This is Getting Old

Now it's breaking 100F while being partly cloudy! While friends and family in NJ. MA and Minnesota report ridiculously cool weather, friends in MS, AL, and FL are suffering through equally ridiculous heat... and no rain for over a month. *whine*

Regardless, we've got people showing up in 2 hours to eat some fine barbecued Independence Day brisket, chicken and ribs. It's uncouth to whine at a party, so I'm whining on the internet instead. FWIW, I think we'll all be hanging out inside :).

Happy Fourth!

The Bane of the Southern Gardener

The stink bug. So called because it bears the abhorrent scent of cilantro. They make tomatoes un-give-away-able because their stings mottle the skin and make rock-hard bead-like structures beneath it. They make cucumbers grow misshapen. They make bean and pea pods come in missing half of the beans/peas. They even discolor corn kernels if you aren't fast to harvest them.

There used to be a pesticide that would eradicate them - Thiodan. But the EPA, being a bunch of whiny ^%$#@$es, banned it in America four years ago, simply because it looks a little like DDT chemically. No studies. They just said 'it might cause cancer', as if anyone was eating the stuff. The EPA is nothing but a bunch of hippies, which is doubly sad because it was created by Republicans!

But I digress. I'm writing this to let you know that there is a new (~2 yrs old) product that treats stink bugs like the cilantro smelling scuzzballs they are and knocks them out, and then kills them - for about 5 days, rain or shine. Then, you've got to pick all the veggies and spray again.

Bayer Triple Action Insect Killer. Buy some today. I haven't found a bug that it won't eradicate. Buy some now before the EPA randomly selects it for the chopping block.

Update: It works on azaleas and rhododendrons too.

What Happens?

What happens when you put a city girl on a tractor in the country? You get a really big smile :)



That's my sister, btw. She's awesome.

Things Just Got Weird

We live on a dead-end road, and there are three other houses in a group beyond ours about a half-mile further down the road. So, what could this possibly mean?

It's on a telephone pole on our property about a quarter mile before you get to our house. I'm not bothered that someone put up a sign on our land (we're eazy-breasy in Louisiana), but I really want to know what it means!

For the record, I sniffed, but smelled no dumplings :(.


UPDATE: I added the following addendum to the sign:


But sadly, no dumplings have been offered :(.

'Maters

We've grown 1, 429 (+- 50) tomatoes this year. I know, because I'm the only one who picks them (lazy freakin' family.. but that's another story that I'll grumble about another time), and it's so boring that I count them. I $%@^&'d up and planted twice as many as I should have, thinking that an expected freeze was going to kill my original crop. The freeze happened, but we saved the plants by draping a towel around each of them. We didn't do anything but that. And they lived! Unexpected, but very cool. But it leaves us with a ridiculous amount of tomatoes.

Here's an example. I picked these Roma tomatoes from 6PM to 6:30PM (good for making sauce, but not so much for eating fresh). I got about a third of the way done with the Romas when I'd had enough (it's oppressively hot in Louisana in June, July, August and the first two weeks of September... also I'm a wimp when it comes to heat), and this is the result:


Don't let the camera fool you. They're beet red. I pick them every night, and leave the extras in a cooler that says 'Free Vegetables' by our Post Office (we have no stores in our town, if you can believe that... it's rinky dink), and by the time I come home from work, it's empty. So far, at least.

Finally, I'll end with a tomato that's unabashedly happy to meet you.


And then there's some corn. But that's a story for another time.



UPDATE 6/16/09: scratch 1429 tomatoes, because it's now 2109 tomatoes. From one and a half 80 foot rows. Unfreakinbelievable. It's gotten so bad that I can't even find enough neighbors to give them to. A LOT of people have gardens in Hicksville, America, and there's only so many vegetables that you can eat or jar in a season. And the corn? Oh. My. God. We planted a 30'x30' patch, and got roughly five times as much corn as you see on our table above, and it all came due in 3 days! Holy CRAP that was a lot of corn. I called in sick one day to help process the stuff since my wife threatened divorce if I didn't (she does that a lot. No worries, but it's best to heed her orders when she gets to that point.)

Before you call me a braggart, know that I'm not taking credit for these ridiculous amounts of produce. It's not because of something I've done. Everyone in Louisiana is experiencing it, perhaps it's an American or even worldwide phenomena. I have no idea why, but it's a banner year. And as an amateur gardener, that makes me very happy. And full.

My Grandfather's "Hobby"

This is a story told by my grandfather, circa 1975 (ish). Apologies for the use of the N-word. He meant no ill will. It was a perfectly acceptable way of saying 'black person' back then. Or so I'm told. Without further adieu, here's a story about my grandfather's hobby, as told by my grandfather, typed by my cousin, and transcribed by yours truly. He was funny. Give it a read.

Grandpa’s Hobby

Last summer we were more than a little shocked when we found out my grandfather was sneaking around making moonshine out on the back porch down in Grant, Louisiana. He told us he was making gasohol to use in his lawn mower, but the last time I was there he still had not mixed any gasoline with it.

When we asked him about that back porch still, he told us that “long years ago when he was young”, he used to make moonshine and home brew all the time and thought it would be fun to try it again --- sort of like a hobby. Then he told us this tale about an incident that happened once when he made some home brew at the ripe old age of thirteen:

Poppa died when I was five, Mama died when I was eleven, and after livin’ with Uncle Levi and Aunt Lanny for a year, I ran away and went and batched with Uncle Joe for six months at a turpentine camp on the Sabine River where Uncle Joe was quarter boss and woods rider. He looked after the chippin’, dippin’, scrapin’, and rakin’ around the trees in the fall of the year so if the woods was to catch fire, the trees wouldn’t burn with all that turpentine. If them trees woulda caught fire, they’d a burnt like gasoline.

The workers in that turpentine camp lived in a “quarters” off a little ways down the road from Uncle Joe’s cabin, and Uncle Joe was boss over the “quarters” and the whole outfit. Man, them turpentine men was the meanest bunch of guys there ever was. They’d fight all the time and kill one another. Uncle Joe had to tend to ‘em and keep ‘em straight. He’d wrap ‘em over the head with a cane, or sometimes he’d shoot ‘em if he had to. I seen him shoot an old woman in the foot when she was comin’ after him with a butcher knife, and she just fell full length. Now, they was scared of Uncle Joe! There’d always be somebody that would slip off and come tell Uncle Joe, “Old so and so’s over there raisin’ the devil and runnin’ around with his guns, fixin’ to kill somebody.” Then uncle Joe would have to go get ‘em all quietened down.

One evenin’ one of them (insert n-word here) over there at the quarters was just a cussin’ and fightin’ and raisin’ sand; he’d shot at Uncle Joe two or three times, and Uncle Joe had shot back at him and then hunted him half the night and never could find him. Uncle Joe always slept with his 38 and big ole flashlight by the side of his bed.

That evenin’ I had decided to make me some home brew. I had bought me a five gallon stone churn and some bottles, caps, a capper, and a tester to test that beer. When you get that home brew to a certain degree, it’s time to bottle it up. Well, I had broke my tester, and I bottled that stuff up too green.

Man, all at once in the middle of the night, “KaPow! KaPow! KaPow!” Them bottles got to explodin’ and that was the worst racket you ever heard in all your life. The jar from one bottle would bust another one, and it just kept on ‘till it blowed the tops off ever’ one of ‘em.

Now, when them bottles started blowin’ up, Uncle Joe sailed outta that bed like a wild man and grabbed that gun and flashlight; he just knew that (insert n-word here) had done come back and had ‘im. I yelled, “Uncle Joe! Uncle Joe! It’s my home brew!” He just dropped to his knees. I grabbed me a ten quart water bucket and tried to save some of it, but it blowed the bucket clean outta my hand and cut it for or five flips across the floor. I lost ever’ bit of my home brew.

Yes, I guess my grandfather started out pretty young with his hobby, but now it looks as though he is going to have to give it up because, in his words: “It took me sixty pounds of sugar to make that moonshine out there on that back porch the other day, so I already made up my mind. I ain’t gonna make no more ‘cause sugar’s done got too high!”

_____________________

I've got his still up in my attic :).

Why Are Liberals Obsessed With Race?

Just wonderin'.