Back in the Saddle
18/05/16 07:05
Geez, Louise. A little fast forwarding for your viewing pleasure. Donald Trump is now the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party since the departure of his last two republican party rivals, Cruz and Kasich. Both dropped out after Trump won a resounding victory in the state of Indiana. He beat Cruz by a good 16 points. Indiana was a state where Cruz held a comfortable lead just thirty days leading up to the day of the primary. Landslide wins in the Northeast by Trump in the weeks leading up to the Indiana primary gave the good folks in Indiana sufficient pause and perhaps more than enough to want get behind an apparent winner instead of propping up and fueling the #NeverTrump crowd. Maybe there is something to be said for what refer to as winners momentum. Ten contests still remain in the primary season and while Trump has the luxury of putting together his team and formulating a strategy for beating Hillary Clinton in November, she is still fending off the socialist Bernie Sanders who refuses to leave the race despite very long odds of acquiring the required number of delegates by the time the primary season comes to an end on June 7th. Needless to say the democratic party is up in arms that their planned coronation for Clinton cannot proceed as planned as long as she is fending off Bernie "feel the Bern" Sanders. It goes without saying that she needs his followers which are substantial in number and, more importantly, a demographic that is significant in numbers and not interested in Clinton's message or history in the least.
I don't know why I'm dragging my feet on the garden. I suppose that by the time Memorial Day rolls around I'll feel the normal obligation to stick a few tomato plants in the ground and maybe a couple of other things like cucumbers and the like. I'm keeping an eye out for weeds and other things that might take root while I otherwise ignore that space in our yard and stand ready to uproot them should they appear. I even bought some black matting to lay over the soil as a preventative measure but have yet to get around to doing that. All in good time I suppose. With nobody chasing me I can do as I like. Ignore it, embrace it, or sit on the fence. Pick your poison, dude. Without a doubt I will, come September, wish I had planted tomatoes if I don't do it in the coming weeks. It's certainly not as though I don't have the wherewithal or time to get the job done. Having said that, it is safe to say that I am not nor will I ever be a slave to our yard. I do the absolute minimum which is not much more than keeping it trimmed so as not to draw unneeded attention from neighbors. I think I've always known that about myself but working a normal 9 to 5 masks a lot of things. Now that I don't work a 9 to 5 the mask is off and quite frankly it's too late to change the trajectory of my horticultural ambitions even if I wanted to at this late date. What's done is done.
I'm slightly annoyed with the goings on with the bluebird house that I put up in our back yard 2-3 years ago. We've had bluebirds express interest in nesting there in years past but nothing close to what we're seeing this year. It's encouraging. At least it was until some other unknown species, maybe a sparrow, seems to have ousted the bluebirds that were wanting to taking up residence there and who now sits in the entrance to the birdhouse looking out as though it is his home and exclusively so. I guess he or she who rules the roost gets to keep the roost. Makes sense to me but I didn't buy the darn birdhouse to provide a sanctuary for the common sparrow. That was not my intent. And now I'd like to know how to go about keeping the birds that I don't like out of the house so that birds I do like can occupy it. That may be above my pay grade although I've been know to research and solve stranger problems. Maybe I will just clean out the bird house and the little critters can start all over again. Odds are that persistence will pay off and we'll have a brood of bluebirds taking advantage of the house and raising their young there as mother nature would have it.
While I'm at it I might want to solve the problem of whatever it is that keeps emptying out our hummingbird feeders overnight. As a practical matter, whatever it is seems to come along in the overnight hours and tips the feeder just enough to allow the nectar to empty leaving the feeder completely empty of its contents by the following morning. I suppose I could position it such that it is no longer accessible but then again I'd have to know what I was dealing with first and I clearly do not. Is it the deer that reside in the woods surrounding our house or perhaps the red squirrels who are just conniving enough to get the job done but elusive enough so as not to be seen. I'll have to wait for Nancy to concoct another batch of hummingbird food before getting back to work on that irksome problem so there may be time for some additional research.
Check that. I'm taking over that responsibility. It might never get done if I leave it to Nancy. She has enough on her mind these days. And what the bejesus is pulling down the bird feeder in our front yard? The is the second time in as many weeks that I'm waking up after a good nights sleep only to find the feeder lying on the ground. Seems some animal had just enough cunning to pull it down even though it was tethered pretty darn good and even rolled it around a bit but was not able to gain access to the store of nuts inside the clear plastic cylinder. I'm suspecting that it may be a bear but there are no bear hereabouts so I just don't know. A bear might well destroy the feeder as I sit here thinking about it and the feeder isn't any worse for wear so just needs to be rehung so I'll have to give this one a little more thought. If it's just a matter of rehanging it then maybe my knickers are not in the bunch that I thought they were so I can rehang it and move on. Just saying.
I don't know why I'm dragging my feet on the garden. I suppose that by the time Memorial Day rolls around I'll feel the normal obligation to stick a few tomato plants in the ground and maybe a couple of other things like cucumbers and the like. I'm keeping an eye out for weeds and other things that might take root while I otherwise ignore that space in our yard and stand ready to uproot them should they appear. I even bought some black matting to lay over the soil as a preventative measure but have yet to get around to doing that. All in good time I suppose. With nobody chasing me I can do as I like. Ignore it, embrace it, or sit on the fence. Pick your poison, dude. Without a doubt I will, come September, wish I had planted tomatoes if I don't do it in the coming weeks. It's certainly not as though I don't have the wherewithal or time to get the job done. Having said that, it is safe to say that I am not nor will I ever be a slave to our yard. I do the absolute minimum which is not much more than keeping it trimmed so as not to draw unneeded attention from neighbors. I think I've always known that about myself but working a normal 9 to 5 masks a lot of things. Now that I don't work a 9 to 5 the mask is off and quite frankly it's too late to change the trajectory of my horticultural ambitions even if I wanted to at this late date. What's done is done.
I'm slightly annoyed with the goings on with the bluebird house that I put up in our back yard 2-3 years ago. We've had bluebirds express interest in nesting there in years past but nothing close to what we're seeing this year. It's encouraging. At least it was until some other unknown species, maybe a sparrow, seems to have ousted the bluebirds that were wanting to taking up residence there and who now sits in the entrance to the birdhouse looking out as though it is his home and exclusively so. I guess he or she who rules the roost gets to keep the roost. Makes sense to me but I didn't buy the darn birdhouse to provide a sanctuary for the common sparrow. That was not my intent. And now I'd like to know how to go about keeping the birds that I don't like out of the house so that birds I do like can occupy it. That may be above my pay grade although I've been know to research and solve stranger problems. Maybe I will just clean out the bird house and the little critters can start all over again. Odds are that persistence will pay off and we'll have a brood of bluebirds taking advantage of the house and raising their young there as mother nature would have it.
While I'm at it I might want to solve the problem of whatever it is that keeps emptying out our hummingbird feeders overnight. As a practical matter, whatever it is seems to come along in the overnight hours and tips the feeder just enough to allow the nectar to empty leaving the feeder completely empty of its contents by the following morning. I suppose I could position it such that it is no longer accessible but then again I'd have to know what I was dealing with first and I clearly do not. Is it the deer that reside in the woods surrounding our house or perhaps the red squirrels who are just conniving enough to get the job done but elusive enough so as not to be seen. I'll have to wait for Nancy to concoct another batch of hummingbird food before getting back to work on that irksome problem so there may be time for some additional research.
Check that. I'm taking over that responsibility. It might never get done if I leave it to Nancy. She has enough on her mind these days. And what the bejesus is pulling down the bird feeder in our front yard? The is the second time in as many weeks that I'm waking up after a good nights sleep only to find the feeder lying on the ground. Seems some animal had just enough cunning to pull it down even though it was tethered pretty darn good and even rolled it around a bit but was not able to gain access to the store of nuts inside the clear plastic cylinder. I'm suspecting that it may be a bear but there are no bear hereabouts so I just don't know. A bear might well destroy the feeder as I sit here thinking about it and the feeder isn't any worse for wear so just needs to be rehung so I'll have to give this one a little more thought. If it's just a matter of rehanging it then maybe my knickers are not in the bunch that I thought they were so I can rehang it and move on. Just saying.