Oh fine, here we go with another story about leaves. Just what every red blooded Yankee wants to hear about this time of year, right? And by Yankee, I mean anyone who is far enough north to enjoy the massive seasonal leaf gathering festival we call “fall.” Each year, Mom Nature paints the landscape with the beautiful autumn hues we’ve grown to know and love. These days, the leaves are already busy sninkeling (huh?) down from the trees. Yes!! You can even hear the “sninkel-sninkel-sninkel” of the leaves whispering in the wind, and then they fall to the ground and rustle about in good sninkely singing songs. In fact, as this is being written you could even say they’re in full-sninkel!

Or maybe I could just say that…

Anyway, when the leaves have completed their sninkelization, if they don’t get removed from the lawn, well, the lawn changes a bit. Once upon ago I would rake all the leaves onto a tarp and then gather the corners to play Leaf Dragging Santy Claus and haul them to the garden. These days I cheat and use the bagger on my lawn tractor. Takes a lot of trips but it chops them up nicely so I can dump the bags on the planting beds. For the garlic bed I actually till several dumpings of sninkeled leaves into the ground and plant the cloves before the snow comes. After planting, another layer of chopped leaves is added as cover to slow the effects of winter’s cold breath, and also to keep weeds in check when the snow is gone. Takes a while for the cloves to start rooting, and as they do the worms and soil microbes are busy making food for when they emerge in the spring.

Other planting beds will get layers of leaves that will remain throughout the winter to act as “sheet composting.” This practice builds the soil nicely because worms, microbes, and other creepy-crawlies enjoy the food I’ve laid down for them. To show their appreciation, worm manure and other byproducts of leaf digestion (made by the microbes and other creepy-crawlies) make very healthy soil for the vegetables I’ll be planting in the spring. And yes, as my vegetable plants get going I’ll mulch with leaves too; as they help the soil retain moisture, control weeds, and add nutrients as the aforementioned helpers break down the leaves that touch the soil.

We have mostly maple leaves… but when I’ve been a good boy and cleaned up all the leaves from the trees at our house, I actually go hunting for more. As you may have guessed by now I’ve learned long ago that leaves are probably the best fertilizer you can get. And they’re FREE!! And hey friends, there are no such things as bad leaves for the garden. There seems to be an old myth floating around that oak leaves are bad for the garden. To this I say, “Phoeey and Bibble Dee Boo!!” It’s simply not true. Yes, oak leaves have some acidity when fresh. But adding them to the soil actually produces a very beneficial result due to several factors, including: a) oak leaves are high in calcium, 12) oak leaves contain good amounts of nitrogen, and X) earthworms LOVE oak leaves.

So my friends, I hope you can all try to enjoy sninkel season. Not only is this a beautiful time of year, we get free fertilizer too!! This week’s video shows some of the exact ways creatures of Nature enjoy Autumn.

Halloween is a bit of a strange holiday to begin with, but it evolves into something more ghoulish every year:  COMMERCIALISM.  Is that a word??  I guess so… but it’s not like communism, although sometimes it seems equally repulsive.  My friends call me a “tree hugger.”  I guess I am.  I go around hugging trees all day long and tell them I love them.  Well maybe I don’t really do that… but all of the products that have sprung up for holiday celebrations have me wondering just how much more of all this manufacturing madness Mother Nature can take.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy jack o’ lanterns and fake skeletons and stuff like that there, but lights??  We never had Halloween lights when I was a kid.  Christmas lights, yes.  But Halloween lights??  Sounds like an oxymoron to me.  I mean, Halloween is all about having the wits frightened out of you by witches and hobgoblins and such.  So all these happy Halloween lights are making big brightness of the night which transforms a perfectly scary evening into orange-on-black-holy-cow-look-at-all-the-lights-on-that-house happy joy dead monsters fun world.  

Yes, they are cool in their own Halloweeny way… but I’m thinking maybe some of our neighborhood home owners have electric meters that are going so fast they’re ready to blow an axle.  Our “neighbor” Mike (about 2 miles up the road) has quite the awesome display this year. I even stopped to tell him so one night on my way back from Whitehall. Never knew his name before then, but he was abrim with joy when he described the acquisition of each part of his remarkable display. I must say, it’s pretty impressive!!

But back to my traditionalist whining: how in the heck do you sneak up on someone when the yard is blasting out all that light??  Sheesh.  Now you wanna hear something really weird, when we were kids it was “cool” to walk around on Halloween with a big fat sock full of flour.  Why?  So you could sneak up on people and bop them with it!!  Makes a nice big mark that is really fun to apply, and easy to get off.  And it looks totally cool when you swing your sock full of flour and connect with someone’s back or maybe their booty.  A big POOF and white powder all over the place, and of course a sock print on the point of impact.  And this prank relied on darkness.  You can’t sneak up on anyone in the midst of blazing Halloween lights and bop them with anything.  

Simpler times… I know.  Those days, Frankenstein’s monster scared the living crap out of us, because we knew he was lurking in the dark and was gonna jump out and rip us all apart if we didn’t scurry from house to house with our pillow cases to get those yummy Black Cow suckers, Jujubes, Neccos and Mary Janes.  And if you were lucky enough to hit a well-to-do neighborhood, you could even score a fair amount of chocolate!  Once in a great while you’d stumble upon the “bad kids” who actually had eggs.  And you always knew that bad kids… and worse yet, you knew they would actually throw the eggs.  At other people no less!!  And again, successful egg tossing required a secret ingredient:  darkness.    

Well, Frankenstein’s monster is considered a big wuss now.  Sure, in movies of yore the monster did indeed kill people, and the villagers told of his awesome strength and the ability to tear men apart with his bare hands.  But these days, such a movie would flop unless the monster was shown opening his victims’ bodies with a machete, eating their kidneys, and washing them down with a Mountain Dew.  And it’s all because of those stupid Halloween lights I’m tellin’ ya!!

OK, maybe not.  

Awright, awright awreddy!! I give in: I really do enjoy looking at everyone’s light displays. And the gigantor skeletons. And the inflatable monsters. My Beautiful Girlfriend and I have seen some pretty elaborate displays lately, and we both wonder aloud, “Where do they store this stuff?? And how long does it take to set it all up??”

The grandsons are 14 and 10 now, so trick-or-treating won’t be quite the same as when they were little tykes all wound up about traipsing through neighborhoods asking for candy. Oh, they want their candy alright, but some of that sparkle is a bit more subdued. Sounds like our daughter and son-in-law are switching gears a bit this year and just taking the boys to a local neighborhood for a much reduced trick-or-treat session.

I hope all of you have a safe and Happy Halloween.  It will be here before you know it!! Enjoy the lights, gigantor skeletons, and inflatable monsters. Oh, and don’t forget your flour filled bopping socks!

Believe it or don’t, this week’s video is one that gave me goose bumps when I was a kid. I mean hey, I was pretty young when this was on the old black and white…

It’s October outside, and here in Michigan, that means hunters will be gearing up for their pursuit of deer. Actually, archery season is already underway, and then in November comes two weeks worth of firearm season.

Whether it’s arrows or bullets, I’ll be staying near the house during the various phases of hunting season. We live in a semi-rural area, and the deer do quite well here. It’s not at all uncommon to see tracks in the back of our five acre plot where Mama, Papa, and Baby Deer have been moving around. Very nice, ya know?? Deer are our friends, except of course when they’re trying to dive into our car as we book down the expressway. Been there. Done that. Not good. But we like giving them a five acre sanctuary, and although we’ve had numerous requests from friends and relatives to hunt on our land, we give everyone the same answer: an emphatic NO. I don’t really like the idea of a stray arrow, bullet or shotgun slug flying past my noggin.

Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with folks who hunt responsibly. But I just don’t have it in me to kill them anymore. I am a WUSSY and I’m not afraid to admit it. Dad used to take us hunting often when we were kids. I got my buck when I was 14, and I haven’t hunted since. I’d much rather shoot them with a camera. I love to eat venison though; yummy stuff, youbetcha. I smear it in my hair with gravy and noodles. Maybe a little mashed potatoes on my eyebrows. A pea or two in my belly button. Now that’s a party!!

Hopefully all the hunters will get their deer and come back all in one piece. Unfortunately, there are some silly boys (and yes, even girls now) who mix alcohol and weapons with very deadly results. And it’s not uncommon for a few to die because an eager hunter sees something moving in the brush and lets a shot fly. Youse guys can go hunting, and I’ll stay home. OK??

Call me. We’ll do lunch. Venison burgers, of course. Your treat, right??

Hopefully our nobody will run across these jokers in the woods…

Dear Battery Holders,

As you may have noticed, this letter is not printed on paper.  No… you see it’s like this:  I’d like to warn you in advance that what follows is something of a hot topic. Please, if you have any interest in maintaining a trove of printed documents, DO NOT be like me.

As an egg sample, I often can’t seem to find my brayne. Those of you who are getting older will appreciate this, and maybe some of the younger ones too. So there I was, wenting to the Meijer pharmacy place picking up a prescription for my Beautiful Girlfriend. And yes, wenting is a real word because I said so, and I can conjugate it thusly, in the following usages of went, wented, and wenting.

I am went to the store.

I wented to the store.

I was wenting to the store.

All good?? Yes. I think, maybe…

So I wented to the store to pick up a prescription for the Love Of My Life, and this particular prescription required the presentation of a photo ID. Well, the only photo ID I am having is a driver’s license, so I put that in the little drive up sliding door thingamabob and it disappeared into the other side of the wall where the nice lady was processing the prescription; and perhaps unbeknownst to her she may possibly have had something to do with the composition of this run-on sentence; I simply don’t know.

OK. I am pay with the credit card and then I am receive the bag with the prescription and put it on the passenger seat and I am go home now. Then I am being home and am remove the prescription from the bag. The prescription obeys the law of gravity by sitting nicely on the counter. The bag is transported to the Red Metal Bucket (RBM) which contains junk mail and other fire starting combustibles.

Well sometimes we have a problem. We heat with wood. No, that’s not the problem… the problem is that when you put “garbage paper” (junk mail, prescription bags, etc.) in the woodstove to get a fire going, you can’t really go back through it if you have a little “whoopsie.” If you try, you will have ashes in your hair and eyebrows from putting your face inside the firebox while looking around.

PLEASE: ONLY DO THAT IF THE FIRE IS OUT… BUT GUESS WHAT?? EVEN IF YOU GO BACK TO CHECK, IT’S PROBABLY TOO LATE!! The fire must be out for obvious reasons. I mean, it’s not very comfortable to walk around the house (or anywhere else) with toasted nostrils and face blister ouch. Probably better to screen the papers carefully BEFORE putting them inside the firebox; because paper burns really well.

And fast!!

I did not notice my boo boo for several days; when I happened to open my wallet and discover that my license was gone. My reaction to this epiphany was, “Where the HECK is my lice…. oh crap.” So yes, boys and girls, I put my driver’s license in the fiery furnace. I’m sure it did a superb job of starting the fire, and that it burned really well.

And fast!!

Thankfully, you can now apply for a duplicate license at a kiosk in the grocery store. Is that cool or what?? And because of my weird propensity for remembering numbers, I was able to type in my driver’s license number from memory. I paid a few bucks for the mailing fee, and the kiosk thingy spit out a temporary paper license that I stuffed into my wallet where the real license used to live. And no I did NOT go home and put it in the woodstove. Took a week or so and I got my duplicate license in the mail, at which time I was able to quit shaming myself for using my original copy to start a wood fire.

I think perhaps I’ll be more careful next time I have to present my license to the pharmacy. In the meantime, I’ll just plod along and try to locate my cerebellum and it’s accessories. I may have left it in RBM (Red Metal Bucket), or even worse it might already be in the wood furnace. As the old saying goes, “All’s well that ends well.” But sometimes I find myself wondering if my brain thing is still out in a remote corner of the galaxy somewhere.

I go now. Please have a Happy Merry and a Joyful Wonderful.

If our fire ever gets to be a problem… we could always call Mickey’s Fire Brigade.  Or not…

It’s getting difficult to watch the news these days. Our lightning-fast media bring reports from all over the globe and flash them in front of our faces, often while they are happening in real time. Sure, it’s important to be informed, lest we become complacent and start resting on our laurels. After all, if we didn’t hear about what was going on, how could we act to effect change? Unfortunately, however, too often the news media have become voracious marketeers. Reports about sad and disturbing events have become their livelihood; sometimes with complete disregard for the victims of horrific events.

I saw a video a while ago of a CNN reporter who was put in her place by a poor woman with kids who had just lost everything because of a hurricane. The reporter asked the woman what the experience was like, and of course the poor lady reacted with disgust from the mere act of being interviewed in such a manner.

Manners… don’t people have manners anymore? Not sure about anyone else, but I don’t think it’s very good manners to stuff a microphone into the face of someone who was freshly uprooted because of a terrible storm.  My heart aches for those who are suffering, and my head is on fire worrying about my loved ones who are bracing for the wrath of Mother Nature, not to mention all the war crap going on around the globe.

Um… I asked you not to mention that!!

Well my friends, there really IS good news out there, and so I thought I’d take this opportunity to spread some of it around. Some of the links to follow were sent to me by friends, others I simply stumbled upon and stashed into my brain. So without further ado, here are some places you can go if you hunger for some uplifting stuff.

One of my new favorites: UTR Michigan (Under The Radar Michigan). Very cool stuff here. Saw a broadcast of their program on our local public TV station recently, but you can also watch programs on their site for free. I’m very grateful to have been transplanted to Michigan… a great place to live in my professional opinion. This guy points out just how cool it really is at http://www.utrmichigan.com/

Then there’s Yes! Magazine. A dear friend gave me a subscription for a Christmas gift awhile ago and I’ve been smitten ever since. Articles about all types of positive actions around the globe are chronicled here. They can be found at http://www.yesmagazine.org/

Then of course my organic gardener soul loves these: The Mother Earth News: http://www.motherearthnews.com/ Oh, and another favorite, the Seed Savers Exchange: http://www.seedsavers.org/

Oh! We mustn’t forget “the pooper book” website!! Say wha?? Well, that’s what our son calls the Old Farmers Almanac. His nickname for the Almanac is one of love, I’m sure, and was derived from the area of the house the magazine is most often found. Every year I buy at least three them: one for our son, one for our daughter and her family, and one for us. Over the years, I’ve acquired this habit of also buying copies for friends. Not sure the website qualifies as news, and actually the hard copy is more fun than the website. Nonetheless, you can find it at http://www.almanac.com/

Well friends, I could go on and on but suffice it to say that there really IS good news out there if you look for it. And the older I get, the more good news I seem to need. There is more than enough heartache in this world; and when I find myself focusing too closely on just the nasty stuff, I get rather sad. I’m sure I’ll continue to keep my ear to the ground and stay informed, but there are times when no news really is good news.

And good news is just plain good!

One of my least favorite topics is politics; but this 1937 Betty Boop cartoon shows that having a mayor like Grampy is just plain cool.

Something smells terrible in the physics of our electronic TV wavelength reception universe. In other words kiddies. sadness abounds because channel 3, our local CBS broadcaster, is not coming in very well. Why do we care? Because we are prehistoric citizens of the techniverse, and we still get much of our TV reception from a strange fixture known as an antenna.

Last time we had this fun, the cause was a soggy coax connector that screws onto the antenna amplifier. This was 8 years ago… and I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to get back on the roof to replace the connector. Used to be you could get such strange items at the local Radio Shack, but those are long gone. I remember going to the local Meijer and asked the guy in the Media Center very technical question. “What year is it??” I said. “Ummm I think it’s 1982,” the youngster replied with a snicker. “Good,” I replied. “Then maybe you can help me find a connector for my TV antenna cable.” The nice young man was maybe in his 20s, and did his best to be helpful. “I need a connector for RG-59 cable,” I said. Of course, he had absolutely no idea what I needed, but I’ll give him an A+ for winging it. He pointed at an assortment of doo-dads and said, “this is all the RGA stuff we have.” I didn’t bother to educate him on the terminology; but no luck for the likes of me. A little later I told my Beautiful Girlfriend, “Maybe I still have one stashed in my junk someplace.” “Where is all your junk??” my Lovely Sweetheart wondered. “EVERYWHERE,” I told her, with little need to exaggerate.

And by golly I found a couple!! They were in the bottom of the bag behind the curtains of the little closet in my office, along with some pliers, an old watch, some matches, a little 3 foot tape measure, some pens, and lots of other treasures I apparently was unwilling to either discard or sort in some logical manner. Although I’d very much prefer not to do it, I imagine I’ll be clambering up on the roof sometime soon to see if that’s actually what’s wrong.

All this may seem a rather silly to some. We live in a pretty high tech world these days, and there’s lots of content for the TV on cable, satellite, and of course the interwebs; if you’re willing to pay for it. We are not willing to pay for something that has been free since the day we were born. Well OK we do pay for the interwebs; but broadcast television is still very much alive, and there’s lots of free stuff you can watch once you get your antenna system set up. When it was new, my antenna system cost a total of about $300 with all the bells and whistles. If installed properly, such a system will work seamlessly for many years. Of course we’re talking a large fish bone looking monster that I bought over 20 years ago, along with a mast mounted amplifier. You can get much smaller antennas these days for almost half as much money. Even though it’s old, it has served us well, and I like to keep my stuff going, thank you very much.

If you know me, then you know I’m a dinosaur. Caveman. Troglodyte. Fred Flintstone. I’m, well, not really a high-tech kind of guy. Although I retired from a fairly high-tech job, all the stuff at our house is pretty much old-tech. We still have a turntable, cassette recorder, and a kick-ass stereo system on which to play them on. And we never did get cable TV…

Instead of cable, we get content off the interwebs with our ROKU. We keep our subscriptions to a minimum… Netflix and Paramount Plus, the latter of which allows us to livestream channel 3!! But hey, when all is well our antenna brings in at least 30 channels, sometimes more depending on what’s going on in the atmosphere. We figure if we paid for TV we’d watch too much of it. And even if we didn’t; it’s money we’d rather spend on other silly stuff like groceries and car repairs, and toys for our grandkids. I don’t mind being a caveman; and my Beautiful Girlfriend hasn’t left me for a high tech guy yet so I’m guessing she’s OK with it too.  In the meantime, the hunt for channel 3 continues; and I WILL WIN!!!

If you don’t believe me, just ask me some time.

When we’re not watching TV we sometimes listen to the radio; just like these two… um… ladies??

Here I am, writing Frappy Hiday about the Blue Supermoon of this past Thursday, using a brand new 2012 model HP 8470P computer on Open Office software and some very old fingers doing the typing… those fingers were built in 1954 but I don’t remember anything about the moon from those days because I was very small and my brain had not yet discovered animal crackers or even raisin flavored potato chips; and of course this silly, ridiculous glob of words is here to tell you that you now can enjoy the run-on sentence one can often expect in any given installment of Hippy Fardy.

Yes.

As some of you may have never known, a Blue Moon has come to mean the 2^nd full moon in a month; which of course only happens once in a blue moon. And of course, blue moons occur every two or three years or so; and if you don’t believe me just ask NASA some time. There is also a bunch of folklore that surrounds the saying “blue moon,” but I’m not gonna elaborate on that here and you can’t make me. Instead, I double-D dare ya to learn about it the same way I did…

I just looked it up… HERE!! <–(click me, click me ooohh aaahhh cha cha cha)

HOWEVER: the Blue Moon we just had on the 30th was also a Supermoon! That’s because the moon was closer to the earth by nearly 17,000 miles, so it looks BIG. And of course as folks on the old TV and radio shows used to shout, “Look!! Up in the sky!! It’s a bird!! It’s a plane!! It’s SUPERMOON!!”

Or something like that.

As a matter of urgent investigation, I earlier ran outside without even running and looked up into the clear blue sky and wondered to myself whether or not the sky could possibly be any more blue; and as nightfall fell while falling I looked at this gorgeous full moon thing and was hoping the moon would make blueness, which is actually a word, and I know this because I just looked that up also; and I went yet AGAIN with the run-on sentence awreddy.

But the Blue Supermoon showed absotively no sign of blueness at all. This is not your fault, it’s merely a science thing I just made up called Lunar Lack-a-blue. According to NASA, the next Blue Supermoon won’t be here until January of 2037, which is more than 2 weeks from now. The moon is waning now but it’s still pretty darn full and awesome looking. As it wanes further, we can continue to celebrate its arrival by talking about things that only happen in a blue moon, which can be a pretty fun thing to say when something doesn’t happen very often. For example, I can say stuff like, “My pants only fit me perfectly once in a blue moon. Perhaps I should not have ice cream for every meal.”

So there you go, my friends. That’s probably everything you never wanted to consider regarding a Sue Blupermoon. I hope it aids your digestion during the upcoming hot dog eating contests I’ve never entered. In the meantime, please remember that it’s always better to be you than for you to be me; and although you can count to it, eight is a word.

Thank you.

Well kids, I may be getting older. Not that I feel old, mind you. But…

I’m sitting here at the keyboard thing,

Just thinking and remembering

That back in 1972

There she was, eyes of blue.

Initially we were just friends,

But soon we were much better friends,

And then (and now) the best of friends

Sharing awesome love that never ends.

Let’s see… reality check… 2023 minus 1972 equals 51. HOLY MOLY, I’VE KNOWN AND LOVED THIS LADY FOR 51 YEARS!!! Can this be real? Who am I? What am I doing here?? Am I really 69 years old now?? Sheesh!! And then, as an added bonus, this beautiful lady allowed me to marry her on August 21, 1973. So like, this coming Monday will be like our 50th anniversary, like you know??

Like, WOW, MAN!!

Very wow!!

For the past several months, I’ve been telling anyone who wants to listen:  “If our marriage survives until August 21, we’ll be celebrating 50 years!!” I asked my Beautiful Girlfriend if there was any chance our marriage would make it for a couple more days, and she gave me that “Whadda you, nuts??” kind of look and said, “I’ll think we’ll be OK.” So… YES!!! We’re gonna be married 50 years this Monday!!

Can you tell I’m pleased about this?

Now for you youngsters (of all ages), just want you to know that this marriage business did not always come naturally to us. We both perpetrated several weepings and gnashings of teeth at various times. Slowly but surely, we began to develop skills that made our relationship endure. Lots of give and take. Lots of goofs and forgiveness. Lots of problems, but thankfully, lots of working on solutions. There, I said it: it took work for us to get where we are today. As my Lovely Bride says, “It took grace, dignity, and compromise.” And you know what?? I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

These days, it feels like we’ve been together our whole lives. We are both very OK with that notion. Heck, we’ve been best buds since were were 17!! Childhood memories are still there of course, but almost becoming a flash in the pan.  We basically grew up together.

So I want to thank Those People In Heaven for allowing us to be so fortunate. Life is very good you see. We are not financially wealthy, but we certainly aren’t poor either. We are blessed.

As you can probably tell by now, I get a little mooshy around this time of year. I’m so SO grateful because I have everything I’ve ever wanted in life. I sometimes verbalize it to my Beautiful Honey Pie.  “Honey,” I’ll say, “all I ever wanted was the love of a Beautiful Woman, a nice family, a nice home, a little bit of land (we have 5 acres), and a kick-ass stereo.”

Mission accomplished!

The moral of the story: all the work has really paid off. We have difficulty remembering the last time we got on each other’s nerves.  And no, that’s not the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The fruit of all this relationship stuff is this: we share a very strong spiritual bond, and have lived harmoniously pretty much all the time for quite a few years now. She even lets me kiss her! Often! Pretty cool since she’s The Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe (all other women are the second most beautiful… just FYI). As I said earlier, we are not really wealthy, but I consider myself one of the richest people on the planet.

Lots of music has touched our hearts over the years, and I often sing some of our favorite songs out loud to my Beautiful Girlfriend. Well OK, I sing them pretty much wherever I am while I have her in my thoughts. Often loudly.

For this week’s video fun, I’ve posted some examples.

Peace, Love, and Happiness to you All!!