I’m still here. Yesterday I was busy tending to errands and putting a presentation together.
Today I gave the presentation. Whew. And am having to quickly pull some things out of the garden. Rain & frost are on the way.
More soon!
Preparing the garden for the inevitable. Sigh.
The overnight low for Wednesday is forecast to be 34 degrees Fahrenheit. Today is Sunday. Things could change. I suspect what will happen is this: It will or will not be 34∘Wednesday night. And even if it isn’t, it will or will not be 34∘the next night, and the next… . But it is inevitable that it will be 34∘some coming night.
Sigh.
A few things linger in the summer garden. Tomatoes, of course. Several varieties set fruit when it started to cool down in August. They will be fine for one cold night. I’ll let them hang on the vine as long as I can and then bring those that haven’t ripened inside.
And I’m going to have to make a hard decision about those tomatilos. [Funny that the red squiggly line doesn’t recognize tomatillos, with alt. wpelling.]
I still have a few of my favorite melon in the garden, and they are just beginning to ripen. If it looks like it really will get that cold, I’ll cover them with cloches. Note to self: mid-June is too late to plant Long John melon.
Radishes and Rutabas don’t care if it gets cold. Neither does the spinach.
The peas have come up. I’ve gotten the leeks and Vidalia onion seeds planted, and some quick growing lettuce. I’m still waiting on the garlic sets to arrive in the mail. And I still need to plant the artichoke seeds.
Other than that, all that remains is cleanup, throwing some lime on the garden plots, and tilling them up. To that end, I’ve been drying basil.
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| Basil drying and the reflection of my cupboards |
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| A quart jar of dried basil |
My kitchen smells so basily! If I dry all the decent basil that remains, I’ll probably wind up with two quarts.
I’ve picked what will be– thank God!– the last of the green cherry tomatoes.
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| The basket is much larger than it looks. Crap. We are going to have to pickle these. |
It’s October 16th. To tell The Truth (nod to Prof. Lynch), I am ready to start thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas and next year’s garden.
Sigh.
We have company and a get together this next weekend!
Web log. See it? Blog.
Technically speaking, a blog is a log of what you’ve seen on the (world-wide) web.
And so I share with you this:
As the kids are getting older, I’m turning over household chores to them. Teaching responsibility and all. Last night, it was kitty litter.
Me: It’s time you started emptying the cat litter.
Junior: I don’t want to.
Me: They’re your cats. Time you take some responsibility for them.
Junior: No. I don’t want to.
Me: This is not a negotiation, you do not get a say, and what you want will not change the outcome.
There was a lot of whining and fussing but we made our way to the litter box where I showed her the scoop and the bags. I even held the bag for her. And she thought she was done. When I reminded her that we had another litter box to empty. More whining.
Junior: I already did one. You do the other.
Me: No, Babe, you’re going to be responsible for your pets.
Junior: Fine!
Me: Doesn’t having cats suck?
Junior: No! You suck!
Hat tip to Instapundit who links to Say Uncle, a blog mostly about guns. Incidentally, this weekend there was a post about parenting at PJM, Four Small Things Good Parents Do That Hurt Their Kids in Big Ways.
My mother spanked me. Spanked, not beat. One time Mom spanked me with a wooden spoon and it broke. Really. She was wailing away and smacked me on the knee and the spoon broke. I was 16. She wasn’t really going to do any damage. It was funny. For both of us. We saw the absurdity of her trying to control my actions with a wooden spoon, at my age.
A Thought Experiment, pt. 2
Imagine a group of 100 people. Any 100 people will work just fine. For the purposes of this thought experiment the “sample” doesn’t have to be random, and we need no control group.
Imagine these folks have five choices– what Mr. Big Food will grill when they all come out to the Farm next weekend. They can choose only one.
[If you don’t think Mr. Big Food can grill for 100+ people, I refer you to the first post here at Big Food, etc.: 260 Pieces of Chicken.]
The choices are:
1. Salmon
2. Vegetables
3. Chicken
4. Hamburgers (made from freshly ground sirloin tip)
5. Ribeyes
Each individual writes the numeral corresponding to his or her choice on a slip of paper and drops it in a box.
Mr. Big Food is very busy so he asks a colleague whose specialty is Experimental Philosophy to determine what will please most of the crowd when they show up at the Farm. This is an important task because we have to purchase what will be grilled.
Mr. X-Phi happily agrees to help. Shhh… although I am very busy, I do a quick tabulation of my own:
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| Lest there be any mistake, I do know how to properly label a graph. What I don’t know is how to get Numbers to properly label a graph. X-axis: Numeral corresponding to choice; Y-axis: # of people choosing each choice. |
Soon, Mr. X-Phi reports to Mr. Big Food that 3– chicken– is the average response.
Let us look at the calculation Mr. X-Phi did.
Mr. X-Phi multiplied the choice (1-5) by the number of people choosing each. He summed these, and divided by 100.
So chicken. Right? So wrong.
Let us look at column B*C (i.e., B multiplied by C). Why do the 30 people who chose steak get five times as much weight in the calculation than the 30 who chose salmon? For that matter, why do the 15 who chose vegetables have the same weight as the twice as many who chose salmon?
Why is it that both the (loosely) vegetarians and the meat lovers are having their potentially fine grilling experience spoiled by an Experimental Philosopher? (Not that there’s anything wrong with grilled chicken. But I’m making a point.)
And why are we going to have to eat what the fewest number of people want?
~~~~~~~
We really did this once for nearly 100 people. Mr. Big Food took orders, steak or salmon grilled to order? It was very funny. One fuss budgety guy came back three times because his steak wasn’t right. In the end of course it was perfect. Daughter K had come home from work in the middle of all this and jumped in to help– in her little chef’s’s outfit.* People thought we’d hired her. Ha!
~~~~~~~
Thought Experiment pt 1.
* At the time, K was doing serious cooking at a restaurant owned by a very successful chef. I think she learned a lot working in restaurant kitchens.
Life isn’t fair.
And I’m not talking about the unfairness felt by Occupiers of various cities. I am talking about the day in, day out, fact of the matter: Life is not fair. And no one said it was going to be.
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| Turtlin’ along |
On my way home from doing some errands, I got caught behind an over-sized load and a guy who really wanted to pass it. I had taken my camera with me for just such an occasion. “Turtlin’ along” had potential as a post title.
You may be able to see the intersection just ahead. I took the pic and caught up. The over-sized load turned left. The other truck and I had to slow way down for him to do so. Just as we were able to move forward, the other driver and I saw a small dog in the road. He hit it, but from my angle it looked like just barely. I stopped and got out. He kept going through the intersection, but then turned around and came back.
The dog was trying to get herself off the road and any one could see that her ankle was not good– as in paw flapping in the wind. The other driver made an attempt at seeing if any of the people working at the gas station on the corner recognized her. Meanwhile, she had calmed down as much as is possible under the circumstances. I stood so she was in my shadow.
I tried to think of actions I could take. I am Red-Cross certified but I am not certified to put a splint on a paw that’s flapping in the wind. Even trying to pet her to reassure her seemed like not such a good idea. She’d tried to bite the other driver. I did think about shooting her– would I have had to call the sheriff first? Probably yes, to be on the safe side– but she wasn’t mangled beyond recognition, so that wasn’t really a possibility. So I just stood there talking to her.
The other driver came back and said he was sorry but there wasn’t anything he could do. No one knew her and he had to get somewhere. He did help me put her in the back of the pickup so I could take her to the vet.
By the time we arrived at the Vet, and were waiting outside, the poor little thing was slowly going into shock. But she tried to be responsive to me and to the nurse who jumped up into the truck with her. She had a friendly little face, and may have, at one time, made someone happy. She just had that look about her.
After a cursory look at her while she was still in the bed of the truck, the Vet and I discussed the options, at that time. I opted for the Vet to get her cleaned up, give her some pain medication and a better look. I was to come back at 4.
I had become responsible– morally and financially– for this stupid dog.
At 4 o’clock I learned that the bones in her leg were shattered, it would need to be amputated. Her pelvis was in four separate pieces. That’s not the way pelvises are put together. There are distinct bones in a mammalian pelvis, but they are fused together. And her pelvis was no longer attached to her spine. X-rays do not reveal much in the way of soft tissue damage, so there were questions about the innervation of her other leg, given that nerves follow bones in the periphery. But, on the other hand, nerves are not bones. In the face of trauma, nerves don’t break, they try to hang on, to re-wire. That’s one reason she would have to convalesce for several months following surgery intended to get her bones back into position. Cross you fingers and pray to God that nerves follow suit.
As I write, she has already passed over into Doggy Heaven.
I like our country vet. He didn’t charge me anything– although the x-ray and euthanasia drugs cost him something. I did pay the receptionist $40 to give to her father who has a backhoe. For the uninitiated, backhoes dig holes.
RIP, Millie (which is what I named her).
And now a word about Mr. In a Big Hurry. Shame on you. Shame. And shame on your wife who got out of your truck and saw this poor little dog and didn’t talk you into doing the right thing. I hope your real character was revealed to her and that she withholds sex from you for quite some time. For shame. I hope when your little dog goes missing and you look everywhere for it … you find it. And you owe me 40 bucks, you jerk.
There are jerks everywhere. Life isn’t fair. Much as I love it, the South has its share of jerks. To his credit, the jerk did come back. To his dishonor, he would have left Millie on the road, to die while being picked at by buzzards.
Cotton harvest
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| A bale of cotton |
Clearly I exaggerated when I said cotton bales were the size of railroad cars. Unfortunately, there’s nothing in this photo that gives you any perspective, but they are BIG. I had difficulty getting this photo. Every time I drove through the field there was something going on– lots of big machines, people, trucks. I didn’t feel comfortable taking photos– like a tourist– of my neighbors working. And to tell the truth, this wasn’t the photo I wanted at all. I wanted a shot of the field I showed you the other day. It was the first picked.
But I couldn’t get it. The one I took is on the other side of the road.
Fortunately, my issue of Cotton Farming came yesterday. It has a good picture for scale.
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| Big machines |
From Cotton Farming, vol. 55, no. 10, p. 10. October 2011. More pictures at the link.
Development, right behavior, & excellence
Watching Rocky grow and develop is fun.
I have seen Rocky (and Buddy, but not so much Lady) hesitate before performing an action that was impermissible. (Lady just insisted on keeping her elbows on the table.) The hesitation is fascinating. Should I or shouldn’t I? As if there is deliberation going on in Rocky’s little brain. And why wouldn’t there be? He now knows a zillion things he’s not supposed to do. And he knows doing some of these results in worse consequences than doing others.
No. I am not anthropomorphizing. First of all, he’s a dog. If you think dogs don’t deliberate– think– you have had no long term exposure to well behaved dogs or you are simply mistaken. Second, he hesitates. Short of his saying in English, “I am thinking about whether or not I should pick up this shoe,” I’m not sure how more more evidence you’d want.
The trick, of course, is to train him such that he can control himself and his actions well enough to leave the shoe alone.
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. Aristotle
Helping Rocky become an excellent dog is a lot of work.
Wash day
I made mention of “wash day” in a previous post. Every day is wash day for those of us here on the Farm, except for Mr. Big Food who does his laundry on a schedule. Every so often, he has “shirt-washing days,” “pant-washing days,” and so on. (He’s very disciplined.) But in the crappy olden days, there really was such a thing as wash day– the one day a week the laundry was done. My neighbors still have wash day. I know this because they hang their clothes out on the line every Wednesday, although Wednesday was not the preferred wash day.
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| HOME LAUNDERING: Need for cleaning knowledge [full citation at post’s end] |
Please do take a minute to enlarge and read this. It is delightful! Look carefully at the diagram on the left-hand page. Note the decidedly non-Electric dryer. We have it so hard these days. We should protest.
Tuesday is preferred over Monday for wash day for the following reasons. (Who does their laundry on Wednesday?) Monday can be used to:
- Replenish the larder
- Put the house in order after the weekend
- Mend tears, etc. that would worsen when the garment was laundered
- Remove stains
- Prepare food in advance for wash day
- Gather, and presumably sort (this is a dig), laundry and prepare laundry apparatus without “infringing on the pleasures or quiet of Sunday”
I say again, we have it so hard these days. Can you imagine what it must have been like for housewives women before the invention of the Electric washer and dryer made it possible for them to escape the drudgery of wash day?? They had to mend clothes so clothes would last longer. They actually had to think things through: cook a day ahead, gather– and presumably sort– the laundry, get the “apparatus” ready.
Could they have taken pride in this drudgery?
To be clear, I like Electric stuff just as much as the next guy. In fact, while typing all of this out on my electricity driven laptop, a storm came up and the power flickered a few times. I had to stop what I was doing, go get the flashlights and the oil lamp. I had to quickly think through what else I’d need to do if the power went out for more than a few minutes– it’s after dark already. Trust me, I am a fan of Electricity.
But I wonder how much we’ve paid for being able to throw a mega-load of unsorted clothes into an Electric washing machine with that new detergent that forgives us for not knowing that black and white make grey?
Citation: Care of Clothing. The Women’s Institute Library of Dressmaking, vol. 3. The Women’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences. Press of International Textbook Company, Scranton, Pa. 1925.
Note: The book in front of me makes no mention of Mary Brooks Picken, but see this.
Wind and solar power are…
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| free! |
We are so green.
The best information I can find on this comes from a government site (data presented as monthly averages). So, according to The Government, not quite 1/2 the days in December, the least sunny month, are sunny days here. From April through September, over 70% of the days– three weeks each month!– are sunny. Lord! I just looked at where we used to live. No wonder we moved!
Lots of people around here have clothes lines, even in the mini-city. I’ll grant that some things are easier to dry in the Electric drier* than on the line. And you can’t always count on the weather being what it should be on wash day.** But still, is it really that hard to hang some things out and let them dry in the breeze?
* Every family has– I hope has– family stuff like this. Remember Jeff Foxworthy’s Olympics in Georgia schitk? I can’t seem to find the version I’m looking for right now, but there is one that says something about Ray and Faylean Walker donating clothes poles for the pole vault because “Faylean done got herself an Electric dryer.” “Electric dryer” with a very long E. We actually say it that way a lot. For fun. So, for example, Mx would never say, “electric dryer,” but he would always say, “Electric dryer,” with a very long E.
** I’ll be posting about wash day soon.
Seed sale
I got an email from New Hope Seed Company. They are having a sale!
I will order Aunt Hatie’s red okra, whippoorwill blackeyes (cowpeas = blackeyed peas), and the hardshell melon seeds. I’ll also pre-order one of those sweet potatoes.
The red okra is delicious and beautiful. Okra is related to hollyhock, rose of Sharon, and hibiscus. The flowers are gorgeous. The plant gets about 3-4′ or more tall. You could plant okra in the back of a flower bed!
Fresh blackeyes are so good. Once established, the plants take care of themselves.
We had that hardshell melon this year. It was very good, although to be honest, I like this French melon better. But the hardshell melon is more resistant to critters.
Last year was the first I’d grown sweet potatoes. I was pretty ignorant about them then. I now know that once you have a crop, you no longer need to buy slips. This year, I wasn’t paying attention and both of the varieties I planted, Nancy Hall and O’Henry, were white potatoes. Very tasty but not traditional. So I’ll get some orange for next year. Sweet potatoes are so easy it grow.
A word about the tobacco: Cool. I grew tobacco once. I was ticked off that the busybodies in the fairly good sized sort of mid-Western city in which we lived had decided in their infinite wisdom to prohibit smoking in bars and restaurants. I knew the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street belonged to the city (although I never saw anyone from the city mowing it). So I planted tobacco on city property. Take that!
Tobacco is another plant that is beautiful as a plant, especially if you let it go to seed.
Big sounds
This could be a disappointment.
Update. There’s supposed to be video.
Blogger is sorry.
Night without parole
Rocky did something so terrible this evening that I sent him to his box for the rest of the night (until C gets home).
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| Parts of a paperback book |
I accept partial responsibility. He’d been very good all evening, even while we were cooking a very nice fall supper– baked porkchops, and some casserole made out of winter squash, an egg, some milk and melted butter, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla. But I lost track of him when we went back into the kitchen to clean up, put things away, and so on. I’m sorry I did.
But Rocky has to take responsibility for his actions, too. Since I make the rules, I ruled that chewing up books was a very bad thing. And so Rocky is behind bars.
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| C will be home soon. She will break him out. |
He is not pouting. He is contrite. I left C a note.
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| Note to C regarding Rocky’s misbehavior |
Other than this episode, Rocky had a good day. He almost caught a butterfly!
Crappy old stuff: Mending
Few women appreciate the importance of mending, forgetting entirely the old proverb, “A stitch in time saves nine.” Every housewife should form the habit of doing the weekly mending each week instead of allowing it to accumulate until it becomes a burden. Carefully mended garments denote thrift, industry, and economy; therefore, every woman and every girl should take pride in knowing how to darn a pair of stockings, to patch a worn garment, and mend a tear. Mary Brooks Picken (Woman’s Institute Library of Dressmaking: Sewing Materials, 1923)
Thrift, industry, and economy. Pride.
I must admit I don’t think I could darn a pair of socks very well. But I have a set of old books written by Mary Brooks Picken. So if worse come to worst, I can learn.
Moving on to more important matters… .
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| A protester at Occupy Cincinnati. She has a job. |
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| And an iPhone. Good for her. |
Please note that these photos were grabbed from this web site. I’ve included the citation information in the screen shot itself.
You can learn more about Mary Brooks Picken, a prolific writer on needlework, sewing, textiles, etc., at Wikipedia, Yellow Zeppelin, and Amy Barickman.
Eggs for Watermelon
I just got off the telephone with Daughter C who had called to ask if we had any extra watermelon because she was “bartering”– her word: Eggs for watermelon.
Are you kidding me? Of course! I just happen to have a couple watermelons on the picnic table. See?
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| Two watermelons. Tomorrow there will be one watermelon and one dozen fresh eggs. |
Fresh eggs rule. And it gets better… . Eggs come from chickens. If you have chickens, you have chicken poop. It is October. There’s plenty of time for me to compost chicken poop before next spring. Whoo hoo!
BIG LIFE!
Pickled green cherry tomatoes
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| Quarts: Pickled green tomatoes; Pint: Pickled jalapenos |
GARLIC DILLED GREEN TOMATOES
Makes 6 pints
Makes 6 pints
3 quarts green cherry tomatoes, approximately
12 cloves garlic
6 sprigs dill
1 1/3 quarts white vinegar
2 C water
1/3 C canning salt
Wash and pack tomatoes into hot pint jars, adding 2 cloves garlic and 1 sprig dill to each jar. Boil vinegar, water and salt mixture about 5 minutes, or until salt is dissolved. Pour over tomatoes, seal jars, and process 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.
~~~~
We have an abundance of cherry tomatoes.
Tomato Cherry Red & Yellow Pear Blend Organic Heirloom Seed
Lycopersicon lycopersicum
75 days. This heirloom blend brings you both red and yellow, very attractive fruit that can be eaten like grapes. Sweet, mild flavor and low acidity make these tomatoes great for hors d’oeuvres, salads, canning and relishes. Produces clusters of fruit all summer long. Cherry Red Pear seeds are dyed red, while the Yellow Pear seeds remain natural so you will know what tomato seed you are sowing produces which color tomato. Provide support for vigorous vines that easily reach 6 feet.
We are still eating pickles from last year, so we haven’t gone hog-wild with the pickling this year. But since we had some jalapenos to pickle, we decided to put up a couple jars of green tomatoes, too.
It’s nice to have pickled green cherry tomatoes around when you want to make some fancy schmancy hors d’oeuvres, or when you feel like a saltine and a pickled green cherry tomato.
Today’s harvest (UPDATED: We did it!)
No photos. Sorry. Maybe I’ll update after we have supper. It’s some chicken casserole dish that’s already baking.
We had a very busy week. I wasn’t able to spend nearly as much time in the garden as I usually do, especially since I knew we wouldn’t be around much late in the week and so I spent one day cleaning the house. And Mr. Big Food wasn’t able to do his chores, either. So we were outside today. Nice day. Also, Daughter C is here today to take care of Rocky. (I spend too much time with Rocky.)
Today I picked
twothree watermelons (one is rotten so we’re going to shoot it)- a few beets and
- baby lima beans
(I don’t know what he’s going to do with the beats, but the limas are going in a crock pot Tuesday morning. Limas are not called for, but we have too few to freeze so we might as well eat them.)
- a little French melon (not sure it’s going to make the cut; we’ll look at it tonight
- jalapeno peppers
That’s right. We are pickling tonight. Pickling jalapeno peppers.
- and a nice batch of cherry tomatoes.
And I almost forgot the white winter radishes. I pulled a handful of white carrots on Thursday. We actually have a lot of radishes on hand right now. I should announce this.
That was satisfying. And now, while supper is in the oven, we will clean the kitchen. This will be satisfying in it’s own sort of drudgery way.
I cannot put it off any longer.
UPDATE
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| Preparing to freeze some French melon |
We did it! We got just about everything done. The only thing that remains for this evening is stewing the tomatoes. But the melons (there were two, not one, aas I reported earlier) and tomatillos– which I think I forgot to mention yesterday– are in the freezer. The jalapeno are pickled, as are the two quarts of green cherry tomatoes that I picked just as it was getting dark.
The melon are
Melon Charentais Heirloom Seed
Cucumis melo (Reticulatus group)
90 days. Charentais melons aren’t found in your grocery store — they’re too fragile to ship. A true cantaloupe, the fruits have smooth skin with light green stripes, maturing to creamy yellow. The delightfully scented, creamy orange flesh is filled with unsurpassed flavor. One of the sweetest rewards of home gardening!
from Botanical Interests and they going to taste sooo good in January!
Good day. Big life.
The view from my side yard
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| Zoom in. It’s cotton. |
Mr. Cotton Farmer is starting to pick. I’ll takes some pics.
A thought experiment
Imagine two sets of 10 numerals that were specified to code for strength of a positive emotion/opinion versus strength of a negative emotion/opinion, such that “5” coded for “strongly disagree.” and “1” coded for “strongly agree.”
A: [1,5,2,4,3,1,5,2,4,3]
and
B: [1,5,1,5,1,1,5,1,5,5]
When you sum the numbers that the numerals stand for, the total is 30. There were ten participants. What’s the average response?
Stop right there. If this question makes sense to you, go back to bed.
Look at the data!
In A, each of the five responses gets two “votes.” That is what a null hypothesis looks like. There is not a consensus opinion. Respondents are just as likely to be neutral as they are to have a strong opinion.
In B, there is strong (dis)agreement.
To mistakenly report a statistic that cannot truly be reported, given the nature of the data, is a crime.
To be continued.
End times
The power went out for a split second earlier and now the satellite is acting out. Some logo is pinging around the screen and we don’t seem to be getting anywhere.
This is not what I was promised.
I AM THE 99%!!!!!
Yeah, right. Go back to bed.
“Progress in Firearms Carry Rights 1986-2011”
States’ concealed carry permit laws are classified as
- UNRESTRICTED– no permit is required to carry a concealed firearm (Alaska, Arizona, Vermont and Wyoming, but see Wikipedia and the maps at USACarry for more specific information)
- SHALL ISSUE– permit required but the state is obligated to issue a permit if the applicant meets certain criteria (age, no felony record, no drug arrests, etc.); i.e., the state has no discretion.
- MAY ISSUE– permit required but local authorities (e.g. sherrifs’ offices) have discretion in the form of requirements above and beyond what the state requires. This category is further broken down into Permissive (Alabama) and Restrictive (California) May Issue states.
- NO ISSUE– private citizens are prohibited from carrying firearms (see links above)
This graphic plots states’ (categorized by law-type) percentage of the US population (Y-axis) against time, 1986-2011. Bottom line, in the last 25 years, states with more restrictive gun laws have seen a decrease in population whereas those that were, or have become, more permissive have seen an increase in population.
No Lawyers– Only Guns and Money has more analyses.
h/t Instapundit