I Think

Would you explain this one?

Are you familiar with Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men?

Thank you. Yes, I am. Maybe I missed the reference to it.

I just popped off. My brother Sam and I often threw these things at each other. Once, I called him on the phone to ask him what is a kout? Even when I went so far as to tell him they are always free (free kout. Get it?) he failed to grasp it. When finally he realized it was a play on freak out, he hung up on me, likely disgusted. I am something of a wise guy, often.

None, paintings are in my view. To the side I have a narrow table with some landscape reference books and dictionaries. In the bookshelves holding up the door the computer sits on, I have telephone books, english usage books, a near useless albuquerque planting guide I bought when I first got here, and lots of paper and envelope and file folder stuff.

My treasury of present books to keep are sitting on shoe shelves, yes, shoe shelves, in my bedroom. Presently they are dusty, after a plumbing renewal effort.

In the storage room are books in containers, books I need to donate to the right place or sell - re italy or landscape architecture/architecture. Back in the computer room, a side wall has garage type shelving with my art books that I haven't been able to stand giving away or selling to a used book store.. I have bungie straps on the sides so books don't just sail out. Those books are a ballast, or is that word I want 'buttress'.

Which is partly why we like you.

I have given away many fine books that I would love to revisit. Hopefully, the recipients got something out of them.

1324a. Discovered the tube connecting my radiator to the overflow bottle had come off. Don't know how long I drove with the system presumably sucking air. I clamped it on and put antifreeze in the bottle. I don't know if I should have done more.
1325a. Mowing the yard today. One of the back wheels corroded off of the mower and I put it back with self tapping screws and stabilized it with wire. So far it works well enough.
1326a. I discovered that pulling up the extra moringa plants accelerates growth for the ones remaining. The first one I did this for doubled in size very quickly. I guess that when two are standing together they struggle against each other instead of freely growing.
1327a. I have to do a required on line course most months, and repeat every year. This month it is "Preventing Sexual Harassment." Last year, I passed this one with a perfect score.

1328a. I tried to transplant the last moringa sprout that came up. But it was well on the way to dying by the time I pulled it out again and determined to consume it. The leaves were already getting dry and flaky. The root looked much like a white radish. I washed it in a colander and then bathed it in colloidal silver. Since the literature suggests the entire tree is edible, both cooked and raw, I bunched up all the parts and stuffed it in my mouth. Eaten like this, it sends to me a radish taste. The plant is called some sort of horseradish by name, in many places. Since I don't ever eat anything with horseradish, I must rely on my own experience.
1329a. I don't like that they moved The Mentalist TV show to Sunday, but I never watch the reruns anyway.
1330a. That storm heading into Florida still sounds pretty mean, in the newscasts. One woman is dead and a baby injured. The eye is still over the water -?

Yeah! Very sad... that woman who died saving her baby was found outside sheltering the baby from harm.

oops: she was found in her home.

1331a. I had to put a new coil in an A/C yesterday. For the maintenance man this is a much more difficult undertaking than it would be for the hired A/C company technician. The technician arrives with a truckload of everything he needs and gets right to it. The maintenance man has to figure out where this is and that is and run to the store for a missing item. He has to quit occasionally to answer the demands emanating out of the office and other residents. Yesterday, I dropped my tube cutter behind the still ensconced coil. Meaning, since I could find only one cutter, I had to run to the hardware store to get another. Once the coil came out, I had two cutters.
1332a. The TV guy says we may get a few storms with straight line winds this afternoon. Not a real high percentage.
1333a. Some say that Bob Dylan does not truly write his own stuff, but cobbles it from the work of others. I think I recall that Shakespeare based some of his plays on the work of other authors. However it went down, Shakespeare is never called a fake because of it. Dylan adds that spark of genius that makes even a line such as "that big fat moon will shine like a spoon" seem original.
1334a. I had dropped out of Angry Birds, only to peek in and discover some bounders had usurped a number of my crowns. Since, I have been steadily taking them back.

1335a. I had been about 90% convinced I ought to cut down the fig tree to make room for the moringa trees. After all, I had never been able to compete with the birds once it produced a few good figs and it rarely had a decent crop. But, I went out early today and picked about ten plump ones. This afternoon, the hot sun had already ripened about twelve more, so I got them too. I suppose I should let it live, for now.

1336a. Ask not for whom the bell tolls. That's none of your business.

Who gives a fig, Newton?

Them figs is fat and sweet. Spriggin' birds didn't get but five or six.

I know with blueberry and other berry bushes, I used to put light color mesh or netting over the tops to keep the squirrels and birds away from them.
Can that help with these figs?

Maybe. I wish I had had some of that stuff when the grapes were popping out. Dingasted bugs ate them all in one day.

Squirrels ate the grapes off the vine at the farm where I used to house-sit. There were 5 Border Collies and still they ate to their heart's content.

I knew a 95 year old man that kept a pump action BB gun handy for the squirrels. Can't say I agree with that, but those little beggars can be a nuisance. I think I wrote on here about some that moved into my house and I had to trap them and take them for a long ride.