Farm News 06-11-06
Sunday morning, after chores, 69°
Flowers
A volunteer Shasta Daisy, Chrysanthemum x. superbum, is blooming in the oak grove. The original two clumps died out last year and this is the first volunteer to appear. It's a bit leggy but, still, a cheerful white daisy growing under a Buckeye, Aeschylus glabra.
The Ozark Sundrops, Oenothera missouriensis, are looking great. All the original plantings have died out but their offspring are doing fine. The volunteer seedlings are all in the gravel walk around the west side of the house. When you see them in the wild they are usually growing on a south facing highway cut, bright yellow flowers bursting out of the rocks and gravel.
Plains Coreopsis, Coreopsis tinctoria, is a common native plant with nice yellow daisy-like flowers. There are quite a few named varieties available in colors ranging from pale yellow to brown. They self-sow and come up reliably every year. If the winter isn't too severe they will winter over, also. I've never tried to count them, but there are hundreds of Coreopsis plants now blooming on the place. The flower heads can be used to make a yellow dye.
A nice plant sometimes known as Althea zebrina or Alcia zebrina, with no common name I know, is blooming. The plants are about three feet tall and the flowers are one or two inch pink Hollyhock types. Whatever it is, it's nice, reseeds freely, but isn't fragrant.
The Bown-eyed Susans, Rudbeckia hirta, are starting to bloom. There have always been a lot of them native on the place, but we also have planted some of named varieties most years. The fancy ones cross-pollinate with the wild ones and we end up with a nice wildflower display.
The Sarvis berries, Amelanchier canadensis, are ripe and delicious. Why don't more people grow them, I wonder? The flowers are nice, the foliage okay, the fruit is excellent, and they are hardy and disease free.
The mulberries, Morus rubra, are starting to ripen. So far they are small and not very sweet, except for one tree on which they are very small and exceptionally sweet. Usually, the best are the white ones that grow on a tree by Fort Pedroja, but the squirrels steal most of those. Rodents are all thieves.
There are three species of mulberries, commonly called black, red, and white. The red species can have either purple or white fruits or maybe red, also. The black and white are both asian species. The black is not dependably hardy in our winters and has black fruit. The white can have white, pink, or purple fruit. Some mulberries are males and have no fruit, some are both male and female and self-pollinating, and some are female. The weeping mulberry is a clone of a white male, usually grafted onto the top of a white seedling.
Dr. M. Becomes a Soldier
Purple Poop Season
With the ripening of the mulberries we enter the Time of Purple Duck Poop. Ducks like mulberries, eat a lot of them, and leave the traces everywhere. There are purple splotches all over the lawn and the barn yard. When not eating mulberries, they like to play in the water, so the area surrounding the duck watering pans is almost solid purple.
When a hen duck goes broody, starts setting on eggs, she become seriously anal retentive in both figurative and literal senses. Once or twice a day she will leave her nest to eat and drink. She will tidy up the nest area, move off the nest, and then drop some bedding and such over the eggs to cover them. Then she walks away. At about three feet from the nest she sets up an incessant quacking which continues for another ten feet or so.
That is generally about when she defecates. She has been sitting there for twelve or more hours, during which time her unpooped poop has been accumulating and becoming stronger and stronger in aroma. When she cuts loose she ejects a stream of poop that jets out three or four feet and spreads an aroma you can smell a considerable distance upwind.
At this time of the year, when mulberries ripen and fall from the trees to where the ducks can find them, that long jet of smelly duck poop is deep purple in color. The total sensory impact is of such strength that it could overwhelm someone of delicate sensitivities. Of course, people with delicate sensitivities seldom consort with ducks.
Captain Wichita, an infamous resident of Wichita, Kansas, known mostly for being caught in compromising sexual congress with a duck in a city park, would undoubtedly have changed his choice of partners if he had ever encountered a broody hen duck during mulberry season. As it was, he was arrested for damaging city property (the duck) and sentenced to the maximum term for that offense, during which time his romantic opportunities were presumably more limited.
Book Review
Telegraph Days by Larry McMurtry
Liar's Moon by Phillip Kimball
Telegraph Days is an fine example of McMurtry's style: earthy and fun. The story is told from the viewpoint of Nellie Courtright, a woman who likes to kiss and copulate with cowboys. The book follows her adventures from being the telegrapher in Rita Blanca to her later years when she is rich and famous. The book will probably sell millions of copies.
Liar's Moon, on the other hand, will probably never sell a million copies, but I think it is a much better book. McMurtry's books make you chuckle as you read them. Kimball's books make you chuckle for years after you read them.
Both books describe the first moments after very dangerous events. In Telegraph Days, “We weren't dead—none of us—and yet death had come so close that it took a while for us to accept that we were still alive. Even Beau Wheless was silenced for a time. How could it be that we were really spared?”
In Liar's Moon, “The other side of danger, an exuberant, awful certainty: the world, a complex contraption, operates not to slake human desire but from immaculate necessity, and our small consciousness a wondrous but transitory and superfluous attribute of its unspinning. I remember once attempting to preach a sermon to that effect anyway back in Tonganoxie. The congregation took it into their heads to run me out of town on a rail.”
Do you see what I mean?
Let Us All Protect Marriage
As we all should know by now, activist judges are threatening the institution of marriage by allowing queers to marry each other. This is dangerous to the flag and all it stands for, not to mention what it sits and lies down for. It is time to call upon our leaders to protect marriage from these activist judges.
Activist judges are responsible for children of different races being forced to attend the same schools and eat in the cafeterias together. Activist judges are responsible for allowing inferior people to vote. Activist judges have taken the Ten Commandments out of the classroom. And now, activist judges are threatening the sacred institution of marriage.
We need to protect our families and our nation from these activist judges. We need a constitutional amendment.
First, as the President has said, we need to prevent people of the same sex from marrying. Marriage should take place only between a man and a woman. The best way to assure that some sort of sneaky cross dressing is not used to dupe the clergy conducting a wedding, nude weddings should be encouraged.
But what about the people who marry five or six times with members of any sex. To stop this debasement of marriage we should prevent any two people whose pictures have appeared in People magazine from marrying. Those people in People are almost always without morals or appreciation for the sanctity of marriage. They are slaves to their lusts and without any redeeming social value. Some of them have been married as many as seven times, repeatedly satisfying their base desires under the holy sacrament of marriage. By relying on People to identify those whose musical bed games threaten the institution of marriage, we privatize a task that the government bureaucrats should not be trusted to carry out.
All of us have observed the benefits of the “three strikes and out” laws. Criminals are being removed from the streets and prison guards are gaining lifetime employment. The same rule should apply to marriage: a person should be allowed to marry no more than three times.
Our nation is in danger! Pat Robertson, a noted representative of God, has told us that God will cause hurricanes and tornadoes which will kill 7.4 children for every queer couple that marries, and 3.6 children for every marriage in which one partner has been involved in three or more previous marriages. Do you realize Elizabeth Taylor is therefore responsible for 13.4 children's deaths? And, don't forget, four queers becoming two married couples could cause 14.8 child deaths. We cannot allow this to happen. If you are ready to help save marriage, click on God Hates Fags.
Vacation
I'm hoping to take a vacation in July. The plan is to drive to Portland, Oregon, pick up my grandson, and drive back home with him. I'll take the most direct route to Portland, but the return trip will be more circuitous, following some of the Lewis and Clark path through Idaho and Montana.
Farm News will not be published while we are on the road, the last half of July.
To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.
Flowers
A volunteer Shasta Daisy, Chrysanthemum x. superbum, is blooming in the oak grove. The original two clumps died out last year and this is the first volunteer to appear. It's a bit leggy but, still, a cheerful white daisy growing under a Buckeye, Aeschylus glabra.
The Ozark Sundrops, Oenothera missouriensis, are looking great. All the original plantings have died out but their offspring are doing fine. The volunteer seedlings are all in the gravel walk around the west side of the house. When you see them in the wild they are usually growing on a south facing highway cut, bright yellow flowers bursting out of the rocks and gravel.
Plains Coreopsis, Coreopsis tinctoria, is a common native plant with nice yellow daisy-like flowers. There are quite a few named varieties available in colors ranging from pale yellow to brown. They self-sow and come up reliably every year. If the winter isn't too severe they will winter over, also. I've never tried to count them, but there are hundreds of Coreopsis plants now blooming on the place. The flower heads can be used to make a yellow dye.
A nice plant sometimes known as Althea zebrina or Alcia zebrina, with no common name I know, is blooming. The plants are about three feet tall and the flowers are one or two inch pink Hollyhock types. Whatever it is, it's nice, reseeds freely, but isn't fragrant.
The Bown-eyed Susans, Rudbeckia hirta, are starting to bloom. There have always been a lot of them native on the place, but we also have planted some of named varieties most years. The fancy ones cross-pollinate with the wild ones and we end up with a nice wildflower display.
The Sarvis berries, Amelanchier canadensis, are ripe and delicious. Why don't more people grow them, I wonder? The flowers are nice, the foliage okay, the fruit is excellent, and they are hardy and disease free.
The mulberries, Morus rubra, are starting to ripen. So far they are small and not very sweet, except for one tree on which they are very small and exceptionally sweet. Usually, the best are the white ones that grow on a tree by Fort Pedroja, but the squirrels steal most of those. Rodents are all thieves.
There are three species of mulberries, commonly called black, red, and white. The red species can have either purple or white fruits or maybe red, also. The black and white are both asian species. The black is not dependably hardy in our winters and has black fruit. The white can have white, pink, or purple fruit. Some mulberries are males and have no fruit, some are both male and female and self-pollinating, and some are female. The weeping mulberry is a clone of a white male, usually grafted onto the top of a white seedling.
Dr. M. Becomes a Soldier
A new Captain’s first Memorial Day Parade
It started when my next door neighbor asked if I would carry the Army flag as part of the color guard in the town’s Memorial Day parade
Your left, your left, your left right left
I showed up, in uniform, on Monday morning and met the local National Guard Unit, also marching.
Your left, your left, your left right left
I helped the Coast Guard Petty Officer put on his strap to hold his flag. I put on mine. The Petty Officer and I reported to the Color Guard Sergeant.
Your left, your left, your left right left
We greeted each other. Marine Sergeants who had fought in Vietnam, an Air Force Sergeant Major on the brink of retirement, a Navy Petty Officer who had fought in the Gulf of Tonkin, and me, the new Captain.
The Marine color sergeant accepted command from the ranking sergeant in the parade and called us to order.
Here is where we depart from real parade. In a real parade (though I’ve yet to be in one) I think that the sergeant has us all step off together. Then, we march together. This isn’t quite what happened at this parade.
“Right shoulder arms, Right shoulder arms!!!!” Well, ok, that didn’t mean anything to me until AFTER the parade when I read the parade and dress manual given to me upon my commissioning. So, my bad, we were not right shoulder to right shoulder.
But, then, we passed the judges stand. And we kept marching
Your left, your left, your left, right left
And before me was the color guard of every Army Unit. The Colors have marched everywhere the Army has been. In Iraq, in the Gulf, in Panama, in Vietnam, in Korea, in France, in the Philippines, all the way back, through all of our wars. Through sergeants that fell to German guns, to English shot. And still we march.
Your left, your left, your left right left
Purple Poop Season
With the ripening of the mulberries we enter the Time of Purple Duck Poop. Ducks like mulberries, eat a lot of them, and leave the traces everywhere. There are purple splotches all over the lawn and the barn yard. When not eating mulberries, they like to play in the water, so the area surrounding the duck watering pans is almost solid purple.
When a hen duck goes broody, starts setting on eggs, she become seriously anal retentive in both figurative and literal senses. Once or twice a day she will leave her nest to eat and drink. She will tidy up the nest area, move off the nest, and then drop some bedding and such over the eggs to cover them. Then she walks away. At about three feet from the nest she sets up an incessant quacking which continues for another ten feet or so.
That is generally about when she defecates. She has been sitting there for twelve or more hours, during which time her unpooped poop has been accumulating and becoming stronger and stronger in aroma. When she cuts loose she ejects a stream of poop that jets out three or four feet and spreads an aroma you can smell a considerable distance upwind.
At this time of the year, when mulberries ripen and fall from the trees to where the ducks can find them, that long jet of smelly duck poop is deep purple in color. The total sensory impact is of such strength that it could overwhelm someone of delicate sensitivities. Of course, people with delicate sensitivities seldom consort with ducks.
Captain Wichita, an infamous resident of Wichita, Kansas, known mostly for being caught in compromising sexual congress with a duck in a city park, would undoubtedly have changed his choice of partners if he had ever encountered a broody hen duck during mulberry season. As it was, he was arrested for damaging city property (the duck) and sentenced to the maximum term for that offense, during which time his romantic opportunities were presumably more limited.
Book Review
Telegraph Days by Larry McMurtry
Liar's Moon by Phillip Kimball
Telegraph Days is an fine example of McMurtry's style: earthy and fun. The story is told from the viewpoint of Nellie Courtright, a woman who likes to kiss and copulate with cowboys. The book follows her adventures from being the telegrapher in Rita Blanca to her later years when she is rich and famous. The book will probably sell millions of copies.
Liar's Moon, on the other hand, will probably never sell a million copies, but I think it is a much better book. McMurtry's books make you chuckle as you read them. Kimball's books make you chuckle for years after you read them.
Both books describe the first moments after very dangerous events. In Telegraph Days, “We weren't dead—none of us—and yet death had come so close that it took a while for us to accept that we were still alive. Even Beau Wheless was silenced for a time. How could it be that we were really spared?”
In Liar's Moon, “The other side of danger, an exuberant, awful certainty: the world, a complex contraption, operates not to slake human desire but from immaculate necessity, and our small consciousness a wondrous but transitory and superfluous attribute of its unspinning. I remember once attempting to preach a sermon to that effect anyway back in Tonganoxie. The congregation took it into their heads to run me out of town on a rail.”
Do you see what I mean?
Let Us All Protect Marriage
As we all should know by now, activist judges are threatening the institution of marriage by allowing queers to marry each other. This is dangerous to the flag and all it stands for, not to mention what it sits and lies down for. It is time to call upon our leaders to protect marriage from these activist judges.
Activist judges are responsible for children of different races being forced to attend the same schools and eat in the cafeterias together. Activist judges are responsible for allowing inferior people to vote. Activist judges have taken the Ten Commandments out of the classroom. And now, activist judges are threatening the sacred institution of marriage.
We need to protect our families and our nation from these activist judges. We need a constitutional amendment.
First, as the President has said, we need to prevent people of the same sex from marrying. Marriage should take place only between a man and a woman. The best way to assure that some sort of sneaky cross dressing is not used to dupe the clergy conducting a wedding, nude weddings should be encouraged.
But what about the people who marry five or six times with members of any sex. To stop this debasement of marriage we should prevent any two people whose pictures have appeared in People magazine from marrying. Those people in People are almost always without morals or appreciation for the sanctity of marriage. They are slaves to their lusts and without any redeeming social value. Some of them have been married as many as seven times, repeatedly satisfying their base desires under the holy sacrament of marriage. By relying on People to identify those whose musical bed games threaten the institution of marriage, we privatize a task that the government bureaucrats should not be trusted to carry out.
All of us have observed the benefits of the “three strikes and out” laws. Criminals are being removed from the streets and prison guards are gaining lifetime employment. The same rule should apply to marriage: a person should be allowed to marry no more than three times.
Our nation is in danger! Pat Robertson, a noted representative of God, has told us that God will cause hurricanes and tornadoes which will kill 7.4 children for every queer couple that marries, and 3.6 children for every marriage in which one partner has been involved in three or more previous marriages. Do you realize Elizabeth Taylor is therefore responsible for 13.4 children's deaths? And, don't forget, four queers becoming two married couples could cause 14.8 child deaths. We cannot allow this to happen. If you are ready to help save marriage, click on God Hates Fags.
Vacation
I'm hoping to take a vacation in July. The plan is to drive to Portland, Oregon, pick up my grandson, and drive back home with him. I'll take the most direct route to Portland, but the return trip will be more circuitous, following some of the Lewis and Clark path through Idaho and Montana.
Farm News will not be published while we are on the road, the last half of July.
To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.
posted by The Geezer at 8:40 AM
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