Author: admin

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Around the Garden: Good and Bad News

Bad News: The many quarts of pickles I put up over the last couple of weeks have got to be trashed. All of them, because of the hot bath processing time, ended up soft and mushy. By the way, I’ve also found that the fresh dill sprigs that I was so excited about will quickly overwhelm the other flavors of the pickles if you use too much. I used too much by about 3X.

Good News: The cucumber plants (beds) are producing like crazy so I really haven’t lost the opportunity to get a years worth under seal.

Last evening I put up 7 pints and processed them for 5 minutes (quarts were processed for 15). Dill seed is impossible to find right now, so I pulled some fresh dill from the garden and used it judiciously. I also used 1 teaspoon of ‘pickling spice’ per pint and decided to forgo the pepper elements (jalapeno, cracked red, and pepper corn).

Jalapeno’s are next to be canned. My four bushes are producing like gang-busters so will be up robbing those plants later in the day.

Will let you know how it turns out.

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America’s Turn From the Constitution

The ‘Z Blog’ continues to post articles that will have you looking at the challenges of our times at slightly different angles. I don’t know if the arguments they introduce and the theories they expound are founded in sound social theory but if your looking for a voice of a different tenor you’ll want to take a look. Their site here. Below is a little piece I snatched from their pages.

Because all societies begin low and violent, purity and grandeur arise from distance from their origin. The rulers and the people must put distance between themselves and the origins of their people, in order to give purpose to the perpetuation of their people, but they can never be disconnected from their origins. Instead, they mythologize them in order to both disguise the reality of their beginnings, but celebrate themselves as part of the natural order. The origin myth is a pretty lie that keeps us looking forward.

The most obvious example of how this works is the Lincoln fetish we see with our ruling class in America. Both sides venerate Lincoln and the Gettysburg address, The Civil War has been cast as the second founding, a purification ritual that addressed the original sin of slavery and republicanism in the founding. Rather than being seen as a break from the founding, which is surely was, it is a continuation of it. Lincoln the usurper, is replaced with Lincoln the saint, who saved the republic.

The Gettysburg Address now holds more emotional power for our elites than the actual founding documents. At some level, Lincoln certainly knew he was a usurper and that speech is pretty good proof of it. He allegedly jotted it down without much thought, but it shows all the signs of a man who knew he destroyed the old order and was now tasked with creating a new one. Starting with a lie about his own motivations was the most obvious place to start. It was the usurper announcing his victory.

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A Read-Worthy Rant

Nolte over at Breitbart has a great rant going on the shape of things (ghosts of past/present/future) that is worth the read time. I clipped the words below from his article (have no idea why the links were included, but I left them so’s folk smarter than I can reflect on his drift). The photo of the enchanting ladies courtesy of the webtubes. Breitbart link here

This is what a Luddite looks like. This is what a backwards, anti-science, anti-progress, spoiled, imperialist, bullying bigot of a Luddite looks like. This, right here.

You know, we always laugh at this whackery; we always dismiss it and write it off to left-wing lunacy that no sane country will ever allow … and then the next thing you know men are marrying men, mentally ill men in skirts are sharing restrooms with our daughters, and we’re all being forced to bake their goddamned wedding cakes as the next Democrat nominee for the president promises to open the borders and confiscate our guns.

The left — and by the left I include the media — are already coming for our guns, our health insurance, our private schools, our churches, our automobiles, our backyard grills, and now they want to take away our cooled air.

So this is nothing to laugh at. Yesterday’s insanity almost always becomes tomorrow’s reality. The Luddites are dead serious. And this is not the first time the far-Left Times has come for our A/C, and it won’t be the last.

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Emblematic of our Times

I’m not going to wear out the the Epstein story line just yet. I did want to note that the world in which we now live is so easily manipulated that our rapid access to information is negated by the manipulation of that information. The velocity at which history can be modified and truth supplanted with falsehoods is amazing. The tweet below is emblematic of our times. Tread carefully on the interubes my friends.

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Back at the Helm

Well, my 4th of July weekend is over and I’m back at the controls of this ship of fools! I hope that each of you were able to enjoy holiday and that you’ve eased back into the grind.

We had a Black Lab puppy, about 4 or 5 months old, wander onto our property on Friday (5th). He kept wanting to get into the jeep and I thought that his owner was somewhere nearby. I drove off and returned about an hour later and he was still here. When I opened the door he jumped in as if I was his owner and he was now at home! I ran him back to the house, fed him and gave him some water. The big, awkward clown (all paws and legs) had been trained to basic commands: come, sit, down, etc. I noticed that he had been neutered so I packed him back into the jeep and ran over to the vets in Leoma TN. No chip ! Back to the house we go .

Wifey is home now and, of course, falls immediately in love with the animal. I make up some ‘found puppy’ signs to posted them on the nearby roads. Wifey decides that we can keep him in the laundry room overnight. We do and find that the big guy is house trained. The next morning (Saturday) after taking the dogs out for a walk, where I discover that he loves to play ‘fetch’, he come back into the cabin as if he had lived there his entire life, jumps up on the sofa and, placing his head on the arm, falls asleep.

So now we have a real problem: my border collies do not appreciate the intrusion of this newcomer into their space. ‘Buddy’ (as I was calling him) went back and forth (he did not cower) with the collies for the next two days. We needed to find the owner or someone willing to care for Buddy quick. We were able to locate a rescue group on Sunday evening and called them on Monday morning. The kind soul that agreed to take Buddy in and keep him for a couple of days until either the owner could be found or a new owner could be identified. She asked us to bring Buddy to her home where we spent a little time introducing Buddy to her large poodle (Cooper). Late Monday afternoon she sent pictures of her kids and Buddy together and said that her husband fell immediately in love with him.

I sure hope Buddy is able to locate his original owner. It’s reassuring to know that if that does not happen then there are good folk out there that are willing to open their home to such great big loving clowns like Buddy.

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Morning Wish(es)

I hope all of you are having a great start to your Tuesday morning and I really hope that you can manage to wrangle a few days off to celebrate the founding of our great nation.

Not much goings-on around here except pulling in (and putting up) whatever nature’s bounty provides. I was able to get 3 quarts of blackberries from the neighbors place and picked enough cuc’s to can six pints of pickles. This pickle run was mostly small (length and width of a thumb). These are a great change of pace when the ‘eatn’ begins. Of course they were pickled with jalapeno’s, peppercorn, and cracked red pepper (dehydrated cayenne peppers).

I used Google Earth to get a rough estimate on how far I was walking to harvest blackberries; it was two miles straight line distance (albeit not in a straight line). It’s probably double that when you account for walking into and out of the wood line.

I’m off to the store this morning to pickup canning supplies: quart jars, vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil, pectin, peppercorn, and pine nuts are all needed. While it’s 25 miles each way to the store, and most of those miles are on back roads, I really don’t mind that much. Before I retired I was traveling 50 miles each way from here to Huntsville AL for work . Because the trip is along country roads (for the most part) the slow going allows me to peek into the backyard of folks and see if they have a garden in and how it’s doing.

Anyway, got to get up and get about my day. Have a great week and be safe over the holiday.