Daily Archives: May 18, 2008

Great Work, Politics

Port-A-Potties A’Plenty

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58  bar falls 29.65  4mph N  Dew-point 27  Beltane, cool

                       Full Hare Moon

Those tiny baby bunnies born under the Hare moon gotta shiver in their bunny nests.  This has been a cold spring.

Went to the State Capitol grounds for 2 hours of volunteer work for the Vote Yes campaign.  We’re pushing a constitutional amendment to dedicate funds for clean water in lakes, rivers and streams.  There is also a dedicated funding stream for the arts.

For a major sesqui-centennial event, this was kept secret.  Who knew about it?  Hardly anyone apparently.   They had port-a-potties for a large crowd, but they all had green on the go in tab.  # of porta potties is a good estimator for how many folks event organizers anticipated.  It was a cool, blustery day.  The crowd seemed hurried and the tents poorly organized.  Not an up day.

Kate made Omaha Steak Company steaks for supper, a gift from Annie.   Mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and a tenderloin–a regular heartland meal.  That is, its destination was heartland via my circulatory system.  If God hadn’t meant us to eat meat, why would she have made it so good?

Our Land and Home

Big Brown, Pulling Away

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56  bar falls 29.73 4mph dew-point 29   Beltane, sunny and cool

                                Full Hare Moon

Cut down three blooming buckthorns before they could fruit.  This radically changes the seed distribution pattern. My goal is to get to each one just before it blooms and whack it down, paint it with brush-b-gone and monitor the site for the next 3-4 years.  Also finally cut down the rather large green ash that had long prevented the truck gate from opening all the way.  The tree came down more easily than I had imagined.  It had grown into the chain link and I thought I might only be able to cut part way through the base due to the imbedded chain link.  Not so.  It cracked and split, after I used the steel wedge to free my stuck chainsaw, leaving a clean stump inside the fence line and a fallen tree outside.  Progress.

Kate, meanwhile, has taken the pruning charge seriously. She’s whacked, sawed, pulled, torn and lopped limbs and canes off Amur maples, red twig and grey ossier dogwood.  When she gets going, get outta the way.  An impressive pile of branches have mounted over the fence line. They need to go to the Habitat for Furry Animals site.

A glorious Sunday. 

Watched Big Brown win Pimlico yesterday afternoon.  Amazing.  On the outside, running third at the final turn, I saw the jockey loose the reins a bit.  It was a signal for a downshift, then accleration that took him past the others by the beginning of the straightaway.  As Big Brown pulled away, the jockey rose up in the saddle and checked between his legs to see the rest of the field.  They were way behind.  Fun to watch run.

Art and Culture, Garden, Writing

More Homes for the Small and Furry

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51  bar steady  29.75 3mph N dew-point 31  Beltane, Sunny and cool

                                    Full Hare Moon 

“I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing everything.” – Vladimir Nabokov

Amen to that.

Another cool day.  Great gardening weather, not so great growing weather.  The cool temps have  kept germination slow, my carrots have not emerged at all and only a few stray beet and lettuce seeds have begun to push through, at least at close of growing day yesterday. 

We will see today.  Sometimes seeds all sprout at once, sometimes not at all.  Germination percentages vary with weather, timing of planting, quality of seed and amount of moisture.  We’ll get something.  We do not watch the soil with the same eagerness as pioneers, for example, whose lives may have depended on germination.  I can only imagine that then the progress of the seed received an attention bordering on pleading and prayer.

We have the grandkids playhouse in the truck, three very large boxes of a put-it-together by the numbers building we bought at Costco.  Today’s task is to unload it and cover it with a tarp until we can level the area now cleared by the Steve and Aimee’s assistance yesterday.  After that we move brush onto yet more homes for the small and furry.  Not sure what after that.

I’m signing out for the summer from the MIA.   In September 2006 I began the second year of the docent education process.  In summer 2007 I signed up for the Made in Scandinavia painting exhibition.  After labor day the school year touring got going.  I had a month off in February for Hawai’i, but other than nothing longer than a week since 2006.  It’s time for a break.  Besides, I need to get back to work on that novel.  And a children’s book or two, too.