To · Talk · of · Many · Things · ...

I just don't understand. I keep working on my tado list, but it never gets shorter.

The good news is I'm getting plenty of exercise, and I'm having fun. Kathy and I are racing to get some yard chores done before the hot weather arrives and takes the fun out of working outside.

Two large stumps were removed. One removal included the whole tree, the other is a cleanup from the tree I removed a years. I have a half-dozen dead pine trees yet to go.

After some dirtwork, we finished landscaping and mulching the front of house. Kathy likes that. The big benefit for me is mowing/weed-whacking will be easier because we rounded several inside corners.
(The photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.)We also cleaned, caulked, and painted a half-dozen window frames. I'm ready to call the front of the house done for this year. The potted plants belong to Kathy. She and her cousin Lynn are enthusiastic about the numerous varieties of 'hen and chicks' plants.

The dog you see is Zero, our only dog since Mike passed this winter. Zero is about 16 years old, and she spends a lot of time on that cushion when she is not sitting in the yard watching me work.

Inside the house, I built another 'honey-do' closet that Kathy was filling almost as fast as I built.
Already, Kathy is saying, "You know Honey, this tall cabinet beside the refrigerator would work better if you built a few drawers in it."

Our tomato plants are on the cusp of producing. I took pictures of the garden because an Oklahoman always expects a spring wind and hail storm to blow in and ruin everything. The complete lack of storms this year is a bit unsettling. Not bad for a low place I built up by dumping grass clippings for a half-dozen years. There's still too much nitrogen in the mix so the green is excessive while the tomato count is low, but it is a big improvement over last year. I considered trimming vines like many do to improve the tomatoes, then decided it would be wise to set as many blossoms as possible before the heat of summer arrives. I raised all the tomato plants from seed.

I end with more proof of Kathy's green thumb. The orchids I bought her for Mother's Day last year that she nurtured over the winter in the sun room have bloomed.And yes, since she already had orchids, I didn't buy her any this year.

From lo5an, an IT job-opening in the south

For lunch the other day, I ate the last of our smoked brisket. It was delicious. I decided to take advantage of the nice weather we're having to smoke some meat for the summer.

I introduced twenty-one chicken breast halves to pecan wood smoke this morning. They were boneless and skinless. Bone-in chicken breasts are suddenly hard to find in quantity. This will be our first time to smoke blsl chicken breasts. The other easy choices yesterday were whole chickens or chicken legs. While I like freshly-smoked dark meat, I find it not so tasty the next day or after a while in the freezer.

The smoking process is going well, but I realized about noon that I had neglected to buy an important item yesterday.

Beer.

Examples of Cox DNA: one of the older ones with the newest one. Congratulations, Chris and Angie!

Also Congratulations to one of Kelley DNA, the third eldest of the newest generation on prom night. Katie, a straight 'A' student heads to a university this spring with a softball scholarship.

Last night's storms produced tornadoes across central Oklahoma. A F2 visited L&A's hometown. It downed powerlines, did a bit of other damage, some injuries, but no deaths and no damage to L&A's townhouse.

The bad new is the weather guys have told us that the real action will come tonight between 5 and 12 pm.. As you can imagine, everyone is hunkering down in anticipation. I called my brother who lives in OKC. He and his wife were out buying some duffel bags for their valuables. They plan to spend the night with their daughter who has a newly-installed saferoom. Their daughter is understandably spooked. She, her husband, and their two kids live near the path of the sidewalk-roller tornado that hit Piedmont last year. What I failed to understand was why my brother and his wife planned to spend the night with the daughter. After all, my brother has a cellar which would be even safer than a saferoom. The answer is my brother suffers from a family affliction, that of procrastination. The rusted hinges on the cellar door are in need of repair.

That reminds me of an old story.

The small town where I grew up had only a few well-off citizens. Among them were owners of the only bank in town. The owners shared a city block on the outskirts of town. Actually, thinking about it, that's not a good description since our small town was pretty much all outskirts. Anyway, one owner, an elderly widow, lived in a large house on the south half block, and the other owner, a never married elderly bachelor, lived in a little shotgun-styled single bedroom house on the north half. The widow's only daughter and son-in-law lived across the street from her. They all shared the cellar at the widow's house, except the old bachelor rarely bothered going to the cellar.

So, a tornado blew through one night taking the top half the town with it. The widow, the daughter, and the son-in-law spent the night in the cellar. The cellar was old, built when the widow was a young bride. It had no door latch, which was normal for that time and place. Closure was accomplished by a rope long enough to be dogged secure when the door was shut or when partially open. The rope dog in that cellar was as old as you'd expect. The wind that night broke the dog and the door was loosed. Fortunately, the son-in-law grabbed the rope and was able to pull the door shut. The violence outside increased and it took the man, his wife, and the old widow all frantically pulling on the rope to keep the cellar door from breaking loose at its hinges. The wind shrieked and howled its displeasure.

Imagine the excitement of the moment and the story they had to tell the next morning at the bank, one of the few buildings in town that had escaped major damage. That is, until the other owner showed, battered and bandaged. The tornado had taken him for a short ride. As usual, he'd procrastinated, deciding to seek shelter at the last moment. He'd pulled on the cellar door and had it half-opened only to have it jerked from his hands and slammed shut again. The old bachelor desperately screamed and tugged and tugged on the door until the wind finally carried him off. Imagine his excitement.

Genes, DNA, and a nice surprise this spring. The Plum Pudding WAVE petunias that we enjoyed last summer whelped a nice volunteer crop of offspring. The petunias were hybrid so it's not surprising they would have unpredictable children. Still, as Kathy pointed out, one can easily see the color palette the experts drew from to make Plum.


The asparagus was not a surprise. Our bed has produced each spring since we planted it 30 odd years ago. Carefree and forgiving, I don't think you can ask for a more productive and easy garden vegetable. The bed is struggling now, suffering from root crowding by, and the shade of, the Dawn Redwood that I planted about the same time. I've ordered sets to start a new bed at the end of my new garden, well way from the redwood. It should last us another thirty years.

God made man, then woman too.
So tis said.
Man could have been the prototype.
The beta test.
And woman, the corrected and improved.
The production model.
This makes perfect sense to me.
But what about the orangutan?

http://www.babyanimalz.com/baby_orangutan_sees_hand.php

I'm still searching for my Cox ancestors, and I've posted some recent studies on my other blog. I decided against cross-posting the information here. Anyone interested in Cox genealogy should follow the link to http://ztlcox.com/.

I've started my St Pat's day by relaxing in a recliner with my webbook on my lap. The corned beef and cabbage will wait until tomorrow. L&A are here today and I've promised to make another batch of posole this evening. Hmm, I wonder. Corned beef posole?

My main effort this week can be expressed in a single word: yardwork. I've been cutting down and removing old dying trees and tree stumps and weeding beds to prepare for planting some shrubs. The tomatoes I grew from seed are outside enjoying the sun (I hope).

Tomorrow I vote in the Republican primary. As a fiscal conservative, I'm disappointed with my choices for a presidential candidate. None of the candidates are anywhere close to being a fiscal conservative. Two of the front runners are lightweights, definitely lacking the intelligence and finesse required of a president in these troubling times. Another one has a political history of dishonesty and double-talk. I didn't care for his antics at that time, and I sure wouldn't want him to be president now. Then there is the pacifist libertarian. It's quite a group. I'm hoping there will be a 'none of the above' choice.