I got these from a garden tractor site... some are pretty clever...
1. The fattest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .
3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.
6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
12. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'
13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'
15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
17. A backward poet writes inverse.
18. In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.
19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris, you'd be in Seine.
21.
A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The
stewardess looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion
allowed per passenger.'
22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says 'Dam!'
23.
Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the
craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have
your kayak and heat it too.
24. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One
says, 'I've lost my electron.' The other says 'Are you sure?' The first
replies, 'Yes, I'm positive.'
25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.
26.
There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that
at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Don't Ever Give Up!!
A Russian driving a large articulated tractor with a long trailer gets stuck in a river... it seems impossible, but he doesn't give up. Watch this incredible video here:
Don't Ever Give Up
A good lesson for all of us... (now go drain the water from those axles, tranny and hydraulics tank, Dmitry!!)
Smitty
Don't Ever Give Up
A good lesson for all of us... (now go drain the water from those axles, tranny and hydraulics tank, Dmitry!!)
Smitty
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Yahoo News: What Mitt Romney's White House Would Have Looked Like if He Had Won the Election
This article spells out some of the details of how Mitt Romney planned to organize the White House. The tone of the article is definitely anti-Romney, but I have to wonder what the author is thinking when they take issue with
"A plan to restructure White House operations to suit Romney’s corporate management style, with clear deliverables"
In other words, Romney planned to hold people accountable for how they performed instead of rewarding political hacks by padding his cabinet with them.
Mitt Romney's White House
So many people have used Romney's actions, and supposed actions while at Bain Capital to vilify him. I'm definitely opposed to the excesses of capitalism as practiced by some of the "robber baron" industrialists. However, I'm reminded of some important points:
- I don't know of any people that work for poor people--a person has to be financially smart to succeed and create jobs.
- If a patient has inoperable gangrene in his leg, is it best to remove the diseased leg, realizing that the patient still might die, or to ignore him while he suffers a painful, extended demise?
The things that the majority of the Liberals, socialists, etc. don't seem to grasp is that government can only create jobs using someone else's money--after taking a large cut of overhead from the revenue collected before redistributing it.
Anyway, my two cents, er..... two dollars worth (adjusted for inflation)--
Smitty
"A plan to restructure White House operations to suit Romney’s corporate management style, with clear deliverables"
In other words, Romney planned to hold people accountable for how they performed instead of rewarding political hacks by padding his cabinet with them.
Mitt Romney's White House
So many people have used Romney's actions, and supposed actions while at Bain Capital to vilify him. I'm definitely opposed to the excesses of capitalism as practiced by some of the "robber baron" industrialists. However, I'm reminded of some important points:
- I don't know of any people that work for poor people--a person has to be financially smart to succeed and create jobs.
- If a patient has inoperable gangrene in his leg, is it best to remove the diseased leg, realizing that the patient still might die, or to ignore him while he suffers a painful, extended demise?
The things that the majority of the Liberals, socialists, etc. don't seem to grasp is that government can only create jobs using someone else's money--after taking a large cut of overhead from the revenue collected before redistributing it.
Anyway, my two cents, er..... two dollars worth (adjusted for inflation)--
Smitty
Friday, May 31, 2013
Garden Update
Well, I finally got some time to finish off the garden.
We planted potatoes about 3 weeks ago, and they had started to come up--Yay!!! I've never planted potatoes before, so I was concerned they might not grow.
I have felt that I needed to get some experience with growing a crop that could be stored for the winter. This would provide us food that we didn't have to buy, and would also help us learn new things and be more self-sufficient.
Since it had been a few weeks since it was disked, I re-tilled the unsown part of the garden. I have a tiller for one of my garden tractors-- a Dayton, and it made short work of the spot:
The next day I furrowed the spot with my White GT1650--it's too hard to remove the tiller and quickly swap things back and forth on the Dayton... plus it gives me one more tractor to have fun on!!
We planted three more rows of potatoes, including some Yukon Golds...similar to a Russet potato but with a yellow tint to the flesh of the potato.
We also planted Blue Guatemalan Banana Squash, Amish Crookneck (similar to Butternut, but with a long neck on them), Fordhook Acorns squash, and Silver Bell squash. Links to these plants are included towards the end of this article.
After putting in the squash, I furrowed the rows between the growing potato plants. As they grow, potatoes will form at the surface, and will "green" from exposure to the sun if you don't heap dirt around the base of the plant.
Many people don't know that potatoes, tomatoes, and egg plant are all members of the nightshade family. The leaves, roots (not tubers), stems, etc. contain the alkaloid solanine and are poisonous. Ditto for the actual "fruit" that grow on some potato plants. Green potatoes also contain solanine, and shouldn't be eaten... which makes me wonder why tomato caterpillars and Colorado Potato Beetles can get a way with eating them, but I digress...
More information on dangers of green potatoes:
Don't eat Green Potatoes
Anyway, here's a couple pictures of me furrowing.
We intend to make a small "root cellar" area in our basement.
When I was a kid, there was an old house (actually more of a shack) down the street from me that had a root cellar behind it. Someone had lived in the house when we first moved in, but they moved not long after and the house later burned down.
I remember going into the old root cellar, with it's weather-beaten door half off the hinges, and seeing dusty wooden shelves with a few jars of fruit still on them. Even though it was mid-summer (high 90 degree temperatures), the root cellar was cool and comfortable.
Root cellars are how people kept food long term before the arrival of refrigerators and grocery stores stocked year round with fresh fruits and vegetables. You can store many different types of food in root cellars--potatoes, carrots, onions, winter squash, turnips, apples, etc. If done right, many things would last until late spring.
We had started putting our winter squash in cardboard boxes in a cool room in our basement. We still have three smaller squash there as of this writing (late May) and they are still good. Now I wanted to expand on that a little, hence the potatoes in the garden.
In addition to storing the squash, we want to store the potatoes. We eat a lot of them and like them cooked in various ways--boiled with the skins on, fried, made into "Galloping" (Scalloped) potatoes, potato salad, etc. We planted 40 pounds of potatoes--a 10 to 1 yield is considered good... we'll see how we do.
Potatoes contain a lot of nutrition--a medium sized baked potato with the skin on has almost half the daily recommended amount of Vitamin C. They also contain other vitamins and helpful minerals. In fact, in rural Ireland in the mid 1800s, two-thirds of the people subsisted as sharecroppers and potatoes were their main food source. When potato blight destroyed the harvest for a couple of successive years, over a million people starved to death, and another million emigrated to other countries--particularly the U.S.
We also like squash, particularly winter squash, like banana squash. We love banana squash in many different forms--baked, mashed, made into "pumpkin pie" and pudding, etc. We wanted to try some different types as well now that we had more room. We looked at different varieties--we didn't want Hubbard or Acorn squash since they are a pain to peel. Something fairly decent size with a smooth skin would fit the bill. We finally came up with those I mentioned earlier.
We also wanted to plant open pollinated seeds. Open pollinated seeds come from plants that haven't been genetically modified. Most seeds you buy today have been scientifically hybridized to get certain desirable features--larger yields, resistance to disease and insects, etc.
However, the seeds contained in the resultant fruit or vegetable often will not grow if you plant them. Or, they will throwback to one of the original plants, and not the hybrid. Lastly, some seeds actually have a patent on them, and you cannot legally save seeds from your planted crops for the next year!! A recent court case between Monsanto and a farmer that reused seeds ruled in favor of Monsanto--the farmer ended up paying an $84,000 fine.
Monsanto Wins in Seed Patent Case
So, to cut to the chase... we did some research and picked some additional types of squash to plant. Some of these links are to seed companies, etc., but I'm not compensated for including their links.
We bought most of our seed from Seedsaver's Exchange. They work to preserve heirloom, organically grown, and open-pollinated seeds. I don't get compensation from them for including the link, but I encourage you to take a look at their website and support them if you can.
Fordhook Acorn Squash
This squash is bigger than the traditional acorn and not as ridged...hopefully it will be easier to prepare.
Amish Crookneck Squash
The Amish Crookneck are unusual as well. (I'm not promoting this particular seed dealer, they just have good information about the squash)
Blue Guatemalan Banana Squash
I bought this just because I am intrigued by its color... We'll see how it does.
Silver Bell Squash
This came as a gift from Seedsaver's Exchange because I made a small donation... I'm interested to see what they taste like:
We also bought seeds for the "trombone squash" (Tromboncini) from another site. We will plant these at the house. It is a vine-type squash that has a long thin neck and a large bulge at the bottom. It is eaten as a summer squash, much like Zucchini, but if allowed to mature and "set" it turns a tan color similar to a butternut squash, and can be stored and eaten as a winter squash. Here's a link:
Trombone Squash
Anyway, that's it for now... I'll keep you posted as things move along.
Smitty
We planted potatoes about 3 weeks ago, and they had started to come up--Yay!!! I've never planted potatoes before, so I was concerned they might not grow.
I have felt that I needed to get some experience with growing a crop that could be stored for the winter. This would provide us food that we didn't have to buy, and would also help us learn new things and be more self-sufficient.
Since it had been a few weeks since it was disked, I re-tilled the unsown part of the garden. I have a tiller for one of my garden tractors-- a Dayton, and it made short work of the spot:
The next day I furrowed the spot with my White GT1650--it's too hard to remove the tiller and quickly swap things back and forth on the Dayton... plus it gives me one more tractor to have fun on!!
We planted three more rows of potatoes, including some Yukon Golds...similar to a Russet potato but with a yellow tint to the flesh of the potato.
We also planted Blue Guatemalan Banana Squash, Amish Crookneck (similar to Butternut, but with a long neck on them), Fordhook Acorns squash, and Silver Bell squash. Links to these plants are included towards the end of this article.
After putting in the squash, I furrowed the rows between the growing potato plants. As they grow, potatoes will form at the surface, and will "green" from exposure to the sun if you don't heap dirt around the base of the plant.
Many people don't know that potatoes, tomatoes, and egg plant are all members of the nightshade family. The leaves, roots (not tubers), stems, etc. contain the alkaloid solanine and are poisonous. Ditto for the actual "fruit" that grow on some potato plants. Green potatoes also contain solanine, and shouldn't be eaten... which makes me wonder why tomato caterpillars and Colorado Potato Beetles can get a way with eating them, but I digress...
More information on dangers of green potatoes:
Don't eat Green Potatoes
Anyway, here's a couple pictures of me furrowing.
We intend to make a small "root cellar" area in our basement.
When I was a kid, there was an old house (actually more of a shack) down the street from me that had a root cellar behind it. Someone had lived in the house when we first moved in, but they moved not long after and the house later burned down.
I remember going into the old root cellar, with it's weather-beaten door half off the hinges, and seeing dusty wooden shelves with a few jars of fruit still on them. Even though it was mid-summer (high 90 degree temperatures), the root cellar was cool and comfortable.
Root cellars are how people kept food long term before the arrival of refrigerators and grocery stores stocked year round with fresh fruits and vegetables. You can store many different types of food in root cellars--potatoes, carrots, onions, winter squash, turnips, apples, etc. If done right, many things would last until late spring.
We had started putting our winter squash in cardboard boxes in a cool room in our basement. We still have three smaller squash there as of this writing (late May) and they are still good. Now I wanted to expand on that a little, hence the potatoes in the garden.
In addition to storing the squash, we want to store the potatoes. We eat a lot of them and like them cooked in various ways--boiled with the skins on, fried, made into "Galloping" (Scalloped) potatoes, potato salad, etc. We planted 40 pounds of potatoes--a 10 to 1 yield is considered good... we'll see how we do.
Potatoes contain a lot of nutrition--a medium sized baked potato with the skin on has almost half the daily recommended amount of Vitamin C. They also contain other vitamins and helpful minerals. In fact, in rural Ireland in the mid 1800s, two-thirds of the people subsisted as sharecroppers and potatoes were their main food source. When potato blight destroyed the harvest for a couple of successive years, over a million people starved to death, and another million emigrated to other countries--particularly the U.S.
We also like squash, particularly winter squash, like banana squash. We love banana squash in many different forms--baked, mashed, made into "pumpkin pie" and pudding, etc. We wanted to try some different types as well now that we had more room. We looked at different varieties--we didn't want Hubbard or Acorn squash since they are a pain to peel. Something fairly decent size with a smooth skin would fit the bill. We finally came up with those I mentioned earlier.
We also wanted to plant open pollinated seeds. Open pollinated seeds come from plants that haven't been genetically modified. Most seeds you buy today have been scientifically hybridized to get certain desirable features--larger yields, resistance to disease and insects, etc.
However, the seeds contained in the resultant fruit or vegetable often will not grow if you plant them. Or, they will throwback to one of the original plants, and not the hybrid. Lastly, some seeds actually have a patent on them, and you cannot legally save seeds from your planted crops for the next year!! A recent court case between Monsanto and a farmer that reused seeds ruled in favor of Monsanto--the farmer ended up paying an $84,000 fine.
Monsanto Wins in Seed Patent Case
So, to cut to the chase... we did some research and picked some additional types of squash to plant. Some of these links are to seed companies, etc., but I'm not compensated for including their links.
We bought most of our seed from Seedsaver's Exchange. They work to preserve heirloom, organically grown, and open-pollinated seeds. I don't get compensation from them for including the link, but I encourage you to take a look at their website and support them if you can.
Fordhook Acorn Squash
This squash is bigger than the traditional acorn and not as ridged...hopefully it will be easier to prepare.
Amish Crookneck Squash
The Amish Crookneck are unusual as well. (I'm not promoting this particular seed dealer, they just have good information about the squash)
Blue Guatemalan Banana Squash
I bought this just because I am intrigued by its color... We'll see how it does.
Silver Bell Squash
This came as a gift from Seedsaver's Exchange because I made a small donation... I'm interested to see what they taste like:
We also bought seeds for the "trombone squash" (Tromboncini) from another site. We will plant these at the house. It is a vine-type squash that has a long thin neck and a large bulge at the bottom. It is eaten as a summer squash, much like Zucchini, but if allowed to mature and "set" it turns a tan color similar to a butternut squash, and can be stored and eaten as a winter squash. Here's a link:
Trombone Squash
Anyway, that's it for now... I'll keep you posted as things move along.
Smitty
Thursday, May 30, 2013
HUMOR: Chicago is known for....
Chicago is known for three things:
1. Pizza
2. Mobsters
3. Corrupt Politicians
One thing we can say about President Obama--he's definitely NOT a Pizza!!!!
Smitty
1. Pizza
2. Mobsters
3. Corrupt Politicians
One thing we can say about President Obama--he's definitely NOT a Pizza!!!!
Smitty
IRS Agent Who Wrote Threatening Letters Promoted
Here's a head scratcher for you...
IRS Exempt Organization Specialist Stephen Seok signed many of the intimidating letters sent to conservative non-profits. He also asked intrusive questions requiring things like a copy of all brochures handed out, the names and credentials of all speakers, and the contents of their speeches, etc.
Despite the public outcry over the IRS' abuse of conservative groups, Mr Seok wasn't reprimanded or even placed on administrative leave... HE WAS PROMOTED!! He is now a supervisory IRS agent.
When the IRS Cincinnati Center was contacted, they deferred all questions to the IRS Washington, D.C., office. When the Washington D.C. office was contacted regarding the promotion, they refused to answer, citing the Privacy Act of 1974...
Abusive IRS Agent Promoted.
All of this is especially troubling, and it seems the "hits just keep on rolling in"... with scandal piling on scandal. Almost as troubling is that a lot of "conservative" politicians seem to have adopted a wait and see attitude rather than jumping in and demanding that those responsible be identified and fired, and criminally prosecuted as warranted.
One of my growing concerns is that the American public has heard so much about all the different scandals that they're becoming numb to it and basically shrug their shoulders and say, "What can I do?"..
Regards,
Smitty
IRS Exempt Organization Specialist Stephen Seok signed many of the intimidating letters sent to conservative non-profits. He also asked intrusive questions requiring things like a copy of all brochures handed out, the names and credentials of all speakers, and the contents of their speeches, etc.
Despite the public outcry over the IRS' abuse of conservative groups, Mr Seok wasn't reprimanded or even placed on administrative leave... HE WAS PROMOTED!! He is now a supervisory IRS agent.
When the IRS Cincinnati Center was contacted, they deferred all questions to the IRS Washington, D.C., office. When the Washington D.C. office was contacted regarding the promotion, they refused to answer, citing the Privacy Act of 1974...
Abusive IRS Agent Promoted.
All of this is especially troubling, and it seems the "hits just keep on rolling in"... with scandal piling on scandal. Almost as troubling is that a lot of "conservative" politicians seem to have adopted a wait and see attitude rather than jumping in and demanding that those responsible be identified and fired, and criminally prosecuted as warranted.
One of my growing concerns is that the American public has heard so much about all the different scandals that they're becoming numb to it and basically shrug their shoulders and say, "What can I do?"..
Regards,
Smitty
Are DHS Police Monitoring Conservative Rallies?
Several Tea Party rallies and demonstrations in the past few weeks have seen the presence of "Federal Protective Services" police from the Department of Homeland Security, in addition to local law enforcement.
These gatherings were peaceful, as is typical of Tea Party gatherings, so one has to wonder why the need for DHS police... especially since the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, which had a number of arrests nationwide for assault, drug use, and rape, didn't seem to concern them.
Read more here:
DHS Police Monitoring Conservative Gatherings
Maybe just a touch of paranoia would be appropriate right now, especially if it prompts us to actively work to ensure our Constitutional Rights aren't swept aside by edicts and regulations from politically appointed "Czars".
Smitty
These gatherings were peaceful, as is typical of Tea Party gatherings, so one has to wonder why the need for DHS police... especially since the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, which had a number of arrests nationwide for assault, drug use, and rape, didn't seem to concern them.
Read more here:
DHS Police Monitoring Conservative Gatherings
Maybe just a touch of paranoia would be appropriate right now, especially if it prompts us to actively work to ensure our Constitutional Rights aren't swept aside by edicts and regulations from politically appointed "Czars".
Smitty
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