My giant ‘shroom from last year is back! This time, he’s imbedded in a piece of fence I use to make compost piles.
My giant ‘shroom from last year is back! This time, he’s imbedded in a piece of fence I use to make compost piles.
Corporations are like children. If you allow your kids to have all the candy they want, you’ll get them fat and all keyed up on sugar. And when you then try to discipline them, you wonder why they won’t listen. It’s the same with these corporations. In Louisiana, they virtually get everything they ask for, so why should they behave?
– Former Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality inspector Kerry St. Pe, on the failure of Louisiana regulators to impose meaningful penalties for violations of environmental law. (via officialssay)
And it ain’t just Louisiana that has this problem.
Wanda Jackson, Rockabilly Queen, Prolongs Her Party - NYTimes.com
Wanda’s got a new record!
Cary artist Peter Geiger has a simple formula: “I took my love of music and cars and created a license plate guitar,” he says. The result is a kind of custom-made American folk art that incorporates sculpture, woodwork and metalwork to make life-size guitars out of vintage license plates from different states. The guitars are strictly decorative - they don’t play - but Geiger says he has exhibited them in galleries. Geiger makes the sculptures in his basement workshop in Cary, where he moved with his family from Massapequa, N.Y., about three years ago.
— Raleigh News & Observer
July 5, 2010
Click link for a photo gallery
Economists have physics envy.
– Richard Sylla, a financial historian at the Stern School of Business at New York University
lemonadeandotherthings asked: I just saw on your blog that you're getting into beekeeping? What made you interested? I've been curious about it for a while now, and I hope that once you get started, you blog about it!
Hi lemonadeandotherthings!
I used to keep bees, twice: once in late elementary school, when my Grandfather died and I took over his hives; and then again in the late ’90s early ’00s, ‘til I lost all my hives over a couple of years, probably to a syndrome called Colony Collapse Disorder.
I had hoped to start back up this spring, but things got hectic and the guy from whom I had planned to buy bees didn’t come through. So now it looks like next year instead. I do have a hive in the wall of my house, though they just settled there and I’m just watching, not keeping, them.
Beekeeping is great! Lots to learn, lots of fun, and you get honey for yourself and to share or sell. I highly recommend it. It is time consuming in the early spring, when you getting the hives ready to store up honey, and in the later spring, when you are harvesting honey.
I highly recommend Richard Taylor’s The How-to-do-it Book of Beekeeping, which is a sort of encyclopedia by an engaging, entertaining, bossy curmudgeon. But he kept bees before a lot of the hive disease problems changed some things. So I also recommend Ross Conrad’s Natural Beekeeping as a good resource for keeping your hives healthy without using a lot of chemicals.
Most places there are beekeeping associations or clubs that have classes and workshops and can help you meet local beekeepers, which can be useful if you’re more of hands-on learner.
Good luck!
Greg
My massive unidentified mushroom keeps morphing.
Tomatoes!
We have reached that transitional state in the garden when, in the space of three days, we go from “Will those green tomatoes ever turn red?” to “What are two people going to do with all these tomatoes?”
Maybe my neighbor Frank Byrd didn’t plant a garden this year. I could leave some on his porch.
Crab-Like Spiny Orb Weaver
I found this very, very odd-looking spider blocking the entrance to the wood barn this morning. (This shot is taken from the rear.) It’s not quite as big as a dime, but scary-looking nonetheless. (I believe there is at least some chance that it is actually an alien ship from a small planet, but I am not going to tell anyone about this, okay?) Check out the article for some details on its natural history.
What’s not to love about this woman?
When Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, asked where she had spent this past Christmas — a precursor to questions about that day’s airline bombing plot — she said, “You know, like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.”
— Charlie Savage & Sheryl Gay Stolberg in the NY Times
— Photo from SLATE, by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Gubernatorial Bees
This is NC governor Bev Perdue checking out a nice frame of honey from a hive in back of the Executive Mansion. When I get back in the bee biz next year I fully expect to be as well made up and expertly coiffed as the Gov whenever I visit my hives. (I’m not sure about the earbobs, though. I think I might look funny in dangly earbobs.)
(Photo by SHAWN ROCCO - SROCCO@NEWSOBSERVER.COM)
Found this enormous mushroom by the stump of an oak tree near the compost pile. It’s six inches across! I can’t find it in any of my mushroom books.
CORN SNAKE!
I found this guy last night, coiled up near the wellhouse, being attacked by Callie Joe, one of our adopted, clawless cats. The former owner removed her claws, but it’s not clear Callie has noticed. It certainly didn’t keep her from attacking this 18-inch long snake.
Corn snakes are skinny, but are often mistaken for copperheads or rattlesnakes, because they are blotchy and because they tend to shake their tails rapidly when threatened. They can be aggressive and try to strike, but are only minimally venomous — not enough to be a problem for people.
They are called corn snakes because they often hang out in corn cribs, where they catch mice. They kill their prey through construction — like a boa constrictor!
I released this little guy in a wooded area away from the house.
Flax Seeds! These shiny little guys from the Dakotas are the newest addition to my secret chicken feed recipe.
Because I’ll be using flax seeds as ten percent of the ration, my hens will start to produce healthier eggs, with many omega-3 fatty acids instead of the bad old omega six fatty acids.
Will it affect the taste? We should know in a couple of weeks… .
