I'm open to the idea of someone mooring their boat in our pond, if it's a picturesque one. They can even live aboard it for a nominal rent. And they can keep all the snapping turtles they catch in exchange for an occasional couple of bowls of snapper soup.
Hunters are always trying to give us venison which we don't like; but snapper soup is another thing entirely. I think our edition of The Joy of Cooking has a recipe starting with the necessary cutting off of the head of the snapper with an ax. I'll provide the chopping block and the ax.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/business/01boats.html?_r=3&hp
Meanwhile, in other news: Detroit is reverting to the wild and there's a wide awake fellow selling skinned raccoons for $12 each. Slick Willy took his woman in 1970; but apparently he didn't take the Coonman's hunting dogs or his down home skills. I like his little touch of leaving one paw on the carcass.
"The paw is old school," says Glemie Dean Beasley, a Detroit raccoon hunter and meat salesman. "It lets the customers know it's not a cat or dog."
During the seven or so minute video that accompanies the newspaper article the Coonman channels Julia Child with a nice raccoon cooking demonstration. And that's before he plays and sings a nice blues song that's got a tempo perfect for our level of West Coast Swing skill.
Unfortunately I've only seen raccoons two times since we bought our land in 1978; although there's no question that they're regularly around. Linda just pointed out a raccoon paw print to me down at the creek a few days ago. I may look into learning how to set a snare. That raccoon recipe looked mighty inviting; although I might be tempted to present it to Linda as rabbit if I ever get the chance to try it out.
The Coonman also sells rabbits and squirrels if you happen to be passing through Detroit and want to work up to the raccoon sort of sideways. I bet he would have a field day with the geese around here and up and down along the river drives in Philly.
The quotes from Beasley are priceless. An example - "Today people got no skill and things is getting worse," he laments. "What people gonna do? They gonna eat each other up is what they gonna do." That's a fellow I'd like to know.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090402/METRO08/904020395/To+urban+hunter++next+meal+is+scampering+by
And, in yet other news, here's a nice, very reasonable, well spoken Arab fellow who wants to come and make an impact on a neighborhood near you.
http://www.tangle.com/view_video.php?viewkey=0861ff3eabea1ceb73e4
Showing posts with label pond. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pond. Show all posts
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Sheepherders
Linda reported that the sheepherders who live cross the creek in Mom and Pop's old house had a couple of their goats out on the ice on our pond this morning. The goats are usually in a pen next to the shed I built for our horses twenty-nine or thirty years ago. Meanwhile the noble shed has been reduced to being a shelter for two exceedingly dirty off-white sheep and one less obviously dirty brown sheep. Bah!
The horse shed has held up amazingly well over the years, and I'm pretty proud of its post and beam design. I suspect that the trunks of the cedar trees I used for its supports have rotted off underground by now; but the thing still stands proud. If only I had built it on our side of the property line rather than on Mom and Pop's side. It would make a great drying and storage place for wood although it wouldn't be very well sited for that.
It's been about as cold as it gets around here for the past couple of days and we've been burning wood at a prodigious rate. Jas was talking yesterday morning about those electric space heaters they've been selling all over the place; but those surely can't hold a candle to a nice hot woodstove. It's not only physically luxurious to sit near; it's also morally luxurious to contemplate. The trees take the carbon out of the air and we put it back into the air.
The horse shed has held up amazingly well over the years, and I'm pretty proud of its post and beam design. I suspect that the trunks of the cedar trees I used for its supports have rotted off underground by now; but the thing still stands proud. If only I had built it on our side of the property line rather than on Mom and Pop's side. It would make a great drying and storage place for wood although it wouldn't be very well sited for that.
It's been about as cold as it gets around here for the past couple of days and we've been burning wood at a prodigious rate. Jas was talking yesterday morning about those electric space heaters they've been selling all over the place; but those surely can't hold a candle to a nice hot woodstove. It's not only physically luxurious to sit near; it's also morally luxurious to contemplate. The trees take the carbon out of the air and we put it back into the air.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Surprise! There is a yellow water lily blooming in the pond
Louise Venezia's husband gave me three water lily bulbs after he, Louise and I ate the excellent cheese steak he went out and got while we were planting flowers at Mom's and Grandmom's graves down at St. Patrick's cemetary earlier in the Spring. Louise had asked me to come over and help her to do the planting when we sat together at the service for Matty Raimo.
One of the bulbs apparently didn't survive the two moves I had to make of them as water levels in the pond have receeded with the drought, but the other two plants seem reasonably healthy. I didn't expect blooms this year, but there it is. It's one pathetic little flower but it's hopefully a sign that the lillies will survive and spread to take over the pond and displace or at least hold down the algae.
Meanwhile, today I'm agitated about the subject of nuclear waste. The whole controversy over nuclear waste makes me wonder whether we deserve to survive as a species. The Egyptians were able to build pyramids 5,000 years ago that have survived quite well. A couple of pyramids could hold all the nuclear waste we can conceivably generate in the next 1,000 years. And you could tuck a couple of pyramids into Death Valley in spots where only a supernaturally dedicated hiker could reach them, spots that would bother no one. Surround them with a ten foot fence patrolled by marines who have to go into the desert regularly to train anyway and they would be safe from anything short of an invasion by Martians.
As to worrying about primitive peoples breaking into them and burning their fingers in 100,000 years I can't understand the concern about stuff like that unless we're going to start fencing off volcanos and hot springs all over the world so primitive people don't fall into them in the event civilization collapses.
Update - maybe we do have to worry about an invasion by Martians. It turns out that a former astronaut believes NASA is covering up visits by aliens - see below from an Australian site news.com.au
FORMER NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens exist.And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions - but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades. Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us
One of the bulbs apparently didn't survive the two moves I had to make of them as water levels in the pond have receeded with the drought, but the other two plants seem reasonably healthy. I didn't expect blooms this year, but there it is. It's one pathetic little flower but it's hopefully a sign that the lillies will survive and spread to take over the pond and displace or at least hold down the algae.
Meanwhile, today I'm agitated about the subject of nuclear waste. The whole controversy over nuclear waste makes me wonder whether we deserve to survive as a species. The Egyptians were able to build pyramids 5,000 years ago that have survived quite well. A couple of pyramids could hold all the nuclear waste we can conceivably generate in the next 1,000 years. And you could tuck a couple of pyramids into Death Valley in spots where only a supernaturally dedicated hiker could reach them, spots that would bother no one. Surround them with a ten foot fence patrolled by marines who have to go into the desert regularly to train anyway and they would be safe from anything short of an invasion by Martians.
As to worrying about primitive peoples breaking into them and burning their fingers in 100,000 years I can't understand the concern about stuff like that unless we're going to start fencing off volcanos and hot springs all over the world so primitive people don't fall into them in the event civilization collapses.
Update - maybe we do have to worry about an invasion by Martians. It turns out that a former astronaut believes NASA is covering up visits by aliens - see below from an Australian site news.com.au
FORMER NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens exist.And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions - but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades. Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us
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