I didn't think it was possible, in any way, to see anything more soul-destroying than that picture of the Stones from the post below. I was wrong — terribly, tragically wrong...

Blog Quote of the Whenever I Feel Like It:

“Call me a naif as it pertains to the human digestive system, but I think that Van Camp's Baked Beans are fundamentally incompatible with uninterrupted family fun at a Six Flags theme park.”

From Happy Furry Puppy Storytime with Norbizness

Oh, and let me just say, I am the biggest baby-boomer rock'n'roll nostalgist on the planet, and I have only ONE thing to say about this... AAAAUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!! [RUNS SCREAMING FROM THE COMPUTER... MUST GOUGE OUT EYES....!!!!]

QUIZ: Who said this?

“…Government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built up. They regard Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life.”

Hint: Not a Republican...

ANSWER: Adolf Hitler, in his first radio address after coming to power.

I'm just sayin...

Blog Quote of the Day (week? month?):

“…Bush defined "people who are better off" as everyone making over $20,000/year.

Who are, granted, yes, technically, "better off" than someone living, say, in a wet mound of clay, feeding on occasional passing snakes.”

From BobHarris.com

Blog Quote of the Day (week?):

“Face it. We're selfish. We're all about us and if it doesn't put a new XBox in Cody & Dakota's room or fill up the gas tank of our 12-mile a gallon TerraCrusher XLT, we don't want any part of it. Freedom for the other guys? That's their problem; when is X-Men III coming out? But threaten our "way of life" (which is more about a plentitude of internet porn, the ability to buy a 64 oz. BladderBuster™ of Mountain Dew for eighty-nine cents, and Calvin pissing-on-something car window stickers than it is about Jeffersonian democracy) and we're shipping the few, the proud, the aren't-a-legacy-at-Yale off to a country that most Americans couldn't find on a map if you spotted them the continent.”

From TBogg

Blog Quote of the Day:

“… Chafee and Hagel said “Yeah, I’m not sure I want that on my FrankenBerry.”

From Corndoggerel

I Love TomTomorrow!

Blog Quote of the Day: Tuesday Edition

“as the Vatican's enforcer, Ratzinger obviously did a piss-poor job regarding the sex scandals. And for this he gets to be Pope.

It looks like incompetence isn't only the domain of the Bush administration. ”

From TBogg.

Germination is proceeding slowly. When I do finally get my ass up from this keyboard, I plan on sowing some leeks (Broad London), zinnia (Pinwheel Mix), marigolds (French Vanilla Hybrid) and celery (Ventura).

Morning Brush With Death… Since I live on a pond, I sometimes like to take the kayak out and do a paddle-around. It's not a deep pond—maybe 6-8 feet in the deepest parts—but mostly you can see the bottom while you paddle.

Anyway, I happened to wake up early this morning and thought it might be warm enough to go see what the pond was like in the hour around sunrise. It was cold, in the high 30's-low 40's, but nothing a couple sweatshirts and some vigorous paddling wouldn't ward off.

And it was lovely. There was a mist rising from the surface, and no wind, and the sky was a beautiful peach color. I paddled for maybe 15-20 minutes, disturbing ducks and redwing blackbirds, and saying "BOO" to the turtles who popped their heads above the surface of the water to see what all the noise was. I was shadowed for a bit by a Canada goose who was honking gently, I guess to tell me to stay away from her nest... I don't speak fluent goose.

And then I spied a large brown head making a vee through the water... the dastardly beaver who's been chewing through our shoreline trees. I decided to follow him (her? who knows?) to see if I could find the dam. Did pretty good for awhile, even at one point crossing over the bubble trail he was leaving. It was a mistake, however, to try to do the same hairpin turn he did. Kayak didn't take it well. In fact, it dumped me into the pond.

The water was COLD. And I was in a spot where there really wasn't anyplace to land... The shoreline all around was dense brush. I was going to have to make my way to my neighbors' dock, about 2-300 feet away. Sounds easy, you say... yeah, well, first off, I'm not a strong swimmer to begin with and I had to tow a kayak half-filled with water. It must have taken me 15 minutes of half-swimming, and half (eeeeewwwwww... Ick!) wading through the muck on the bottom where I could reach it. The depth was over my 5-foot height for about half the distance. Shout for a neighbor, you say? Nope. No neighbors in shouting distance. In fact, you can't even see another house from where I went in. After about 5 minutes, it started getting hard to breathe and I started getting scared. Then I got pissed, because I didn't want to die of hypothermia in my own damned pond in April because of a damned beaver dam. It just didn't seem dignified. So I kept slogging on.

Long story short, I (obviously) made it to the dock, dragging the friggin' kayak behind me. I emptied the water out, got back in and paddled back to my landing. My hands are still aching from the cold (they were mottled white and purple by the time I got home). But I made it. And aside from that (Mrs. Lincoln), it really was a lovely morning ride.

Blog Quote of the Day: Friday Edition

“Well, you know, here's the thing: tough nuts.”

From Sisyphus Shrugged.

Germination! Yes! Tomatoes and eggplant are popping up! Woo, hoo!

This is fun...

Blog Quote of the Day:

“This is a new season. We get a new hairshirt. ”

From a comment by mdhatter on Sadly No!

Hey, he only said what were were all thinkin’…

Actual Garden Post!!!!
Alrighty then, to get back to Glogging, I actually got some seeds in some dirt today, finally. Started the following tomatoes:

• Super Marmande
• German Gold
• Heart*
• Christmas Grape
• Roma
• Cherokee Purple
• Mister Stripey
• Arkansas Traveler
• Sun Gold Cherry
• Bucks County Hybrid (Hybrid of Brandywine)
• Fourth of July
• Red October

*Seed collected from fruits from a friend of my mom’s who said it is an Italian heirloom; huge, extremely meaty fruit.

Also started the following peppers: Sweet Chocolate, Sweet Banana, California Wonder and Jalapeno, and an Italian heirloom eggplant called Listada de Gandia (below). Contact me if you’re interested in sources.

I had a TRULY HORRIFYING EXPERIENCE last night.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those ladies who gets the vapors when I see a bug; I'm a gardener, fer gawdsakes. I happen to think most bugs are interesting, many are beneficial. I used to keep bees. I love snakes, and once owned a cornsnake, for about 10 minutes, until he figured out how to escape from the terrarium I kept him in. I never saw him again, but I get the warm fuzzies when I imagine he came out and introduced himself to the crazy lady who bought my house. She was not crazy in a somewhat amusing and eccentric way, but in more of a creepy and thuggish way, and there are not too many people I can think of who more deserve getting surprised by a cornsnake at an awkward moment.

But I digress.

Worms, snakes, toads, frogs, bugs, bees... these members of the animal kingdom don't bother me. I am, however, a certifiable arachniphobe. If I come into contact with, or even close proximity to, a spider any larger than, perhaps, the size of a wasabe pea, I start to shriek and run around in purposeless circles brushing hundreds of imaginary spiders off myself, shuddering, twitching and gibbering. In other words, I don't take it well.

Back to my TRULY HORRIFYING EXPERIENCE. I was up late last night, watching the latest Sex and the City DVD to arrive from Netflix. (Miranda and Steve got married, Samantha got cancer.) When it was over, I still wasn't sleepy, so I decided to go grab a novel and take a warm bath. Mmmmmm, warm bath.

Run the water, pour the bubble bath, arrange the towel on the floor next to the tub so I can read without getting the book wet... heaven. I'm relaxed, getting sleepy, when suddenly [duhn duhn DUNH...] a large black ant drops into the tub next to me.

Not horrifying. Startling, maybe. A little gross. But not TRULY HORRIFYING.

But alas, the mood was broken. Time to get out of the tub. So I'm standing there, toweling off, watching the water drain, when I notice that, besides the ant in the bathwater, there are also [duhn duhn DUNH...] two teeny, tiny little spider bodies in there, no larger than an asterisk (*)—a 24-point asterisk (*), but still...

...not horrifying. Gross. Eeeuu.... Yuck.

But as I said, I'm toweling off my naked, wet body, when suddenly [duhn duhn DUNH...] OMIGOD, a LARGE (quarter-sized) BLACK SPIDER DROPS OUT OF THE VERY TOWEL I AM USING and lands on the rug.

Cue the shrieking and purposeless circling. Cue the shuddering, gibbering and twitching. I am actually hyperventilating while typing this. THIS AWFUL THING TOUCHED MY NAKED BODY!!!! AUUGGHH!!!!!

I was awake till at least 4:00 am.

Blog Quote of the Day:

“I resent the hell out of someone who went to pharmacy school telling me what is right or wrong. Pharmacists aren't preachers, teachers or judges - they take pills out of big containers and put them into smaller ones, stick labels on them and dispense them.”

From the Tena at First Draft.

What she said. Freakin' A, what she said.

Blog Quote of the Day:

“Forget 'screw me once, shame on you.' This new breed of fanatacism is "Slight me in any discernable way, even a mild disagreement, and I will publicly destroy you." ”

From the Right-of-Center Blog, Balloon Juice.

Hey, it's not Little Green Footballs or Powerline, but Atrios it ain’t, either! I am shudderingly familiar with the level of discourse on the comments section of the aforementioned Righty blogs, and was pleasantly surprised to find so few mouth-breathing trolls in the comments section of Balloon Juice. The discussion was civil. Amazing. Civility in the Blogosphere. Who'd have thought? Maybe there’s ho.... nah.

Blog Quote of the Day:

“8:19:  Commercial break.  The next two minutes of my life finally puts the "Which is better: urinating or watching Bill O'Reilly?" debate to rest.”

From the DailyKos Diary of LiberalVirginian.

Blog Quote of the Day:

"Based on preseason reporting there appear to only be two teams this year: the Yankees and the NotYankees who are apparently in Boston. All you other Major League cities: grow up.

You don't count. "

From TBogg

Along those lines, last night I sorely missed my dad while listening to the Red Sox lose to the Evil Empire. I just know he'd have been swearing up a storm. Yep, the Sox are up to their old tricks, hiring “seasoned veterans” like poor washed-up David Wells, while the Yankees get Randy Johnson.

Blog Quote of the Day:

"Killing any single American for being an insensible, drooling vegetable could be the thin end of a fairly sizeable wedge."

From Chase me ladies, I'm in the cavalry

My favorite post on the whole Schaivo thang:

“Oh, sure, there are plenty of sensate human beings dying in horrible ways around the globe right now, but who cares about them? Iraq? Too foreign! Darfur? Too brown! Medicaid cuts? Too poor-y! Remember, one death is a tragedy, a million are a statistic, but one stretched out to an interminable length makes for endless hours of thrilling tragitainment!”

From Fafblog

I want to meet the booyah industrial product designer who thought it would be OH SO COOL to eliminate vacuum cleaner bags from vacuum cleaners. "Ladies will get to ACTUALLY SEE the dirt spinning around like a little tornado! They'll love it!" Great, thanks dillweed, now, instead of having a nice, contained bag to just remove from the machine and throw away, I have to spend 10 minutes banging a freakin' filter against the side of the garbage can whilst inhaling clouds of dust and crap. Thanks.

And you know in 5 years they'll come out with a GREAT NEW INNOVATION!!! Now all the dirt GOES INTO A BAG! AND YOU JUST THROW IT AWAY!!!

Bought a new book... It's about knitting socks, so I am obviously delusional, because I have no idea when I plan on doing this knitting, but whatever. It's just cool because it's sock-shaped. And it did get good customer reviews on Amazon.

Oh, and YAYYYY!!!! PATS!!!!! Dy-na-sty! Dy-na-sty! Dy-na-sty!

Added a new feature or two, including, on the right, a glogroll. That's a garden-blog roll. Whatever. Found some very neat blogs whilst just poking around. Hi, all! Feel free to reciprocate.

This is from a comment to a diary on dailyKos.com, my number one go-to political blog. Kossack eodell says it better than I could:

If there is no economic justice, if people go hungry, go homeless, go without medical care, cannot get decent educations, then there is no social justice. The idea that one can be socially liberal and fiscally conservative is the Big Lie that sustains the so-called centrist wing of the Democratic party.

I know it makes me sound like a Socialist or something, but I feel very strongly that it is true. I don't care what the Rethugs think of our new head of the DNC... Like we should be taking advice from the wingnuts! Dean will help us define a set of core Democratic principles and maybe even make our side live up to them.

This is a great article on the upcoming superbowl. Key quote: “...I can blow up the fucking sun if you want.”

Yay, yippee, free elections in Iraq... now can we have the same in, like, Ohio and Florida? </snark>

On another note, it's getting warmer here... up to maybe freezing today. Again I say, “Yay, yippee.” Haven't had time to go through the thousands of seed catalogues yet. I really just want to do heirloom veggies for the most part this year, except we had such great luck with the Marketmore cukes last year that I'd say we HAVE to put those in. I really want to do those teeny little “currant” tomatoes, in a container maybe, also. They are such fun in a salad, and so yummy to boot.

Oh, and GO PATS!!!!!

Pix, as promised. From the window. Inside the house. Where there is no snow and it is warm. (Note: ignore date stamp!) Don't think we got as much as predicted... yet. It's still snowing, tho. Oh, and since this is a Glog, let me just point out that the perennials will be very happy now under their cosy blanket of snow mulch.

Attended an advanced Master Gardener training session today on Organic Gardening. Got me to thinking it's time to order seeds and get the garden planned. Ok, not in that order. But looking out my windows makes me wonder if it will EVER be warm again... They're predicting 3 bleeping feet for our little corner of Connecticut tonight! Eeesh! Pix tomorrow, if the power stays on...

Hm. Well, happy new year, all readers. Bummer about the election and all, but hey, whadda ya gonna do?

On a happier note, may I humbly call your attention to the banner ad at the left? I decided to try selling some stuff.

Not much happening in the garden right now. It's cold, cold, and colder tonight... low is predicted to be 4-degrees. Yuk. So get out those seed catalogues, and if you have any extra heirloom vegetable seeds, send me an email. I will be blogging on seed starting soon!

In the meantime, go check out my shop, and also check out the new URI Master Gardener website at www.urimga.org.

Oh, baby, did I ever do some canning today! And cooking... I came up with recipes to do away with 6 pounds of damn zucchini. Didn't quite get rid of all of it, of course, but still... I made Zucchini Ribbon Pickles from last month's Martha Stewart Living, two batches of Golden Onion & Zucchini Lasagne and two batches of my own recipe for Zucchini Parmesan. The zucchini parm and the lasagne went into the freezer unbaked. Also did a couple little jars of Pickled Jalapeño Peppers and 4 pints of Dilly Beans. Oh, and I started a batch of Scott's Favorite Sweet Pickles.

Planning my first canning of the year. We're harvesting lots of cukes now, and I plan on doing up a batch of relish. This should be interesting, in the sense of painfully frustrating, because we're still in the rental, which has ZERO counterspace and no dishwasher and [insert more annoying whining here].

You may want to take a peek at the new little graphic on the left, by the way...

Had an interesting exchange with a reader (ooh, my first!) about the Weck canning system recently and I thought I'd share it.

S. from Germany, an American abroad, wanted to know if you needed the Weck canning kettle in order to use the Weck jars, lids, rings, etc. Since the Weck kettle is merely an electric boiling water bath, the answer is absolutely not. Although don't get me wrong, I totally love the convenience of the Weck kettle... just plug that baby in, crank the temperature to the top and you gotcher boiling water... and it is cavernous, so you can put lots of jars in and even do a second layer on top of the first.

Her other questions had to do with how I liked the jars. I like them a lot from an aesthetic standpoint.. they're really quite pretty and this is a hint to the Mason/Ball/Kerr people... like, get a clue, ok? Although I'm more comfortable with the US system of lids and rings. How about jars that use that system that are Weck-pretty? You listening, Mason/Ball/Kerr people? Huh?

So it’s, like, about time I started keeping track of garden events and things here. Yes, Virginia, I actually have gardens to work on at my new house. Even if I can't live there yet.

We have a 20x30' fully deer-proofed vegetable garden, with cukes, beans, tomatoes, basil, eggplant, summer squash, peppers (bell and of course jalapeño), zucchini and pumpkins. Yeah, I know, the pumpkins are going to take over the whole thing. But since Scott did all the work to get the garden installed, I could hardly say no to pumpkins when he requested them.

And I have been working on the perennial garden that runs along the driveway. It's a long freakin' driveway. Really long. Like, LONG, long. I planted it with whatever survived from Mendon, as well as donated divisions from Cathy F. (thanks, Cath!) and the occasional purchased (couldn't help myself) “hadda have” perennial. Will post pix asap. I have been mulching it by the truckload with chipped brush from Scott's amazing one-man lot clearing efforts and layers of newspapers I got from the main office of the Narragansett Times in Wakefield. But it's taking forever. Did I mention it's a long driveway?

Today’s garden work: got a rain gauge today, also a second bale of seedless straw for vegetable garden path mulch, and a 3rd 1/2-yard of Mike Mernier's excellent compost (see here for more info on this stuff). It was very, very hot and humid today working in the sun. I've been ecstatic about finally having a full-sun perennial garden... major drawback? It's in the sun. Well, duh. I am currently blogging instead of going back over to do a little more work.

UPDATE: Pix posted!