a few months in the late mid nineties I controlled the Dallas radio market . It was heady stuff.

In today's world,  in between election cycles. hardly anyone does polls me over the phone  about my music preferences because I am too old.  My Ipod knows this and plays Umbrella Man four times an hour just to spite me.

Right now though, we are right in the middle of a very hot election cycle every other time my phone rings, someone, usually a very young someone who wants to know who I’m voting for and to what degree I am in the bag for them. I’m being polled like a son-of-a bitch and that’s just phone polls, I can’t check my email with out Harris Interactive or Polling Point or Zogby breathing down my neck as to my party affiliation and who I voted for in 2004. Today's Zogby poll was different. I was shocked, I’ve never answered a Zogby poll that wasn’t single minded in its pursuit of my political leanings. I know the questions by heart:, everything from whether or not I voted last time around to what flavor of church I attend and how often I'm there.

The questions are always the same. So when I started my little poll I got ready to just zip through it. This time it was different. The first question was about the word “Authentic” and how I defined it. It then asked about how I felt about the relative authenticity of the candidates. This is fine. I like a little polling shake up every once in a while. After we got through discussing authenticity and how it pertains to the candidates we moved on.

For each of the following possible technologies, please tell me how likely you would be to use or do each. Then, whether or not you would use the technology, indicate how you think the technology would affect someones authenticity :

1. Download your brain onto a computer disk so that you could become pure energy and virtually live forever?

2. Do you believe downloading their brain onto a computer disk would make someone more authentic, less authentic, or not affect their authenticity?

3. Install knowledge or learning chips into your brain that would allow you to learn anything immediately?

3a. Do you believe installing learning chips into their brain would make someone more authentic, less authentic, or not affect their authenticity?

4. Do you believe using virtual sex partners would make someone more authentic, less authentic, or not affect their authenticity?

5. Do you believe that using Microscopic computers floating through your body that would detect disease or injury immediately would make someone more authentic or less authentic or not affect their authenticity?

I shit you not. Lets talk about sex Zogby, lets talk about You and Me, lets talk about all the good things and the bad things virtual sex/learning chips/downloading our brains onto computer disk/macroscopic computers in our blood streams can be... Lets talk about you poll writing guys at Zogby? Do you need a vacation? Would you like to speak with Employee Assistance? Do we need to talk about the Mental Health coverage in our insurance? They also wanted to know how I felt about virtual vacations and if I felt that taking a virtual vacation would effect a persons “authenticity”, not whether or not I saw the experiences one would have in a virtual environment were authentic or not, but if I felt taking part in a virtual environment would cause the participant to become less authentic. Less human. Man, some people are just four square against stay-cations.

I see in the future that we could have all of the things the poll covered but I’m almost absolutely sure that these are not issues I am going to have to wrestle with in my lifetime - I some how do not see the capacity to down load my brain as being a plug-in available as free ware in the next few years - I mean, at present we don’t come with USB ports - But then, I am old, I may have to check out Tiny E though, she’s a much new model and she may have that upgrade. I do like the tiny, floating computers or in the language of grown-ups: Nanotechnology, though, I like that idea, you know, zap that cancer, fix that broken bone! But why didn’t they just say “nanotechnology” instead of the scary sounding “macroscopic floating computers in your blood stream?

I think a pollster at Zogby may have gone off the deep end on got a hold of their address lists. The last time someone wanted to hysterically rant to me about tiny computers and brain downloads was on Edenton Street and I set my dog on them.

HAPPY       SUNDAY       !!!!!!!

HAPPY     SATURDAY     !!!!!!!

Friday Cat Blogging

Garden Update

Wednesday night I came home from worked and made dinner, pilled everyone, fed everyone, did laundry, rode the bike all the way to Krispy Kreme and then washed the dog. Thursday night I came home, made dinner for everyone, pilled everyone and then fell asleep in front of the TV. It’s not my fault, I was watching a Blue Planet DVD and the whole disk was about life on the ocean floor. It is very dark on the ocean floor.

Earlier, when I was more wakeful , I went to the farmers market to see it would be possible to buy garlic yet. I would much rather buy from a local source than have to order from one of my very sexy, very expensive seed catalogues, especially since I all ready know I’m going to be buying fancy tomatoes from them in the spring. It was a bust. Nobody was selling seedlings except for herbs and I don’t want herbs. I think I’ll go back looking for garlic in the fall, and no, you can’t just plant the garlic you buy at the store, that garlic gets treated with stuff to keep it from sprouting. I think this is done on the advice of the makers of the sexy seed catalogues.

I noticed the farmers market was piled high with peppers and eggplants. How did they get theirs so soon? I planted mine arguably, too early and it’s only now starting to fruit, how did they who are more discipline than I am, have mature, harvestable produce? They had all kinds of bell peppers and several different kinds of eggplant and all I have are pepper and eggplant fetusi. It’s not fair. I also noticed they didn’t have a big market for their eggplants either. It looks now like I’m going to have a grand total of two eggplants and I think that is about all I am going to be able to re-home when the time comes. Tomatoes, cukes, peppers, all easy to find slots for but so far I’m not perceiving a big demand for eggplants, I mean, I don’t want to eat them, I’m not sure I’ve actually seen anyone eat eggplant actually except for once on a Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode, Buffy ordered a grilled eggplant sandwich. I hate to think that is the reason I planted them but I think it is.

The peppers are producing now at last and I think they are going to do well and I should get a good harvest from them, the peppers after all are the only seedlings I planted that all the plants lived to reach maturity. The cukes all died except for a single plant and it seems a little weary now, the squash which were the most plentiful thing in the garden are down to two plants that grow but do not produce, I think there were five eggplants at the beginning and now I have three left and one of those looks ill, I harvested the collards early so they are all out of the ground,. The Tomatoes are still doing well and I wish I had planted more.

It looks like for the fall  it's  going to be garlic and maybe broccoli if it will grow here and only if I can buy seedlings. I’m a little concerned that neither of those crops will be finished up in time to get my spring planting done at a reasonable time. The spring crops is going to be several different varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, and a couple different pepper varieties. I’m not really sure yet. I do know for sure what I won’t be planting: No collards, no squash, and no eggplants.

It would put a real crimp in their ability go unpunished for their crimes

(CNN) -- An American contractor said Thursday the U.S. mission in Iraq will be undermined if the Iraqi government succeeds in revoking blanket legal immunity for American security contractors.

Carter Andress reacted to a Wednesday government report that said the removal of legal immunity for American private security contractors could set off an "exodus" from war-ravaged Iraq and "impose significant limitations" on American reconstruction efforts.

CNN.com

Just in time for our Tax Holiday

There won't be any stores to shop in.

Yea!!

Phht on the Olympics, August 8th,  Animal Planet is bringing us something even  better :  The Puppy Games , three hours of highly talented amateur pups.

Pet P.T

Eighteen days into Doggers recovery... Is that all? Haven’t we been doing this forever? Didn’t she hurt herself months ago? Hasn’t her crate been in the living room for as long as I can remember? Haven’t I been the worlds greatest cheerleader for years? Hasn’t chanting Youcandoit!Youcandoit!Youcandoit! and Up!Up!Up!Up! and Outside!Outside!Outside! been part of my daily routine always?

It hasn’t even been three weeks.

On day eighteen, I decided to try out some hydrotherapy. I was talking to one of the nurses at work and I told her how Dogger pre-accident hated being outside and would stay out only as long as it took to do what she needed to do and then it was time to go back inside; and now, post-accident she loves nothing more than to go outside and sit in the sun. She really likes it. The nurse told me it was because of the heat. The heat loosens her muscles and helps with her stiffness. I didn’t tell the nurse that Dogger hardly has to go outside to experience the healing wonders of heat.

But it gave me an idea. If  ambient heat makes her feel good, how about hot water? Water is good, heat is good, Warm water would be very good! Do-it-yourself hydrotherapy! All I needed to do was fill the bathtub with warm water and have Dogger stretch out and have a nice therapeutic soak and let the warm water work it’s magic. I thought to myself that she was really going to like this and it will make her feel good and maybe it would help speed her recovery. Dogger has had countless baths and never complained about them, this will be easy and good for her.

Dogger has had countless showers.  I had to get Dogger into the bath tub. Dogger didn’t want to get into the bathtub. She can’t just step into the tub, to get into the tub she has to jump. Dogger does not want to jump, Dogger knows where she is injured and she knows that jumping is a bad idea and she knows that putting too much pressure on her back legs will cause her pain. Hence, she is not jumping at present . Have you ever tried to heft a 90-something pound, recalcitrant, lame dog into a bath tub?

Well I did it and afterwards, my muscles needed a nice long soak. Dogger was not happy about all this water touching her and she would not sit in it and she displayed absolutely no interest whatsoever in soaking in it. I tried. I begged and pleaded and tried to explain to her about the benefits of hydrotherapy and how people with sore muscles really enjoy a nice warm soak...And she gave me a look that said I AM NOT A PEOPLE! AND I AM NOT ENJOYING THIS.

She settled on staying long enough for a shower and I soaked a tee shirt and wrapped it around her knee but I don’t think she was really getting all the soothing benefits of hydrotherapy. She’s not a water dog, it just isn’t in her.

Bunnies in the stream it is what we aaarrreeee

Bunny Rabbit Photo-stream!

Fella's, I could suggest some "options"...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional panel voted on Wednesday to find former presidential adviser Karl Rove in contempt for defying a subpoena to testify in its probe into suspected political meddling at the Justice Department.

On a party-line vote of 20-14, the Democratic-led House of Representatives Judiciary Committee approved a contempt citation against President George W. Bush's former deputy chief of staff and political adviser and sent it to the full House of Representatives for needed concurrence.

"It is regrettable that it has become necessary to pursue this course, but Mr. Rove has left us no option,"

Full story here.