Almost August, the month of vacations. Tell us about yours!

Zed!

Darn it. Missed it by that much.

Hey pups…

Hey newtonusr and CE.

Hey Mary,
Great pic at the meet-up!

Oh, Christine, I’d feel guilty…

Where are the photos?

We are leaving this week for Canada. The rules are very strict: one bottle of wine per person? That is nuts.

There’s an unconfirmed, and likely false, rumour that former Sha Na Na member Danny McBride has died.

Saturday Night At The Movies.

per vacation? or crossing the border?

Oh Dear, Loo Hoo, why?

Hey!

Maine to New Brunswick

These photos?

What a crew! We did have fun, didn’t we.

I want to know how those thirty pounds snuck up on me.

You all look great, you know.

And me, too…I still think I’m a GIRL!

I used to have dark brown hair and I was skinny. That was just last week. and I could play pool. Now I can’t see the damn balls.

Margot, luv
How are you?

Sure looked it from my brief vantage. I hated to leave.

Hey, being dial-up I’m a video virgin tonight. What’s on my mind is the enormous amounts of vegetables I’m harvesting from my “Victory Garden”. With $10 worth of snap/snow/shelling pea seed and countless hours of manual labor I’m harvesting an easy 2 standard coolers full of snap peas.A gallon of shelled peas and probably 3 gallon containers of snow peas. My first harvest in this new garden.. Broccoli is getting ready to rock. Lettuce is exploding.Potatoes are going strong.
If they let me grow medical pot I could ease the pain of many oldsters in our community. If they let me just grow industrial hemp I could get control of the “wild” 1/2 acre. And build the soil while doing it.
We should grow more as a country. And destroy less.I think people would feel more empowered with spontaneous gardening. Yards, roof tops, patios. From small herb pots to truck farms.
OT I’ve been reading Ryan Grim’s ” This is your country on drugs”. And loving it!!!

Hi all, major net slows here tonight… took 25 mins to load this page.

We have tomatoes growing in pots on our driveway. Our backyard is suddenly too shady to grow veggies. Our river birch got really big. This is good cause it shades the house. So we moved the garden to the front right where the deers can get at it. Shit fire. We have these little rods that had the scent of acorns of them. The deer smell them and get a little shock. This helps to keep them away. If the garden attracts too many deer over time the big cats and coyotes will start showing up. I guess we could grow things that don’t call the deer in.

‘Cuz I retired. It’s all vacation time now! (Not as in going on vacation, but the lack of alarm clocks is wonderful!!)

Hola, ES!

I have 9 years…can’t wait!

I’m having a rat invasion that’s starting to scare me. They’re so bold that I can hose them down in the cabbage, work 20 feet away and they’ll come back to hit the beans WHILE I’m in the garden. I found their hole[because my French Filet bean plant was being dragged into it] and flooded it until the water ran out. Watched for running rats. None. Left the garden, came back 1 hour later and 5 bean plants were piled up by that hole.
I know a fuck you when I see one!!!! Freaked me out.

Nasty. You need rattlers to take care of the rats but then what do you do with the snakes.

Stealing with all hands claws right out in the open…
Did you check them for party affiliation?

republirats.

Get some rat poison. It’s sad, but it works.

I assume smoke bombs are illegal now, but I have seen them work very well.

I’m fine, distracted as usual. And you?

Openhope, this same thing only with groundhogs happened in our garden in NM years ago. Flower garden. I watched and it was like a cartoon, bloop, bloop bloop one flower after another went down into the ground. My dad put some sort of smoke bomb in the entrance and shoveled dirt over every exit he could find. I don’t remember how effective this was lo these decades later.

yikes! just hearing about it scares me.

I confess. For the first time in my life I placed a “black box” aka poisen in my garden. I’m kind of not really okay with it. Except that this house actually caught on fire because of rats. Before we moved in. I don’t see how that can really solve the problem. where do dead rats go and who eats them while they’re still twitching? Owls? Hawks? Eagles?
I wish I didn’t think so much……………………………

Can you put good fencing around your garden?

cats, dogs, coyotes, snakes. they all eat rats along with the owls, hawks and eagles.

Human hair will keep bunnies out of the garden but I don’t know about rats.

I had rats in my garage and climbing up in the attic…ICK!…so I put the poison pellets in the garage. Next thing I knew, one had died in the attick above my bathroom and stunk the place up for a week, and another was stuck-dead-trying to get out under a roof tile. Big rats. They’ve never been back, and that was about six years ago.

Also, there is a company out of florida that makes hair mats for farmers and gardeners. They get the hair from barbers in China. They are made in circles or strips. The hair prevents weeds from growing due to lack of sun but it nourishes the plants. Sort of creepy but it is good for the environment.

Where do you all live that you’ve got rats like that?

Sounds seriously icky.

the really big rats are in DC and they can only be controlled by lobbyists, I heard.

K Street?

coke to you emerson

I think we got some of that single malt left, Newt. Coming your way!

Sorry you had to leave early. It was fun and Nahant’s better half treated Suze and I to a mini-concert. The lady has a set of pipes!

Hi Mary!

Wow, that is creepy being China. Our kids had a great opportunity to study violin with a young incredibly talented man from China. He had stories of children lashed to benches by hooks inserted thru their buttocks as slave labor. His family was forced to live in a huge drain pipe,with many others, during an earthquake event.For several years. I always wanted to ask him about the fact thatt his father was a reknown violinist in a time when that was a symbol of the “Western” and therefore, unacceptable China. We didn’t have that kind of relationship.
Uhm, ,maybe I’m not the only weird influence on their lives. I thought it was all the anti-war demonstrations. Maybe Wai had an influence beyond taking them to Susuki Violin #7.

lobbyists increase the rat population

We live in the Puget Sound. We’re going through an invasion of Norwegian Rats, probably ship cargo. And a blooming of native wood rats. Both look way cuter than the average street rat.
But in the end a rat’s a rat.

I think the rat personality isn’t confined to rats.
We need “black boxes” for CongressCritters. Just not poison. Probably accountability.
Like, why can Blue Dog Rick Larsen of WA. constantly go under the radar? Why is he immune to scrutiny? The man’s a dick!!!!!!

Evenin’ all !

All my rats guests are asleep so I get a moment of peace before someone wakes up begging for food. I think I’ll send them to Mary’s yard … *g*

How on Earth do Canukistani rats survive in the searing heat up there?

Lucky you. I’ve got one doing something under the floorboards as I type. I have a gun. I want to shoot it into the floor.
EDITED BY MOERATOR

~~~ModNote: Fantasy violence off of these pages, please.~~~

Southern California. Apparently they are Norwegian rats…Big, too.

Norwegian rat.

Wiki.

They’re Murkan guests … who’re leaving sometime tomorrow.

I know this because I’ve already tossed their belongings on the Lawn ! *g*

I heard that confining people in small boxes, and introducing their phobias (rats!) was perfectly legal. Department of Justice said so.

I don’t mean to imply that I want to shoot anything.
Just that Congress Critters are good at shooting into the floor, with no expected results.
And the owl is hollering” Who cooks for you. who cooks for you”. Going to have to poison that owl……/s/.

Where they belong! Those Murkans got no class!

Grab your coat, Mable.

Probably all port towns have them now. They’re cuter then sharp-nosed rats, so maybe it’s going to be okay?

Oye … trying to explain to the kids why every sign is metric …

Loo Hoo !

Loved the new name you gave me over at Marcy’s place …

Cuter, but no less hungry.
And a terrific food source, since many more of us will be living out of doors soon.

Exxon owns a race horse now. petrofilly.

707 !!!

Loo Hoo, I didn’t know you had retired! Congratulations!

g’nite all….

Yeah, don’t worry. My problem was that I STUPIDLY left the trash in the garage. Once I moved it outside, the rat problem disappeared.

nite teddy. nice to see you at the thing.

G’nite Teddy !

I’m off as well … G’nite all !

Cuz you are.-.-.-.-Petrosilly!

me too
nite you guys

Whoo Hoo!!

Nighters and thanks.

ZZZZZZZ

Nite! zzzzz

Funny you should mention that. Great minds think alike. I’m thinking..meat…organic ..pelts….garden…dehydrate to jerky status.
Then I have to fuck it up by introducing poisons!!! However, I just went out to see if they were taking the $40 bait set-up. No takers in 12 hours.
It’s just like Congress Critters. They can smell the intent and move away. Amazing.

Okay, I’m going to throw this out here to FDL.
IF you had a kick ass recipe for a quick chocolate cake. Fool proof. With a variety of off shoots from the original chocolate cake recipe. I’ve done 8 variations on this one amazing recipe from the 1950’s housewife era. Everyone loves these cakes.
What if we did a “cook in”, sold recipes for a buck. Gave them away. Also,.
Oh,yah, that’s a lot of work. A good recipe has to be tried by strangers or it’s nothing.

Christy often does recipe posts on her Saturday morning “Pull Up A Chair”.