Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

People are complicated. Love is not.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

In after Baud. Damn.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Because of wow. / Sunday Morning Garden Chat: OH! The Eclipse

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: OH! The Eclipse

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From gifted commentor Marvel:

It’s difficult to describe what the eclipse totality was like — too dazzling for my small words. But I can describe one wonderful aspect of it:

When totality struck and the sun’s fiery ring was exposed, a ROAR rose up all over the Willamette Valley — thousands of peoples’ voices in unexpected unison, shouting out the pure wonder of it.

Then, after the height of the celestial show, as the sun was being restored by an ebbing moonshadow, we rambled around the yard, looking for those wonderful crescent-shaped representations of the eclipse provided by dappled, pin-hole sunlight shining through the trees.

We were awestruck throughout.

(This photo made the Spousal Unit very happy. He’d hoped for something similar here — as happened back in 1991 — but it turned out that 63% totality & slightly overcast wasn’t good enough.)
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***********
Here north of Boston, we are finally enjoying Peak Tomato Season, those lovely few weeks when my plants are ripening fruit faster than we can eat them fresh. Local professionals say it was this summer’s cool nights that delayed such bliss by several weeks past the usual mid-July days… but, tragically, they haven’t slowed down the blights. Since there’s no rain predicted before Wednesday, I hope to spend some time later today pruning dead leaves and spraying Serenade, in the hope that the least affected plants will continue to set fruit even if they look like lollipops…
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What’s going on in your garden(s) this week?

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  2. 2.

    Cermet

    Here we had only 86% coverage; watched between the clouds and a thunderstorm at peak with a solar filter I’ve had for decades. Not my first partial eclipse (1970, using an imaging projection system in a box) but did get to show some friends. Still, nice people saw such a celestial event – maybe a few will start to get interested in the sky and pay attention to conditions. Of course, funny that if a black person or woman were president then all the religious loons would say this proves that the country/leader were evil – then add the devastation to Texas and that would be a slam dunk for those people that believe in that ridiculous superstitious of a “sky” being. LOL

  3. 3.

    satby

    That’s a great picture of the crescent shadows! I was looking for them but could only run out for a minute while at work.

    All the tomatoes coming in right now for me are orange ones. I planted an orange beefsteak and one called a orange whopper and they’re insanely productive. My Paul Robeson tomatoes have produced one so far, the Russian heart shaped ones gave me four very early but succumbed to wilt. I thought I planted a red variety but haven’t had any ripen. I’m going to make oven roasted tomatoes today before work to turn into sauce. YUM!

  4. 4.

    raven

    I’m doing a low country boil for the garden club today! Shrimp, red spuds, onions, corn and sausage.

  9. 9.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Baud:

    John Cole is meditating and doing yoga now.

    WTF! I go out for a few hours for a nice b-day dinner for madame and the kid and I come back to this? Gawd, I can’t leave you folk alone for 5 minutes.

  11. 11.

    Viva BrisVegas

    For those who missed this eclipse, there’s another US one in April, 2024.

    It goes from the SW to the NE through Dallas, Indianapolis, Cleveland and Buffalo. For our fearless leader, totality should only be about 50 miles away.

    There will also be one in Sydney in July 2028. See you there.

  14. 14.

    Gin & Tonic

    Between the blight and the hornworms and being away from home for two weeks during a dry spell, the only fresh tomatoes I’ll be eating will be from a local farm stand or the Saturday farmer’s market.

  27. 27.

    Amir Khalid

    Barre chords are not as difficult as I’d been warned they were. (For me, anyway.) I am continuing to work on memorising chords and scales and strumming technique.
    I am considering adding other guitars. The Squier Affinity Stratocaster does look pretty in Slick Silver. Unfortunately, it comes with the big headstock which is not as nice as the small headstock. I might have to fit a new neck, which is not expensive but a nerve-wracking job for a newbie.

  30. 30.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” -Picasso (or so I recall)
    “Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery.” -??? (woody allen maybe?)
    “Originality is just undiscovered plagarism.” – Whothefuck Knows

  33. 33.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “Originality is just undiscovered plagarism.” – Whothefuck Knows

    There is a variation on that:

    “Originality is just incompetent plagarism.”

  35. 35.

    RAM

    I love this time of year. The big slicers are really coming on and that means one tomato slice = one bacon and tomato sandwich–not real big on lettuce on my B-T, though Ms. RAM is. And our August lilies are blooming their little hearts out. They’re not actual lilies, of course (they’re actually a variety of plantain lily), but they look like lilies and the blooms are extremely fragrant. Meanwhile, everything else is beginning to shut down in preparation for autumn…

  36. 36.

    Immanentize

    My tomatoes are coming fast and furious I sadly lost my Satby yellow pear tomato plant-in-a-box to wilt (and some neglect). My celebrity, Rutgers, Roma, purple Cherokee and (especially) the little Sungolds are overwhelming me. Neighbors are very happy. Also, my Tomatillo plants are putting out a huge number of fruit this year. Salsa Verde here we come!

    ETA. Still curious why I wasn’t invited to Raven’s boil.

  38. 38.

    cmorenc

    When totality struck and the sun’s fiery ring was exposed, a ROAR rose up all over the Willamette Valley — thousands of peoples’ voices in unexpected unison, shouting out the pure wonder of it.

    Exact same thing happened at the arrival of totality at the site on the South Carolina coast where I watched the eclipse – (Santee coastal refuge, near McClellanville) – a loud collective gasp of awe-struck amazement. And it’s a safe bet the same thing happened at sites across the country within the band of totality, as totality progressed across the continent. A total solar eclipse is the most astoundingly beautiful, awesome natural phenomenon there is, other than perhaps witnessing the birth of your first child.

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @cmorenc: My 26 guests just got very quiet. At one point somebody commented on the “dawn” to the north (my only unobstructed horizon) but otherwise we just took it all in. Or maybe it was just me that was oblivious to anyone around me.

  40. 40.

    Steve T.

    @cmorenc: I was in South Carolina too. I went from New Orleans to a conference in North Charleston located and scheduled just so we could see the eclipse. After business ended Monday afternoon, all 300 of us went outside to watch the show.

    Two words. 1st word: Clouds. 2nd word: Frustration. :-(

  41. 41.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby: My tomatoes were a bust this year. I have only one scraggle plant remaining, producing a handful of stunted – albeit tasty – yellow globes. A master gardener in the neighborhood recommended mixing a handful each of epsom salts and powdered milk in the soil when planting next year, plus covering with reemay cloth initially, which prevents hornworms and others from weakening the plants and making them susceptible to wilt and other nasties.

    On the other hand, we have LOTS of chard and butternut squash, followed closely by beets, carrots, tatsoi, and sundry herbs. Starting to plant various kale and chinese leafy greens for my fall/winter crops.

    Good morning, also too!

  43. 43.

    satby

    @Immanentize: ? for the Satby box! I have noticed that the boxes dry out faster than pots, about the same as root pouches. This is the way I use up the overabundance when it threatens to overwhelm me and the neighbors. Great recipe and easy to doctor to suit your own tastes; I put fresh basil and rosemary in mine as well as dried Italian herbs. And no sugar because I just don’t use that.

  46. 46.

    satby

    @O. Felix Culpa: Good morning to you and Mrs Culpa! My pests this year were aphids. I was surprised not to see hornworms or other produce loving caterpillars, then not so surprised when I spotted the many large praying mantis (manti?) about. I’m not really a fan of that bug because the larger ones will attack and kill hummingbirds, but I didn’t get any hummingbirds at all this year ? so I guess it didn’t matter.

  48. 48.

    cmorenc

    @Steve T.:

    @cmorenc: I was in South Carolina too. I went from New Orleans to a conference in North Charleston located and scheduled just so we could see the eclipse. After business ended Monday afternoon, all 300 of us went outside to watch the show.

    Two words. 1st word: Clouds. 2nd word: Frustration. :-(

    We were very lucky that our site happened to be in a huge sucker-hole in the clouds during the critical half-hour prior to and during totality. About 15 minutes after totality ended, the clouds closed in on our site, too. The clouds looked particularly thick to the SW and West of us, and in fact a pretty good rain shower appeared to be going on just inland. But from McClellanville up through about Georgetown, we had a nicely timed sucker-hole in the clouds.

    Our site out in the coastal marshes had wide-open horizons in every direction, enough to see the distant twilight at both the north and south ends of the 70-mile band of sky-darkened totality.

  49. 49.

    Elmo

    Last year we spent hundreds of $$ on lumber and trucked-in soil, built lovely raised beds, planted tomatoes, squash, peppers, basil – and then watched as it all withered for lack of sun. Wrong spot in the yard.

    This year we almost gave a hard pass. Then at the last minute we bought three of these – big round fabric garden beds – and planted em with mail order tomato, pepper, and basil plants. It was already way past the big box store availability. Put down about 25 bags of Miracle Gro garden soil and crossed our fingers.

    O. M. G. The tomato plants are taller than me. They are going crazybananas. We are constantly harvesting basil and have already done two red sauces and a pesto.

    Also my fig trees have decided to honor us with bounty. Such a great year!

  50. 50.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby: Ooh, I didn’t know praying mantises (manti?) killed hummingbirds. Haven’t seen any of the former around here, but we have scads of hummers. It’s a challenge keeping up with the nectar refills (one part sugar, four parts water, NO red dye). I just set up several thistle feeders and we’re getting swarms of finches. There’s something deeply pleasurable about watching those little birdies hanging on the thistle socks and peck-peck-pecking away.

  53. 53.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    Unfortunately, the forecast doesn’t get any better for Houston. Harvey will continue to sit in a nearly stationary position on Sunday, keeping the Houston area under heavy rain bands of two to four inches per hour.

    Perhaps even more frightening, computer model forecasts are showing the very real possibility that Harvey will move back over the Gulf of Mexico early next week and make a second landfall near Houston on Wednesday.

    Double Oooofff.

  56. 56.

    Laura

    @rikyrah: Good morning back atcha!

    The golden pears, Mr. Stripeys and sweet 1 millions are in overdrive and I can’t keep up with the tiny tomatoes. I swapped for a friend’s zucchinis last week and made zucchini pancakes with a salsa of tomatoes, basil, burmuda red onions and sherry vinegar. Good eats.

    The Hubbard squash got powdery mildew and it has partially collapsed the leaf canopy and today I’ll start seeding masses of marigolds for the Dia de los Muertos party in November.

    Last night about 7pm the backyard was swarming with dragonflies -there was easily 50 or more and they were everywhere, birdbath, powerlines, in the air. The spouse and I enjoyed until the heat drove us back in for final jeopardy.

  58. 58.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa: 42″ per year used to be our normal. Our new normal is getting closer and closer to 50″ every year.

    If Harvey heads back out to the gulf and makes a 2nd landfall at Houston, all rainfall predictions will go right out the window. 40″? HA!

  60. 60.

    d58826

    @O. Felix Culpa: First let me say I have family in the area also so I hope every one can ride out the storm safely. Cong. Critter King of NY said what I thought Schumer should say – that NY would be there for TX today even though TX wasn’t there for NY during Sandy. My higher brain functions and the better angels of my nature whole heartedly agree with this sentiment.

    ON THE OTHER HAND, there is an atavistic twitching deep in the reptilian brain stem that says for TX it is time for Karmic payback. This is the state that has given us Ted Cruz, John Cornyn, Louie Gohmert, Joe Barton, Blake Farenhold, Rick Perry and a long list of other knuckle draggers. They have polluted the air waves with their anti-Washington/anti-tax/anti-government hot air. Various governors have floated the idea of secession (now would be a good time to start the process BTW). So if I were in Congress I would want to see all of these people on their hands and knees begging for aid, preferable on national TV , before I would vote them a dime.

    Fortunately for them I am ruled by the better angels.

  61. 61.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    @O. Felix Culpa:

    “This disaster’s going to be a landmark event,” said Brock Long, FEMA administrator on CNN’s State of the Union program. “This is a storm that the United States has not seen yet.”

    But will see many more times in the near future.

    Thanks, China.

  62. 62.

    Baud

    @d58826: I would like to see us use this against Cruz and Cornyn every time they open their pie hole. We’ve earned the right to shame these horrible people.

  67. 67.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Just now reading this: Why the IPA’s claim global warming is natural is ‘junk science’

    People who work for climate science denial thinktanks tend not to spend all that much time worrying about getting stuff into scientific journals. Perhaps because it’s easier, people who are paid to tell the public and policy makers that human-caused climate change is overblown bunk would rather pump out newspaper columns, do softball interviews or push out their own self-published reports. There’s a lot less scrutiny in that kind of public relations.

    So when two staffers at Australia’s Institute of Public Affairs managed to get some “science” into a journal earlier this month, there was much delight in conservative media outlets, together with a distinct lack of any genuine scepticism. “Global Warming Is Almost Entirely Natural, Study Confirms,” wrote Breitbart. “Advanced Computer Models Suggest Most Global Warming Is From Natural Forces,” said the Daily Caller. One of the authors, Jennifer Marohasy, took to the Spectator to claim her research had shown that recent global warming was almost entirely natural. The web traffic behemoth the Drudge Report also linked to Marohasy’s article.

    None of the writers bothered to ask a single other genuine climate scientist for their view on the paper.

    I asked five. They variously summarised the research as “junk science” and seriously flawed. Oh dear.

    Scientists including Dr Gavin Schmidt, director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Prof Steven Sherwood, deputy director at the University of New South Wales climate change research centre; and Prof Piers Forster, director of the Priestley international centre for climate at the University of Leeds, have pointed out to me serious flaws and errors in the paper’s methodology.

    It also appears that the lead author, the IPA’s John Abbot, claimed an academic affiliation to James Cook University that, according to that university, had expired more than six months before the research was submitted to the journal. I emailed Abbot and Marohasy to ask them to respond to the key points but didn’t hear back.

    The 5 rip the paper to shreds.

  69. 69.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @d58826: From my post at #53, @OzarkHillbilly: quoting the WaPo:

    Perhaps even more frightening, computer model forecasts are showing the very real possibility that Harvey will move back over the Gulf of Mexico early next week and make a second landfall near Houston on Wednesday.

  71. 71.

    Steeplejack

    Chyron on one of the cable news channels: “Trump Directs Harvey Response from Camp David.” Puh-leeze.

    No A.M. Joy. Liverpool-Arsenal can’t start soon enough.

  72. 72.

    Eric U.

    it looked like it was going to be overcast here for the eclipse, but then the sun came out. 75% totality. I could tell it was happening because of the quality of the light, but the leaf-produced crescents was something I had never noticed before. Last eclipse I remember, I was in Utah and there were no trees where I was. I like the pictures people have taken with saltines and other crackers. Kinda wish I had taken a colander
    to work

  74. 74.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: I would guess the “peer review” at this one was composed of janitors from MIT, Stanford, and CalTech, with a cafeteria worker from JPL. On the slightly more serious side, there has been a substantial increase in the # of “scientific journals” and the quality of peer review has dropped significantly. I have read a # of articles taking note of the problem. I am still reading the article so I haven’t followed the link to see which journal published it.

    Want to note that even in the best of times, shoddy research has from time to time found an outlet. Remember the vaccine/autism link study. It was found to have serious flaws early on and still took a couple years to get it withdrawn. Not that that mattered to certain denizens of the science denial community.

  80. 80.

    StringOnAStick

    We watched the total eclipse from the top of Grand Targhee ski area, a lovely way to watch the shadow roll in from the west. The first image in my mind when I awoke the next day was exactly that, such an amazing thing to witness. I felt like I could sense the distance to the moon and the much greater distance to the sun as totality approached and receded.

  82. 82.

    d58826

    And while Houston drowns, Der Fuhrer is promoting books, bailing on NAFTA, telling Mexico that they will pay for the wall and insulting democrats.

  84. 84.

    frosty

    @cmorenc: Same from our crowd of hundreds in the State Park in Tennessee. The crowd noise got louder, then when it went total there was applause and cheering. My wife took a cell phone video of the dimming light and the crowd and it’s great to hear it all again.

  86. 86.

    J R in WV

    @frosty:

    I can see that experiencing totality with a pleasant crowd would have been fun. I couldn’t predict how many people would show up at any organized eclipse “viewing” and so planned a rural experience. But even in Marion Ky it looked like just a moderate crowd.

    I was glad when the car with 3 folks from Baltimore stopped and watched with us. They were friendly and I was glad to share our wine with them after.

    We went to some friends’ farm yesterday for a small pizza party, and the couple hosting went to South Carolina, hiked into a National Forest, went off trail cross country to a river bank where they could stand in the water to cool off while they watched. Bliss!

    The pizzas were wonderful, a New York woman, with NYC ingredients, making a different recipe each time – like 8 or 9 pizzas for maybe 14 people. Salads, fruit, beer, wine, G&Ts it was a great party. She’s moved from a 500 square foot Brooklyn apartment to several hundred acres of remote farm, moved a ceramics studio too, into their shop/barn. Interesting folks! He managed staging or installing exhibits at a major NYC art museum, retired but will be going back to manage stuff for 6 weeks at a time. So part time now.

  88. 88.

    HeartlandLiberal

    As I have reported before, I am lucky to have a garden this year. The rotator cuff surgery laid me low for three months. Into early June, I was well enough to direct my son, who tilled the garden. It has not been very successful, the typical August drought in Indiana set in. But, we have a few tomatoes, last week enough I fried bacon, and we had bacon, spinach, and tomato sandwiches; lots of beans, but the big success is okra. Today I fried the third huge batch of Southern style cornmeal / milk / egg breaded fried okra. We are in hog heaven at least that little bit.The sunflowers were a total bust. Too late, bad soil, too much heat. I am planning next year to turn a third of the 2,000 square feet vegetable garden into sunflowers and wildflowers, after tilling in peat moss, composted manure, and fertilizer.

  89. 89.

    LaNonna

    Try try again, I managed to post about almonds on the o’night open thread, bu^t just to say we finished our almond harvest this weekend, the whole almonds (hulled but not shelled) are drying happily on the stone flags, chianche, on the back veranda for a few days. Next week off to the professional nutcracker, as Pugliese almonds are thicker shelled and smaller than Cali almonds. Finished days of hot hard work with many Adriatic sea swims, and earlier today a beautiful frittura mista lunch with plenty of local rosato. Buona domenica, jackals.

  90. 90.

    The Red Pen

    A couple months ago I found this awesome house with an awesome garden. It had some cool tree-like things. Turns out their castor plants. They grow freaky fast. I mention the timing because I swear they are at least a foot taller (maybe more) than when I first toured the house. They are a little out of control.

    Question for gardeners: what the fuck should I do with the crazy things (besides saving the seeds to make ricin to kill meth dealers)? Can I chop off a few limbs and keep them under control? Thanks for any advice.

    Here’s a picture of one of the damned things.

  91. 91.

    Knight of Nothing

    A bit late to this thread, but I finally got through my eclipse photos. Here is a selection.

    https://goo.gl/photos/tnu5P5G3oQQUJbNm9

    Sadly, none of my wide angle shots turned out – even though I practiced, it was more challenging in the moment to adjust the camera settings for totality than I thought it would be, and many of my totality shots — especially the wide angle shots — are blurry, have lens flare, or both. Rather than fiddle with the camera, I opted to enjoy the event itself.

    Still, for a first effort, I am happy with my results!

  93. 93.

    Gvg

    @Knight of Nothing: hmm if you have any pets or small children I would kill them and yank the seedlings. Seriously toxic and not to my taste to risk my dogs or any one else’s. Sorry to be a downer.

  94. 94.

    No One You Know

    @Knight of Nothing: Gorgeous! Wow, you could see more solar flare in Madras, or get better photos of it. In McMinnville, we saw some solar flare but not as much. Breathtaking experience, anyway.

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