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Young, Hot and Oi!

Aren't they just the cutest things? They're 13 years old, homeschooled (of course!), and entertainers! Their act is called "Prussian Blue". It only gets weirder...dad raises cattle..guess what his brand is? RaHoWa...a game the whole family can play! Needless to say, they're also devout Christians.

The other photo I've seen of these children, they're wearing t-shirts with the happy face done up with the appropriate mustache and hair. Which I thought was hysterical, but it's really politically incorrect that I think so. So shoot me.

I read this man's account of getting arrested on the tube in London for daring to carry his laptop in a backpack and not looking at the police. Well, at least they didn't murder him in cold blood and for no reason, like they did Jean Charles De Menzes. In both of these cases, the British Government says lackadaisically, as it scratches its ass, we're so sorry, the shoot to kill order still stands, and that other mistakes will be made. But don't worry, we'll make it up to you.

Didn't Benjamin Franklin say that those who give up liberty for security deserve neither? The reason this pisses me off so much is that any cop in England can decide, for any reason he/she chooses, that you're a threat and arrest or kill you. Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime.

Eventide..

Yes, it's Sunday evening....and I'm sitting here by myself, whch I honestly don't mind. The only light in the house is provided by the screen of my laptop....and the only sounds are dogs barking, traffic, and Canada Geese overhead.

What a high, wild and lonesome sound. I remember when i was a kid...seeing a Canada Goose, or a skein of them, was a rare thing. You put down what you were doing, and went out and looked. They brought the winter in after them, on their stubby tail feathers...they were the last tear that the gray sheet of the sky could handle. Winter just flaked down from their path. Since Canada Geese are so common now, thanks to the decimation of their real environment, their cockroach-like ability to adapt and office workers who feed them bread and hot dogs...I have switched my high and wild allegience to Sandhill Cranes. They are my untamed things. And they cannot and will not eat hot dogs or bread and make their nests in retention ponds.

Now Dan is home...and every light in the house is on. And the TV, which he claims to hate, is the first thing he turns on when he get home at night. He likes the light, I like the dark. This causes a bit of trouble, especially at bed time.

But the leaves on the sugar maples turn bright red and drift down, silently.

Nothing much...

Just saw this picture online, and I had to put it up. It's from the Renegade Gardener's website. Why would someone trim a bush in this fashion? Is my mind just filthy or something? Am I seeing something that's not there? Sometimes a columnar shape flanked at its base by 2 round objects is just a columnar object flanked at its base by 2 round objects.

Someone went to a lot of trouble to trim this in exactly this way. I'm sure they are very unaware of filth minded people like me. Anyway, the favorite part of the Renegade's website is the link entitled "Don't DO That."

I haven't had a cigarette since last Sunday Night. It would be so nice to have one right now. Reading seems to help with the craving, though. So, I'm off to read!

Little Tulip Poplars

Were growing under a big Tulip Poplar at my work. The landscapers(and i use that term loosely) at work were going to pull them up, so today I brought a shovel and dug up the biggest ones. I will give them to a friend who has 5 acres and is trying to re-forest her land with native trees.

I have lots of stuff to put in the ground this weekend. Let's see...a fothergilla, a couple of hazelnut bushes, a white pine seedling, a little tulip tree. That's just trees and shrubs. For forbs and grasses i have verbena stricta, plains boneset, a mystery plant, verbena stricta, rattlesnake master, illinois bundleflower, verbena stricta, prairie dropseed, prairie milkweed, wild quinine, smooth blue aster, big bluestem, prairie skullcap, cardinal flower and more. Plus all the pitcher plants I have to get ready for winter. OY VEY. I also have to start collecting seeds and getting ready to start trading.

Politics #1
Politics #2

A Promise...

I made this internal promise to myself to not talk about politics here.....cuz I can't and won't compete with those who have drank the Konservative Kool-Aid, and besides, they're much more eloquent and have a much bigger BS machine than liberals like me...facts don't stack up well against brilliant and manipulative prose and, in some cases, outright lies. Lies fed to the public by Fox News are so much easier to believe, as all they require is a sheep-like mentality to believe. So, instead, when i have something political to say....i'll just do a linky.

Weather is fine and dry and cool. The garden spiders are fat and sassy in my garden, happily catching big grasshoppers. I have their locations marked with flags so I don't run into them accidentally...I am terrified of large spiders. The Canadian Geese are forming their v-shapes going nowhere...they don't migrate anymore, but they look good faking it. I remember one clear day, early last November...I went outside for some reason or another, and what must have been every last sandhill crane (the bird in the picture) in NE Illinois was migrating south...there were hundreds of them, way high up, in huge wobbly "V" shapes, making quite a clacketty racket. They fly high and talk a lot! You can hear them way before you see them. In early March, when I went to visit my parents in Florida..there were lots of sandhill cranes there. They were getting into groups and getting ready to fly north again. i am happy to say I get to hear their voices on the way home, too.

The thing for me was knowing what I was hearing before I actually knew what they were...I instinctively knew they were cranes, and probably sandhills. my mother taught me, as a small child, that cranes fly with their necks outstretched, herons fly with their necks tucked in. She learned this on the farm in Ohio that she was born on in 1920. There must have been sandhills coming through there 80 years ago. She also taught me that vultures soar with wings in a "V" shape(a dihedral)...hawks soar on flat wings, and when the leaves on trees show you their backsides..you are going to have rain within 48 hours.

There is little or no chance of me seeing a whooping crane, though one did show up at Glacial Park last fall, on it's way south. Whooping Cranes are very, very rare. They are our other crane. There are only 5 species of cranes in the whole world, and all of them are endangered.

The Sandhill Cranes preen themselves with vegetation, which can have a high iron oxide content, so in my area, they tend to be a brownish-grayish red kind of colour. Baby cranes are called colts, BTW.