Ew.
Man, I do this every year — carve pumpkin and then forget about it. These two bad boys were pretty ripe before Onkle B pointed them out to me.
Pity. Dude on the left was one of my better efforts. Carving pumpkins is one of the many things I think I ought to be good at, and I amn’t.
I wish I’d gotten a picture with the candle lit. As it is, it was all I could do to roll him into a trash bag without getting any on me.
Ooooo…spooky!
November 11, 2015 — 10:11 pm
Comments: 11
Somewhere under there is a garage
It’s finally turned nice here. We had a record-breaking cold June (we put the heat on a few times), but nice here is…as nice as you can imagine. Hot sun, cool breeze and…holy shit look at this rose.
It only blooms once a season, but when it goes over, it strews white petals like snow all over the garden.
Yeah, there’s not a gardening bone in my body. My mother used to say I had a purple thumb — every plant I touch dies. But Uncle B is an awesome plantsman. He has a greenhouse and everything. And he’s slowly making all the borders around the house explode with flowers, like slomo fireworks.
Yeah. I been out in the garden eating barbecue and drinking wine. I’m too mellow for the blogosphere.
EDIT. As requested, the Rector large and in color. The straggly bit at the right is an elder tree, the ‘blank’ spot is a blackberry bramble.
June 30, 2015 — 9:07 pm
Comments: 9
cabbage head
I don’t remember much Tennessee High School French, but I do believe “tête de chou” was a deadly insult, wasn’t it? Anyhow, look at this sucker. Look at it!
I really should have photographed it next to something. I reckon those outer leaves are, like, a yard across. It’s HUGE. Uncle B growed that for me.
Anybody want slaw?
Speaking of food, I was browsing the news and saw The Nine Worst Chain Restaurant Meals. I was surprised to see Red Lobster top the list. That place was my mother’s favorite dinner treat, rest her downmarket soul. The food wasn’t too bad.
Then I saw it was as rated by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the penny dropped. The CSPI are the extreme left whackadoodle pretend scientists who first came to public attention fighting against the obscene deliciousness of movie theater popcorn. May they rot in hell.
What they did was, Red Lobster apparently has a “Create Your Own Combination” special, CSPI put theirs together out of the most fattening things on offer and discovered that the resulting plate was really, really fattening. Red Lobster spokesperson said there are, like, five hundred different possible combinations, *eyeroll*.
That’s it. It’s Friday. The weather here is finally turning nice. Have a good one!
Oh, one more thing. Reader Wandering Neurons has started a blog. Visit him at wandering neurons dot org.
June 5, 2015 — 9:16 pm
Comments: 24
Shoo, ye witches!
You might have seen this story floating around this week. They’ve been doing some work on Knole House, the enormous Grade I listed pile in Sevenoaks, Kent.
They were renovating a room that had originally been remodelled for a visit from King James I and found these crude gouges in the wood on the beams under the floorboards and around the fireplace. Specifically, they found straight lines and crosshatches and V marks cut deep in the wood. Experts say these are apotropaic marks — folk magic intended to ward off witches and other evil.
What’s interesting about them is they’ve done tree ring analysis on the wood and they reckon they can pin the beams down to 1606. That’s just after the Gunpowder Plot. So, they figure, these marks were made to keep evil away from the King at a time he had just survived an assassination attempt.
Actually, I’m lying. That’s not the most interesting thing about them. The most interesting thing is, the picture above isn’t from Knole House, it’s from this house. That carving is on an exposed ceiling beam about ten feet from where I’m sitting right now. We always assumed they were just marks the workmen made to tally something or identify the piece of wood, but they look exactly like the marks at Knole.
No wonder the witches never come to visit.
How impossibly cool is that?
Good weekend, all!
November 7, 2014 — 10:20 pm
Comments: 28
POW! right in the mouse finger
All through the Summer and into the Fall, I make a lot of what I like to call Cream of Shit from the Garden Soup. Basically, harvest a bunch of stuff, throw it in the pressure cooker with some herbs and olive oil, blend the shit out of it. I do add cream, but just before serving (the base soup keeps longer that way).
In aid of this souptastic activity, Uncle B bought me a powerful fancy-schmancy Bamix stick mixer. It’s Swiss, bitchez. Thing is awesome. Zero to suck-it-up-a-straw in no time flat.
I love the way the soup color morphs over the season as different things are harvested at different rates. Cool and green early on. Warm and red toward the end.
Today’s was a proper Autumn soup — the principals were tomatoes, carrots and red onions. A bit of cuke (see above) and potato for body. It was very nice. It was very red. It was slightly redder than it ought to be.
Yeah, that’s right. I cleaned the mixer without unplugging it and, um, oopsied. I’d just given it a good bvvvvt in soapy water and I was wiping off the blades when my left hand strayed to the buttons and…it bit me. Not stitches-deep, but deep. I leaked a lot.
And it’s my mouse finger 😮
September 24, 2014 — 9:25 pm
Comments: 18
We’ll know by morning
Welp, the Scots are at it today. If you’re wondering why you haven’t seen much speculation yet, there’s a very tight embargo on election results until the whole vote is in. The announcement is expected in the morning, around 7:30 or before. That’s in the wee hours for most of my readership.
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict the No vote will win — not because I’m terribly confident, but because occasionally it’s fun to post something that will be definitively proven right or wrong within a few hours. It’s like playing Internet Pundit Chicken.
I base that on the fact No has been ahead all along, and still is. Just. Though Yes has had a tremendous last minute surge, it’s mostly among the yoot. And we know young people are excitable and love change but don’t turn up reliably at the ballot box. Still, they’re rounding people up and turning them out to vote, so I could have it wrong.
Had Scots politicians handled this better, they would end up in a stronger position, no matter how the vote turns out. Everyone in the UK is pissed off at Westminster and feels powerless, poorly represented and condescended to by that small bunch of snot-nosed mediocrities in government (of all parties). They could have capitalized on that and parted but stayed friends.
But no. Scots politicians are also snot-nosed mediocrities of the same general political class and they ran this thing on a lot of lefty anti-Tory bullshit and traditional bad feelings. If Scotland stays in the union, they may find Dave has promised them a whole bunch of stuff he can’t deliver, on account of all-around fuck-off-Scotty feelings in England (in fact, the one awesome silver lining is a tiny chance this referendum could ultimately topple Cameron).
If they opt out, things will get very chilly indeed. Lots of bruises and bad ideas. A commenter on Hot Air described this outcome as Venezuela with haggis.
Not too smug, though. The financial turbulence could be rough on the only constituency that matters — Badger House.
p.s. Re: the French caption. In the days of the guillotine, a favorite tattoo among French career criminals was a dotted line around the neck and “coupé ici”. I just. I dunno. Thought it was. Funny. I guess.
September 18, 2014 — 7:55 pm
Comments: 11
Guzzbries
Behold, the mighty gooseberry crop! I reckon there’s about five pounds there (well, Uncle B weighed them, but I didn’t write it down. Five pounds, close enough). The little dark ones in the back are a sweet purplish dessert variety.
Uncle B says we’ll have to make a gooseberry fool. So I asked “what exactly is a fool?” And he says, “Oh, it’s something like a syllabub.”
Sigh.
Fool. Syllabub. Cranachan. Eton mess. Pavlova.
Ugh. Just give me a smoothie.
June 24, 2014 — 10:51 pm
Comments: 29
Damn.
Well, dammit, I found a hen dead in the run this evening when I went to lock up. Chickens do that; they just fall over. But this was a shocker because it was Coco — the biggest and youngest bird in the flock.
She was the all black hen, and a lovely iridescent thing she was, like a fat raven with a big red comb. We were admiring her earlier today, pecking around in the sunshine. Not even a year old.
Her sister — these are the only two of our birds that probably were biologically sisters — is the paralyzed one. Frightened by a fox in late Summer (we guess), she hurt her spine somehow and can’t stand. I decided I’d stick with her as long as she was alert and had an appetite, but I didn’t truly expect to see her live out the Winter.
She’s fine. She’s hanging in there, hard. I mean, she’ll never mature, but I feel rather fiercely that if she wants it, I will give it to her. Goodness knows she’s no extra trouble.
Stupid mortality wins too many as it is.
April 22, 2014 — 9:24 pm
Comments: 21
Mutton honey
They found a ewe drowned in the canal in our back garden yesterday. How they noticed one missing and went to find her is beyond me. It’s a big flock. The looker pulled her out with a rope.
In our area, a shepherd is called a looker. You might think a looker looks, but he doesn’t. He lookers. Generally, he goes out lookering in the morning and lookering again in the afternoon.
Anyway, the looker told us a ewe will suicide if she’s ill (although another looker told me a ewe wakes up every morning and thinks, “how shall I kill myself today?”).
The looker (the first looker, I mean) also told us a ewe will reject a lamb if she senses it’s wrong. He had an apparently healthy lamb this season, rejected by its mama, was feeding well on the bottle and looking robust. Found him stone dead next morning in his pen.
On the other hand, most bottle-reared lambs thrive. You can tell who in the flock was raised by humans: they run up to you happy instead of away from you scared. I think I’d feel pretty awful sending off a sheep that thought I was great.
When they fish a sheep out of the ditch, it’s called drowned mutton. Used to sell it cheaper at the butchers, so it was prized by the poor (I can’t imagine it’s legal to sell these days). I half overheard one of my neighbors tell a story about an old lady who preferred drowned mutton, so they pitched one in the pond for her every year.
Lookers, eh?
April 17, 2014 — 9:11 pm
Comments: 15
Welcome, fuzzball
I was out doing a bit of weeding in the garden this afternoon, when I heard a lamb kicking up a terrific fuss. I thought perhaps one had gotten stuck in the ditch so I sidled over to check it out. Found this: newly hatched lamb struggling to take his very first step.
So, awesome.
We don’t own the field behind, but it shares a name with this house, so they were obviously together once. It’s a long, narrow field — flat as a table — and the sun rises spectacularly at the far end of it.
A thought experiment: imagine you are a lamb in Badger House Field, born at midnight. A chill, windy midnight (last year, there was snow on the ground when the lambs were born). Yours is a world of darkness (which it has always been) and cold (this is new and not very welcome).
A few hours into your life, just when you’re getting the hang of tottering a few steps behind your mother in the dark, this THING — this great, bright sun — blazes down the field in a streak of glory.
What must that be like?
Thinking on it is darn near enough to make me religious.
April 14, 2014 — 10:17 pm
Comments: 9