Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Real Farming, Small Scale

We have just about finished with the addition of flowers and vegetables for this year. There might be a few more flowers coming in the front yard and we want to start a couple of different varieties of sunflowers in the back yard but that's about it.

I took the rust off the post from the
old satellite dish, painted it and added a couple of brackets. Now it is a support for two hanging baskets. I also transplanted some daylilies from the bunch at the back of the yard to the base of this post. Those daylilies originally came from Sue's father's house in Erie. A few years ago, I transplanted some to surround the base of our mailbox. Last year I put some along the garage side of the house in between hosta. The original plot just keeps replacing the plants that I take out. You can see that starter area in the rear right in the picture below. Anybody want some daylilies from Grandpa's house? We might be able to provide lilacs that came from Grandma Halter's house too.



The garden has 10 tomato plants, plus some peppers, carrots and butternut squash. We planted everything last week, but yesterday we added an automated slow soaking watering system and a fence to keep Wickett and the rabbits from wandering through the garden. The soaker comes on every 12 hours(about 6am and 6pm) and runs for 30 minutes. This is a new wrinkle for us so we'll see how it works out.


Another new venture is the small wildflower patch. We had some seeds that we got at a wildflower farm in Texas. I've been keeping them damp, so we should know soon if they are going to come up.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

FarmVille, what the hell?


Last night, I had 400 plots of land on my "farm" and they were all planted with pumpkins. This morning, there were 19 plots on my farm and nothing was planted in any of them. All of my trees, buildings, animals, decorations, etc are there and all the harvesting, plowing, sowing functions work. Still my farm is almost all green grass.

I blame The Smoke Monster.








Well, at least it's a nice day and I will find something to do in the real outdoors.






Update: The "Farm" is back, sometime between 3:00 and 4:00 this afternoon. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Just A Short Rant

There are two news stories that have been occupying our TV coverage lately. The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the debate over what LeBron James will do when he becomes a free agent.

The oil spill is, of course of national importance. The LeBron story seems to headed that way.

Here are my "brief" rants

(1) The oil spill should have never happened. Corners were cut and safeguards ignored that led to this mess. The government, that means both Republicans and Democrats, need to improve oversight that would not allow profit to push safety and concerns for the environment aside. Remember, people died on that oil rig. If you want to dig a little, do some searching about the closed-door meetings between Dick Cheney and guys from Halliburton during the previous administration in Washington. I heard Sarah Palin on TV yesterday suggesting that this situation would have been handled better if Republicans had been in charge. Is she aware of the Katrina fiasco? Well, of course not. She only reads what is written on her hand.

(2) LeBron won't be a free agent for over a month from now. The TV news will beat this to death until then and it will be like trying to endure political ads and praying that election day comes soon. For a 25 year-old whose every move is under scrutiny, he seems to be handling it all well. No indication of drugs, concealed weapons, bar fights, etc. I hadn't paid much attention to NBA basketball since the Cavs moved to downtown Cleveland. I began to follow the team a little when they won the right to draft LeBron and then became more of a fan when Dan Gilbert started bringing in some better players. But, LeBron James will play next year with the team of his choice. If that's not in Cleveland, then the sun will still rise and life will go on. Wouldn't it be nice if the general population of NE Ohio was as passionate about The Cleveland Clinic as they are about a basketball player. Believe it or not, The Clinic has an even better world-wide reputation than does Mr. James.

End of rant. I feel better. I think that I'll watch PBS tonight from 6:00-7:00.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

I'm A Tribe Fan


I will always be a fan of the Cleveland Indians. They can be up, down, whatever and I will support them. This year, expectations were not too high. The pitching was suspect and the offense was supposed to be the strong point. So far, the pitchers, especially the starters, have overachieved and the hitters have struggled. Their record is 15-24, after losing two straight to Kansas City. There are a lot of new faces, but I enjoy watching this combination of veterans and kids. As long as I can tune in to a game and see Sandy Alomar standing in the first base coach's box, I will be content.

Of course, a record above .500 would be nice too.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Facebook Is Bad For My Blog

As you may have noticed, my last post here was in March while we were still in Florida. Blame FarmVille and Restaurant City mostly, plus RV trips and general slothfulness. I am going to try to get back in the habit of posting on a regular basis.

Last Saturday, The Akron Derbytown Chorus of barbershop singers sang the National Anthem before the Indians-Tigers baseball game at Progressive Field in Cleveland. This is the third year in a row that we have done this. Mike and I are both members of this chorus.

It was cold, windy and sometimes rainy. We got the singing in ok and stayed through the fourth inning. Then Kim, Mike, Sue and myself went to Quaker Steak and Lube in Valley View for some lunch and watched the game on TV. It was much warmer there.

Here is a video that Sue took despite the wind and other nasty conditions. She's a trooper.
With all due modesty, I think that we sound dang good.





How about another video. This is the chorus warming up (both our voices and the rest of our bodies) before we went onto the field.