Spring's Sprung!

As my mother and sister incessantly remind me, it's cold as heck in the northern US. But down here, we've just had our first azalea bloom. Spring is here!


It's quite typical to get some spring here in southern Louisiana at this time of the year, but it was unexpected by me, since we've had such a frigid winter. By Louisiana standards of course. We had 17 nights where the thermometer went below 32 degrees! 3 or 4 is normal. 17 is crazy! I blame Albert Gore.

(click the photo to enlarge it. Azaleas are probably the world's most beautiful flowers.)

Weird Lettuce

I bought a packet of seeds called 'mesclun', which is just a random bunch edible greens. Each seed producer puts different types of seeds in them. In my opinion, they all taste horrible, but women really like them, so grow them we must.

This year, I planted some in 1 gallon pots. The lettuce looks so creepy! I'm wondering if I bought a packet of weeds.

[Click to enlarge. The stuff on the far-right is carrots, not lettuce.]

Would YOU eat that?

Cool Tomatoes

What kind of idiot tries to grow tomatoes in the middle of the winter? Me :( (click the image for a massive photo): This was a big mistake on my part. I have 67 full-sized tomato plants that I'm probably going to have to kill because I can't plant them outside until March 20ish, and they're already too big for their pots, meaning they drink the dirt dry more than once a day, and no one is here to re-water them sometimes. *Waaaah*

But there's some good news too. Check out the tiny tomato plants on the left hand side of the image. They're called 'Tiny Tim' tomato plants. They only grow to about 20" tall, will never outgrow a 1 gallon pot, and will produce cherry tomatoes (5-10 a week) until they die from cold in the fall. They make great gifts for people who like vegetables. Once some tomatoes start to turn red, throw 4 tablespoons of osmocote or some other slow-release fertilizer on the dirt and give them to someone you like. Tell them that all they have to do is water it (since you pre-fertilized it for the life of the thing). You will be surprised how happy it makes people - especially people who assumed that growing vegetables was difficult.

Just a head's up - tomatoes grown at your home taste nothing like the ones you buy in the store. They are much more intense in flavor. If you don't like the flavor of tomatoes, you REALLY won't like the flavor of homegrown ones. On the other hand, if you like the flavor of tomatoes, you'll REALLY like the flavor of homegrown ones.

Buy some seeds today! It's plantin' time in the lower 23 of the lower 48, for tomatoes and peppers at least.

15 Seconds of Bragging

I hate people who brag. But I can't help it this time! A Rolex! My company awarded me with a Rolex to celebrate 10 years of working for them!

These things cost upward of fifteen dollars on the streets of lower Manhattan. With shipping and handling to send it to Louisiana, this thing might have run them as much as twenty one bucks! Royal Dutch Shell cares about it's employees, people. Let that be a lesson to you.

UPDATE: Yes, it's a fake. Still pretty cool though :).

Bok Choy

A lot of people ask me, "Hey, blogagog, what does young bok choy look like in the garden if you forget to spray it with bug-killing chemicals?"

Well ask no more, people. Because here is the answer:


Lousy bugs. Anyway, bok choy (also called 'Pak Choi' by communists and hippies) is a great way to get your kids to eat cabbage products. We all know that they're good for you, but they taste horrible. So here's the solution. Heat up a tablespoon or two of oil until it's smoking hot in your skillet, and toss some bok choy in. If you've got a spare clove of garlic, toss that in too, but it's not necessary. Grind in some pepper.

1 minute later, pour in a few tablespoons of soy sauce, and you're almost done! Lastly, stir in whatever meat dish you've prepared. Stir it in in such a way that it would be difficult to remove the greens from the real food.

Trust me, it works. Hat tip to my wife for the idea of mixing greens into food. It's how she got me to eat them, so it only seems fair to do it to the kids :)

Sexy Nude Photos! Of My Wife!

Nah, just kidding. I was trying to get your attention. I see that it worked!

So here's the deal: This blog was created so that I could learn to Photoshop and not annoy my family by making them look at all of the lame images that I tortured into life. But I'm pretty much done with Photoshop now.

A side-issue of this blog was to expose the murderous theology described in the koran and to support those who fight against it, but there are people much better at doing that than me. There's no good reason for me to keep talking about it. The people who are willing to fight against this evil are already doing so and no amount of evidence will convince the liberals that this is a big problem. So, whatever.

So, what's left? My only other interests are exposing liberal idiocy (which is also handled better than me by others), chemical engineering (who is interested in that... seriously), fishing (yet another boring past-time) and vegetable gardening.

Yup, you guessed it. I'm heading in the direction of posting about frickin' vegetable gardening. Can you believe it? I love all of that campy crap. Making homemade beer, saki, cheese, growing vegetables... we're even discussing putting a chicken coop or cows in the currently unused barn (it came with the house and it's huge - 100'x40', two stories tall - and going to waste). Ok, I'm going to be honest: I'm losing that argument, and we probably won't get chickens or cows. But still, we talked about it...

We're big fans of nature down here, but not in the hippie way that people in the cities of America are. It's more of a 'common sense' way of looking at nature. For example, unlike the foolish city dwellers in Australia who made laws forbidding controlled burning of forests (click that link. It's funny), we torch our forests yearly around this time, and make firebreaks regardless of how many saplings are murdified. So don't hate me because I'm a closet environmentalist. I'm the good kind!

FWIW, THIS is the type of environmentalism I'm in favor of:


Mmm, I love the smell of burning forest in the morning. The photo is at 7:30 AM sunday. Total area burned - 36 acres. Trees saved from possible forest fire - ~21,000. But don't feel too happy for the trees just yet! In 12 years, most of these will be in your local lumber supply store, and the ugly ones will be in the paper you write letters with. And then I'll plant some more! Nature rocks.

So, de-link this blog if you are linked to it. It won't be what you expected anymore.

And quit trying to find nude photos of my wife on the internet, you pervert!