Eye-candy wrap-up from master gardener OpieJeanne:
The pink hydrangea [top photo] was a “rescue” plant, $5 at Home Depot five years ago.
This hydrangeas photo was shot when the big plant at the left wasn’t at its best because of a few days of heat, but there is also a light blue clematis hanging down from the arbor.
The centaurea is bigger member of the cornflower/bachelor button family. They have naturalized really nicely in parts of the garden we don’t want to worry about, and they tend to crowd out buttercup which is a pain in the butt, but they don’t invade the beds where we don’t want them.
***********
Bonus content, via commentor Germy, from last week’s Garden Chat:
One farmer is using her farm to fight against racial injustice, health disparities and inequalities in the food system.@errolbarnett spoke to activist Leah Penniman about how @soulfirefarm is helping families eat healthier and opening doors for the next generation of farmers. pic.twitter.com/r7YxblsoKR
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) August 20, 2020
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone???
rikyrah
Going to try and go back to sleep???
rikyrah
Beautiful pictures?
OzarkHillbilly
Beautiful garden spot, OpieJeanne. I am a little surprised that hydrangea is so happy in that pot.
I has a sad in my garden: On Monday our hummingbirds flew the coop for more southerly regions. They may have been prompted by the fact that I was unable to refill the feeders all day (I had my 11 month old granddaughter all to myself all day, the horror!) I was not expecting it for a couple more weeks. The garden is just not the same without 50 or more kamikazes buzzing around.
JAFD
To go on bit of tangent..
A couple of decades ago I knew a young lady who was active in Seed Savers International, a group that grows ‘heirloom’ plants and passes around the seeds. To keep and ship seeds, they reused prescription bottles, the lightproof amber-colored plastic, etc. So I brought her the empties from my parents’ drugs…
Time passes, now I am accumulating empty pill bottles. If you know anyone who could use them, please let me know.
raven
Nice! I tease my wife by calling her hydrangea’s “mums”!
raven
I see a bunch of whining about Garden and Gun magazine by people who I would guess have never read it. Here’s a sample of the kind of things in the rag. This one is about hydrangea’s.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Good recipes, the Cast-Iron Charred Corn is short, sweet, and simple, and looks really good. I can feel my arteries harden reading the Baklava recipe. Not sure if I’ll try that one or not but it sure sounds deathly good.
Mousebumples
Good morning! Beautiful garden pictures for first thing in the morning!
These tweets belong more in a fundraising thread, but I’m going to post them now since my little girl will be waking up shortly and demanding my time and attention …
Related to:
I guess my question is… Is Cruz a fan of the movie that he couldn’t NOT quote it ? (I’ve been quoting it , off and on , for weeks now) Or is he trying to help sabotage Trump in a way that gives him plausible deniability?
Catherine D.
Leah Penniman was on The Splendid Table podcast on July 31, episode 716.
Aleta
That charred corn does looks perfect.
And just for the sake of saying something, a lobster roll with horseradish and mustard, and peppers and shallots and garlic AND capers, and chives…that’s tuna fish territory. That would be good. But why desecrate what is sacred when fresh.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: There are all kinds of interesting articles, almost every issue has something about dogs. Oh, but it has guns in the title so it MUST be bad.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: I’ve come to the Ask G&G column “Snakes, Summer Sippers, and Staying Cool” which starts with:
Good advice, of course I have Miss Kitty to deal with the bedroom copperheads.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Thunderstorms this morning. I like them.
Steeplejack (phone)
@raven:
At least there’s no football in it!
Aleta
Sunday Morning Garden and Guns Chat
Humor me …. OK to joke around I hope
raven
@Steeplejack (phone): I may comment later but not now.
Gvg
I read the first issue of garden and guns. I thought it was weird. I still do. It is a cheap imitation of southern living but added a guys point of view. I think that was too cliched a view of southern men and the garden articles seemed even more simplistic than southern living. It seemed too lightweight to be worth bothering with. Since they are still around I guess they adjusted their offering.
i quit reading southern living because my gardening experience had increased over the decades to the point their articles were always yeah I already know that, however in the beginning they were the only gardening magazine that had a southern climate knowledge enough to be useful. Climate is very important to which plants will stay alive and look good.
Guns actually wouldn’t be that bad, if they had stayed a tool for hunting. However in my region, they became a nutball religion too and the fanatics have recruited cultist who can’t understand gun safety plus they all vote against any reasonable regulation. People get killed and they prevent any help. Now I hate them and won’t buy a magazine called guns and gardens nor support their propaganda and I have become a second amendment abolishment supporter. They caused this. I look at that magazine as a propaganda enemy trying to look all innocuous.
Southern Living is a better magazine anyway.
Aleta
We used to have a two week local sweet corn season. It’s going on 7 1/2 weeks at the farm stand I’ve been going to this year (big but deserted midday). Now run by the family’s 4th generation son, a civil engineering major. I think I see the influence of his mindset in the farm operation’s organization and production lately. (Although the longer corn season is b/c of climate warming and this year’s hot sunny summer, as well as his river bottom land; but I’ve also been imagining a souped up irrigation system.)
Gvg
@Aleta: The longer corn season is probably because of selective breeding of corn varieties. It’s a big emphasis of Ag corporations and University research. Extending the season of all crops is what every farmer wants. They need the money.
The other goal is breeding crops that last longer once picked.
Global warming won’t make the season longer, it would just make it happen earlier.
debbie
@raven:
Wow on that border bursting with hydrangeas!
Aleta
@Gvg: They became a tool for making threats instead of for living. That used to mark someone as a crackpot (eccentric character type on comedy TV) or criminally minded. To actually threaten with one was (I think) a kind of violation. Now that the threats are pervasive and allowed, that’s the meaning they carry. It’s not the fault of the people threatened.
Aleta
@Gvg: Thanks, I forgot that part. I don’t think those varieties of corn are as good, but they’re mostly what you find now.
Cold weather and light frost used to end the corn season by very early Sept. here (Aug. for blueberry fields some years), but we have much later frosts now. Tomato season is much longer, though it slows down. Sun is the same but our Septembers are very different b/c of warming. We even swim into October.
raven
@Gvg: That’s ridiculous.
raven
@Aleta: What are you talking about???
OzarkHillbilly
@Gvg: @Aleta: It’s not the guns, it’s the people who get obsessive about them. I used to hunt but don’t anymore. I still have my guns and use them from time to time for problem critters I can’t catch and relocate (like fat bottomed wood chucks) and for home protection. The cops are a long ways off, I can count on one hand (wait a minute, now 2) the number of times I have seen a sheriffs deputy and one of those was when somebody escaped from the Franklin county jail (I saw a truckload of guys in full combat regalia drive by and never saw them again even tho he was supposedly in the “neighborhood”)
I have no patience for people who feel the need to carry one with them where ever they go and even less for those who feel the need to own an AR-15 so they can “resist govt tyranny” (Art III sec 3 calls that “treason”).
I’m not the only gun owner who feels this way, we just aren’t as loud as the idiots.
MazeDancer
What lovely photos!
And had not heard of centaurea before. Happy to make its acquaintance.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack (phone):
I answered you on last night’s thread. Thursday definitely watched “gold slacks,” and Bright did too.
germy
I’ve tried growing catnip, but neighborhood cats who are either stray or allowed by their owners to roam always destroy the crop.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: I have grown it for 2 years now. My cat couldn’t care less and my neighbor has moved away with hers. I’m yanking it out.
Geminid
I was listening to local garden guru Andre Viette’s morning garden show on WSVA (AM 550 Harrisonberg VA) yesterday and climate change came up. His son Mark Viette spoke of a recent study that said that the relatively high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are making poison ivy grow like crazy. Viette’s show is syndicated around Virginia and up into Maryland and Pennsylvania, and is a good listen 8-11am Saturday mornings.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Got it. Just climbed out of “reading in bed” mode, made some coffee and am now catching up on old threads.
Did you watch the video again? Good times. I hope Omnes sees it.
NotMax
@Aleta
Pales in WTFitude to this combo.
Yes, that’s the PB & J & L served in a tony Miami nightspot.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
Just watched it. Flat abs!
Kristine
Gorgeous garden. I’ve visited the PNW a few times in the spring, and was always struck by the flowers, flowering shrubs, and general greenery.
Raining this morning in far NE Illinois, with off and on rains expected for most of the week along with some cooling. I mowed the green parts of the lawn yesterday, and was struck by how parched and wrung out everything looks. Some of it is the usual late summer exhaustion–the flowers are spent, the seeds are curing in the ground or passing through bird systems to places unknown, and everything is shutting down for winter. But there’s also the fact that this was the warmest summer on record with below average rains in July/August and some of the fauna just got the crap kicked out of it. My astilbes look like someone set fires under them.
Miss Bianca
@OzarkHillbilly: Ours are still here, in diminished numbers, altho’ with snow (!!) expected on Tuesday, I am wondering if the rest of them will hightail it out of here. We usually have at least a few game stragglers hanging on till some time in October. I dunno, tho’, weird year all around – they didn’t show up till almost the end of April, when they’re usually here earlier in the month, so in addition to the other horrors and indignities of 2020, I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a truncated hummie season.
Sure Lurkalot
My DH is the gardening one but I will help him on Monday cover and move plants to the garage for THE SNOW. 97 today! 95 tomorrow! 60 degree diurnal swing on Monday and 3-6 inches forecast for Tuesday. Then back to the 80’s by next weekend.
OzarkHillbilly
@Miss Bianca: I have seen a couple transients pass thru this weigh station long enough for a sip or 2 but that’s it. I wonder if somebody told them about the cold front coming thru on T/W and they decided to git while the gittins was good.
germy
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t understand catnip.
I bought a small plant once from my grocery store. It was a little leafy catnip plant, still potted. Our cat got so intoxicated by it she literally stumbled and lost her balance, like an old woman overcome by wine.
But then I bought a giant catnip plant, grown organically at our farmers market, and she was completely indifferent to it.
germy
@OzarkHillbilly: Off topic, but I found this interesting:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/09/01/my-eighty-six-jobs/
(May not so off topic, because at one point her vegetable gardening helps them through a rough financial situation)
NotMax
@germy
None of that hoity-toity artisanal stuff chez germy!
:)
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: I don’t understand it either. My neighbors cat went head over paws for it but ours just sniffed at it a bit, pushed it around with her nose a little, then walked away. It’s a mess of a plant now, gotten way too big for the plot it’s in so I’m just going to yank it and not bother with it again.
germy
@NotMax: The farmers market stuff smelled really potent. I thought she’d love it, but no.
I guess there’s different varieties.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Mousebumples: A lot of them are probably well aware that virtually every A-list entertainer is on our side politically, and it gnaws at them.
“Why is every decent person opposed to my political party? Could it mean there’s something wrong… something about my party… something…???”
None of them have the self-awareness to have that thought of course.
jonas
And when there actually *is* government tyranny, they show up to help defend the jackbooted government thugs.
But that’s what brownshirts are for…
germy
@OzarkHillbilly: Some cats go nuts for catnip and some don’t.
What I found odd was that our cat reacted strongly to one plant, but not another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3scQ0wq5zLE
Miss Bianca
@raven: @OzarkHillbilly: Well, I have to admit, the title “Gardens and Guns” elicited a snort from me, but based on the contents OH quoted, I’d be willing to give it a try!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@germy: Too mature maybe? Some of our herbs if we neglect them and they get overgrown and start to flower, also lose a lot of their flavor.
I tried carrots this year and noticed that the invading armies of bunnies also kind of ignored them once they matured a little bit.
We just harvested the carrots BTW. Pro tip: If you are lazy and only throw about 3″ of good garden soil on top of the crappy soil that was already there, your carrots are going to be 3″ long.
germy
If it had been marijuana I was buying, I’d accuse him of “catnipping” me, but it was catnip he was selling me.
germy
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: My wife tried a trick of growing potatoes in an old laundry hamper. Filled the hamper with good soil and planted the potatoes. Harvest time, she turned the hamper over, shook it out, and retrieved some potatoes. Less stress on the back muscles.
Amir Khalid
Apologirs for going waaay off topic. Because it’s become a habit, here is my daily coronavirus report for Malaysia. I was going to post this in the morning open thread, but it’s already past 10:00 am Balloon Juice time.
Malaysia’s daily numbers. Six new cases. Three cases from local infection, all Malaysians: two in Sabah from the Benteng Lahad Datu cluster, one in Penang state screened with symptoms of severe acute respiratory infection. Three imported cases, all non-Malaysians: two arriving from Indonesia, one arriving from Bangladesh. The cumulative reported total is 9,397 cases.
Two more patients recovered and were discharged, for a total of 9,115 patients recovered — 97.0% of the cumulative reported total. Active and contagious cases currently being isolated/treated in hospital rose to 154 patients; six are in ICU, three of them on respirators.
There have been no new deaths since 1st September, and the total stands at 128 deaths — 1.36% of the cumulative reported total, 1.38% of resolved cases.
Gvg
@raven: The open carry is what tore it for me. They are threatening everyone and enjoying it. There is an implied if you complain about me, someone will kill you. Sometimes they do kill us. All democratic politicians are really operating under threat and it’s not imagined. Those people who go to Walmart armed are enjoying that people are afraid of them. That’s why I hate them. What’s ridiculous about hating people who bully others and myself? We have to watch what we say because we may get threats and the threat might be real. After decades of escalation, they made me their enemy. Before I was pro second amendment and believed it was a good part of our Constitution. Now I’ve lived a few decades more and seen people and children shot with nothing done and always increased gun sales because “they are going to take away our guns, buy more quick”. They have made me what they feared by their own attacks. Now I want to take away their guns. I didn’t before.
G&G is enemy propaganda. They could have chosen a different title, but they didn’t.
germy
@Gvg: I took a quick look at G&G’s twitter feed, and they seem to focus more on drink recipes than actual… gardening.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: Damn, I can sympathize. Thanx, a good read.
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
I expect she started going to twelve-step meetings.
“Hi, my name is Fluffy, and I’m a catnipholic.”
“HI, FLUFFY.”
germy
@SiubhanDuinne:
That would require a level of self control I believe she sadly lacks.
mrmoshpotato
@germy: Shoot your tomatoes right off the vine?
opiejeanne
@raven: Thank you! That was a nice article about hydrangeas. Like McGee, when I was a kid I swore I’d never have rose bushes in my yard.
At one point we had over 100, on purpose.
OzarkHillbilly
C’mon, you obviously didn’t even bother looking at the website to see what was there to be read. You’ve just damned the whole magazine on the basis of a single word. I saw one article that pertained to guns at all and that was in the context of the opening of dove season.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Forget it Jake. . .
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: I have two hydrangeas in big pots, both rescues. Are they notorious for not growing in pots? I had no idea that I couldn’t grow them there.
I feed them in the spring and they are kept well-watered.
MoCA Ace
gorgeous pics OpieJeanne. Here in NE WI the leaves are beginning to turn and the garden is entering stasis. The pole beans quit last week, cucumbers the week before that, and today I’ll be canning the last of the tomatoes. I pulled the onions and garlic a few weeks ago and the winter squash is hardening off. At the end of the month I’ll be planting next years garlic crop.
scav
@germy: That could very well make sense if the effort is more about lifestyle signaling than the actual subjects in the title. Beside the starting with the same letter, They’re both rather symbolic, gardens traditional femininity, guns ditto masculinity (plus moar conservatism!) it’s all very comforting.
Raven
@opiejeanne: we don’t have them in pots but they sure do well in the heat and humidity!
O. Felix Culpa
@MoCA Ace: I’m trying to expand my repertoire of vegetable gardening. Any tips on garlic growing? Have never done that before.
And beautiful pics, opiejeanne. I love hydrangea, which alas will not thrive in the southwest. I’ll delight in your photos instead.
OzarkHillbilly
@opiejeanne: I had no idea you could grow them in a pot and never would have tried. I’d figured they would get pot bound post haste and need fertilizing every couple weeks or so.
germy
@scav: I haven’t read the magazine, just scanned some of their “tweets” and their brand seems to be more about lifestyle. Big southern porches, zesty drink recipes, tasty southern dishes.
You’re probably right that their name was chosen to wed the feminine with the masculine.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: sigh…
germy
@O. Felix Culpa: My wife has successfully grown garlic. I’ll ask her when she gets home. She’ll have some good advice.
O. Felix Culpa
@germy: Thanks
ETA: Heading out now to tend to said garden before it gets too hot. Will check back later.
FelonyGovt
Gorgeous hydrangeas!
We’ve now cleared all the dead grass and weeds from our former lawn, have laid out a garden path with stones, and are getting ready to plant.
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: Your cat? Copperheads? Inside the house???
I’d die of fright. California has rattlesnakes and a friend had them in her new house at the edge of a wild area so often that she became pretty casual about trapping them and returning them to their habitat.
Western Washington isn’t (normally) home to venomous snakes. We have a good-sized garter snake in the yard, or we did for a couple of years. We’ve only seen it twice; the first was the day of our youngest’s wedding when it surprised my niece and she screamed like she was being murdered. The second time it came out for a visit was a couple of years later and it had more than doubled in size.
WereBear
Re catnip & cats: there’s genetics involved both with cats and plants.
This is why Mr WayofCats, herbalist, has created different kinds of our herbal cat toys. If your cat doesn’t like catnip, they might LOVE Stinky Sox!
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: @O. Felix Culpa: I’ve successfully grown garlic and my advice is, “Don’t.” (I’m not gonna say how well they turned out).
The only real advice I have is #1, if you’re gonna go to the trouble of growing it, pick something you can’t buy at the store and looks like it will do well in your climate and
#2: don’t grow more than you can use in a few months. Even the “stores well” types didn’t last all that long.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’d love to know her secrets; I could try and grow them on my front step.
MoCA Ace
@O. Felix Culpa: I’m up here where the ground freezes solid. I plant them about a month before our first hard frost. I dig in some chicken coop cleanings then plant each clove about four inches apart, one inch deep. You can mulch them right away or wait a few weeks (mulch heavily before winter) Typically they sprout slowly and you may see an inch or two of greenery before the snow flies.
The following spring they will shoot up quickly. When they form, cut off the curly flower stalk and flower bud (garlic scapes) when they are young and tender. For years I threw them on the compost pile before I found out they are a delicacy! Now I use them in saute, stir fry, grilled veggies, anywhere you want a mild garlic taste. Pull the bulbs and hang to dry in a cool dark place when the plants turn yellow, just like onions.
OzarkHillbilly
@opiejeanne: Oh yeah, in the bedroom, but Miss Kitty, the Unburnt, and breaker of tethers, Queen of the Hollers and killer of Copperheads took care of it for us. Like there wasn’t much left to throw out.
We have plenty of snakes of many types around here, garter snakes, black rat snakes, speckled king snakes, timber rattlers, milk snakes, etc. No cottonmouths in the Meramec watershed as far as I know but the Current and Eleven Point rivers have plenty. I think this is the first year I didn’t catch and relocate at least one copperhead.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Is anyone else seeing trees losing leaves?
We have walnuts all around us, a huge grandfather tree and younger ones planted by squirrels over the years. They’ve been dropping leaves for a couple of weeks now, all of them. Maybe walnuts are just early on that and I didn’t notice?
We have a lanternfly infestation and I read that they are a danger to hardwoods so I’ve been worried about that.
OzarkHillbilly
Time to get busy. Have a good day all.
MoCA Ace
My basement is probably a little more dry and cold than those in Misery. I typically harvest in July and they keep until the following spring in a mesh bag. If they do start to go bad I peel them all, blend them with olive oil and freeze them. When you need “fresh” garlic just gouge chunks of it out of the jar as needed.
OzarkHillbilly
Yes, they are. My dogwoods started taking on color a couple weeks ago. They do it every year but I’d never noticed it till we bought this place.
OzarkHillbilly
Thanx for the tip. I was actually thinking about trying some again this year and that makes it more likely I will.
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: “Negative polarization” is pervasive. On the political level, it plays a big part in political analyst Rachel Bitecofer’s electoral modeling (she credits another political scientist with naming the concept). On a cultural level, it plays out as, “if they like it, it stinks!”
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: Do you live somewhere where it gets cold in the winter? And they survive in the pots?
WaterGirl
@Mousebumples: I have never seen the movie, so I am clueless here, not understanding the reference. What does the Ted Cruz comment have to do with Wisconsin? Why would that quote drive fundraising?
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: I fed both of the ones in pots once this year, in the spring. The pots are very large, the plants started out pretty small, scrawny little things five years ago. They are a bit stunted by their pots now, probably pot-bound as you say. I need to remove them and several other plants from their big pots, and either trim the roots to repot them, or plant them out in the garden. I was going to do that in the spring of this year, two Japanese maples and a Portugal bay on our deck, but now it’s fall despite what the calendar says, and has been since mid-August. Strange weather this year, wet and cool into July. The zucchini just sulked for months, so much that I despaired and started two more plants. The first plant just now has its first fruit, and I’ve just gotten two nice ones off of one I’m growing in a big pot, planted in early July, the third one is just starting to flower.
frosty
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: We had half a dozen big old walnuts* where I grew up. They were always the first to lose their leaves.
* Still there. They must be close to 100 years old by now.
ETA: the crabapple at my current place lost half its leaves in July when we had a two-week drought, all of them by now. No apples either; first time that’s happened.
raven
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Yes and the kudzu is thinning just a bit. My bride says it’s hours of sunlight even more than temp.
CarolPW
For those interested in growing garlic, I have gotten mine from these guys
They have more garlic types than you would ever know exist, and lots of information too.
opiejeanne
@MoCA Ace: Freeze them in an icecube tray, then put the garlic/olive oil cubes in a ziplock bag, date and ID the bag, and put it in the freezer. I made pesto last week and need to freeze what we didn’t eat. When it’s snowing in the winter or cold and rainy in the spring, it’s like a bit of summer.
O. Felix Culpa
@opiejeanne: I just froze some pesto last week and need to do some more. So nice to pull the taste of summer out in deep midwinter!
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: I live just outside Seattle. We get snow most winters, and that’s great because it insulates the plants from lower temps. It has gotten down to 17 degrees a couple of times since we’ve lived here. I think the one in the photo is somewhat sheltered from the harsher temps by being in that arbor.
We grow artichokes here. We cut the one big clump back to about a foot tall and bury most of it in mulch for the winter. Mr opiejeanne makes a cage out of heavy plastic mesh fencing to contain the mulch.
opiejeanne
@CarolPW: Thank you. We’ve grown garlic casually, just stuck the sprouting ones from the store into a raised bed that was empty, the following year planted the little bulbs that had over-wintered in the garage and hadn’t gotten used up. The results are mostly small heads, and what’s interesting is that I’ve noticed that the garlic in the stores are not just one generic type. This year when I harvested the bed there were quite a few “hard necks” mixed in with the others, and some bulbs were rosy, some streaked with purple, some dead white, and others yellowish. I may get serious this year and grow them properly.
Geminid
@Geminid: Just to be clear, in my response to OH referring to “negative polarization.” I was talking about people and magazines, not cats and catnip. Better to have left it out of a gardening thread.
MomSense
More gorgeousness, Opiejeanne!
opiejeanne
@Geminid: That’s ok.
We grew catnip in our garden when we lived in the East Bay Area of SF, the little burg where Rachel Maddow grew up. Our cats ignored it as it grew to a large clump, but almost daily in the spring and summer I’d look out the back door and the neighbor’s big fluffy Himalayan would be sitting right in the middle of the plant with a glazed expression on its face. The owner finally asked me to take it out because the cat was crossing our not-busy road to get to it, so I did. I really think she didn’t approve of his recreational drug use.
J R in WV
@OzarkHillbilly:
Me too.
The last two deer I shot were fatally injured here on the farm. One was a beautiful 8 point buck with a gut wound from either coyotes or dogs. A neighbor came up to help me pull him to where we could put him in the loader bucket of the tractor.
A couple of years later, other neighbor called, there was a little spotted fawn beside the driveway road with a broken leg. Sad, buried the poor baby in the bottom where I buried the buck.
Properly viewed most guns should be farm tools. We’re at least 35 minutes from the nearest law enforcement aid. An ambulance is much closer.
I too quit hunting when I realized that 50% plus of the guys out carrying rifles were drunk.
J R in WV
@O. Felix Culpa:
Neighbors grow a crop every year. You plant individual unpeeled cloves in early fall, and mulch it heavily with straw.
It grows all winter, and you harvest it in late spring or early summer, and let it dry and the skin hardens up. You need to dry it in the shade of a garage or dry basement, preferably on a screen the air can flow through. It needs rich loose soil, so neighbors work compost in months before planting it.
Fresh green garlic is pungent and great on pizza or in pesto. It seems to do well here in lower WV.
Gvg
@OzarkHillbilly: yes, you are right, I’m not being fair and I don’t owe them fairness. I am really really angry and tired of being afraid about the large numbers of gun nuts around me and I want them to back down. I am not supporting with my money or attention anything that makes flaunting guns and normalizing them as harmless ok. They (guns) are serious tools and if someone is careful with them, they don’t put them in magazines with cooking and gardening. It’s like not locking them up and leaving them loose in ladies purses.
the context is how things are now after school shootings, political murders and allowing the police to get out of control because the police are afraid anybody might have a gun. It’s all related. If we were still back before the NRA went radical and the majority of gun owners were safe gun owners who reacted to shootings with have a trial and lock them up….then I wouldn’t look at that magazine title with such anger.
if that magazine doesn’t intend to be my enemy, they need to prove it and change their name.
zhena gogolia
@Gvg:
I would never even glance at a publication/website with “guns” in the title. Fuckem.
The Lodger
@Aleta: Ye gods, you’re getting into Chicago hot dog territory there, except with… lobster…
Aleta
@OzarkHillbilly: Lots of people I know and like hunt for food (even canning their deer meat) and to keep rats out of their animal feed.
I was thinking out loud about the change in how people’s brains react to guns now, due to those who carry them around to show power or make others back away. Growing up we were taught that threatening someone with a gun, or even in play, was wrong. A matter of safety of course, but also seriously uncivil and bad behavior. Among adult hunters and sports shooters as well. (On TV it was portrayed as addled or backward, comical.) So the gun in our house or a neighbor’s didn’t make us think “threatening.” What came to mind was “Treat very carefully; stays in the closet.” Early morning thinking, not profound, not an attack on gun owners.
Aleta
@germy: I’ve had two so far who get violent around catnip. Mean drunks we call them. Two others I was finally able to tame after trying catnip treats on them.
raven
@zhena gogolia: you are so pure
scav
@Aleta: Certainly not just treated as a dangerous — if useful in specific circumstances — tool anymore. My brain. It’s off now imagining OPEN CARRY DRAINO!!! parades. Or, Patriots® showing up beflagged in their costumes sporting oversize rat-poison tins, screaming that “If school children don’t want to be poisoned, they should bring their own tasters to lunch break!”
eta. Oh no. John Wayne just showed up with draino (again) in his holsters.
germy
@Aleta: The catnip our cat responded to made her mellow.
After she was done stumbling around, she sat quietly and stared into space for a long time.
I have some commercial, powdered catnip that came with a cardboard scratch box. Its effect is not as profound as the small, potted plant from the supermarket.
See the youtube link at my comment #47
raven
you Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover
Meaning:
One should not form an opinion on someone or something based purely on what is seen on the surface, because after taking a deeper look, the person or thing may be very different than what was expected.
Raven
Garden & Gun is based in Charleston, South Carolina and covers art, skeet-shooting, gardens, Southern tradition, and land conservation.[1] The name Garden & Gun is explained as an “inside reference to a popular 1970s Charleston disco called the Garden and Gun Club.”[1] It is also explained as a metaphor for the South’s land, people, lifestyle, and heritage.[5]
zhena gogolia
@raven:
I just live very close to where 20 little children were slaughtered. It’s a visceral reaction. Nothing pure about it.
O. Felix Culpa
@raven: Consider dialing it back just a tad. The blood of innocents causes some to recoil at the prominence of guns in our culture. I grew up in hunting and fishing country and have no problem with their associated tools. But given the current climate of fetishization of guns and resulting massacres, is there any wonder that some folks have a visceral negative reaction to publications with gun in the title?
Raven
@O. Felix Culpa: It’s a magazine. Dial what back?
opiejeanne
@O. Felix Culpa: Thank you. I was startled and dismayed to watch harsh words being spoken to people who are our friends.
opiejeanne
@Raven: The snark. The approbation. The heckling.
OzarkHillbilly
So you are going to shit on people who might agree with you 98% of the time because the word “gun” is in the header.
That’s some genius thinking there.
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Careful that’s not the party line.
O. Felix Culpa
@Raven: The name-calling and the disingenuous responses. People have explained why they’re sensitive to titles like Gardens and Guns, which can be perceived as normalizing gun fetishization in this country and leading to mass slaughter. Maybe that’s a misperception, but no need to be nasty. Just explain why this magazine is innocent of those associations without the labeling and condescension.
Raven
@O. Felix Culpa: Thank you for your opinion.
O. Felix Culpa
@Raven: Damn, folks have been so supportive of you over the years and they have explained why this issue is painful for them. Try a little kindness.
O. Felix Culpa
@Raven: You asked, I answered. And what is Balloon Juice but a sharing of opinion?
Raven
@O. Felix Culpa: And I thanked you for it.
O. Felix Culpa
@Raven: Perhaps I misread your thanks as snark. I appreciate thanks offered in good faith and reciprocate accordingly.
Raven
@O. Felix Culpa: And perhaps offering an explanation of how the publication got its name and urging people not to judge a book by it’s cover is not snark or heckling. Do I really care if people read it or not? Not at all.
Gvg
@OzarkHillbilly: I am not shitting on people except the magazines editors. I am explaining.
i have to do active shooter drills at work every year where we lock down and shelter in place under our desk because no one will actually get laws passed and make public spaces relatively safe again. A lot of the reasons it has happened is nonsensical views in popular culture. Too positive a view of guns in a wrongheaded unsafe violence promoting gun slingers are hero’s way. We also make children drill for school shooting but I can’t even count all the ways gun worship threatens people all the time. I don’t like guns. I don’t even like slightly nice depictions of them anymore. I’d like for some ordinary gun users to understand my viewpoint and maybe decide to try harder to rein in their nuts instead of blaming me. You can’t know how offended and angry I am about all the shootings if I don’t speak up about why I am no longer a moderate on this. I do see this as a deliberate boycott on my part, and I’d also like others to think about it. It’s not just this one magazine, it’s many things.
laws really tend to follow culture not preceded them. Anti drunk driving and anti smoking efforts came after public opinion campaigns that took decades but they worked much better than prohibition which was a rather sudden law that didn’t have enough actual support to work.
raven and others don’t agree. That is their right and we aren’t unfriends about it. But I hope they will think about it in the future…that there are some people out there that are getting more and more upset about the blowing off doing anything every time there is a new mass murder. Different people have different ideas about what contributes the most too this problem.
I guess too as a serious gardener, I find that magazine more intrusive in my safe serene place than say a hunting magazine.
scribbler
@Raven: You have been arguing, sometimes quite meanly, with people about this all day. Can you not see that for some this is not just about a magazine name?