tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41587501018849606322024-03-18T21:46:25.826-07:00Verona's JournalUrban farming and tales.veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.comBlogger102125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-10887324479246031052011-10-14T08:11:00.000-07:002011-10-14T08:11:45.533-07:00What is this weed?
I've spent the last year trying to figure out how to have a grass-free yard. It's harder than I thought it would be. I covered most of the backyard in a layer of old cardboard and covered that in mulch from the city landfill and in pine needles from Lowe's. Bermuda grass laughed at my efforts. My layer of hard-won mulch was covered in verdure within six weeks. That's fine, as long as theveronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-35053738812981122972011-10-06T07:57:00.000-07:002011-10-06T07:59:56.808-07:00I Salute The Late Jake MidnightJake Midnight died about a year ago. I've written about him before here and here. I met him in the mid-90s, I think in the neighborhood coffee shop. We used to talk about getting out of debt and off the grid. He was more successful than I was with that kind of thing overall, and the chapper is, by the time I finally managed to get a yard and means to some self-sufficiency, he'd veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-76543675387474830012011-09-20T05:09:00.000-07:002011-09-20T05:09:34.037-07:00Significant Others That Aren't People
Earlier this season an episode of Doctor Who made me reflect on a similar situation in my own life. In "The Doctor's Wife," a living woman comes to embody the spirit of the Doctor's beloved TARDIS. As the Doctor's transportation, the TARDIS is an essential component of the Doctor himself. After all, nobody would watch a show about a bored Time Lord who did nothing but stay at home on on veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-63043919967712509752011-09-13T05:57:00.001-07:002011-09-13T07:12:42.678-07:00Reverse Feed BagOn Sunday a friend of ours told us about an innovative and inexpensive strategy she developed for keeping vomit off the couch.This friend, we'll call her Mareva, spent a semester in Ireland when she was in college. Drago, one of her old Irish housemates, is visiting her now, and they came over for dinner. Mareva told us when she arrived at her student residence in Cork, she walked in to find a veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-51787713169765522622011-04-06T09:47:00.000-07:002011-09-15T07:20:48.098-07:00Wrestling Fans 1, Ceramic Clowns 0I haven't seen my cousin Hoyt in a long time - he's MIA; perhaps he joined the witness protection program. Nobody's seen or heard from him in forever. My old friend Phoenicia and I have been waxing nostalgic about him lately. We've left messages for him at his job but he doesn't return calls. He is on of the most fun people I've ever ever killed time with, so in honor of Hoyt I'm going to dust veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-14072948307040474812011-04-06T09:31:00.000-07:002011-04-06T09:46:32.710-07:00Squirrel Stomachs Are Bottomless PitsAnybody have ideas about how to keep these guys out of the bird feeder? How can so much food disappear into such a small animal?veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-35209908117157359582011-04-04T10:08:00.000-07:002011-04-04T10:27:13.907-07:00My neighbor, Mrs. Brown SnakeWas excited to find this Brown Snake under a paving stone in the yard. I hear they eat slugs. Yesterday was fabulous. I planed 3 Nanking Cherry trees and 3 American Plums. I have raspberry, elderberry, and dwarf blueberries on the way. I wanted to plant some apple trees but now I don't think I'll have the space. I moved a small mulberry tree from the north side of the house near the AC unit to veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-64467842569187935202011-03-03T15:46:00.000-08:002011-03-04T04:19:07.240-08:00SetbacksToday I spent all afternoon making a new cage to cover raised beds. After much profanity, fit throwing, deep breathing episodes to regain calm, two trips to the hardware store, and glue (a lot of which I got on myself), I went out a few minutes ago to carry my new project off the deck and into the yard. I bumped the railing on my way out and the whole thing sprang apart.This latest version of veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-69483659911590503672011-02-14T05:00:00.000-08:002011-02-14T05:19:18.450-08:00Groundhog ProtectionThis is the cage we built to keep groundhogs out of our raised bed. I call it Botsford's Incarcitorium For Wayward Produce. It's made of PVC and chicken wire, and was both more expensive and more complicated to make than I anticipated. I don't remember exactly but I think it might have been around $50, and it took all day Sunday pretty much to put it together. I had planned to do it myself but veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-84040660335648633832011-02-07T05:21:00.000-08:002011-02-07T05:48:56.636-08:00Getting started at lastI started this blog because I wanted to write about Permaculture and self-reliance projects. At the time I'd taken a Permaculture course but lived in a 3rd floor walkup in a condo building where the board was hostile to gardening activities on the grounds. After much drama, suspense, and a lot longer than we originally anticipated, we have at last acquired a yard - and it's not in a historic veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-7813586798715018042010-04-28T17:19:00.000-07:002010-04-28T17:23:18.213-07:00Jean Blues UpdateI recently got around to buying some iron-on patches for the holey jeans mentioned in my last post. I followed the directions for applying them. Then I washed the jeans, and the patch came off for the most part. The parts that stayed stuck are attached to the fibers within the tear, so if I try to rip it off it'll make the rip worse. I am really bitter about this.veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-51562000968602746052009-08-31T04:22:00.000-07:002009-08-31T07:37:23.850-07:00Jean BluesJeans of this breed are so rare I am almost afraid to wear them because they are so precious. I'll explain why: They neither bare your anal cleft when you stoop (jeans of today), nor make your ass look like an empty sack (jeans of the 80s/ early 90s). They don't grab you around the middle and squish your organs, like Calvin Kleins did in the age of designer jeans, and they don't have that dumbassveronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-91816623895308237382009-08-28T05:52:00.000-07:002009-08-28T06:41:44.682-07:00Alien Planet Needs BandsIf aliens beamed me aboard their ship and said look, we want to clone some musicians so we can bring good music to our home planet, and we need you to recommend some, I'd start with this one:That's Nick Gilder of Hot Child In The City fame. So many of his songs were good, but he's pretty much considered a one-hit wonder. He's still performing in Canada with the band he left right before he hit itveronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-52277566889939745662009-08-11T08:21:00.001-07:002009-08-11T09:12:45.849-07:00Old PeopleWhen I was a kid, I remember hearing adults talk about who'd been in the obituaries lately. Especially my grandmother - she'd ask me "You remember so and so?" and I'd shake my head, and she'd get exasperated and tell me things about that person to jog my memory, to no avail. I'd be thinking, all you adults look alike to me. Then she'd go on and tell me all the details of that person's untimely veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-41934250182197089772009-07-13T08:37:00.000-07:002009-07-14T03:15:35.932-07:00Sado-Masochistic ViolinistSo: To set the scene, I need to explain that I'd just gotten out of graduate school and had a crummy, hateful job that involved talking to demanding people on the phone all day for very little money. But I lived in a fashionably dumpy cheap apartment house with some good female friends for neighbors. We liked to make the scene in halter tops with short skirts and combat boots and drink malt veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-76793294259204693752009-07-06T10:41:00.000-07:002009-07-07T03:34:48.076-07:00Third Grade Jail TripWyatt and I went to see Public Enemies on Sunday. It was okay. Has a lot of jailbreaks and so forth. At dinner we were talking about the movie, and he said he'd seen something on TV once about how prisoners can make weapons out of toothbrushes. "Oh yeah," I said. "They grind them to an edge on the floor to make it sharp. And you can melt them with a lighter too to get the edge started.""How do veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-8091960991594529702009-06-29T04:07:00.000-07:002009-06-29T05:02:22.313-07:00Recent Awkward Guy EventsOn Friday the daughter of a good friend of mine died. I was a little shell-shocked by the news, even though she's been sick for a long time and everybody knew it was coming. I wasn't sure what to do - in those situations you want to be helpful, but you also don't want to intrude during a time when somebody might need some peace and quiet. Nadine, the surviving mother, has plenty of local family veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-89303824618134224782009-06-23T15:21:00.001-07:002009-06-23T15:45:16.519-07:00Summer StuffWe've had enough rain for a change this year, and that must be what's spurred the boom in local four-leaf-clover populations. Before this spring, it'd been years since I'd found one. Now I'm finding them all the time. I sat on a park bench a few weeks ago and counted nine in a nearby patch.There are a lot more things blooming later this year than in recent years, which is cool. And the Orange veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-87995860250791130192009-06-13T03:47:00.000-07:002009-06-15T06:24:35.859-07:00An Exception For The C Word<!-- Butkaj.com Statistics Code -->try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-3181151-469"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}<!-- Butkaj.com Statistics Code -->Normally I'm against the C word, as many women are. But it's the centerpiece of the following story, which is the funniest I've heard in months, so I'll make allowances for it this time:Derrick from downstairs said he used veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-69556232483744242792009-06-09T05:14:00.000-07:002009-06-09T05:37:09.669-07:00Five-Alarm Tick WarningIf you haven't been camping yet this year, take heed if you have plans to go. You may need to keep some plasma in a cooler just in case the ticks you will encounter bleed you almost dry. For some reason, this year there are enough hungry ticks out there to create a rioting stampede the minute a warm-blooded animal such as yourself sets foot in the grass or the woods.During my recent camping trip,veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-71447497120704542912009-05-28T07:08:00.001-07:002009-05-28T08:17:46.315-07:00Holiday RoundupHad a fabulous time in Charleston over Memorial Day weekend. Rode through a lot of flat, green country on the way there. Ate, drank, and lounged by a pool to excess. Walked on a beach in the rain. A change of scenery can be very liberating.Wyatt and I stayed with Claudine and her husband. It's become an annual event. We again sat on their back porch and drank Bombay Dry gin and ginger ale (we veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-39714974928229874242009-05-16T10:35:00.000-07:002009-05-18T05:02:31.363-07:00Graduation GallI went to a recent graduation ceremony that really pissed me off. There was a time in my life when I went to four or five of them every year. While boring, they were all inoffensive. But this one - at a college - really took the shit cake.It was because of the main speaker. We'll call him Fathead O'Douche. First, the guy who introduced O'Douche almost brought himself to the point of climax veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-88330101727442354782009-05-13T05:59:00.000-07:002009-05-13T06:24:02.654-07:00UghTo a certain degree, Wyatt and I are luddites. Me maybe more so. Before I married him, I hadn't lived in the same house with a TV for 10 years. Even now, we don't have cable. And I hate cell phones. Shit on video games. Fuck a Wii. Don't like power windows or door locks either - that's just more I might have to pay to get fixed later.But yesterday, a tsunami of new technology hit this household. veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-50885186838783828892009-04-30T13:31:00.000-07:002009-05-01T03:41:24.935-07:00If God Said Boris Had To Turn GayBoris O'Dan is a good friend all of the time but he's at his entertaining best on no sleep and too much Little Debbie and cold caffeine:"Now, I'm a straight guy," he said Thursday. "But if God came down and said, 'Boris, I've decided you've got to have a homosexual relationship,' I'd have to choose Hugh Jackman for that.""Don't blame you," I said."Or maybe Patrick Stewart" - already I was veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4158750101884960632.post-1510839907455215652009-04-26T12:01:00.000-07:002009-04-27T03:02:44.813-07:00KillersLast Tuesday the guy who sits next to me at my temp job backed over his cat. Totally ran over it, so that it made his car lurch. The cat, a beloved pet of nine years, then ran down a storm drain and refused to come out so he could take it to the vet, and he assumed it would die in there. He was a wreck. On Wednesday I saw him with his head in his hands a lot, but I just assumed his eyes were veronahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07132132931162009366noreply@blogger.com1