How to Divide Peonies

How to Divide Peonies: You seldom hear someone complain about a big, fragrant peony blooming in spring. You often hear, however, gardeners bemoaning the retail price of a new peony plant. The good news is that if you already have a peony growing in the garden, you can divide it to come by more plants. Dan Furman, a third-generation peony grower at Cricket Hill Garden in Thomaston Connecticut, and Fine Gardening's web producer Antonio Reis walk you through the division process in this video.   Now there's no excuse for a lack of peonies.

Angry v. Placid v. Hungry Birds

I have been regularly filling the bird feeder in my back yard, and the hungry little ones have been cleaning it out completely in about two days.  The robins and cardinals seem to just chill out and wait for the little birds to knock a bunch of seeds onto the ground.  They seem to do this quite frequently, but I am not sure if this is an intentional altruistic effort  on the part of the little birds, or just sloppiness.


Maybe they are just SO EXCITED that this stupid woman keeps shelling out her hard earned dollars to buy birdseed for these wild creatures, that their exuberance causes them to be messy while eating.  Or perhaps they are throwing out the small round seeds to get to the bigger sunflower seeds, or other yummy morsels?!?

Waiting area on the power line - good thing they don't weigh too much!

When I put out a suet feeder the first fall we lived in SE Michigan, I put it in a place that I could see from the kitchen window that looks out into the backyard.  When no birdies were enjoying this free bounty, the nice lady at Wild Birds Unlimited suggested that I put it in a more private location where the birds would feel somewhat sheltered while nibbling on the fatty goodness.

So I moved the suet to a location underneath the pine trees, where I could not see it from the kitchen window, but the squirrels appreciated this new spot, as they could easily get to it from a secluded tree branch without alerting me.  Those buggers are quite healthy and fat, and they hang around sleeping most of the winter, so I didn't think they really needed any additional nourishment for a long migration south.

Last week I bought a shepherd's crook metal feeder holder, which can also accommodate a nice wind chime that we got for our wedding.

Perching room only!

Now I have noticed a few hummingbirds hanging around in the backyard.  They checked out the hanging feeder, but I think they were attracted by the sap in the pine trees, or the nectar from the trumpet vine on the side of the house.  Our composting also attracts a lot of tiny flies, so that is a good source of protein for those fast paced critters.

There are at least 4 on the feeder in this shot.

The angry birds are the ones I hear or see fighting in the trees.  I think the mating season is over for them, so I am not really sure that their problem is.

Makers v. Takers = Shakers v. Bakers

I was listening to Terry Gross on Fresh Air  within the last few weeks, and she was interviewing one of the stars of the HBO series "The Newsroom" John Gallagher, Jr., and they played an audio clip from the show.  The main stars are Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer and Sam Waterston, and their performances are quite excellent from my point of view.  Jane Fonda plays the big boss, and she does a great job of manipulating all her minions.  And the spouse will tell you that I have watched a LOT of television, so I might know what I am talking about in my review of this show.

They deal quite frequently with politics and public opinions in general, and the specific discussions of what they should feature on their nightly news programs are quite fascinating.

The audio clip I mentioned in the first paragraph had to do with the Makers v. Takers argument that Governor Mitt Romney tried to advance during his presidential campaign of 2012.  This is one of the most misguided statements that he made, though my favorite is still the Binders of Women comment during one of the debates.

[borrowed from http://www.whatamimissinghere.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/118899-47-Color-by-Eric-Allie-Caglecartoons-515x356.jpg]

While I was mulling over this comparison of who Romney believes are producers as opposed to consumers of public largesse is exactly backwards.  The makers are the people breaking their backs to actually support their families at little more than minimum wage (people like bakers and fast food employees, etc), while the takers are the ones shaking down the government for lower tax rates so they can keep more of their millions of dollars they make each year.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Always keep the vermouth guessing!

I must confess that I am a big fan of Martinis.  Not the James Bond version with a crazy lemon peel and vodka AND gin, but the more pedestrian classic semi dry and dirty Martini with olives.  The little green fellows can be stuffed with either peppers, garlic cloves, some sort of yummy stinky cheese (preferably gorgonzola or bleu),  or if I am feeling more spicy, I will go with straight jalapeños or pickled okra.

I couldn't find a cool vintage advertisement from the cheap brand of vermouth I usually use, but this one was from my second choice brand.

[borrowed from http://rlv.zcache.com/martini_rossi_torino_vermouth_bianco_vintage_ad_poster-r14507a846fa4418ab0ae50ad40295e1c_ez7u_8byvr_512.jpg]

The meaning behind the title of this blog involves anthropomorphizing my bottle of vermouth and assuming that it can sense which bottle, gin or vodka, might be joining it in the shaker.  When I want it to be really perplexed, I delay a few minutes before grabbing the gin or vodka out of the liquor cabinet.

Why do I attribute sensation to a bottle of spirits?  Why do I try to figure out what the cats, fish or turtles are thinking?  Kind of relating to the crazy way my brain works.

Salute, salud, skol, kam-pai or whatever toast you may prefer!

Oh yeah, never drive a motor vehicle or boat under the influence.  Stay safe out there!

lawnmowers and leafblowers

Most of our neighbors have their lawns mown by professionals (read teenage boys employed by landscape companies), and thursday is the day that has been chosen for the days on the right and left of us to get their lawns manicured.

Now that I am retired and get to sleep in on weekdays AND weekends, I am greeted in the mornings of nearly every thursday (except those with torrential rainfall) at 8AM by a symphony of lawnmowers and leaf blowers.  Those do not bother me as much as the nasty high-pitched weed whackers they use instead of the edgers which take more time to operate effectively.

The whackers make a bunch of grass bits and the blowers follow them up pushing those clippings back into the lawn.

octopus pants

My dad has not played golf in years, but I do sometimes enjoy watching or playing a good round on a lazy sunday.  OK, truth be told, I have probably never actually 'played' on a sunday, other than smacking some balls at the range.

I started watching the coverage on NBC today after getting my political news fix, and the commentators were laughing about the octopus pants that were going to be worn by one of the top players:  Billy Horschel

[borrowed from the golfer's twitter feed]

They just made a joke that the pants weren't working very well for him, and they might soon become calamare.  I think they are confusing an octo-dish with one actually made of squid, but at least they were fairly close......

Black and white, right and wrong, etc.

cardinal fish pic borrowed from Seegrest Farms' Facebook page

I don't think it is just because I chose a career mostly dominated by law enforcement that I see things in a very ON or OFF fashion, I have always been that way.  When you come to a fork in the road, you either have to turn left or right, going straight won't work, unless you have a tank or something like that.

In applying fisheries or safety regulations, the person is either in compliance or not.  I realize that there is grey area.  Sometimes the humans who are interpreting the laws do not see things the same way as the ones who wrote them in the first place.  My job for four years in Alaska was to interpret the intentions of the regulators, fishermen and scientists, and explain to them how the laws they wrote would actually have to be practically enforced by a 20 year old kid with a gun who spent the whole night before on bridge watch and had potentially lost their lunch in the drink on the way over to the fishing boat.

[Losing your lunch (and I have unfortunately done that) is much easier than losing a coded radio or a clip of ammo:  MUCH LESS PAPERWORK!!!!!]

We have recently been going thru some of our artwork that has been in the same storage boxes since before we left Massachusetts in 2006.  Kind of like getting new birthday presents that look somewhat familiar to old birthday presents.  I get excited, like a kid in a candy shop, waiting for them to be unwrapped and anticipating what they might be........

Is it the print of the watercolor of the Boston Aquarium montage of African cichlids???
Is it the Winslow Homer print that I got during college of one of my favorite works from the Art Institute of Chicago?
Is it the amazing small photo of Ana Purna that Andy's friend Scott took while on a trip to India????
Or is it the wonderful oil painting of sea grass that my grandfather Milton painted on Martha's Vineyard in the 1960s???

Each one has their own story and memories all wrapped up in it.

When we found the 8x10 glossy of me on the field at Fenway wearing the 2004 World Series replica ring and one of the biggest smiles I can ever remember breaking out on purpose while IN FRONT OF and not BEHIND the camera (where I would much rather be....), I immediately blurted out - "That goes in the sports cave in the basement!"

For almost everything that we unwrapped I knew exactly where I would want to put it, based on either the subject matter, where the frame or colors would work best on which walls, or just where I wanted it based on how I wanted to feel in each room when I saw it.  Black or white, cut and dried, simple!

Retirement party by the lake!

19.7.2013 *

Please don't type the info above into your browser.  It will just get confused about what you are looking for.  It might actually think that your are trying to ping some server.......  You can put "ping" in your browser if that is confusing as well.

If you are one of the lucky folks to be invited to my retirement ceremony (invites will be snail mailed in early June) those inscrutable numbers and symbols announce that I have secured the location for the big retirement ceremony extravaganza!!!!

If you would like an email or snail mail invite to this long awaited event, please send the appropriate info and the number of attendees in your party to retire@aquagal.us.  This will give me a better idea of how many of my buckaroos from my final few active duty paychecks on the catering for this event.

There will be another party at the hacienda a few blocks away, if you cannot make a during the work day event.  I am also going to try and accomplish a Google+ hangout video presentation of the event for those who are unable to travel to the motor city area.

Hope you can make it!

p.s. *- the numbers represent the day.month.year of this exciting event.  If you don't know which lake I live near, then you probably aren't going to get an invite........  Hint:  this picture should help you to make an educated guess!

tracking preferences......

I like to track things:  baseball stats; my weight; the location of my keys; the travelings of my friends and family on Google+ or Facebook; etc.  I am a little bit concerned about people tracking me in an unwanted fashion, but not overly so.  My conduct at work and home has been tracked by my employer for the last 22 years, so maybe that level of government interference does not bother me.

As I was watching some news this afternoon, the confluence of two separate political issues about to be debated this week struck me as odd.

If we are to believe the lobbying done by the NRA, gun owners do not want a gun registry because they are afraid the government is going to come to their houses and confiscate their weapons.  Maybe this happens frequently in other countries, but it really hasn't happened in the USA for the last couple of centuries.  I don't have a crystal ball or a time machine, so I suppose it is within the realm of possibility, but I feel that eventuality is highly improbable during the remainder of my life.  And I plan to live the greater part of the next half century if possible.

I am also making the assumption that some of those same people who don't feel the government should know the contents of the armories in their homes should INSTEAD be spending its time tracking people illegally in this country with a system called e-Register so that they cannot legally work.  Employers would have to use the e-Verify system to confirm that the people they are about to hire are actually here legally.

This really doesn't make any sense to me.  They want big brother to crack down on small business people and increase their costs of providing whatever service or good is produced by their enterprise, and potentially spend LOTS of buckaroonies deporting, detaining or tracking people trying to enjoy the American dream, but keep your hands off my AR-15!

My interpretation is that they believe they should be able to sell or give that privately to ANYONE they choose without having to confirm that they have a legal right to own a gun, much less the mental wherewithal to use it for non-nefarious purposes.

As a non-gun owner but member of the military, I however have to sign a scary looking legal form attesting to the fact that I have not been convicted of any misdemeanor domestic abuse offenses which would make me ineligible to possess a gun.  The Lautenberg amendment to the Appropriations Act of 1997 made this necessary and retroactive.  Even if the offense was reported on your entry documents before you joined the service, that one conviction (if it has not been overturned) will cause you to be discharged from the military because you are not eligible to possess a firearm.

I have been out of the gun-toting business for a few years (they just keep me tethered to an iPhone these days) but I still would have been kicked out of the service for committing such an offense decades earlier.  I am certainly not condoning any form of domestic violence, but I find it interesting that some members of the military and law enforcement professions have been fired for committing (and properly reporting) these offenses before they were employed.

Bio-rhythms

As I sit in the spouse's office watching his screen saver make goofy fluorescent tentacles float across the screen of Big Mac, it strikes me that we have spent much of our marriage on the crests of different waves.  It is 0236, and despite not drinking ANY caffeinated products today, I cannot get to sleep.  Yes, I should have gone to the gym after work rather than going home and feeding the fish and turtles, but even if I HAD been more active today, I don't know whether I would actually be asleep right now.

[borrowed from http://test.classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/643/flashcards/20643/jpg/28-13_katushika_hokusaki.jpg]

Spouse is usually the one sitting up for hours after I have hit the rack, but not today.  Right now he is sawing logs, most likely flanked by cats, while I sit in the dark composing this blog.

I am a little particle of water on the crest of the wave in one of my favorite Japanese woodcut prints like the one pictured above, while he is slumbering somewhere near the summit of Mount Fuji (or Fuji-san, for those more familiar with this classic volcano peak).  Or maybe he is one of the guys in the tiny rowboats being thrashed back and forth by some troubling dreams......

Problem is that he doesn't usually remember his dreams, whereas I rarely go a night without remembering at least a snippet of one dream.  That is, of course, when I am actually able to keep my eyes shut to have those dreams.  Well, better give it another shot right now.