Bits and Pieces 12

Gardening sucks this year. At least six times we’ve had to cover the plants from late and even later freezes. Eight times we’ve had to cover them from hail damage. They are too big to cover now. Because of the frequent and heavy precipitation, weeding has become nearly impossible, in part because the soil won’t bear my weight so I can get to the weeds. I’m doing things completely different next year.

The only computer games I’ve played are puzzles and solitaire. I don’t like most video games. I can’t get up enough interest to fight through and lose repeatedly until I figure out the game. It’s not in my personality to tolerate such things. However, the one kind of game I’d really like to play, no one will ever make. I really enjoy the part in some RPGs where you explore a very well thought out landscape. Something like Fallout 3 without the necessity of fighting would suit me well, but the market for such a thing is minuscule. It’s the visual equivalent of a really good adventure novel in terms of how the user experiences it, but there simply aren’t that many folks like me in that respect.

I’m a serious geography geek. Not in the memorization of places and things, but in the exploration. I’d give almost anything to see Europe again and visit all those places I never had time to see. As it was, I spent at least half my weekends volksmarching or biking and hiking in general. I simply wanted to see the places close up and personal. Weather conditions never made any difference. I was out in 40C heat or saw frost trails hanging from fences.

After my upper body workout on the machine at the park, I rode a bit farther to see the new terrain around Crutcho community. Crutcho Creek, running on the south side of it, overflows as soon as someone spits in it. The little community has flooded repeatedly over the years. This time, something had changed. A mile to the north is a landfill operation. They have a massive mountain of dirt and solid waste. The operation has expanded, buying up an old farm of some forty acres or so, which stood between the Mount Trashmore and Crutcho community. The landfill folks scooped out the entire acreage for the soil to cover their trash, and left a massive lagoon at least ten feet deep. This time Crutcho Creek really overflowed and ran across the whole community and over the main highway between the buildings and the new lagoon. As it fell over the side into the lagoon, it ate the soil away until it backed out a huge channel all the way to the road. This whole area is nothing more than alluvial sand in the first place (North Canadian River Valley), so it spread along both directions quite a ways. Two of the four lanes became unsafe, with most of the far lane already crumbling into this new massive channel that runs a hundred yards or so alongside the road bed. A nice geography lesson in miniature.

Edit: Couple of images of the washout from Crutcho can be found here.

Spring Garden Shots

First item is the main collection. We interspersed tomatoes with peppers, and each one is different. You may be able to see some early fruit on the purple tomato vine. In the background against the fence are peas, beans, another kind of peas and radishes. Somewhere far at the rear is lettuce.

Second is the red onions. We love them!

At the opposite end of this patch is the strawberries. Last spring we planted one large and two tiny sprouts. The drought prevented much fruit from growing, but I watered and fed regularly, and when the rains came back in the fall, they spread out a little.

In the other patch, we have a wire frame standing just over seven feet tall (2.1m), with cucumbers set to climb, and a couple of stray pea vines.

Weekend Outlook for Early July

Too many little items I just can’t resist.

This is a long weekend in the US, as we prepare to celebrate Independence Day on Monday. As if we had anything to celebrate. Fireworks don’t amuse me much, unless they are the human kind.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) has served his time in the corner, and can now remove the dunce cap. His accuser has proven a liar with a criminal background, and may be currently engaged in one or more ongoing criminal enterprises. So he lost his seat at the head of IMF, and his replacement is now sitting. Meanwhile, there’s talk of him running for political office in France. The real story? He’s still a scumbag. Once again, we see the Shadow Government employs the most hideous moral wretches. It matches their own insatiable appetite for most perverse sexual activities you can imagine, and some you cannot. It’s part of a pattern, like the Dutroux Affair and the Franklin Scandal.

It’s like walking a tightrope trying to dodge the fake alternative press propaganda and MSM. I was surprised when some very earnest sounding folks tried to defend the likes of Alex Jones when it was mentioned he was pro-Israel. How did that become news? He asserted that himself way back at the beginning of his career, and has reaffirmed it repeatedly. For him, 9/11 was everybody, anybody but never Mossad. And people defending Icke with his tales of Illuminati shape shifters? These days, anybody with a sponsor is almost certainly lying about one thing or another. Have we forgotten how all the really rich people and organizations got that way? The bankers control all the money except for a few piles of precious metals, so if you have very much, they allowed it for their reasons; don’t imagine they aren’t watching and controlling it.

But plenty of those with no apparent liabilities are thinking and saying we are due for a big and ugly false flag, maybe even over this long weekend. It will surely be used to cover up all sorts of mischief. Take a glance at the hundreds of conspiracies arising from independent investigations of 9/11. This guy made billions on insurance, all these folks skipped work that day, Muslims were tagged, as was a couple of countries absolutely not involved, some vast hordes of gold disappeared, all the bean counters at the Pentagon were killed and their investigative files destroyed, lots of fancy new technologies were tested… I can’t keep track of all the crazy stuff crammed into this one event, and just about all of them seem plausible. What I’m saying is almost all the various theories a likely true at the same time, that all the greedy hogs lined up at the trough and everyone got their bellies filled. Trillions of dollars were moved in very many ways all from one event, and we are still seeing money leaking out from it. I can’t wait to see how creative they get with the next one, and who’s turn it will be to profit.

I ran into another tranche (gotta love that word) of whimpering and panicking by evangelical Christians over something which has bothered me for quite some time. Back when I first ran across some Neo-Pentecostals (AKA Charismatics), they were going on about how Satan and his demons could get a doorway through our words, or through our exposure to something particularly odious. Granted, if you expose yourself to certain types of sin, it will whet your appetite for more of the same, until you discover yourself drowning in some unspeakable perversion. For example, mild porn leads to nasty porn leads to violent porn leads to gay porn leads to … you get the picture. Keep digging into it and you’ll need a higher shock value to get the same thrill. Standard addiction which requires ever increasing dosages. But that’s not the same as having to watch over your words, as if Satan can use your figures of speech to create curses. I was told not to call my niece a “cute little doll” because that curses her — “She’s not just a doll, not just a toy!” Of all the Aristotelian nonsense; the majority of the Bible is figures of speech and symbolism. Sheesh, “word curses!”

But the biggest stupidity is fearing some genuine academic review of something outside our beliefs. It’s as if I have to get from God a special dispensation to go learn about Hinduism, or read a little bit about Aleister Crowley. They forget two of the greatest heroes of Scripture knew more than is even available about pagan black magic today: Joseph and Daniel. Joseph could probably name the entire pantheon of Nile gods, and as Pharaoh’s vizier, most certainly had to carry out ceremonies addressing these deities. He probably knew exactly how the magicians later turned their rods into snakes when Moses came around a few generations later. Daniel learned quite a bit about the ancient Sumerian and Akkadian pagan practices, not least of which included Astrology.

No, there’s no life in those things. Will Satan somehow be granted some great power over me because I dared to look into them? Will he be permitted to suck me in and destroy my faith? I think evangelicals give him entirely too much credit. No doubt my power is insignificant against Satan, but I was sealed against his authority by the Blood of Jesus. If my God can’t protect me at that level, what’s the point in serving Him? I won’t waste space chasing the heresy of synergism here, look it up, but Paul bluntly said that was wrong. He kept using this term “election” and said what it meant. Part of it means I’m not going to get stupid enough to fling a challenge in God’s face. If I can get that stupid, I’m not elect. No, I’m not in the same league as Joseph and Daniel, but I follow Someone who made both of them look silly.

I fear the Lord, not a fallen angel forced even in his rebellion to serve the Divine Purpose.

The weekend outlook here in Central Oklahoma is continued high pressure dome, which means continued hot and dry. Our weather folks make a big deal out of 100° F (38C) but anything over 90° (32C) is uncomfortable here. My poor tomatoes keep bursting from the heat just as soon as they get ripe; the ants get them before I do. Here’s hoping the cantaloupe fair better; there are two already showing the brown scale on their skin. I think my garden matters more than the likes of DSK.

Garden Is Ready for Spring Planting

Last summer, after the rather disastrous growing season in our little garden, I took over from Dad. Instead of leaving our red clay soil as is, I broke it up using an all-steel shovel and very many hours of slicing and dicing the brick-like slabs into small crumbles. Even more hours went into schlepping mulch from the other end of the trailer park. Each time, I would spread a thick layer, let it rain, then turn it all under. I did this for three layers. Finally, I tilled it all two more times with the shovel.

Then I covered it all in pine needles and left it for the winter. It stayed above freezing just below the surface, and was damp throughout the recent drought. I know this because there is only one weed in this area which likes pine needles — we call it chickweed. Edible, but not very tasty and not especially nutritious. It grew immediately after the first snow thawed, and stayed green through unusually low temperatures and more snow.

That meant in order for me to make it ready for spring planting, I had to pull off the pine needles, pull those weeds, and turn it all under a couple more times. It looks more like potting soil than hard red clay. That’s done today, and the pine needles are back down just in time for our first spring rain tonight and tomorrow.

We plant later this week, starting with blue potatoes. We also have some strawberries, tomatoes, beets and a few other goodies. The choosing and planting really isn’t my department. I’m just the rototiller.