spring, weeds

Noxious or Not

5 Comments

I’ve decided that I need to take more blogging breaks. Why you might ask? Because more people follow this blog when I don’t write than when I do write. I’m not sure what that means. In the immortal words of Arnold in Terminator 3 – I’m back.

I’ve been tied up with real life for the last week as I went through a change of operating system on the servers here while herding cats. No, not literally, but figuratively, as I worked to get the members of the board in sync for a board meeting next Monday. It always makes me think of herding cats when you try getting a group of people to agree on a day and time to hold a board meeting.

In other niceties, the weather is finally heading towards full-on spring here in the flatlands. That means that it is time to start planting some of the early cool ground tolerant things. Of course the weeds are already in fine fettle, attempting to conquer the universe one root at a time. There has to be a good reason that weeds seem to have a head start on all the other plants – otherwise they wouldn’t be called weeds!

All of which is a round about way to sneak up on the subject for tonight: one man’s weed is another man’s flower. I remember as a kid when we lived for a few years in Nebraska and then returned to Colorado. I was puzzled that the same plant that was so abundant as to be considered a pest in Nebraska was rare enough in Colorado to be the state flower. It was my introduction to the idea that people can have quite different value judgments of the same objective reality depending on local conditions.

I leave you with this question: Is there any reality where noxious weeds like Russian Thistle are considered rare and beautiful plants? Because if there is, I can introduce you to nirvana without any effort. At least until the weed police come and cart me away for growing a proscribed weed.

At least Russian Thistle leads to tumble weeds in the fall. Unlike Canadian Thistle that just remains troubling and noxious all year round.

cooking, weather

Experimental Cooking

11 Comments

Today was dull and dreary; overcast skies and alternating rain and thunderstorms most of the day. Molly wasn’t willing to get more than a few inches from me all day. Finally this evening with the storms passed she was willing to leave my side long enough to venture outside for a bit. What is it going to be like this summer when the real thunderstorms arrive?

I had supper at mom’s tonight and the discussion turned to the ingredients in microwave mashed potatoes. We conducted a side by side taste test of two different brands because the advertised differences were amusing. One brand (Betty Crocker) advertised “high fiber” and had a larger serving size (2/3 cup) with fewer calories, the other (Idahoan) was advertised as “natural” potatoes with a smaller serving size (1/2 cup). (Both were red potato varieties.) The results: we preferred the Idahoan natural potato kind. It tasted more like real mashed potatoes and had a better consistency.

I had predicted the result before the experiment based on the ingredients listed on the box. The Betty Crocker “high fiber” variant had cellulose listed as the second ingredient. They were using cellulose to supply fiber and add body to the potatoes, allowing the lower calorie claim along with the larger serving size. But it also made the consistency stiffer and the taste was less potato-ey than real mashed potatoes. It is amusing what you can learn if you read the box carefully.

That experiment in turn led to a discussion of angel food cake baking.  I had made a regular angel food cake earlier in the week and mom had made the chocolate variant yesterday. I happened to mention that the boxed mix I used allowed adding either a quarter cup of all purpose flour or a quarter cup of cocoa and extending the baking time by 3 minutes to account for the altitude here. Mom had started from a different mix but had added the cocoa as a seat of the pants thing. Both turned out well, but the high altitude “fixes” led to us looking at a couple of the “from scratch” recipes renowned in the local area and comparing them to a recipe out of a standard cook book. Sure enough, the local recipes had that dash more flour added relative to the standard cookbook.

 
I wonder how many local recipes have all the altitude corrections built in without notation? I also wonder how drastic the effects would be on low altitude cooking.

Enough blithering about cooking, time to do some real work.

mama kat, writer's challenge

I’m Mad

12 Comments
(Before proceeding, the answer to yesterday’s question is octopus. Odd huh?)
 
(And no, I’m not literally mad in either sense fo the word.)
 

This weeks topics:

1.) “I’m mad at myself. I’m embarrassed. I can’t believe after all these years, I’m still talking about my weight.” Poor Ope. What are you mad at yourself about?

2.) Divorce Dreams…a tempting alternative? A disaster to be avoided? Ever an option? Advice? What’s your take?

3.) What is the joy in your present moment?

4.) List 10 rules you’ve unlearned (meaning 10 things you thought were expected of you or were the “right way” of doing things, but that you now ignore).

5.) Mother’s Day is coming…what is the secret behind the close bond you have with your mom? OR What do you do to create that close bond with your kids?

#1 – I’m Mad
(I think that if I were Oprah, I would just leave it at that: I’m mad!)

I suspect that we all have multiple subjects to be mad or obsessed about. The problem is narrow it down to just one thing. I’m going to say weight for the moment.

I have spent my entire life in the 3 standard deviation range for size (except for a week or two sometime in infancy). I was born a small preemie, one of the smallest to survive at the hospital at the time. I have always claimed that they over cooked me in the oxygen tent after birth. The growth that followed led to me being one of the biggest (both tallest and heaviest) in my class throughout school. That is why I have been 6’5″ and 300 lbs. since high school.

The only time I get perturbed is when people design doors too short and chairs too small, when people drive cars so small that even one of my size 16 feet won’t fit in the door, etc. But at least I can see above the crowd.

#2 – Divorce Dreams

I think that everyone in a long term marriage has occasional thoughts of divorce. L and I have been married for close to 35 years and I know I have had such thoughts. I suspect L has as well.

Such thoughts tend to occur in the throes or aftermath of a particular disappointment or unmet need. Usually the thought of divorce is completely unrealistic. A few hours or days later, the cold hard light of reality intrudes and you realize that divorce is not going to meet the unmet need. You realize that the shared memories and experiences are more important than the problem. That history and belief in each other will let you work the triggering problem out.

The other big trigger for such thoughts seems to be a crisis of self belief. It is a dangerous trap to start believing you are not good enough and that divorce is a way to let your partner find happiness (or even yourself). Usually the delusion fades away and with it the contemplation of divorce.

The divorce dream becomes problematic when it becomes the wedge that prevents you from working on the underlying problem(s). We’ve all know couples where the idea of divorce was the axe that sundered the marriage because it stopped the ability to function as a team to solve the underlying problem.

(Confused enough?)

#3 – The Joy

The current joy is the coming of summer. The glorious days of never ending sunshine and green growing things all around. The satisfaction of mowing the lawn and working in the garden. The late evening twilight with the cicadas and birds and even the coyotes.

#4 – 10 Broken Rules

  • The best person always wins
  • Belief is sufficient to impel action
  • People are always honest
  • Life is fair
  • Liars never prosper
  • Change is not a constant
  • People never change
  • Good plans always work well
  • Managing people is easy
  • Sleep is always attainable

#5 – Relation to Mom

It’s getting late, so I’ll just point you to this post from last year.

odd facts, quiz, weather

Pears and Goats

7 Comments

Today was one of those days where things started strange and went pear shaped from there. It began with a voice mail box full of full moon (you know, lunatic type) messages, including two from people that wanted to adopt cats but then left no number for me to contact them. Then the fiber optic interface box at the demarc was scheduled to be replaced, but the new box hadn’t been programmed quite right. Browsing to a new page hung up the phone and picking up the phone led to strange internet behavior. It took about an hour for the technician to get all correctly setup, so there went the lunch hour.

Molly and I were finally able to head out on our walk a little after 6pm and it was glorious. Warm, slight breeze, late afternoon sun: what could be better. An hour later and the clouds were rolling in and by the time we finished our 5 miles and returned to the house it was sprinkling. It gave the air that glorious ionic touch that smells so good during and after a rain. Before I could even get supper fixed, the rain started falling and the lightning and thunder sat on the horizon, giving a sight and sound extravaganza. Told you I shouldn’t have worked on the lawn sprinklers! Of course Molly didn’t care for the booming and kept her head in my lap as I ate supper. Poor doggy.

I’ll close with this weird fact I was reminded of today: unlike most creatures, goats have rectangular pupils. (Don’t ask how it came up.)

Human pupils are round. Goats and most other animals with hooves have horizontal slit pupils which are nearly rectangular when dilated. This gives goats vision covering up to 340 degrees, meaning they can see virtually all around without having to move. Contrast that with the less than 180 degrees we poor humans can see around. The real kicker is that animals with rectangular pupils can also see better at night due to having larger pupils that can close tighter during the day and open more at night. Makes me think we got shorted a bit in the grand eye design competition.

Bonus question: what well known invertebrate also has rectangular pupils? No Google!

humane society, weather

Spring?

6 Comments

Needless to say, the PowerBall ticket of the last post was indeed worthless. At least no one else won either. {*grin*} Better luck Wednesday!

Sunday was a return to spring warmth, so I finally got to work on the sprinkler system and play in the water without being too cold. Of course that meant I awoke this morning to the sound of thunder and rain as a thunderstorm rolled through. I’m just happy I didn’t wash the truck or it would have flooded for sure.

Today was symptomatic of the arrival of spring. I had at least 5 panicked calls on the office phone before 9:30 this morning. All from people who had lost their puppies Sunday. They were hoping that we (the humane society) had found and captured them Sunday or this morning. I passed the calls on to the animal control officers, really hoping that we had indeed captured their pets. Dogs that wonder into the fields and river bottom this time of year tend to become coyote food in very short order.

The first nice spring weekend and people were out working in the yard, removing debris, etc. and forgot that the gate was open and the puppy was in the yard with them. Many times it is hours later that the pet is discovered to be missing. We actually schedule more animal control during the time in an attempt to keep the animals out of harms way, but there is a limited amount we can do in our huge rural area.

One final observation: the economy must be picking up a little. We run the only no-kill shelter in a huge geographic area (hundreds of square miles), so we are getting calls from a 3 state area from people who have gotten a job elsewhere and cannot take their pets with them. It is good that people are getting jobs, but it is hard on them to leave their animal friend and companion behind. They look very hard to find a shelter that will ensure they are taken care of and not subject to euthanasia. That’s how they find us. It will sure be a relief when we get the new facility built. Our current one (an old municipal shelter from the ’60s) has very limited space and is almost continuously full in spite of volunteer fostering and help from the front range shelters with adoption and finding new homes out of area. We really hope to have the construction finished by December.

Back to the salt mine and then off to bed.

Things Done Right