Kaboom!

Sorry I have not been around. When I say everything blew up at once workwise, I'm not kidding. While overcommitting to other things, I agreed to a rush job for extra pay that turned out to have some hidden issues. I felt like a cartoon antagonist (say, Wile E. Coyote) whose tunnel got diverted to a fireworks warehouse by the hero (one Bugs Bunny, perhaps); rising from the tunnel in the darkness, I struck a match, then realized I was surrounded by gunpowder-laden rockets, their fuses lolling my way; shocked, I dropped the match, but before it went out, it caught a fuse and -- 

You've seen that cartoon before. 

As a coworker once told me on a particularly annoying afternoon, "If it was fun they'd call it play." 

Well, nothing for it but to shove everything aside that was shoveable and get the thing done. Which I did, yesterday, and was ready for a nap afterward, at which time of course I got a phone call from someone who almost never calls me. I will leave my phone on in case my wife needs me, thinketh I, because the only other person who might call is Claymore, and he never calls at this time because he's at work, and of course Claymore had taken the day off. 

Nice to be popular, but please, my public, let a guy rest! 

Meanwhile, here's a couple of other thoughts that have popped up for you:

ROOSTERS 

Chicken and eggs are good to eat, but sadly, roosters are part of the deal. When we moved from the city to the exurbs, there was someone in the area who kept a few, and I'd hear the idiot chicken known as the rooster scream from time to time. They don't just crow at dawn, as in the movies; they keep it up all the livelong day. 

As the town demographics have changed, it seems that keeping chickens is now more of a thing to do. These seem to be more hyperactive, possible meth-addicted roosters, who don't wait for sunup at 7 but start around 5:30. When one goes off to the east, another, miles away in the west, says to himself, "I'm not going to stand for that!" and blurts out his cheery tune. None of them have the nice, clear "cock-a-doodle-doo!" cry, but rather sound like kazoo-based kaiju being strangled. They used to say that children should be seen and not heard, but I think that better applies to chickens. 

WINTER

A haiku for you:

Chapped lips, chapped hands, feet

Where can I go to buy a

Full-body ChapStick?

See you tomorrow, unless more stuff blows up, or I get arrested for first-degree rooster assault. 

Please clap.

 

It's kind of a long story.

 

Hither and thither.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Nah, I'll just show some pictures of where I've been lately and what they're all about. 

You all know how much I love my mulch. But this gentleman really went game. He got a pile of red mulch so big that in one of your flatter states like Florida or North Dakota it would have been considered a mountain range. Then he mulched everything, even this tree stump. 

So, what's the advantage of mulching a tree stump? Er... Well, his young kids like to play baseball, so maybe this is a warning track!   

From the window of a local Chase branch. Doesn't this look a little Christmassy to you? I guess they're stars but they look like snowflakes, most having eight points. Not sure what the idea is here. 

This is sad. After something like 30 years, the garden center/florist/café in town is closing. Actually, this is after the closing; they sold everything half off. The owners are very decent people but were getting too old for the work. They kept afloat for almost 20 years after a Home Depot and later a Lowe's moved into the area. They had a personal touch and a great location, and their plants were always in better condition than the ones at the big box stores. Still, with the competition I doubt anyone would have bought their business. 

I heard the people who did buy the property are planning to build a hotel, which is odd. This isn't the kind of town that screams "We need a Holiday Inn Express!" or the like. We shall see. 

Personal note: This store was the inspiration for Houghton Holly’s Garden Center in my MacFinster novels, although the hard-charging fictional owner, Holly Starke, is nothing like the nice people who owned this place. 

Finally, here's an interesting piece a neighbor put out on the lawn. It's a Farmall Model H tractor. The Model H was manufactured between 1939 and 1953, but I don't know the year of this one. I don't even know if it's in working condition, although it looks great. I'll let you know if I see it chugging down the street or around the yard. 

The best part of waking up.

Some interesting news over the transom the other day: Nine out of ten people don't know what a "transom" is! 

No, that's not it. The news comes from Barchart, which notes that "Arabica Closes At A 10-1/4 Year High As Global Coffee Supplies Plunge". 

Arabica is valued as the best quality coffee bean (as opposed to lesser ones like Robusta, Excelsa, and Liberica, often grown in places like Vietnam), and it is certainly the most popular. The idea of a shortage driving up the price of coffee, and possibly resulting in worse beans getting into the mix, is fascinating. I look at it this way:

Despite the fact that I consider myself a morning person, I have a strong desire for morning coffee. My wife simply cannot function without it, and suffers withdrawal symptoms including headaches. This house will cease to function if this coffee shortage turns serious. 

So what has led to this threat? Labor shortage? Revolution? Coffee bean blight?

I've done some serious study of the commodities market, having seen Trading Places several times, and I think we know that there can be reasons other than these for wrecking a market. However, returning to the Barchart story, we see that 

Arabica coffee prices are seeing support from expectations of lower global supplies due to unfavorable weather and supply chain disruptions.  Drought and recent frost events have devastated Brazil's coffee crop this year and have curbed the growth potential for the country's coffee crop for the next two years.

The good news is that better weather in the forecast may be leading to better crops going forward. I certainly hope so, because otherwise we are hosed. The only U.S. state that has the climate to grow coffee is Hawaii, and while the coffee they grow there is awesome, they can't possibly feed the machine that is the U.S. economy. America may run on Dunkin', as the chain claims, but what does Dunkin' run on? Coffee. We didn't get to be the biggest economic engine in the history of the world on doggone tea, people!

For some of us the situation is even more desperate. People fighting against chronic fatigue syndrome, for example, or relying on medications like diphenhydramine in allergy season that can cause sleepiness. Or me, still taking duloxetine for spinal neuropathy. Flat-out fatigue cannot be totally mitigated with caffeine, but most of the time it will get us through in a pinch. And what about the binge-watchers, the one-more-episoders who never get enough sleep? What will become of them?

Yes, we could resort to Red Bull or other gruesome beverages, which are made with synthetically produced caffeine. If it gets that bad, I guess I would. Of course, that would lead to the price of energy drinks skyrocketing, and then we'd be in another vicious, sleepy circle. 

Come on, Brazil! Get it together! We need you!

Cud be worse.

 

Spring pictures.

Okay, enough with the depressing things for a bit. Here are some pictures I got while walking around. The National Geographic people may not come hammering at my door to buy them, but hey, I write novels, not picture books.

Here we have an example of the concrete worker's art, a planter apparently awaiting whatever plant will adorn it for the summer.

I guess they put the pebbles around to keep it upright, but I think it looks a little silly. Tell you the truth, the first thing I thought of that it looked like a spittoon for the Thing from the Fantastic Four.

"Reed, will you please speak to Ben?  He keeps missing the spittoon and now there are pebbles all over the floor!"

"Ben, why are you spitting so much?"

"Because, Reed... It's SLOBBERIN' TIME!"

Speaking of elegant concrete sculpture, we also have this content and well-dressed chap, although a bit worse for weather wear. Yes, allow me to present Monsieur Grenouille Faux;

Fake frogs are okay, but with all the rain we had, we had enough of the real thing around here. In fact, the same day Nipper and I passed M. G. Faux in the morning, we encountered Monsieur Grenouille la Vraie in the evening:

I wonder if M. Faux and M. la Vraie have met?

We've also had plenty of wildflowers, some of which don't suck. I mean, most wildflowers are more weed than flower. This one was okay.

What that always puts me in mind of is "Fields of People" by an underrated English group, the Move. A friend of mine got me into their stuff long after their heyday had passed -- also after the heyday of Electric Light Orchestra, actually, which is what the Move morphed into. "Fields of People" is a cover of a song by Ars Nova. I like "Fields of People" a lot ("Fields of people... there's no such thing as a weed...") but I used to have more tolerance for hippie stuff. Now my home is a tambourine-free zone. Anyway, it's a fun song, from the album Shazam, but unless you really dig sitar music, bail after the main song portion. (Side note: The lead vocal by Carl Wayne was recorded on the street, the rest in the studio.)

Finally, we have a horse-drawn hay rake that has been turned into a planter.

I love this thing. I admit that I had to look up olde tyme farm equipment to find out what it was; I've explained this city slicker's knowledge of farming to you in the past. I think they family is a little optimistic; I don't know what's growing in the planter but it's overwhelmed by the machine itself. Still, I wouldn't care. I love old stuff and I'd probably just sit on the seat, wearing an Amish hat, chewing straw, whittlin', and making wise country remarks to people like an idiot all day. Good thing I don't own it.

That's what I've been seeing around this spring; how's it with you?

Picking up chicks.

If you have a Tractor Supply Company near you, you may know that they have a lot of supplies for your farm dog. Even if your "farm dog" is a Peke named Mr. Fuzzy whom you like to dress up. Clearly, it has plenty of supplies for more typical family dogs. It also has plenty of supplies for more typical farm animals. Sometimes even the animals.

I was getting a big sack o' dog food at TSC yesterday when I discovered that these are the Chick Days. Who knew?

That ain't hay. You can actually go on their site and pick from 88 different kinds of live birds, plus whatever you'll need to keep them live. For you country boys that's just another day at the office, but for us suburb slickers, it's all interesting. And sometimes it's a problem, as you will hear in a moment.

I'm a fan of farms because I'm a fan of food; it's my favorite thing to eat. But as past blog entries have noted, I grew up in the city knowing nothing about farms, and that hasn't changed a lot. So I'm not crazy enough to think it would be a great idea to get a bunch of baby chicks and start my own egg business in the backyard. We don't have a homeowners association here, but if I tried that I think we would have one, formed for the sole purpose of making me cease and desist.

It would probably be moot anyway, as I would likely kill the chicks by accident or the dogs would on purpose.

If you are going to a place like Tractor Supply at this time of year, allow me to suggest that you leave the children at home.

A few years back, our parish school had a little farm with a handful of animals, couple of sheep, maybe a goat, I dunno. Educational for the children. But one of the kids, a softhearted child, apparently decided to save a bunch of cute li'l chicks by buying a large mess of them. Whether it was with the intent to give them to the school farm-slash-petting zoo or if her parents just made her do it, one way or another the pastor wound up with a big pile of fuzzy little chicks and no way to take care of them over the long haul.

This ecumenical crisis was resolved over a couple of weeks, as the pastor pleaded from the pulpit for anyone who would like to take some free chicks to inquire after Mass or at the church office.

Ultimately a few families equipped for this kind of thing stepped forward, and the chicks found new homes. Maybe they joined an egg operation, or were brought to adulthood and eaten; I don't know. It was probably a bit of pain for everyone involved, especially our pastor, and more proof that you should never bring children around baby anything, because they'll want to bring it home and raise it. All baby mammals and birds are cute. Even the ugly ones.

So that's my words of advice regarding chicks. I'm in no danger of acquiring any, as I said, but it doesn't mean I'm free form risk. If my wife goes to goat yoga or something, there's a fair chance she'll try to sneak a pygmy goat into the house. Wouldn't you?

Mars needs baggage check.

Good help.

"No foolin', Joe, that's the best sheep dog I've ever seen."

No farms, no overalls.

[Another Fred classic from the defunct blog -- sorry, it's deadline week.]

I grew up in the city confines, where we did not have a whole lot of farms. None, in fact, unless you count all the Italian families I knew who planted tomatoes in the backyard, just past where the patio concrete ended. To my mind, everything west of New Jersey looked exactly like this:

Right down to the rooster.

These were the facts I absolutely knew to be true about farming, mainly based on picture books and playsets:

1. Every farm had one pig.

2. Every farm had one cow. No bulls. Sometimes there was a calf.

3. Farmers smiled a lot and worked alone.

4. You were not allowed to set foot on a farm without a hat made of straw and overalls.

5. Every farm had one sheep.

6. Every barn was painted red. I think it was some kind of law.

7. Farmland tended to be very hilly.

8. Every farm had one dog.

9. A farm could have as many as a dozen chickens, but more often no more than six.

10. Occasionally Mrs. Farmer would take a break from canning and baking pies and put on her overalls and straw hat and come out to smile next to the farmer. Might have children too, dressed the same way.

11. Farms did not have alpacas, llamas, rabbits, cats, moose, bears, fish, giraffes, buffalo, ostrich, turkeys, ducks, insects, caribou, or lawyers.

12. Animals on farms smiled a lot.

13. MacDonald was perhaps the most famous farmer of all time, despite the advanced age at which he achieved his notoriety and his obsession with certain vowels (those being E, I, and O).

14. Bingo (spelled B-I-N-G-O) may have been MacDonald's dog.

15. Farmers never had guns, except in cartoons, where they wielded comically large shotguns.

16. Every tractor looked like Mr. Douglas's from Green Acres, although usually a lot more colorful.

17. In addition to having a mixed bunch of animals, the farmer would likely grow one acre of every kind of crop there was, and might also have a small orchard that grew apples, pears, cherries, nectarines, oranges, and grapes, but no bananas.

18. Every farm had one rooster, which crowed once at sunrise and shut up the rest of the day.

19. Farmers wore boots in the north, nothing on their feet in the south.

20. Farmers worked real hard, but what they actually did was sketchy. Mending fences, milking cows, driving the tractor around. Something with the pitchfork. Unclear. Maw might get eggs out from under the easily upset chickens and churn butter, aside from the canning and baking. Whatever they did, they did a lot of it.

21. Somehow this small farm, and a few more like it, mostly in square states, fed hundreds of millions of Americans and many more around the world.

So hats off to you, Old MacDonald, and all your kin! Thanks for all the grub!

🐄🐓🐕🐖

UPDATE: Mr. Philbin also notes that it was common knowledge that pigs very clearly enunciated "Oink," cows "Moo," chickens "Cluck," and so on. How could I forget?