Kakahead

April showers bring Mayflowers, the old song says. I guess that means the Pilgrims came over to Plymouth Rock during a rain storm. But it isn’t April anymore, and we’re still having showers. This is a good thing.

My friends will cry, “this stinking rain!! I wish the sun was out so my epidermal molecules be injured by ultraviolet radiation and we could enjoy larger temperatures!! And now the pollen is removing the nose linings of my face from repeated sniffle-sniffle! Oh flarn, what an onerous life event I am experiencing from this weather pattern!”

Well, maybe that don’t quite say THAT, but the rain hasn’t exactly been welcome lately. Some folks are getting tons of rain, we are getting just enough.  So we want more, they want less.  However, the rain is bringing with it a miracle: the plants are exploding. You can hear it all night long, the bigness is so loud. Leaves popping out of the tree buds like a dog with a new model airplane! The pure spontaneity of it makes me cringe as I pass normally innocent trees and bulbs; and they go “BOOM!” with new growth. Growth noise! Very wonderful.

That’s what summer brings in Michigan. And the rain is the culprit here. Rain as opposed to snow, you see. The snow causes plants to go to bed, and have dreams for many months. Now they are all awake, and the plants are holding hands, rendering amorous floral displays, and getting ready to have babies. People are orchestrating this, too, with their trips to the garden store. There they can adopt the seedy offspring of many varieties. Of course, the humans are completely insidious in their intent, because we all know what’s going to happen to the seed babies, now don’t we??

Sure! The people giants are going to take the plant  baby seeds and stuff them in their dirt cribs. Next comes the water, then maybe some compost flavored organic soup for din-din. This is all a plot (or is it all IN a plot?) to raise unsuspecting babies into mature adults so we can bite them and mush their bodies into pulp for our tummies. It frightens them badly, you know. Whenever I say to my kids, “eat your veggies,” all the produce tries to make a break for it. We keep the doors closed. Ha ha on them!

I have to admit, I get much pleasure out of raising the young of other plants for my own whimsical eating enjoyment.  We have a big enough garden to grow a little of everything,  but it’s not really huge enough to grow much corn. So, we  grow enough for a few dozen ears. Time and trial has taught me a few lessons on growing corn successfully in a small area, you betcha by golly. Would you like to know the secret?

Ok, I’ll tell you anyway.

It’s kind of sick, so if there are any children in the room, send them to bed or something. We have to… um… HELP them. Help them… you know… do it. Pitch woo. Make hay. Um… parlez vous la humma-humma? Ok, WE HAVE TO AID THEM IN THEIR LOVE MAKING. Gack. But hey, I said it and I’m glad.

It’s like this, ok?? Corn is kinda funny because the male part of the plant is in its hair, and the female part is in the armpit. By this reasoning, since the female part is called the ear, that means a corn plant’s ears are in its armpits. Very strange. You see, corn pollinates by floof.  Pollen from the tassle floofs through the air and lands on the ear when it’s ovulating. Very primitive, but when the corn is planted in large fields and the rows are reasonably close together, this works out pretty well. However, in a small wannabe-farm-variety-type hobby not-so-serious garden dinky plot thing, with only two rows of corn, this is not so successful; even if you write about the lack of success in a run-on sentence with totally silly adjective and noun use.

So, you have to be the Dr. Ruth of the garden house.  Sure, you don’t absolutely HAVE to, but if you have a small garden and want corn, you may get ears with few or even NO kernels. You really have to know the right time, which is when the ears are just starting to grow silk out of their heads.  After the silk is out a bit, the tassles should be making these little pollen holders that flap about in the breeze and spread pollen for the floofing. You can tell the pollen is ready when you pull some of the holders off the tassle and they make yellowish floof powder on your fingers.

Now you are ready to help the corn have sex. OH JEEZ!  I SAID THE SEX THING!! Anyhow. Take the pollen holders and drop them on the silk of each ear. It is helpful to set up a VCR and TV in the garden while you are doing this. Rent one of those nice agricultural films that shows lots of flowers blooming and bees being. The ones that end with lots of grain graining are especially arousing to the corn plants.  Do this a few times, once a day if you can while the silk is new and the pollen is floofy.

This same love lesson can be applied to any veggie or other plant. Differences will of course be present depending on what type of flowers you are dealing with. Many plants have the male and female stuff all in one flower, and you can whisk them with an artist’s brush to get them to have babies.  Folks with apartments do this with very good success. They don’t usually invite bees in their house, so an artist’s brush is a good alternative. Some plants, like squash and melons, have male and female flowers. The females are the ones with the little baby fruit attached.  So, now you all know my innermost garden secrets. I am not ashamed of myself. I mean, you gotta do whatcha gotta  do. If you decide to try this, just be careful. No cross breeding. In other words, no eggpeppers or broccorn. No cantelumpkins or tomadishes. No zuccarrots. And absolutely NO suncumbers!!

We don’t want the National World Globe Star Enquirer interfering with our dinner, now do we??

Took a little while but I found an appropriately silly video for this week. Please watch as Red Green broadens our gardening horizon just a bit…

Because it’s so terrible I’ve purposely avoided writing about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  How can one even begin to describe the extreme sadness such a terrible disaster brings?  And I’m not even a gulf coast resident!

I’m not going to restate the obvious about how we need to plug the leak forever and clean up the mess like a month ago.  Instead, I’ll jump on the much less popular bandwagon regarding how such a horrible spill could occur in the first place.

Never mind the suspected safety shortcuts that congress is digging into.  The bottom line is this:  our society is addicted to petroleum.  Not sure if you’ve ever met a heroin addict or maybe really learned what addiction is all about; but for practicing addicts one thing is always true:  they engage in destructive behavior and ignore the consequences.

That is of course until they get caught.

We’ve been caught.  From what I can tell, the only reason we have such a disaster in the gulf is because we allow offshore drilling.  Why do we allow offshore drilling?  Because we consume a lot of oil; and if we didn’t drill offshore it would be more expensive.  Then we’d be forced to do silly things like try to use less energy and hunt busily for alternative methods of meeting our energy needs.

Boy would that be stupid or what??   A totally crazy and brand new idea:  create much needed jobs here at home; slow climate change, and clean up the planet all in one fell swoop.  Pretty ridiculous logic, eh?

Anyone remember that high gas prices during the Arab Oil Embargo were what prompted the promotion of ethanol and biodiesel?  Don’t get me wrong, the internal combustion engine is probably not a viable solution for the long term.   However, such alternatives coupled with wind and solar energy and conservation can get us moving in the right direction…

“Who has all these lights on in the house???  Whaddya think, we own the power company??”  Mom and Dad used to yell stuff like this at us when we were kids.   I’m sad to admit I commute to work; but I do try to save fuel by driving under the speed limit (40 mpg @ 65 mph).  And we don’t leave the electronics on at home when nobody is listening, watching, or computing or whatever.

I grew up with a wonderful comic strip called “Pogo” by Walt Kelly.   One of my favorite quotes is Pogo complaining about the follies of human nature, “WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US.”

Ain’t it the truth.

“My kind of town, Chicago is…” Well Frank Sinatra sang it, and it’s a nice place to visit, but I am REALLY GLAD I don’t live there! This past week made year number 6 for me working in Chicago.

The company I work for shows their wares at NeoCon, and me and my good friend John come in after all the furniture in the showroom is set up. We are the computer guys, so our mission is to set up computers all nice and pretty.

John has reminded me more than once that “it’s a good gig.” I concede that he’s right but having been a country boy for over forty years I am always glad to leave the noise. I mean hey, Chicago has a LOT of people!! More than thirteen I believe. And all the traffic and trains make for constant rumble. Nothing close to the congestion in New York mind you (I’m speaking from experience).

Although we work our butts off it really IS a good gig… we don’t eat McDonalds if you know what I mean. And over the years John and I have become very close friends. Pretty hard to beat that… we work very well together and seem to please the bosses.

I drove home today, very glad to be driving OUT of the city instead of IN; especially since the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup and the whole town is going nuts with celebrations. So Dorothy, I totally agree… “There’s no place like home.”

Ah, summertime… cookouts, fresh berries, warm sunny days, and lots of BUGS!! Especially if you live in Podunk Swamp Land, which is exactly where we live.  The vampire bugs have been especially thick lately… this includes deer flies, skeeters, and black flies.  Oh, not to forget the gnats.  They all get hungry every stinking time I go outside.  Deer flies are not too bad because they aren’t nearly as numerous as the stupid skeeters, and they’re dumb enough that you can kersmoosh them easily.  Black flies are meanies punks kakahead mooka flarns, because I have yet to swat one successfully.  You may be able to swat one if they have their blood sucking stabber thing deep into your skin, but I’m a wimp and don’t like the pain.  So, I try to swat as quickly as I can and cry for ow when I miss them and hit me. Skeeters are the worst.  I mean, there are so many of these stupid things that I swear to The Giant Rhinoceros Statue that I was lifted off the ground by a swarm of them the other day.  I have killed many of them.  And as many of you know, when they die, your own blood is on your hands!

One thing nice about living in the swamp:  you’ll never go hungry.  If you need a snack, just run through our yard with your mouth open, and you’ll get a meal and a half of all kinds of different flying meat.  I eat them all the time… not purposely mind you, but it happens.  Gnats seem to be the most common meal I ingest.  I especially enjoy talking to someone outside and having a quick bug snack.   Ah well.  Summer also means that the dragonflies and their cousins the damselflies are hatching out.  They eat skeeters.  And gnats.  And deer flies.  And black flies.  Simply put, THEY ARE MY HEROES.

Ants.  They are also very friendly right now.  We had a bunch of  them come to visit during a graduation open house, and boy did that give us the warm fuzzies inside.  Nothing makes your self esteem higher than a bunch of ants traipsing about the house when you have company from all over the universe.  My honey pie asked me, “where the *&%$ are all these ants coming from??”  Well, of course they migrate from Antarctica.  Except fire ants.  They don’t like Michigan because our winters put their fires out.  THANK GOD.

A few amazing yet little known statements about some of these bug things:  Dragonflies are from a land called Onalee.  If you get too close to them they will burn your eyebrows.   Hey, they are dragons!!  Lightning bugs are, of course, from thunderstorms.  I’m truly surprized that there is no loud noise when you see their hineys light up.  But then, what do I know about all this??  Deer flies look nothing like deer and black flies aren’t very black.  Gnats are tiny, so that one makes sense.  And of course, gnats have very tiny hineys.

Although I have nothing but hatred for mosquitoes, they are useful because they are food for not just dragonflies and damselflies, but also for bats, swallows and other wonderful animals.  And of course the mosquito wrigglers (larvae) feed fishies.  Swamp world contains many many wild critters.  So, in spite of all the bugs that are buzzin’ around our house, we will likely never leave.  We just love being part of the swamp family.

Of course, the stinkin’ skeeters can leave any time!

We hear some weird noises here in the swamp… lots of buzzing and such. Could THIS be what they’re all up to??