My Baby Buzzard Boy

Bubbard, bubbard, come get Shoosie! I used to say that in retort to my sister, Susie, who would hold me and rock me, and call to the buzzards to come get me. I guess that's why she's my second favorite sister.

So no wonder when THIS happened:

I took this first picture about three weeks ago. Here's Baby Buzzard - perched with one of his other two siblings. There they were, three buzzards perched atop our gazebo. I took many shots, first thru the window, then opened the window, then finally went outside and got more pics. They didn't fly away until I hollered at them and told them it was ok to go home, but to be sure and come back soon. They finally flew down to a clump of oak trees not too far below.



Then, today, he came back. It was raining (hopefully it will rain some more!) and he perched up on the power pole outside my office window. I guess he chose that spot, because just below it is our trash dumpster, inside which contains the remains of a dead armadillo which my dogger had rubbed around in TWICE. Pew-wee! BB took a nice long bath in the rain, and I'll be darned if he STILL isn't there right now. That's been over an hour. His tail feathers are still quite short, so I'm guessing since he's all wet, he's afraid to fly away, or else he just likes the stinky smell. Here's a picture of him flapping his wings to dry off.



Anyway, I just love him! And he's still there!

Edit: I posted this at 2:54PM and he finally flew home to roost at 8:13PM - you do the math - he stayed up there a long time!

Pranks - # 1 - Pulling the Purse

Preface: My grandfather, Ollie, used to pull this prank. He was the rural mail carrier for our po-dunk town's mail route, delivering mail in a horse and buggy. He passed away in January of 1958 and I was born in March of 1959. Some folks tell me I am the spitting image of him, and I know I have some of his weird tendencies and interests. Ollie's wife Audra, my grandmother, told me about "pulling the purse". He was a prankster, and occasionally, so have I been. Among several things, Gran Ollie used to tie little flashlights to kites, fly them at night, and then listen the next day as the townsfolk talked about UFO's they'd seen over town the night before. I love that, but haven't tried it just yet.

So, back to the purse pulling. The set up is this: take a purse, hook some fishing line to it, and put the purse in the middle of the road, right about dusk......reel the line out to a good hiding place (Ollie and Audie's cellar for me, which was covered in nice tree limbs and leaves because it was summer and there wasn't anything else to do for entertainment in a small town) and wait until someone drives by, sees the purse, stops their vehicle, gets out to grab it, and then yank away!

I had two experiences with this on the same night, and have never done that again. The first time, the town jerk saw the purse, slammed on his breaks, jumped out of his old pickup, and almost got rear-ended by another vehicle traveling not far behind. Since we lived in the definitive one-horse town back then, I could not believe another car would be right behind him, but it was.

He actually ran after the purse as we pulled it, fell down and tumbled over. I sort of felt bad, but he was a really irritating person, so I just laughed my arse off, as I kept reeling in the fishing line. He eventually gave up, walked back to his truck, while scratching his head, looking over his shoulder, and eventually got a good tongue lashing from the driver of the car that almost rammed him. I was hiding too far away to hear what that lady was yelling at him about, but I could tell by the way her arms were moving, she was pretty mad.

The second time I attempted to pull the purse, the driver stopped, got out, tried to grab it, saw it being pulled away, got back in his truck and drove like a bat out of hell following the pulled purse down the vacant lot......that scared be bejebus out of me (along with three of my friends who were just there watching) so I dropped the line and we scattered.

Pranks can be dangerous, I'm just glad there wasn't a car wreck that night.......the old jerk was actually an evil, greedy person, lucky he didn't get killed or cause someone to get killed by just slamming on his brakes and hopping out to collect up a purse in the middle of the road....I'm sure he thought there was great gobs of money stashed in it.

Any of you ever pulled any pranks?

"Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia" , or" Curse of the Golden Flower"

Is there someone out there who has seen this movie besides me? I hope so.

Gong Li/Li Gong is beautiful, and I think Chow Yun Fat/Yun Fat Chow is not so bad himself.

The White Man's Burden

I have the first stanza of this poem posted over my desk, and read it every day....I printed it off the day before George W. Bush started the Iraq war, back so many years ago. Here's the whole poem, by Rudyard Kipling. It's still controversial to this day.....I consider it timeless.

It fascinates me.

The White Man's Burden

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to naught.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humor
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.

2008 Garden Experiment

Thanks to my sister Becky's idea, I started lettuce, mesclun, radishes and spinach in Miracle Grow bags. I found some metal sawhorses and grates up at the barn, so the bags would be about waist high, well-drained and out of doggie danger. Here's what they look like today, April 17, 2008. I planted them last Tuesday. I'll be doing an herb garden this week, after the wind stops blowing so hard.



I also have onions, corn, okra, cukes, various peppers and tomatoes in the traditional garden. Some things got kind of frozen last week, but appear to be coming around quite well.

I'm Startin' to Get the Feeling That

Spring is just around the corner. I'm psyching myself up to put in a good garden this year. I haven't done that in a while. Here's a picture of my second garden attempt. (Pardon the poor resolution - I didn't have a good digital camera back then, in 2002.) I love how the plants blend in to the oak trees in the background - that must have been a good year for rain, because it looks like a jungle!



That same year, one of our friends gave us some calabash seeds, and I planted LOTS of them.........OMG! They ended up taking the whole place over. We picked a ton of the small ones, and they made nice squash bread. These pictured went in the dumpster, along with many, many other wheelbarrows full. I'll never do that again!



My first garden was totally ground-based, and it nearly broke our backs, so I decided the next year to experiment with container gardening. Here's a picture of my lettuce bed - I scarfed a broken liquid feed liner (we do cows) and planted lettuce in it. It was perfect, and I still use it to this day. In fact, I have two of them. I think of them as giant flower pots. You should have seen this bed when all the salad greens were fully filled out and ready to cut - it was beautiful, except for the nut grass. Darned nut grass! Oh well, I could easily separate it from the salad greens.



A dear friend who owns a fertilizer company saw my liquid feed liner-planters and brought over some big, freaking HUGE tractor tires that we modified to plant taters in. We currently have two, but I'll take all he'll bring me. Taters love 'em!



I'm glad I live way out in the country, so I don't have to worry about what my neighbors think of all my backyard gardening experiments! It all looks pretty wacky right now, two liquid feeder tubs, two giant tractor tires, a couple of wooden raised beds..........but when our garden is growing in all it's Spring glory, it looks quite righteous! I need to stop blogging and get to tilling! Here's the rest of my back yard.........



which makes it all worth it!

I Love Pictures of Dogs, Especially Funny Pictures of Dogs

First, here's my dogger, Roxie - the day we got this picture, she heard Dad yelling at the baseball mens on TV, and she thought she had been bad, so she got in her basket. We told her she was a good girl, and hadn't done anything wrong, so she eventually got out of the tub. We gave her a puppy biscuit for doing such a good job pressing the clothes!




I scarfed this one from BON - I love the little brown pibble puppy baby that looks like my dogger, Roxie.



I have been an evil doer several times, when I bought my dog costumes. I got Roxie one of these - a hula skirt, complete with lei and coconut bra, but she broke the lei immediately. I have a picture somewhere, but this will have to do. I am sure you get the idea. She really doesn't mind the coconut bra, but the grass skirt gets in her way sometimes.



I really want to make Roxie be a lion for next Halloween..........



Roxie also loves to ride in Dad's truck, so I think she might like to fly someday.....



And, since we live on a farm, and she goes with Dad every morning to feed the cows, she might consider wearing this costume someday, although she is not spotted, and we don't have any dairy cows, but we do have some brown ones.....



Roxie has a few other costumes: a shark, batman and a pumpkin. She doesn't like any of those, so I think I will quit wasting my money and just get more puppy biscuits for her!

Want

I Love This Song

"Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds. Have you heard it?

I Can't Wait

Godspeed, MS Beluga

A cargo ship pulled by a giant, parachute-shaped kite will leave Germany on Tuesday on a voyage that could herald a new "green" age of commercial sailing on the high seas. The owners of the MS Beluga, a 462ft cargo vessel, will try to prove that modern steel ships can harness wind power and reduce their reliance on diesel engines.

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Tuesday, They Took Away The Boat

Since we live out in the country, we can hear when someone drives up, and our dogs bark. We initially thought it might be UPS, Fed Ex, DHL, or the propane guy, but it sounded bigger and louder than usual, so my husband went outside to check. "Come to find out", it was a big flat bed truck sent by the insurance company of the boat owner to get her remains.



My husband inquired what they were here for, and they told him. They showed him their orders, and one of them remarked that they thought it was owned by a movie star. The name was right.

Actually, my son started the whole "recovery of her remains" process. He called the Sheriff's Office to check up on things. They ended up giving him the owner's cell phone number. My son called him. He was in Colorado, at one of his other homes at the time, and didn't even know his boat was stolen, so he ended up coming back to Texas and calling his insurance company. That led to the insurance company sending the truck out to pick up the boat, which was valued at about $60,000.00. So here's a picture of the guy who drove the big flatbed truck out to our place to pick her up. He had to tie his shoe lace before he started.




You know, if it was a movie star who owned the boat that was stolen, stripped and then driven to our little slice of heaven, and set on fire, I damned well hope I can get his autograph.

I can't confirm the movie star thing based on my feeble, free internet searches, but it's kinda fun to imagine it. I could bring myself to feel fortunate that, if our old house had to burn down unexpectedly, it's better if there is a movie star involved. I guess this all stems from the fact that my beloved, RIP, mother, was named after this movie star:



Crap! Why am I doing this to myself? My son has HIS phone number. I think I'll ask my son to call HIM back, and see if HE IS a movie star. Me? Besides all that, I'm just pining for the old house. I still tear up when I drive by the place where it was.

Evil bastards. I still hate you.

Mr. Pickle

Here he is. I've had him for over 40 years. He's a true pickle. Tell me what you think, if you dare.

This really pissed me off.

Some evil doers stole a boat down in Fort Worth, towed it up here to our little slice of heaven, and set it on fire on December 19, 2007 - right outside the back porch of the house I was brought home to when I was born a long while back.




A few weeks have passed. I'm feeling better. I'm not coughing so much now. I breathed in a lot of smoke from that fire - I had to get pictures. I still can hardly make myself look that way when I go to town, and have to drive by the place that was always there but is not there anymore.



To the evil doers - I wish a pox upon you. May you burn in hell, hotter than the fire you manifested upon my beloved old farm house.