Accessible Gardening: #20 Practical Matters for Physically Challenged Gardeners, 1 by seacanepain

seacanepain wrote:
Ah, musical terms! Thanks, Carrie! Most of those would sail passed Kay unrecognized. She loves listening to music, but she is purely a consumer. She has never studied music and doesn’t play an instrument. I wasn’t the talented musician in my family, but we all learned music the way we learned to walk and talk. It was just part of the environment.

TTC, montibank, was a new one to me. Thanks.

I had seen the word “duff” in print and guessed its meaning correctly from context. I just didn’t think it was a real word. I mean, if someone had tried to use it in Scrabble, I would have called them on it and hauled down the OED. The only occasion where I saw it used it was preceded by fluffy making it look and sound like the writer was channeling Dr. Seuss. A scientist exploring the canopy of a redwood fell. He survived to everyone’s surprise because he landed in a deep layer of FLUFFY DUFF beneath the tree. Okay, it’s a real word. If the writer had been able to resist tacking fluffy in front of it, I might have realized that. Couldn’t the scientist have fallen into a downy layer of duff instead?

When I hear environmentalist talk about the death of the printed word as a good thing because it saves trees, I remember a plot twist in one of my favorite Terry Brooks novels (Antrax: The Voyage of the Jerle Shanara, Book II). The gist of the story is that our generation created a repository of information to make it easier to rebuild civilization after an inevitable apocalypse. The O’Henty twist is that this treasury of our civilization was stored in computer banks making it useless to the primitive remnant who survived. The hero makes the hallowing journey to the fortress library, manages to get inside and then…. There is nothing to be found he recognizes as a book. The humming machines are a complete mystery. I think Shakespeare is worth the sacrifice of a few trees.

I have a long border that is filled with 20+ varieties of daylilies. I was inordinately proud of weeding the entire length of the border yesterday. Then, I come here to brag and read you basically dug up your whole back yard, TTC. ROFL! I’m still gonna crow about what I did.

Yeah, I’m feeling it today too. It is not so much that my back is hurting. I took a page out of my elder’s book and sat on the ground to do the job. I’m just out of shape from all the laying around.

I guess you’ve got plenty of aloe to treat that sunburn? I learned something I thought was interesting while I was reading up on prickly pear. People have also used its flesh to treat burns. You’ve got to love the way Nature set people up for problems like sunburn, but then provides the solution in the same environment. It is like the way jewelweed inevitably grows near the poison ivy. Let us know if you want some African aloe (soap aloe) to go with your Aloe vera, TTC. I think soap aloe is a little tougher and it definitely grows faster.

I hear what you are saying, Beth. I can emotionally afford to be more civilized. Kay had her face rearranged a little, but came out amazingly unscaved compared to the other women these creeps fixated on. She was much older than the other victims who were barely into adulthood. One of the girls was literally butchered alive and partially beheaded. I have never even seen or heard of a cat or wolverine mauling its prey to the extent this young woman was mauled and those are the most ghoulish animals I know of. The girl’s father sat through the full trial and heard all the forensic evidence. I’m not sure I could live my beliefs in his shoes. I think he pushed for the death penalty. (I’m not certain. I was in the Middle East during the trial.) His daughter was a late life child and he will probably not live to see justice carried out. What I do know is that executing this less-than-animal excuse for a human being will not bring his daughter back or erase any of the suffering she endured. I know revenge tastes sweet on the tongue, but can turn to ashes in the throat and cause a person to psychologically choke. “Judge not least ye be judge” applies to this father also, however. Nadi became my ward when she was 14. She is the closest thing I have to a daughter. Not that long ago I was ready to rip and tear just because the crazy neighbor was playing psychological intimidation games. If the father sincerely believes executing this criminal would bring some sort of peace and closure to the family, I know I could not deny him after all this family has endured. I would try to discourage him because I don’t believe it would give him the satisfaction he thinks it would. If he insisted, I would not stand in his way. No violent crime affects only the two parties. The people most affected by the crime should have the loudest voice when it comes to sentencing especially in cases like this where the victims did not even know the perpetrators before the crime. I think it was the sheer brutality of the crime coupled with his cool demeanor in court that elicited the death penalty. One of his victims survived because he thought she was dead. The evidence of his guilt is beyond question. If I believed in the death penalty, this would be the kind of case where it would be appropriate. As long as we have a prison system that can keep sub-humans like this behind bars, I can afford to be high-minded. (That sub-human comment would destroy any chance of passing a security clearance to be a prison guard, wouldn’t it? I bet it is very hard to get such a clearance.) If our prison population continues to increase and we can’t afford to keep it up, the rules change. Hey, it gives a desert community a way to improve its economics. Deserts are good places to have prisons.



On a subject where my opinion actually accomplishes something, I will try filling the new raised bed with the compost. We try to add a truckload to the cultivated areas every year. (It is cheaper by the truckload than the bag. I could not afford to do this if I purchased by the bag.) It sounds like as long as the compost isn’t still hot, fully decomposed, I should be okay. That’s good. It’s a lot easier to move than soil and the nursery loads it for us. Nadi will still gripe about having to clean “her” truck, but not as much as she would about moving that much heavy soil.

I only now notice what scent figs have. These are an unknown variety that fruit very late. We’ve picked them as late as November when there were no early frost. The Brown Turkey figs that fruit in mid-summer are a safer bet. We’ve already had our first cool mornings, but it is expected to warm back up. It will be a race to see if these ripen in time.

(Jim)

Photo: noID fig variety.