vituperation

I’ve spent most of the weekend farting around, working on the garden and doing little things that needed doing. I put together a cabinet thingy for Robyn’s bathroom yesterday morning, and raised the electric fence in the pig yard in the afternoon. In between, I messed around in the garden with the scuffle hoe. I sure do like chopping down weeds.

Also yesterday, I planted five half-rows of yellow corn. The corn plantings were staggered, so we should get a big load of white corn first, then a load of yellow corn a few weeks later. If the crows don’t get it all, that is. Crows, I have found, are some wily motherfuckers. They fly off as soon as I go out the back door, and I lack the patience to sit and wait for them for long. I got a shot off today (in true redneck form from the back door) but it was about a hundred yards and I missed. The crow was slow to take off, and seemed wobbly at first, like I’d gotten him, but then he straightened up and flew normally.

Damnit.

Today, I replanted blackeyed peas and okra, because I completely forgot about having planting them too early last year (and having to replant them then) and planted them with everything else while the ground was still too cool for them. Some okra sprouted, but not much, and I only saw one or two pea plants. I also went down all the rows of squash and planted new seeds where the originals didn’t germinate, and did the same on the row of soybeans (edamame). I set up for and planted a couple of small rows of cucumbers, and replanted the Black Beauty eggplant seeds because none of the originals germinated. Who knew eggplant seeds needed it so hot?

I spent the rest of today weeding the rest of the garden and putting up fence for the pole beans, blackeyed peas, and navy beans. The pole beans are climbers, so they got a row of 5-foot welded wire fence. The blackeyed peas and navy beans are runners, so they’re sort of boxed-in with 2-foot chicken wire, to keep them from getting into the other rows.

I’m pretty much done with getting the garden going, except for transplanting pepper plants, which are still too small, and putting in a support system for the tomatoes. I’ve been thinking about it over the last couple of weeks, and have come to the realization that I planted the rows of tomatoes too far apart to be able to reach all the tomatoes through field fence. Instead of running three rows of fence like I’d planned, I’ve decided to cut the field fence into 4- or 5-foot sections and fashion tomato cages out of them by making a circle. I’ll drive a t-post next to each plant, set the “cage” over it, and connect the two with the greatest thing ever created: cable ties.

Probably my arms will fall off at some point while I’m doing that fifty-four times, but it’ll be worth it in the long run.

Here’s a good ethical question for you.

Our property shares borders with two professional nurseries, both of which are hundreds of acres of nothing but trees and bushes. Our property also has a privacy thicket around it of trees, briars, and a TON of poison ivy.

On the weekends, hunters sometimes bring their beagles onto the nursery property to practice (right now) or hunt (Jan/Feb). Often, these beagles come onto our property in a long baying line of maybe 12 dogs. Generally, they just go across the back field and into the thicket on the other side.

Today, however, they came onto our land three times, and raced around, tearing into the garden and getting all our animals (chickens, cats, and pigs) terrified. One time, a beagle too stupid to go around the pig yard managed to jump up and fit himself through openings in the field fence. I had the satisfaction of seeing him get zapped several times by the strand of electric that’s run around the inside to keep the pigs from rooting under the fence.

He was stuck in there for a couple of minutes, racing around the perimeter and baying his fool head off. The pigs, needless to say, were in a state of terror. I went out to see if I could get him to come out the gate, taking a gun just in case he was mean. Before I got to him, he managed to jump high enough to fit through another hole in the field fence and got out.

The dogs don’t pay any attention to our animals, but their presence / noise / assiness scares the fool out of them. I can’t ever hear any people around, just the baying dogs out running and raising cain. I can’t easily get through that thicket of poison ivy to look for people, and even if I could I don’t relish the thought of possibly being shot by an overzealous hunter. Plus, I don’t really want to go trespassing on someone else’s property unless I’m sure it’s their dogs I’m following.

At what point would you just say “to hell with it” and start shooting dogs? Or would you even consider such a thing? I love animals, but I have no patience for nuisance animals that are bothering MY animals, even if those nuisance animals mean mine no harm.

Probably I’ll just call the nursery tomorrow and ask them about it, and tell them what happened, but I’m curious as to what others would do in this situation.

And now, I devote the rest of the entry to pictures.

Is it time for the eatin’?

Dinnertime!

The cukes will grow up the hog panels.

The boxed in peas and beans. Beans are to the right, peas (just planted)
to the left.

We are going to have some serious green beans this year. Rattlesnakes, they are.

Okra

Soybean

Squash

Curious George, living up to the name.

Rhode Island Red roosting practice.

Don King is rather round.

Still broody.

And now, a plug. I heard of some slick software the other day called VirtualBox, which is great for dorks like me because it lets you set up virtual PCs within your PC, and install different operating systems on those virtual PCs. It makes it possible to run Linux in a Windows window, or Windows in a Linux window, or any combination of operating systems you want.

Below is a screen shot from my PC, which runs Windows Vista Home Premium. In the screenshot, the back window is a normal FireFox browser. The middle window is a full Ubuntu Linux installation, running Gnome desktop with a game of mah jongg going, and the foreground window is an installation of Windows 2000.

The fact that I’m running three operating systems, two in their own windows, nearly brings me to geekgasm.

So very cool.

How cool is it that I remember watching this on the Friday it happened?

(Originally, I wanted to put this video in the space above, but I couldn’t find a copy that didn’t have embedding disabled. Damn people.)