3311 Snork.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Evans(?), in a letter to the Kingston Daily Freeman: There is no necessary connection between the desire to lead and the ability to lead.... Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able and those who scramble to the top are more often motivated by their own inner torments than by any demand for their guidance.

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From http://www.fun1067.com/?page=1&cat=4 :

Posted Monday, July 18th, 2011
BORGATA CASINO NAILED FOR UNDERAGE GAMBLERS
29 suspected underage gamblers have been rounded up at the Borgata in Atlantic City, and casino regulators have seized more than $2,600 in cash. The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement announced today that the gamblers were rounded up recently, and the money was taken as a forfeiture. The money will be given to special state programs that benefit from gaming. The decision was approved earlier this month, and announced today.

Let's see, 29 gamblers, $2,600, that's $90 each. Not exactly high rollers. That next to last sentence, "given to special state programs that benefit from gambling", cracked me up! Anyone want to take a guess as to what kind of programs? I'm stumped.

Only in New Jersey. You know, in any other state the money would be given to programs like Gamblers Anonymous.

Looked a little further. Other news outlets have now picked up the story (and they are now all using the same wording, different from the above wording), and they say:

The money will be split between state-funded programs to help senior citizens with prescription medication and transportation, and programs to help compulsive gamblers.

Oh. Ohhhhkaaaaaayyy. I wonder what the truth is.

When I see the exact same wording in every place I look, I don't believe it any more. Once upon a time, "reporters" did their own "reporting", and you could get different views of the same story, the truth being usually somewhere in the middle. Now, everyone copies the same story word for word, and you have to wonder if there was a slant, bias, agenda, of the original writer, and what it was. No way to know. Doesn't matter so much with this story (I suspect it was just a poor choice of words in the first rendition), but it's important for other matters.

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I have already eaten six fair-sized tomatoes from my tiny potted plant - two ripe and four as fried green. There are about 24 more tomatoes on it in various stages of development.

I'm getting anxious about the bell peppers. There are 14 peppers, growing slowly larger, but I don't think the largest is full sized yet. I want one now!

It's been putting out more flowers, but the flowers just drop off. It's not setting more peppers. I did some research, and it turns out that in high heat and/or high humidity, pepper pollen gets gummy and won't fertilize the flowers. Duh. So I hope there'll be a second crop later, when it gets cooler.
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3273 A good thing

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Infidelity isn't about whom you lie with. It's whom you lie to.
-- Frank Pittman, MD --

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My potted patio tomato plant has really taken off. It's big and lush and covered with blossoms.

The two potted sweet pepper plants, however, haven't done as well. There was no change in size for three weeks. Then, about three days ago, I checked it more carefully, and found it covered with cheek-by-jowl aphids. They weren't there the day before.

About the same time I noticed some kind of tiny bee-like insect hovering and darting around almost all my flowers - the pansies in particular. They move like bees. A bee with a very pointy behind. It looked dangerous, bite or sting, and was showing far too much interest in the flowers on the porch.

I wasn't able to get out to find something that would kill aphids without poisoning the peppers or the soil until yesterday. I found a spray that is all plant oils, like peppermint, rosemary thyme, and clove, and not much else (EcoSmart). The directions said to wait until the cool of evening to spray.

So last evening I went to spray the peppers, and was amazed! In one day they'd almost doubled in size and had a healthy knot of infant leaves. And no aphids! None. Two days before they had been covered with them. Now there were none.

Very strange.

Later, out of curiosity, I got out my bug book and looked up the tiny bee-darting thingy.

It's called a snipe fly (family Rhagionidae), and they are predators, and their favorite snack is aphids.

Cool.

That's where the aphids went.

In this photo, scarfed from the internet, it's obvious it's some kind of fly, not bee, just by the shape of the head and eyes - but they are so tiny you don't notice that. One easy to notice characteristic is that if one lands near you, and you move to touch it, it will hop and sidle away rather than take off.

So if you see any tiny (less than 1/3 inch) bee-looking things with long pointy behinds in your garden, don't hurt them. They might LOOK like they could bite or sting, but they don't.

Send them my way.
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1808 Daylilies

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Yesterday I went to Poughkeepsie with my trowel, shovel, and garden fork (not sure that's the right name - it's like a pitchfork, but with a shorter handle and stronger tines), to dig up some daylilies.

I'd had an email response to my request on Ecycle. The woman said she wanted them out so she could plant a shrub in that spot, so I should take them all. She gave me her address, a description of the house, and the location of the daylily bed. She said she'd be at work every day, but I could come and get them any time.

On the drive there, I got a little worried. What if this email was actually from someone else, as a joke or retaliation, and the owner would come home from work and find a hole where her beloved lilies had been? So I tried knocking on neighbors' doors, but no one was home.

I started digging. I half expected a police car to pull up and a cop to ask me what I was doing.

It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I just pushed the fork in, and the whole mass levered up. I had been a bit disappointed that the patch was only about 22 by 18 inches, but it was very dense, and when I separated the plants, I ended up with well over 100 sets. Wow! Given the price the local nursery is asking for potted lilies, that's more than $600 dollars worth!

I spent the late afternoon planting them on my bank/cliff. That was WORK! Much of the bank is a shale-like rock. I know there's some soil there, because there are weeds (that's why I wanted the lilies, eventually they'll choke out the weeds) but much of that soil is shale. I had to dig about 200 holes before I found enough good spots for lily sets. When I finished I was drained.

I was standing there holding a trowel and the plastic garbage bag the sets had been in, admiring the plants, when a police car pulled up and a cop asked me what I was doing. "Everything ok?" Local guy. I've bought him coffee in the diner. He was just passing. He probably wonders why I found his question funny.

I felt like I'd pulled off the perfect "bank" robbery, having just buried the swag.
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1788 Seeds for the side yard

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

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Today was cool, too cool for bugs, and perfect for working in the yard.

The Hunk had finished grading, spreading topsoil, and raking among the trees in the side yard, and he spread grass seed in the front half just in time for 2.5 days of rain. Which was excellent timing, since I don't have enough water pressure to run a sprinkler.

I wanted to spread wildflower mix in the back half. I had some that had been table favors at a friend's anniversary party (almost nobody took them, so when I helped clear after dinner, I brought almost 200 packets home). They covered only about a third of what I wanted to do, so I went shopping for more.

I went to three garden centers, and asked for "2 pounds of mixed wildflower seeds for shade, please". Only one place had seeds at all, and it was a sun mix. I bought one pound of those. Maybe some will grow....

I shopped for shade mixes online this evening. I found some, but they all say they need a minimum of 1-4 hours of direct sun daily. Hey, this is woods! They best they'll get is filtered light. There ARE wildflowers that grow in the woods. Trilliums. Dogtooth violets. Other stuff I don't know the names of. Why is it so hard to find deep woods seeds? I'm frustrated. I'll get two pounds of one of those mixes, I guess, and overseed the sun mix.

I also want a gazillion of the wild roadside daylilies, too, for the steep bank and around the mailbox. Nobody had the wild type, but I bought a few potted cultured ones. Everybody suggested that since they grow everywhere wild, I should just take a trowel and a bag, and dig some up along the road. I'd like to, but even out in the middle of countryside, that land is owned, so someone owns the lilies, and I don't feel right about digging them up without permission.

We'll see how desperate I get.

The nurseryman where I bought the lilies said not to plant them today. We're expecting frost tonight and tomorrow night.

Hey! It's almost May! Frost?
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