Scanner art by Craig Cramer, gardening & more
Hat tip to Ann Raver who plugged this video in her article in today’s NY Times, In the Pumpkin Patch, an Orange Thumb, about growing and showing giant pumpkins.
Rep. Pete Stark (D – CA) from the House debate on the override vote on Bush’s veto of SCHIP:
But President Bush’s statements about children’s health shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than his lies about the war in Iraq. The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up. In Iraq, in the United States and in Congress.
One of the frustrating parts of my job is that this trial is a 5-minute drive from my office and I visited once for about 10 minutes. I need to make time before the blooms fade away to spend a couple hours out there to observe and shoot what must be some spectacular plants.
Kim over at A Study in Contrasts had a great post a few days ago, Urban Excavating, where she describes the unusual things she’s found digging around her house. It spawned a great thread.
Who hasn’t dug up something weird? When I lived in town, what looked like a 4-inch patch of slate turned out to be a 10′ x 15′ rough flagstone patio buried under sod that grew up between the cracks.
Here in the country, the theme is tools. Above are three that I had stashed behind the shed after unearthing them in the vegetable garden: A scythe blade, a stovetop flatiron, and a C-clamp. I also found some sheep shears, but they’re buried somewhere in the shed.
In one of the old dumps out in the woods, I found a great enamel chamber pot. Makes a great planter.
Great weather in the forecast. But no blogging or gardening this weekend until the house is in order.
From the New York Times:
“The Dissolute Householdâ€
Jan Steen (1626-1679)
Few artists combined situation comedy and moral rebuke with more panache than Jan Steen. Both are evident in this masterly depiction of an upper-middle-class family partying their way down the road to perdition. The house is still fancy, its larder well stocked. But domestic life is a shambles. A maid plies her mistress with wine while exchanging an obscene gesture with her master. The old grandmother has nodded off; one of the roustabout children chases a beggar from the door. A basket hangs from a rafter overhead. It holds a crutch and begging cup: the future. Art historians suggest that Steen might have used his first wife and children as models for the picture. And there’s no question that that master of the house, foppish, grinning, and defiantly self-aware, is a self-portrait.
Come on. Tell me those of you who are plagued with too many deer haven’t fantasized something like this.
Seriously, with more than 75,000 deer killed on roads in New York, this is a problem that can only be solved by — you guessed it — composting, according to this Cornell Chronicle article. And it’s a cheap solution too.
It’s also nothing terribly new, as the article mentions. I remember back in the day writing articles about composting as a solution for livestock farmers, especially in areas where rendering plants were few and far between.
What I really want to know is, will that deer compost work better than Milorganite or other purported deer repellents?
One solution not considered, brought to you by Ithaca’s own Horseflies. (Warning: Neo-primitive bug music is not for the faint of heart.)
mp3s of live concert here, and more Horseflies concerts at this site.