Well I suppose I’m overdue to express my sadness by crying in my dog food about the driving ninnies. I’m really loving summer though… the lack of snow means we don’t have to worry about sliding into the ditch as we leave our driveway. No more hitting the windshield with a sledgehammer to remove those pesky chunks of ice. Nope… these days we can crank the windows DOWN and crank the tunes UP. Coolness!

Unfortunately, with every silver cloud comes a grey lining. Warm weather kicks in a well known ailment in some people. Officially, I just named this disease auto-idiotica, and many of you know this age-old affliction as, “hey you with the Cracker Jacks driver’s license!!”

You know what I mean. Stupid, flameheaded wombats that believe they’re the only ones on the road. You’re in their way, so watch carefully. These people have dog breath and improper grooming habits, and are EVERYWHERE. Some symptoms are: weaving in and out of traffic, severe tailgate-itis, driving 130 mph over the limit, and passing on the right on a two lane road. At intersections. While honking. Although they are ignorant of the fact, idiot drivers have chicken lips, and are known to cavort with barnyard animals during Mardi Gras.

Used to be a time when moronic motorists were restricted to the male population. Unfortunately, however, women are learning from us dudes, and are beginning to do the “tailgate-till-you-move” dance when you’re going less than 85 mph in the right lane on the expressway. It never matters that you’re already going five over the limit and are sanely going past Grandma and Grampa Sightseer. But as far as numbers, dumdum boy drivers still far outnumber dodo girl drivers.

I’m still truly compressed by the number of mush-minded monkeys that try to pull the trim off my car as they fly past me on the expressway. Hey, the limit in Michigan is already 70. Nobody really needs to go more than 75, ok? It just ain’t safe! Sure, you can go, but try to safely miss that deer or broken car. Maybe I’m getting to be an old fart. At least some “kids” (30 and younger) would label me so. But because I’m over 60 I remember the high speed limits from the beforetimes. Before the Arab oil embargo (say wha??). A lot of people raced around back then, and ended up being “dead on time.”

Very sad, the road rage that is spreading these days. Too many people in a terrible hurry. And of course if you are “in their way” they will show the likes of you. Especially if you drive cautiously like I do; meaning I usually try to observe those crazy “Speed Limit” signs. I can almost hear them…

“Watch this, Mr. SlowPoke Minivan Cruise Control Person! Watch while I remove a few thousand miles worth of wear by vaporizing the surface of my tires! Watch how well I can ruin my transmission! Ha ha! I shall show the likes of you! I’ll accelerate wildly so I can tailgate the next jerkface who has the nerve to drive courteously!! Then I’ll pass on the right, and also on the left. But just to show you I mean business, I’ll wait for oncoming traffic and barely pull back in on time! Ha ha! I listen to the COOLEST music very loudly and am ruining my hearing with 92 inch woofers! Boy are you stupid!!  And if you dare to look my way, I’ll display to your face one of my more memorable fingers!!”

Such intelligent beings are often mystified when they receive a ticket. After all, it was not their fault they were going 84 that day, because that cop is NEVER there before! Or… they run the same stop sign all the time, BECAUSE THEY LIVE THERE and there’s NEVER ANY TRAFFIC. Oh, and not to forget the folks who weave and poke along like they’re drunk. Some really ARE drunk, but the others are texting.

I don’t want the reader to get any funny ideas about the possibility that reckless driving scares me or anything. It PETRIFIES me. Wanna know why? Because I used to be a Mr. Moron Motorist! Been there, done that! Thank God I never hurt anyone. I did, however, manage to rack up many tickets in younger days. Too many. But boy, the insurance company was happy with me!! I wanted to continue driving, and they were only too happy to take lots of my money in exchange for minimal coverage.

Lucky for me, I finally learned; albeit the hard way. Haven’t had so much as a parking ticket since 1982. This is a good thing. I can breathe much more easily, and so can my wallet. It’s always empty anyway, but at least it’s not red when I put a nice, crisp dollar bill in there.

So, I can spot ’em a mile away now, and know pretty much what they’re gonna do when they get up near me. I just let them go by. Safer that way. I paid my dues, and I’m sure they’ll pay theirs in one form or another.

Anybody seen the keys to my Slow Poke Minivan Cruise Control Zooming Machine?

Folks just need to chill out and slow down… something strange happens to the weirdo drivers once they get behind the wheel… they become Motor Maniacs like in the first video.  The whole zooming mania reminds me of an old Queen song.,”Dead On Time;”  the lyrics for which appear in the second video.  Take care folks… and please, BE SAFE.

I love to grow vegetables. And my favorite way to grow vegetables is the “natural” way, which means I don’t put any artificial additives in the soil. There was a time when I relied on manure for fertilizer, but I’ve switched to pure compost.

Well, mostly pure.

We have a compost pile, and that receives all of our kitchen waste: vegetable snippings, coffee grounds, egg shells. Absolutely no meat… meat in the compost is bad juju from the nasty microbes that eat animal flesh. Fish stuff is OK if you put it straight in the ground before planting, but no bird or mammal meat. In addition to all the kitchen waste, a healthy helping of leaves and all the weeds I yank from the garden go into the compost pile. Some folks take a pitch fork and turn the pile occasionally to speed up the composting action; but I usually end up just letting the creepy crawlies chow down and make the compost for me.

This practice has turned me into an avid leaf collector. My “prize leaf ” is a 1971 maple that really makes me proud. A nice bowl of leaves are really great with milk and sugar too! High fiber.

OK, I may be fooling… But seriously folks, I used to traipse around the neighborhood and pick up bagged leaves in the fall. Many, many trailer loads. People tell me, “Oh God!! Don’t use oak leaves!!! They have too much acid!!” And I reply, “No!! This is bull mahookey old fairy tale nonsensical rumor badness!! There’s no such thing as bad leaves in the garden!!” And they cry and roll on the ground.

Or not.

Oak leaves have a high calcium content, and are pretty substantial compared to leaves like maple that break down more quickly. Earthworms LOVE oak leaves, and earthworm manure is alkaline, so a balancing effect occurs when oak leaves are added to the soil. Back to running around the neighborhood to collect leaves, these days I’m blessed with friends who bring me leaves from their yard and dump them out behind the garden for me. And if I go through all those (which I often do) I make “emergency runs” to the local transfer station, which we affectionately call “the dump.” People bring their leaves there, and the pile even gets turned regularly so there’s lots of compost available, free for the taking.

I have only one complaint about all these free composting items. Trash. There is always at least some trash in the leaves, whether they come from the dump or are given to me by my friends. Sometimes I find “interesting” items, like soda cans, candy wrappers, hunks of Styrofoam, even found the remains of a cell phone once. My very “favorite” type of trash are the fake leaves that get mixed in with the real ones. I’ll bet plastic leaves take a few thousand years to break down. Oh and on a side note: you know those little sticky labels on green peppers, avocados and the like from the grocery store? I’ve been guilty of forgetting to remove them before the remains go in the compost. Then of course I find them later, either while scooping compost during planting time or yanking weeds. I’m pretty sure those stupid labels will be here when the archaeologists come.

I’ll continue to use the dump as my primary source of compost material. So to my dear friends, and to all who bring their leaves to the dump, thank you. But please, keep the trash at home.

It doesn’t just doesn’t make good fertilizer.

And now, a video that’s not a video, but a song. Our grandson would express frustration on cartoon night when I’d slip in a music video; and his annoyed voice would ring out, “Papa, you like songs!!” Anyway, this is from a band from yesteryear called Spirit. The name of the song is “Fresh Garbage.” And the lyrics are…

Fresh garbage
Fresh garbage

Look beneath your lid some morning,
See those things you didn’t quite consume.
The world’s a can for your fresh garbage.

If bean plants could talk, they’d ask the onions to leave the premises immediately. This is for real, people! They’d pinch their noses and shout thusly: “Hey! You wid da face! You’re pudding a big hurt od by doze! Gid oudda here awreddy! Can’t lib here wid dis stinking.”

The onions cry. After all, they can’t help the fact that they were born with a natural fragrance that bean plants find offensive. Not to worry, the cabbage family is happy to have onions in the neighborhood. Must like that Italian cooking, maybe?

Forgive me while I indulge in this good stink / bad stink talk. In these parts, It’s time to start the garden up, and I get to thinking out loud about who goes where in the dirt. Companion planting, the practice of growing plants that benefit from each other, is a cool thing for us organic-type gardeners. That’s because if plants can be happy together, they are much healthier. Having healthy plants means more yield and fewer problems with bugs and diseases.

Onions exude chemicals that prevent beans, peas, and other legumes from making nitrogen in the soil with their toes. If you’ve ever yanked a bean plant out of the dirt, you might have noticed the rhizomes (little round bumps) on the roots. Well, the beans do NOT have tumors.  The rhizomes are where the action is:  bean-friendly bacteria live there and make nitrogen for the bean plants and anyone else who happens to be nearby.  That is, unless the onions are in town. Then they just sit there, remaining all tiny and twiddling their toes.

Cabbage and its relatives (broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, etc.) love those onions, because they help keep the cabbage butterflies away, and also keep the aphid population down. Both of those bugs love their cabbage, but, like beans, many bugs also hate onion breath.

Another example of companion planting is when corn says thank you to the beans and peas for being there and doing the cool nitrogen toe jam thing. The beans and peas give the corn a high five for wind protection and some shade. Corn plants also make nice poles for peas and runner beans to grab. Between the corn rows, squash or pumpkins get the shade they like, and they in turn shade the corn’s roots and keep them cool. Everybody happy.

On the other hand, you have marigolds. OK, maybe you don’t; but those can go near anything. All the vegetable clans love marigolds, and they even stimulate growth. Not to mention the pretty flowers attract pollinators, so there’s a nice bonus for you.  My kinda plants!

Grandmas and Grandpas used to know lots of this stuff, and Native Peoples were very much in tune to companion planting. Farm and garden chemical companies would love for you to forget all about that stuff though. Those fancy commercials showing folks winning cool prizes for big veggies do tend to get one’s attention. Unfortunately, chemical companies are conveniently quiet about the nasty stuff flowing into our lakes and streams when herbicides and pesticides are washed out of our dirt during a good rain.

But fear not, organic produce are finally becoming more mainstream. People are “discovering” that when the pilgrims found the Indians were growing pumpkins in their corn, it was no accident.

Back to the beans a second (uh-oh, he’s gonna get weird again). I know some people who agree with beans about the onions. Some folks just can’t stand onions or the smell of them. If you like raw onions, your sweetie might say something like, “No kissy face for you until you brush them chompers!” Onions and beans are great food things. I love them together, and regard the combo as almost cosmic. Of course, there is a by-product of eating too much of either: methane. In its natural state, methane is colorless and odorless. When generated by human food eating machines, it is often released with a “PHOOT!!” noise and can have a rather diSTINKtive odor.

HOLY COW!! I JUST HAD A BRAIN-FART!! We may be able to achieve world peace with this combination! Get regiments of bean eaters, right? March them into enemy territory two or three hours after the whole bunch of them cram a few truckloads of bean burritos laced with onions in their faces. No troops in their right minds would try to fight against anyone during such a gas attack. We’re talking victory with no chemical weapons here! Peace could be had without firing a shot, except for the occasional audible report from those burrito eaters. The only hitch would be to strictly enforce an important rule, which would need to be posted with very large placards:

ABSOLUTELY NO SMOKING ALLOWED.

So the moral of the story is: if you must plant beans and onions together, plant them in your tummy, not in the dirt.

And please, always remember to visualize whirled peas.

So if you find any of these beans, please save a couple for me!