Faithful Garden Chat correspondent JR in WV, again:
Above, White Violets. These are native wildflowers, I moved them nearer to the house with a shovel full of forest floor for each tiny plant, and they’re doing great.
We have lived on our farm, which is really just a big wood lot, since the late 1970s, and we built the house we live in (with a little help from our friends) in the early 90s, moving in March of 1994. So there have been a lot of summers for us to garden. Of course the first several years I was finishing up things around the house, which still aren’t done. Anyone who has ever built anything will know what I mean there! ;-)
Mostly Mrs J. has done the removal of the invasives, like honeysuckle, poison ivy, grape vines, etc; and yes I know those last two aren’t invasive, just hard on other plants and people like Mrs J. That work is what allowed many of these native plants to stage a big come back. We have together planted perennials and I have moved native plants at her suggestion.
She also grooms the moss and sedum on the boulders. The foundation of the house is at one point just inches from the rock wall on the west side of the excavation, we were lucky there. Living in the Appalachian Woods is really nice, like being at a state park all the time, only I have to plow the road and fill the potholes, and deal with the won’t-flush toilet, instead of the Park Staff. The plants, mostly, will get by on their own once they get a good start.
I didn’t send a picture of the ramp beds, they aren’t really flashy, just green leaves looking somewhat like lillies of the valley. I buy them from road-side vendors who dig them in the deep woods. We eat some, and plant 50 or 60% on the hillside, as they were harvested out around here a long time ago. But in a few more seasons we will have beds we can harvest a few from for special spring dinners.
Blowing Winds god – after Greek or pagan deities, this guy faces NE and blows the winds in their natural direction. There are patches of ramps around the boulder he sits on. IIRC a gift from a friend.
Bluebells up close – these were planted, just 6 little pots IIRC, but now there are 4 big patches with dozens of them around the step to a foot bridge across the tiny creek. Spring rains create noisy waterfalls all over the “backyard” sometimes, it will rush while it’s raining, and slowly dwindle after the front passes to the NE.
Anemones and fiddle-heads – these are both native, the tiny pointed flowers are all over the forest floor in a good spring, and of course the fiddle-heads are native ferns not yet uncoiled. These aren’t the more famous ferns from Maine and New England, I don’t know if they would be good to eat like New England fiddle-heads, but the ferns are so pretty I don’t think I would pick them if they were good.
Hydrangea and deer – The dogs brought the deer skull home after hunting season years ago, and we thought to use it on the trellis for this climbing hydrangea, which is supposed to bloom like all of them, big snowballs of tiny blooms, but it has never bloomed a bit, ever. But it is pretty greenery and in a few more days the deer will be as hard to see as his living relatives.
Ajuga and may apples – this is a ground cover we introduced elsewhere. It’s gone from where we planted it, but showed up on this steep hillside above the tiny frog pond. Of course the may apples are native. We never get any of the tiny apples, the forest critters take them first. I’m told they can make a nice jelly or jam, but have never seen any for sale.
Spring Beauty – these are short little stalks with a ton of little white flowers at their top, and they’re all over the place in a good spring. Native wildflowers, they grow all over the east from Canada south, and bloom from April to May as you go south.
Fish sculpture climbing a mossy rock – this is really just a big rock covered with moss, and the occasional wild flower, sedum and wild geraniums mostly. But the copper fish fighting its way up the moss is cute. A gift from friends in the neighborhood.
Violet violets – another native, these just happen, more common than the white ones, just growing where ever they feel at home.
All of these pictures have been taken in the last couple of weeks, in April I’m pretty sure. I’m inclined to pick the camera up and roam around the place near the house when it isn’t too awful out, so I suppose some could be from March, although I wasn’t really active much yet then.
***********
Here north of Boston, I’m in the annual BIG PLANS gardening stage… knee deep in new purchases & unfinished projects. Filled five planters with purple blue & white pansies, shades-of-blue lobelia, and white allysum, but the dark-blue generic Siberian irises they usually complement are just starting to bud up, a few weeks behind schedule. Still have a hanging basket and some other planters to fill, so Saturday we went to Volante Farms for more lobelia… and ice cream… and the Spousal Unit picked out a couple tomato plants for me to take care of, a Vintage Wine (which I’ve grown before, and he loved them) and a Black Sea Man (sounds like a middle-school joke, but the tag promised ‘great slicer’ and that’s how he likes his fresh tomatoes the best).
And our lilacs are starting to bloom! — again, a little bit behind schedule, since in recent years they’ve been rather past their peak by Mother’s Day. But the heady scent from the heavy panicles makes it much easier to get out and rake or dig…
What’s going on in your gardens this week?
raven
Nice pics! The roses are jumping and they make a nice backdrop for the excavation for the addition. We’re not sure how the garden and yard will end up since we have al least three months of construction ahead of us and the boss want’s to see what’s what before we plan the fencing.
dp
What a lovely post (although I remain jealous of you people who can actually grow plants).
OzarkHillbilly
Very nice JR, and so much like the Ozarks. Our place is on top of a ridge and we can’t grow bluebells up here. I’m jealous. I might have some down in the hollers but the sides are so steep I need to construct some stairs to make them easily accessible.
Sigh…. Like you I’ll never die ’cause I’ll never be done.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: as opposed to
Highway 90
The jobs are gone
We tend our garden
We set the sun
This is the only place on earth blue bonnets grow
Once a year they come and go
At this old house here by the road
And when we die we say we’ll catch some blackbird’s wing
Then we will fly away to heaven come some sweet blue bonnet spring
JPL
Wahoo! Today is my favorite day. The sons come over and do heavy yard chores. We plan on prepping a section of the yard for new grass and that involves removing a crepe myrtle stump. Good times.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Nanci Griffith on a Sunday morning…. :-)
JPL
The pictures are beautiful. Various storms have caused several trees in my back to fall. I’d like to add a few trees and maybe when fall comes and the prices are low, I will.
@raven: I’m pleased that your construction has finally started. Your wife has that special gardening touch, so I’m sure she will make the back area, look great.
Raven
@JPL: Thx, the next thing we are going to do is go to the beach for a week!
ThresherK
My wife’s first Mother’s Day without her mum. And we’re not alone in that among our circle of friends.
This is the last of the “Big Five” holidays; I’ve (hopefully) been the support she needed through Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mom’s B’day and Easter.
My younger nephew (also a middle child, so there’s an affinity there) just got out of the hospital, from a virus infecting his heart sac lining. He’s in his mid 20s, my brother had it in (I think) his 30s. Wondering if it’s congenital or genetic and if I’m at risk for it. On the other hand both of them are certainly on the husky side, and I’m less so.
Pogonip
The Blowing Winds God looks more like the Sneezing God to me. Since he’s in a garden maybe he’s the God of Allergies.
Good morning shaper-uppers and Happy Mother’s Day! Except for the day my dad had a mini-stroke I pretty much stuck to my plan. The hospital gave him 4 aspirins and now you can’t tell it ever happened and at the moment he seems healthier than I am, I’ve caught a chest cold so I am practicing Cough Maga. Probably will not worry about shape up plan today.
Iowa Old Lady
Bluebells grow in the green belt along the river in my town. They’re done now, but for the last two weekends, they floated in a blue cloud all through the woods as we went for our walks.
satby
JR in WV, those are wonderful pictures and it looks so peaceful at your place. I love the sculptures; I just put broken crockery out for toad houses and call it yard sculpture.
I had reclaimed some past-their-prime tulips by digging up the little bulblettes they had become and planting them around in new beds. It took two years for them to grow enough to flower again, but the tulip display is great this year, and it’s also the first year my profusion crabapple has bloomed fully. And my lilacs are in full flower too, 6 bushes scattered around the house, three purple and three primroses that look much more ivory than yellow. It’s been raining for 3 days now, so I really haven’t been able to enjoy all this as much as I would like.
Botsplainer
Happy Successful Sexual Congress day for all you XX chromosome participants!
Or, if less crudity is warranted, Happy Fruition of Fertility Day!
(I always wanted to say that, but if I did it at home my head would be severed from my neck barehanded and I’d never enjoy sexual congress again, at least not in this house, LOL)
Germy Shoemangler
There is a garden center right around the corner from us. It’s been run by the same family since 1890.
Every time we go there we learn something new. One of the owners is full of good advice and information and loves to share. Yesterday the missus came home with a small rose bush.
Watching Parrot Confidential. Smart and beautiful creatures.
Germy Shoemangler
@Botsplainer: I remember a cartoon caption (someone seeing a couple’s children for the first time): “I never knew your union was blessed with issue!”
the Conster
The morning glories I sowed last week are emerging, but everything else will have to wait until next weekend to be planted. Since I moved and left all my gardens behind, my little itty bitty plot of rented land will all be cut flowers – cosmos, vanilla marigolds, cleome and something else – I’ll probably put in one or two bee balm plants, just because.
Bloomberg has a nice graph of the seating arrangement inside the clown car. Aunt Pittypat is sitting in the same seat with “someone else”.
Germy Shoemangler
@the Conster: It looks like the final race will be tight. Jeb 42% Hillary 44% in the poll?
Ultraviolet Thunder
My wife gave a $3K retainer to a local garden design company to come up with a plan for the front of our house. I guess that’s what gardening costs in this neighborhood. I’m a laissez faire gardener: mow, weed, prune and leave alone the interesting looking volunteer plants. I’m afraid we’re going to end up with a garden that looks like it belongs in front of a dentist’s office: boring, durable and maintenance free. But with both of us working up to 60 hours a week we have no time to undertake a makeover on our own.
Botsplainer
There’s an OUTSTANDING running thread on LGM about McDonalds, it’s declining market share, the destruction wrought by branding and the idiocy of MBA culture. The case for its death is convincing – they’re delivering branding, ads and the synergies of the paradigm as opposed to products that people enjoy eating.
the Conster
@Germy Shoemangler:
Exciting!
Germy Shoemangler
@the Conster: Like a slow-motion car crash.
Germy Shoemangler
@Botsplainer: I was amazed when I first saw they had copyrighted the phrase “I’m loving it!âą” Seriously??
Do you have a link to the thread?
Cervantes
@Botsplainer:
Does the discussion cover the adverse environmental effects of McDonald’s global business?
Cervantes
@Germy Shoemangler:
Trademarks and copyrights are both species of intellectual property (so called) but they are not the same thing.
Germy Shoemangler
@Cervantes: I’m lovin’ it!
Cervantes
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Well, you’re together working 120 hours a week (separately, I guess) while you spend a few hours each week in that neighborhood, so presumably it all makes sense somehow!
gelfling545
My daughter came over yesterday to help me get the pond shaped up, pulling out the dead oxygenating plants & such. We added another small pump as the one for the trickle waterfall was not enough to keep the water moving. Grand daughter is coming today to mow the back lawn before I have amber waves of grain there.
My garden is a bit confused as we went from below zero to 80 in a very short time so things are blooming or starting to at weird times. My neighbor, bless her, had the barberry hedge that has edged my driveway forever cut down last fall. Narrow city driveway made getting out of the car unscratched a challenge. We’re mulling over what to do with the area. A lot of my perennials are looking happier for the extended snow cover we had all winter so I’m seeing some reward for enduring the ghastly weather.
Cervantes
@Germy Shoemangler:
There you go!
Germy Shoemangler
Found the discussion on LGM. I didn’t understand this: “the decline of the car culture that fueled its early years combined “
Have I missed something? The car culture declined?
Cervantes
@Germy Shoemangler:
Not sure you missed anything but I missed all context (and a link to it).
Botsplainer
@Germy Shoemangler:
That poll is going to be misleading, due to the nature of phone pollers and household over hearers. There is a high amount of party crossover in suburban and exurban areas of normally conservative women of middle age (and up) when presented with the candidacies of non-ideological Democratic women vs fire breathing conservative men. The anonymity of the booth makes all the difference, at least here in the People’s Democratic Kenyan Socialist Shariah Atheist Republic of Louisville. Some of the precinct tallies are shocking in this regard to the amount of gender identity on those.
Also, the final cross-tabs don’t go the other way – leftish women vote issues.
Germy Shoemangler
@Cervantes: And here tis
Scout211
Beautiful photos, JR in WV! I love wildflower pics.
Out here in Droughtland, all of our wildflowers are done for the season. We have fiddleheads on our property but none of the others.
It looks like you live in paradise JR. It is just stunningly beautiful.
debbie
@Botsplainer:
The wrongheadedness of MacDonald’s branding is the new Hamburglar. Too Jack Nicholson/Jokerish.
Cervantes
@Germy Shoemangler:
Thanks.
Re “âthe decline of the car culture,” here, without comment, are some indications.
PurpleGirl
Very nice pictures JR in WV. The native wild flowers are beautiful. I like the green man head and the fish. Wish my complex had people who liked to garden and could keep flowers blooming on our grounds. (We have 13 acres.)
If any of you don’t usually open the Google page, please do today. As today is Mother’s Day the Google doodle is an animated one for the occasion — a baby duck goes to its mother, a kitten meows and the momcat comes along and picks ups the kitten, three little rabbits hug their mother and a woman picks ups her little child. Each critter transforms into the next one. It’s so cute but I really like the momcat picking up the kitten. (I know many people don’t like Google anymore but I love to see doodles.)
Roger Moore
@Germy Shoemangler:
Supposedly. Total car purchases have been declining for a while- though that is at least as much a result of improved durability- and recently total miles driven have declined, too. It’s hard to know if it’s a serious trend or a short-term blip, but the kind of people who want to believe that car culture is dying are going to proclaim the demise of car culture.
Germy Shoemangler
@Cervantes: Wow! Thanks for that link.
I was encouraged when Obama appointed Anthony Foxx, an advocate of transit and street cars.
I’m curious about something: Everyone is excited about self-driving cars. Fine, but what will their effect be on funding for mass transit?
Mary G
Beautiful pictures of a beautiful garden, JR! I love all your garden art.
PurpleGirl
@raven: Nice picture. Glad to hear the work on the addition is finally happening.
OzarkHillbilly
@Roger Moore:FWIW, Millenials are driving much less in comparison to previous generations and showing very little interest in changing that. Or at least where that is possible (not StL).
WereBear
@Botsplainer: Thanks. Immersed in it now.
Garden-wise, my Bucket o’ Pansies inspired me to plant the two stone urns in front of the house with my usual pansies and a mini rose in each. Makes me ridiculously happy to greet them morning and evening.
Roger Moore
@Germy Shoemangler:
I think self-driving cars are largely orthogonal to transit. Self-driving cars will still have most of the disadvantages of traditional cars relative to transit: they’re expensive, they take up a lot of space (both on the road and when parked), and they’re less fuel efficient. Transit will remain an important option for reducing traffic and providing transportation to people who can’t afford cars.
PurpleGirl
@Ultraviolet Thunder: As long as all the plants are real, that sounds good. The one time I went to see my sister’s house upstate, I realized that half (HALF!) her front garden was fake plants. Backyard is just grass. My sister has a nice plot of land and she can’t arssed to do any real gardening.
Cervantes
@Roger Moore:
I agree. While ten years’ worth of data is nice, more would be better.
(I will say that previous short-term declines have not lasted ten years, but so many things have changed that these kinds of comparisons, while encouraging, are not dispositive.)
ThresherK
@Roger Moore:
@Cervantes:
Somewhere I read (and forgot to bookmark / no cite) a public policy wonkplace at either UVa or VaTech, pointing out how many newreaders and lazy journos are writing “gotcha” stories misinterpreting their study about millenials and declining driving rates generation over generation.
Combine that with historically low gas prices, and every time it goes up a nickel a gallon the PainAtThePump!!11!!one! headlines on the teevee, and one may fairly wonder how much straight reportage there is on transportation.
(I can’t be the only person who skips down a NYT car review to avoid the first three paragraphs almost invariably wasted at the nexus of automobiling and psychosexual projection.)
Cervantes
Do be careful. If you eat them too early they are toxic. And the leaves and seeds are always toxic. (The plant is a variety of mandrake.)
At home here in the Boston area, we have them growing about the place and sometimes we collect them just to eat raw. Rarely do we make anything out of them, but you’re right, they do make a scrumptious jelly.
In New York there are secret parts of Central Park where you can find them. Seemingly no one knows, because whenever we happen to be there in the summer we find entire groves of them untouched!
Do you have any more photographs, by the way? I might be tempted to go back in to stare at your pics all day if it weren’t so nice outside here right now.
And on that note I am off. Happy Mother’s Day to all.
Botsplainer
@Cervantes:
I suspect overall, we’re commuting longer, and the last thing anybody wants to say is “c’mon kids, hop into the car and let’s go get some uninspiring overpriced bland grub”.
Elizabelle
@PurpleGirl: Thanks for head’s up on the Google doodle. It’s wonderful.
The cheetah cub and momma is the best.
Germy Shoemangler
@ThresherK:
You are not the only person.
ThresherK
@Botsplainer: @Botsplainer: “Hey kids, I brought home pizza. Let’s stay in and watch American Graffiti or a Fast and Furious while I rhapsodize about the days driving cars around was fun, like a car commercial.”
American Graffiti seemed almost an elegy to the cruising culture a dozen years after the fact, and now a third of a century after it was made, the boomers holding sway in much of our media are pretending so many things haven’t changed. Meanwhile we’re paving our way nigh until to a standstill.
(Disclaimer: I am a boomer.)
Botsplainer
@ThresherK:
Locally, kids don’t seem to be splattering themselves against guard rails or into ravines like they did when I was a kid. The only peer death mine experienced was of a girl who tragically hit a deer on the interstate on the way home from a school event. Most don’t eagerly go to the DMV on their 16th birthdays, either. Two of my three didn’t bother with permits until they were 17, and even when they got their licenses, didn’t cruise around aimlessly like I did.
They weren’t atypical.
jnfr
My part of Colorado got nearly six inches of snow last night. We also had tornadoes and flooding in other parts of the state. Weird weather, not the snow so much but the endless days of steady rain that preceded it.
Tommy
Just put my garden in the ground. Four types of peppers. Tomatoes. Squash. Lots of herbs. Cucumbers (a first for me). May it grow, may it all grow. Fingers crossed.
This is only my fifth year of doing a garden and I find I keep learning so much each year. I have some epic fails, but I like to learn from trial and error. Got a lot of that going on in my garden :)!
MomSense
Beautiful pics, JR in WV. Looks like such a peaceful place for you. The only thing missing is happy dog.
Kids surprised me and came home last night (with women friends). Last night we went out for dinner and this morning they are making breakfast. The dog literally peed herself when they came in the door. Then she did about 20 minutes of puppy parkour, wiggling, and howling.
Tommy
@Roger Moore: You are going to have to show me a ton of studies to make me think “car culture” is gone or going away.
I live in a pretty rural town. It is 2.5 blocks to get to a 7/11 type store. I walk 99 percent of the time. Bore out of my days living in DC. I might have grown up here but learned to use public transportation in DC and got the concept of walking to this or that place.
I have people stop me, neighbors, ask me if I need a ride. It seems to me the concept of them walking more than a few feet is foreign to them. Just saying …..
Amir Khalid
If car culture were fading away, a dick like Jeremy Clarkson wouldn’t be one of the biggest TV stars on the planet.
Germy Shoemangler
@Amir Khalid: This is true.
Mime in NC
Getting battered by Tropical Storm Ana today, with about 5-7 inches predicted.
Yesterday I finished planting nearly $100 worth of palm trees, flowering shrubs, and ornamental grasses to replace plants killed by the winter storms. Next project is to re-sod half the back yard.
Tommy
@Amir Khalid: Yeah but his show did this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSFX9vrwJf8
Takes a Bugatti Veyron out to see how fast it really is. Spoiler it is really, really fast. A million dollar car with a 1,000 HP engine can in fact go really fast. 267 MPH.
Jay C
@Germy Shoemangler: @the Conster:
I dunno: I found those charts depressing: it’s nice to see that Hillary Clinton has a fairly secure “floor” of support (even this far out from the election”, but it’s disheartening to see that pretty much “Any Republican” seems also to have a “floor” of about 40% support, no matter which of the buffoons in the Klown Kar they might put up. That a possible ticket of say, Bobby Jindal and Ben Carson might get as much as 40% of the vote in a national election (and carry a couple of states) is a sad commentary on this country….
scav
@Amir Khalid: But then to judge by the amount of tvtime devoted to sports, one might imagine my neighbors to be universally athletic and fighting fit. Also, if it were really the cars rather than the parading he-hissies that really attracted, there’d be a lot less whining about a change in presenters.
Botsplainer
Jesus fuck, I just looked at an article in the Baltimore Sun about some idiot motion that the defense lawyers for the accused predictably made. Made the error of wading into the comments, most of which were from Lawn Order crusty old white Christian conservatives(spit). The results were as expected.
I think this is the result of being culturally inundated with about 65 years of police procedurals on the networks, those completely overplaying cops as being zealously truthful heroes full of integrity. Only one show portrayed small department petty policing as having negatives, and that was practically a cartoon (Dukes of Hazzard). In fact, in a fair number of episodes, interests converged and the cops didn’t seem so bad.
You could never have a “Dukes of Ferguson”, the protagonists would be tazed or shot 10 minutes into the pilot.
Jay C
@Tommy:
The irony, of course, being that the test driver for that 260+-mph run in the Bugatti wasn’t Jeremy Clarkson, but rather the least-agressive-driving of the Top Gear hosts, James May. Who, as fans of the show will attest, has shown over the years numerous justifications for his nickname: “Captain Slow”….
raven
@Jay C: The pilot said we were at about 175 on the target dives yesterday.
Tommy
@Jay C:
I have a lot of connections to LSU. My father’s best friend was the former head of Arts & College at said school. After Katrina I saw all these emails go back and forth about how Jindal was the only sane person in the state.
I recall saying you folks have no clue. You are backing the wrong person.
Laughed at me.
They are not laughing now.
The school my father got his PhD from. A state/town where I was born. Where I got my MA. The university is going to lose 82% of their state funding. Let me say that again a state, public school will lose 80+ percent of their funding!
Amir Khalid
@Tommy:
What they do on Top Gear doesn’t make Jeremy Clarkson any less of a racist, physically abusive dick. And the Veyron is a symbol of the ludicrous automotive excess the show is so fond of celebrating. It has two V8 engines and drinks fuel like an aeroplane. Despite its sky-high price tag, VW loses money on each one it sells.
J R in WV
Good morning, fellow Balloon-Juicers!
Thanks for all the compliments on the foliage around the house. We always wanted to live in the country, which morphed into wanting to live in the woods once we were in the country. It was a lot of work to get here.
Now that we are both retired, we have traveled a little. But mostly we just stay up the hollow, like hermits. And while these photos show the success stories, the dead and gone, eaten by deer, peed upon by dogs failed to make the transfer from nursery to woods plants would fill a volume.
Many years ago I learned to spool 35mm film onto a reel for developing. It is done in pitch dark, and must be perfect lest it not develop correctly at all. Now that is an ancient craft like blacksmithy work, soon lost to all. I was an early adopter of digital, and yes, there are more pictures, thousands of them.
One 2+ week vacation resulted in about a thousand pictures. I have Monument Valley, and Chaco Canyon, and Canyon de Chelle in Navajo Nation, thousands of photos from the west and all around the east, too.
I’m glad you all enjoyed the photos, and the thread. I’ll send more later on of summer and fall.
Eric S.
My Swiss chard is coming along strong and looks damn fine in the rain I think. My herbs are doing only so-so. There’s a fungus in their planter and the basil didn’t make it. I planted some pepper plants and a new basil plant in different planters yesterday.
Suzanne
Happy Mothers’ Day to all the moms.
Yesterday, Mr. Suzanne and I made Spawn the Elder hike Camelback Mountain for the first time. By the way she bitched and pissed and moaned, you would have thought we were leading her on the Bataan Death March. She finally had a moment near the top when we were going to turn back without reaching the summit. Then she bucked up and finished it. I was so proud of her that we let her take a picture flipping the bird at the mountain.
Tommy
@Suzanne:
Good for you. I like to fancy myself as a hiker/camper dude. I have brought people where they live in a nice house and have no idea about camping.
danielx
Mothers Day and my birthday on one and the same day….was watching Zoey the Menace reclining on the spousal unit’s lap (her favorite human, natch) and loudly proclaiming I’M A HAPPY CAT in a purr that I could hear fifteen feet away. Currently researching the care of feeding of Mothers Day gift of a large pot of Calibrachoa Aloha, and have concluded that after last evening and this morning’s downpours that they’ve had all the water they need at the moment; in on the table of the back porch for you guys. Not like you’re going to get any sunlight today to speak of anyway…no bitching, I’m well aware that people in other areas of the country would be out dancing in the street if they received any rain at all.
Re: car culture – It may indeed be declining somewhat, but it’s prom season and that means one really wants to have spiffy wheels in which to convey one’s date. Was leaving the neighborhood last evening and pulled around the corner, and lo and behold here’s mom and dad taking pictures of their daughter with her date, who was driving a (possibly his own) Porsche Boxster, even if the top was up. My thought was great car, kid, now how are you going to get her in and out of your ride, what with her wearing the long skirt? Then I noticed that he had strategically parked the Porsche with the passenger door away from mom and dad and thought (filthy minded old man that I am) – of course, she’s going to have to lift her skirt with at least one and possibly both hands to get in and out, even with a helping hand from her no doubt chivalrous date! Something less than a tragedy from his viewpoint….
Germy Shoemangler
@Jay C:
Hate, fear and resentment are their motivations. Anyone in a suit and flag lapel pin with an R next to his name will get no less than 40%.
And lately I’ve noticed they’ve started calling liberals “low info voters”
Damned at Random
I was surprised to see little purple violets at our doorstep last month. We have lived here for 9 years and they never came up before. I live in Oregon, but growing up in PA, we used to pick bouquets of violets for my mom, who loved them. Before the woods near our house were developed, she dug up some violets to plant by the back door as the thought of losing them broke her heart.
ThresherK
@Suzanne: Camelback? Vermont’s, or which one?
(I know, it’s a generic geographical term with some specific applications, a la Mondadnock/monadnock or Sugarloaf/sugarloaf.)
Steeplejack
@ThresherK:
Phoenix, I believe.
Steeplejack
@ThresherK:
Did you get a new computer bag? I sent you some links at the end of that thread.
danielx
@Jay C:
Disheartening, perhaps, but normal enough – 40% of voters will vote for Republicans and 40% for Democrats, even if there was a dead person at the head of the ticket. I mean, look at the second term vote for Ronald Reagan. Diehard Republicans would probably make the same sort of arguments (re Jindal/Carson) about Bernie Sanders’ candidacy – whose policy stands, be it noted, I agree with much more than those of HRC.
Suzanne
@ThresherK: Camelback is the tallest mountain in Phoenix. The last third of the hike is basically all rock-climbing.
PurpleGirl
@Suzanne: In 1990 I was in the Phoenix area for an arbitration proceeding (I was a paralegal at the time). On the ride from Sky Harbor airport to The Wigwam Resort, the driver pointed out Camelback Mountain.
muddy
@ThresherK: In Vermont it’s Camel’s Hump.
ThresherK
@Steeplejack: Thanx for the links, but I saved mine! First a healthy dose of white vinegar & water, soaked inside it for about a day. Then a gentle cycle in the washing machine with a few old tees to keep the bumping down, a bit of detergent, and plenty of Borax.
First, it got rid of the cat pee odor. Second, it didn’t tear the bag, straps, anchors or anything. Built like a tank, this one is, and I’m grateful for that because they don’t make it any more.
@Suzanne: I don’t travel much, but I’ve actually seen it (not from that up close). Sounds like a more rugged hike than Vermont’s. It’s a great backdrop to Taliesin West, but I’m sure you know that.
@muddy: Oops. There’s also a Camelback in PA I’ve been by.
muddy
@ThresherK: The one in Vermont, at least, is not particularly camel like, in my opinion. It’s more sphinx-ish.
Germy Shoemangler
@ThresherK: What’s to stop the cat from doing it again?
redshirt
Heavens help me, I’m thinking of getting into gardening.
I assume I just need a bunch of dirt and seeds to start, right?
Also, I live in the forest and animals will be an issue, so I need a fence.
Is there anyway to reliably keep out groundhogs and other burrowers?
RobNYNY1957
My brother built his own house. He used to say, “Building a house is like kissing. There is no easy way to know when you are finished.”
Germy Shoemangler
@redshirt: We had last year’s vegetables destroyed by critters. We had success with container tomatoes hung from a thin post they couldn’t climb.
Our city rabbits are fearless. My wife saw one in our garden. She tried to shoo him away. He stared at her, standing his ground. I think he even grabbed his crotch in a further display of disrespect.
We’ve grown pumpkins successfully in the past, giant ones, but last year they were gnawed before they could turn orange. It’s a quandary.
Suzanne
@ThresherK: Yeah, it is a lovely part of the skyline from almost everywhere on the eastern side of the city. Funny you mention Taliesin West. There is a house just south of Camelback Mountain in the Arcadia area of Phoenix that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for his son, and it has been the center of a very large local historic preservation battle. At the last minute, some anonymous benefactors stepped in to save the house from some developers who wanted to literally cut the house on half. I actually got to take a private tour of it on Thursday. Just amazing views of Camelback from the entire home. I’ll put pictures of it on Book of Faces for those who are interested.
redshirt
So here’s my conceptual plan: Rake/scrape out an area of woods that’s free of wild raspberries, and then build an approximately 10×10 and 2 feet high wooden border, then fill that with soil, and then plant seeds. Then set up a fence of some kind.
I’m most worried about the fence, as I don’t want to fight the wildlife.
Ruckus
@Botsplainer:
Well if you are a boomer, cars, gas and insurance were cheaper compared to income when you were 16. And the only way to escape the house was to get outside, walk (no fucking way!) bicycle (almost as desperate as walking!) or drive. Now you can talk to and see your friends without leaving your room.
J R in WV
@redshirt:
If you run a closely woven wire fence into the ground, that might do it. I’ve seen people dig a trench, then build the fence and run the wire to the bottom of the trench, then fill the trench with concrete. This can even keep pigs in, or out, whichever you need.
If there are deer (and there are deer if you are in North America) the fence needs to be really tall, as they can do a standing high jump you wouldn’t believe. My neighbors who vegetable garden use two widths of woven wire, or electric fencing at least 8 feet high.
Electric doesn’t take as sturdy posts as woven wire needs, but you need to keep the weeds off of it as they will ground the voltage, making the fence just a flimsy wire thing, not a barrier without the voltage.
My first adult encounter with a hot electric fence was amusing. I volunteered to feed a neighbor’s goats while they were away on a short trip. It was nearly dark and raining when I went up there. I knew where the fence was, but those electric wires are inconspicuous in broad daylight.
When my damp jeans on my thighs touched the wire there were blue-white sparks 4 inches long. I moved backwards by teleporting 6 inches, or perhaps it was a muscular spasm involuntary in nature!
The rest of the feeding mission was less noteworthy. Note: Do not pet a male buck goat on the head – they pee on their heads as part of goatish sexual rituals. You have heard the “smells like a goat” thing, perhaps. Well, it is true… unbelievable but true.
Don’t bend over around goats; they will butt you in the head, or the butt, whichever side of you they start from.
I have friends who keep dairy goats, and make world’s best cheeses. Lots of work, though. People come from hundreds of miles around to buy their kids! Goat kids!! Famous for their cheese in the French style.
I know too much about goats to want to keep them myself, but the cheese is to die for.
redshirt
Also, as a first time gardener looking for food, what would be simplest, least fallible plants I should start with?
Please say tomatoes.
redshirt
@J R in WV: See, this is why I haven’t had a garden to date – I feel like I’ll be creating a war with the wildlife. I am in the deep forest, there are deer and turkeys and porupines and all manner of other creatures, everywhere. I feel like I’d have to build a garden version of Fort Knox to keep my tomatoes safe, and I’m not sure I want to do that.
Glidwrith
@Jay C: I rather think that ‘floor’ for the Rethugs is going to go down somewhat if Clinton is the candidate. The unbridled misogyny is going to be so extreme, that I think a huge number of women that would vote ‘R’ otherwise are going to shift camps or not vote at all.
Germy Shoemangler
@Glidwrith: They certainly don’t seem to be able to control what comes out of their mouths at times. It should get interesting.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid:
I take the proliferation of ‘celebrity auto shows’ as an opposite indicator — people are thinking of them less as a household essential than as an expensive hobby. Like those cooking shows, which are very popular with people whose most frequently used kitchen tools are the microwave and the phone (to dial out for delivery).
And, at least here in the US, so much of the automotive externals have been computerized, there’s just not much that non-specialists can tinker with, so people don’t get “bonded” with a tool they’ve put time & experience into. When we were growing up, dads (almost always dads) changed their own oil, their own fan belts, knew what to do with a spark plug, messed with the wiring (successfully, sometimes). These days, even professional mechanics complain they’re reduced to having the expensive computer program tell them which even-more-expensive component needs to be unplugged (using only company-certified tools & methods) and replaced with the properly authorized new unit — one step off the flowchart & you’ve voided all warranties, turning the whole car into an expensive doorstop.
Anne Laurie
@redshirt:
No, your first worry is sunlight. Most flowering and/or food plants need at least 6 hours of sunlight a day, so before you start digging/raking/building, figure out whether that patch gets enough light, or if it’s in shadow too much of the day.
Second, for a newbie, it really makes more sense to start with a smaller patch of dirt, preferably raised higher off the ground. Four feet by four feet, or even 3′ x 3′, gives you more space than you think for planting if you’re not competing with established plants. (Like those wild raspberries, which will send out runners to re-colonize your new bed.) Look up ‘square foot gardening’ or ‘raised bed gardening’.
Anne Laurie
@redshirt:
If you have a patch with enough sunlight — and tomatoes really love sunlight — they are indeed about the easiest edible to grow. And if you grow them in containers, or tall raised beds, that helps massively with the critter problem, too. I’ve had rabbits ignore a planter full of lettuce a mere six inches off the ground (while voraciously devouring every leaf that fell out of it), and if you put up stakes / cages for your tomatoes, the groundhogs won’t be able to reach the fruits either.
If I were you, I’d try a couple tomato plants in the sunniest spot you can check on every day, and see where you go from there. There should be tomato seedlings available for not-very-much at your local gardening centers right now, and as long as they have enough dirt around their roots, tomatoes don’t care what their planter/bed looks like. Lots of people even grow them in those ‘reusable’ handled fabric totes your grocery store sells at the checkout for a buck or two.
If you don’t mind appearances, you can also use those bags, or any burlap bags, to grow potatoes. IIRC, you’re in Maine, so you can probably score some ‘seed potatoes’ cheaply right now, too.
redshirt
@Anne Laurie: Yeah I’m in Maine so now is the time to grow. I just don’t want to have to fight the wildlife.
Putting up a birdfeeder has caused me to hate Bluejays, for example. A gang of at least 10 of them just arrived and they’ve changed the cool bird dynamic I had working for weeks.
redshirt
@Anne Laurie: I’ve got plenty of sunlight in the spot I’m considering. And I’ve already burned off the scrub growth so I think the garden would be un-intruded, by plants at least. I expect a full assault from the animals.
SWMBO
@redshirt: My mom has had success with the hanging garden type of plants. She has grown tomatoes, cucumbers and strawberries hanging them (upside down or right side up) off the end of her porch. My aunt and uncle did the upside down version to keep squirrels from climbing down and getting them. Use Home Depot 5 gallon buckets to hang. If you’re going upside down, start it on its side with a lid so it isn’t transplanted when it’s too big. The sides of the bucket are too slick for the squirrels to hang onto when you hang it. If you’re worried about deer, make a fence around it to keep them from eating them. Hang them off the eaves in sun and you should be good to go.
opiejeanne
JR in WV, These pictures are beautiful. Thanks for sharing them with us; your garden in the forest sounds lovely. Our neighborhood is in full flower, pink and white dogwoods, all of the cherries are finished, but azaleas and rhododendrons and everything else that blooms is blooming. The lilacs are finishing early this year.
We have been buying tomato plants and squeezing the extras into raised beds, to share space with things like tomatillos and zucchini. I don’t know but I hope the tomatillos are nice roommates for tomatoes… maybe I’d better check.
We have been starting seeds in the greenhouse since the first week or second week of April, when I wasn’t carting my husband to various doctors and sports specialists for his back. Pinched nerve, squinched disk (can’t think of the exact wording but that expresses it pretty well); 10 days ago he got a shot of cortisone in his back and now he is pain-free, but his left leg is still weak. The doc who gave him the shot says that if it doesn’t improve in the next couple of weeks he will refer him to a surgeon to have a bit of out-patient surgery to release the pinched nerve.
So far in the greenhouse we have started cucumbers, watermelon, zucchini, tomatillos, ground cherries, alpine strawberries, corn, sunflowers, pumpkins, and some small-head cabbages which the wild bunnies are eating now that we’ve set them out, but we are amused by the rabbits and they aren’t very destructive, so we will block them from getting into the raised beds. Some of the other things are almost ready to set out now, if the weather behaves. We already have spinach, peas, basil, beets, onions, and carrots coming up in the beds, and the chives are in bloom. Some of the thyme we planted four years ago has given up the ghost for no apparent reason. More will be planted in corners of the raised beds.
Oh, and the Hood strawberries are setting fruit now, and one berry is big enough to eat, and coloring up nicely. There will be lots of berries this year.
redshirt
@opiejeanne: Have you considered a chiropractor? I was being referred for surgery before I went to a Chiro who realigned my hips and after that all my health issues dissolved.