Eggs and Crow

Just a thing that came into my head a bit ago:

Some folks are working really hard at digging that big deep hole, and at the same time they're working just as hard to make sure they have the makings for a big meal if they ever stop digging. The menu items? All the egg they'll have on their faces, and a whole lot of crow.

Just sayin'.

Watching this thing play out ... as an Independent I don't have a horse in the race or a dog in the fight ... as an American citizen I have a vested interest in what's going on between the Republicans and the Democrats so maybe I really do have a horse in the race and a dog in the fight, huh? It's just that mine are sort of invisible.

Basic laws of physics come to mind, just as I've mentioned before. The harder the push, the harder the push-back is going to be.

Is it possible, really, that there can possibly be so very many people who are truly that ignorant about something as basic as ordinary physics?

Uffda.

While I'm pattering I may as well ask a question that's been on my mind for quite a while, since even before the whole Presidential campaign thing last year.

From my perspective, the goals of the Republicans are pretty straightforward: they want security. Economic security, resource security, personal security, religious security, national security both at home and in the world at large. That's something even I can understand.

I honestly have no idea what the goals of the Democrats might be. The general impression I've gotten over a long period of time is that they want ... what? ... a sort of world-wide socialistic or communistic kind of thing? If that's what they're shooting for, it would sure help if they would just come right out with it and explain the reasons they think that would be a good thing. We don't want any more meaningless rhetoric. If they have a goal, they need to do some clarifying.

Meanwhile, it's like they don't have anything to bring to the table. At all.

Well, shovels maybe ... and all that egg ... and hot air, lots and lots of hot air. They could fill our skies with balloons.

*laughing*

Maybe that's how they'll get themselves out of that hole they're digging, huh? Hot air balloons. If they don't learn how to close their yaps those hot air balloons are liable to carry them clear out of the atmosphere of Earth. At least they'll have plenty of egg and crow to keep them from starving.

I wonder how far up there into the atmosphere they'd have to get before we wouldn't have to hear them any more?

The Republicans might be stolid and kind of boring, relatively speaking, but at least they're doing something halfway constructive at the moment and not just yapping and yiping every which way from Tuesday until the rest of us hope they really do take off into the blue in those hot air balloons. They can come back when they learn how to shut their mouths and use their brains and their muscles for something positive and constructive for a change. That might take a couple of millennia so don't be holding your breath or anything.

And I'm not even a Republican.

What the heck.

Straw Bale Garden Not Dead Yet!

I got the bales into place, soaked 'em down good for several days, sprinkled the nutrient mix on as I went, and then went to put the bedding plants and seeds in.

Reaching down into the bales to make openings for the potting soil and plants/seeds, I was pleased to find that the bales were pretty warm inside. It makes me happy because that heat is an indication that the bales are already in the process of breaking down. As they do, they'll provide nutrients for the plants whose roots are even now growing down into that warmth.

I put in sweet peppers, tomatoes, onions, carrots, and beets. The cantaloupe and watermelon get five gallon pails, and I'm thinking to see if I can get green beans to grow up along the fence.

So far things are looking pretty good (knock wood) and the peppers are beginning to flower.

So we shall see what we shall see.

*laughing*

One thing that I do see is that apparently that wasn't ALL just straw in those bales. I'm going to have to weed them as I have a strong suspicion that if I don't I might have a good crop of wheat coming.

Electronic difficulties are the reason I haven't gotten photos into these posts, but hopefully that will soon be figured out and fixed.

Busy As All Get-Out And Loving Every Minute

Just lately I really have been busy, even more so than usual.

COME  HELL AND HIGH WATER, the Alianora Books of SONG, are all headed for print and the Younglings are clamoring for attention while Sass and Aine are vying to see which will produce the next set of books for SONG. Caileen, being of a more patient nature, stands by, watching the dispute.

Sass' main 'argument' is that she's technically next in the line up.

Aine suggests that the timeline of Sass might be a bit ... tumultuous ... all things considered. She thinks we all need a change of pace. Plus she's in a hurry to get to the New World, and to take us all along with her.

Danann of Dunnottar, their father, stands with Sass, arms folded.

Sidhelagh of Dunnottar, the mother of the Sisters of Dunnottar, just smiles. Me, I have a feeling she might have something up her sleeve, but she's not saying anything. At all. She's just smiling.

Which of the two will prevail is anybody's guess.

The Younglings, on the other hand, are yammering that they want to be about having their adventures. To them, time and place aren't the least bit relevant. Their adventures take them all over the Spiral.

So there's that.

While Aine and Sass argue their cases, we'll likely tend to the impatient Younglings, which is no hardship by any means. Their adventures are going to be a great deal of fun for all concerned.

Meanwhile, I've been focusing on getting a garden going. For the first time in WAY too long, I've got some things planted, and none of them have died (yet). You'll likely see more posts about it along the way. Look for the Straw Bale Garden posts.

Another string to my harp is working that little calf hide. At the moment it's been mostly scraped (another time or two to go as we progress through the procedure) and is in the 'pickling solution'. The posts about it will probably have 'Tan Your Hide' labels.

There are a few art projects in the works, neglected for the moment but I'll soon be back to them.

And I've been reading my way through the remnants of my collection of westerns, books about the American West, so that I can get them into the mail to my grandboy in Minnesota.

Add to all that a full time job that I adore, people around me who are awesome, Duke keeping me company, getting outfits and accessories done for the Character Collections, adjusting to a very definite change in climate :) ... and the meeting of new friends ... not to mention the things I haven't had time to even get started on ... yes I've been busy.

And yes I've been loving every minute of it.

Laughing At Self

Truly.

I really have to stop staying up all night during my days off.

It's bad enough that during my work schedule days I have to sleep all day so that I can put in those night shifts. And when I was finishing up the Alianora Books I did that during my 'off' nights so as to keep myself on a night schedule.

But that was back in the winter time when I didn't really want to do anything during the daytimes anyhow.

Now it's springtime and I WANT to be awake in the daytimes.

So why in the name of all that's Holy am I spending this whole entire night exploring the contents of my blog posts from way back when?

Because I feel like it.

In the course of the exploration I've come to a couple of conclusions.

One is that there's actually some pretty decent stuff in them.

Another is that I'm going to follow through on a few of the ideas I came up with for stories, and write the stories.

Yet another is that it might be fun to go ahead and make books out of the posts.

They're my work, already protected by copyright, and with some editing the collection would come in handy to be able to poke around in whenever I want.

Plus I'm at the moment a tiny bit ticked.

Straw Bale Garden

I'm finally going to try that straw bale garden idea.

I've got the bales, which was somewhat a minor adventure all by itself. We, my cousin Bill and I, drove over to the next town to pick them up. I ordered them and paid for them a couple of days ago but had only a little car. A pickup making a lot more sense, I asked Bill if I could use his to bring them home with.

It's been raining (showers of blessings for this area) and the bales had been sitting outside and were soaked already when I ordered them. Sideways glances from a couple of people let me know that they thought I was a mite off, not fretting about those bales being soggy. They tried to talk me into taking the ones that had been under cover and were dry (the way they're supposed to be). Nope, sez I, it will save me having to use so much water to wet them down.

Not explaining further was possibly not nice of me.

At any rate, on the way over to pick them up, hoping being wet wouldn't make them fall to pieces (don't want Patsy Cline bales), it started raining cats and dogs, a real gully washer for just a little while there. But it was just for a little while; then it calmed down to a nice steady rain, which is a good thing all the way around.

Bill handed me the keys when we got there so I could go get the bales loaded while he shopped (for boots as it turns out) and out I went to drive over to pick them up.

Right.

The humidity had the windows so fogged I couldn't see a darned thing. Plus I can't get the seat to advance in that pickup to save my life so was hanging onto the steering wheel to keep myself where I could reach the clutch, brake, and gas pedals. Backing out of the parking place it dawned on me that there might be somebody behind me that I wasn't able to see, so I held onto the steering wheel with one arm while I used kleenex to wipe the windows clear of fog with the other hand, and rolled down the driver's side window while I was at it.

Now the loading guy was apparently watching.

He asked me if I wanted to put one of the straw bales in the driver's seat so I could drive.

No.

Just put 'em in the back.

But I was grinning when I said it.

I only got a half dozen and they filled the box of the pickup nicely.

By then the fan was keeping the windows clear so the short trip back to the parking place was less traumatic.

Since we were in the vicinity we made another stop and got a few other things. I picked up another little round washtub for the other half of the geraniums I'd gotten, and a five gallon pail since I can't find the one I just got not that long ago.

I'll get the bedding plants I need in a few days when it stops raining, but I did get seeds for carrots and beets. If I end up with any kind of crop at all I'll be able to make borscht. That's like a vegetable soup that's a purple-red because of the beets. Unless you're a very careful eater, don't eat it when you're wearing white. You have been warned.

By the time we got home the rain was in abeyance for a bit so we unloaded the bales, which weren't as heavy as I was afraid they would be. Either that or I'm stronger than I thought I was. Whichever, they're lined up in my back yard along the fenceline between my house and Bill's.

They're plenty soggy, but might be still dry inside so tomorrow I'll put a hose on them to make sure they're thoroughly soaked all the way through.

Then I'll sprinkle them with a nutrition mix and get more water on them to spread it down through the straw. Until that straw begins to break down it needs a bit of a boost on the nutrition end of things or my plants aren't going to be much to write home about. They might not be anyway, but I'll give them the best shot I can.

For the next few days that's what I'll be doing with my straw bale garden - getting it wet and getting the nutrients distributed through them as best I can.

Then I'll get on with the rest of it.

That would be digging holes in the straw, putting in some potting soil, and planting the seeds and bedding plants.

Part of the reason I'm hoping this works is that it keeps my garden up where I can reach it more easily.

Another part, of course, is that I want to make that borscht.

Yet another part is the ease of harvesting the root crops. When that time comes, the rebuttable presumption being that there are going to be potatoes, onions, carrots, and beets to harvest, all I'll have to do is knock the straw off. 

It's an experiment for me.

Everything is hypothetical and Bill is skeptical but keeping an open mind.

Another benefit, if it works right, is that the straw bales will break down and can be tilled into the ground right where they now stand, making for some good mulch for next year.

So we shall see what we shall see.

Just Wondering ...

A thought crossed my mind, turned around, and came back into it. 

Since it's still there maybe this will help to evict it.

I rarely watch the news any more, just enough to try to keep up with what's going on in our world. Most of the time it's just flat out depressing but I can't and won't totally ignore it. Ignoring it will not make it not-real. Plus there are good things happening out there too. Overshadowed by the negative, still there is good and it's a powerful strong good. It just seems to be a lot more quiet than the noisy negative.

Anyway, that particular thought pattern is a permanent resident in my mind and it's not what I'm wondering about on this night.

What has me wondering is how it seems people, lots of people, don't bother themselves about history.

That wonder has been brought to me by a relatively recent thing I heard, which is that Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat. While I don't blame him for wanting to distance himself from that label, the one that's been given him instead is just as much of a wonderment to me. They're calling him a Socialist.

Since people don't seem to want to think about such things as history I wonder if they even know anything about something that used to be called the USSR. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

To my mind, the terms 'socialist' and 'republics' don't seem to fit very well into the same phrase but I'm not the one who came up with it.

Not wanting to consider our world's populations in the light of history, perhaps the people who might think being a Socialist could be a good idea ought to look to current events. They could maybe give a gander to Venezuela right about now, if they would like to see Socialism in action.

Just sayin' is all.

We in the United States have a Constitutional Republic. We do not have a democracy. We do not have socialism. We do not have communism. We do not have a monarchy or a dictatorship.

For that I am grateful every day of my life.

As for my wondering mind, I really wonder if those who espouse socialism really have a clue what they're going on about.

When it comes to that, I've been wondering for a good long time why it would be that our democrat party seems to want to insist on referring to our form of government as a democracy. It is nothing of the sort. 

There's a big difference between a Constitutional Republic and a democracy. If you don't know what that difference is, look it up. The short answer is that in a democracy the majority rules. Period. Nobody else has a say about anything. 

Why our democrat party would want any such thing is beyond me as they are obviously NOT the majority they would like to think they are. They're just a lot more noisy than the republican party and the independents. That doesn't make them the majority. It just makes them loud and obnoxious.

Frankly, and I'm an Independent so it's not like I'm affiliated with the 'other side', the democrats these days are starting to remind me of the inevitable drunks I used to see at local bars (pubs) back when I was working for a local charity and had to spend time in said bars. You know the kind of drunks I'm talking about. They're loud, obnoxious, gossiping, picking fights and filled with malice to the point where nobody really wants to associate with them but there they are, in your face. 

All. The. Time. 

So the thought, going hand in hand with the one about how in the world people might think socialism could be a good life choice, is the one about how in the world the democrats could think their current presentation of themselves might possibly make anyone want to be associated with them.

Just wondering.

It's not like there aren't plenty of other things, good things, happy things, that I want to take up residence in my mind. Maybe I'll focus on those things and they'll crowd these wandering wondering thoughts right on out of there.

One can hope.

Working My Way Back Into A Semblance of 'Normal' - my own version of 'NORMAL', that is

Technical difficulties, a year or so of personal chaos, and yada yada have challenged my strength in a lot of ways.

I might fill you all in on those things later, but don't hold your breath on that.

At the moment I'm much more excited about looking ahead than I am about looking back at the past year or so, believe you me.

So this bit of a blurb is your heads up.

We've only just begun, our Characters and I.

Get ready. Stand steady. Wait for the sign and listen for the Voices of the Bells and the Sounding of the Horns.