Why Are You So Skeptical?

Gardening Time has Begun









GARDEN - Get At Raking Dirt Evenly Now.

It is that time again and it has come so early. Even with that you just can't predict what you're going to see in the garden this time of year. Whether you're checking out the pansies, the daffodils or the blood-root you never know what you might see.

Even the flower buds on the fruit trees are breaking open and that might spell disaster for the fruit crop. If we get a hard frost it will kill the flower buds and that means no fruit. And no fruit means no fruits of our labours. All the maintenance of the fruit trees will be just that, maintenance.

Sour cherries come on quickly and need to be pitted before being frozen.

We really enjoy making our own apple sauce and cider or freezing apple slices from the Lodi apple in August for those late Fall apple pies. Pears are tricky to pick at just the right ripeness but keen observation and perseverance reward the grower.

So, it's hard not to be skeptical when such odd things are going on all around. I don't believe we will get a fruit crop this year no matter how much we wish it. This year may be an anomaly but this may also be another situation influenced by Global Warming.

But it's hard not to be skeptical about so many things going on today.

But, I am not skeptical about a Conservative cabinet minister going rangy over a simple security check. I am not skeptical about her husband, a former MP trying to peddle his influence, such as it may be, to friends and associates from his wife's Parliament Hill office.. No skepticism here about that.

You may be skeptical about the garden gnomes you see here. I may be brought to wondering what was in my pre-dinner Scotch and skeptical about the reputed origins of the liquid but I am not at all skeptical about the shame and disrepute these people bring to an institution which, for the most part is made of honest , hard-working and well-meaning people.

Why Are You So Touchy?

ANN COULTER: 

A Nother Neo-Con Ostensibly Uses Logic To Expound "Righteousness"

There isn't much more to say about Ann Coulter except to wish that her charisma and obvious literary and oratory skills could be used to really help people instead of just helping her to become a latter-day William F. Buckley Jr. in a miniskirt. 

Crocodiles have been around since the time of the dinosaurs and in fact are direct descendants of them. Since they are so tough-mouthed it's almost impossible to have a reasoned debate with one especially when it's hungry for attention and smells blood. They might usually look a bit slow and lumbering but watch that National Geographic special again, the one about the wildebeest  migration and the rest stop at the ole watering hole. You just can't trust anything or anyone with that many white teeth. What else is there to say?

Copyright 2010 The Stargeazer

Why Are You So Sorry?

I'm so sorry. There was an error in the recipe for Egg Benedict posted on Groundhog day. The price of saffron spiked to $US700/gram. That was supposed to be the unit, gram, not kilogram. Pricey stuff but it was worth it wasn't it?

Speaking of apologies, we are all owed big ones from whoever coined the phrases "Going forward" and "Drill down." GF is almost always used by someone who is not the least bit interested in G'ing F. They want us to think they're G'ingF when they're really quite happy to ride the status quo train and typically display a fondness for the "Good Ole Days." "Drill down," must have been coined by a dentist. I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean but it sounds like I'm soon about to experience some kind of pain. These phrases are no better than "Like, you know." They are the mean-nothing fillers that are the "Hamburger Helper" of English. They are the bread crumbs in the meatloaf of this rich and noble language. These may also be the same people who use the phrase "As far as," incompletely. You may hear them say "As far as the weather, it's raining," or "As far as my salary, I'm not making enough. They say one is getting old and curmudgeonly when he starts to complain about language and usage. Have they read the title of this blog? As far as my complaints I will go forward to drill down to get to the bottom of all these errors.

Toyota's sorry. This is a big one and it hits home. Hundreds of employees in Canada may be affected even further by this. Imagine the scale of this bailout.Toyota can't be allowed to go under but who's going to buy one when/if production starts again? Somehow it's hard to shake the image of incompetent executives getting more megabonuses with bailout bucks. Maybe that's what the mint should start printing, bailout bucks. We would know they're worthless but we would all let on they're not. What's going on in GM corporate HQ? Are those popping champagne corks?

Stephen Harper is sorry. He's sorry he underestimated how many dictionaries there were in the country and how many people could use them. The Liberals are actually 0.9% ahead of the Conservatives. Now that's a lead that could be overcome by the margin of error like a Boxing Day tsunami on a Bali beach but it gives the Liberals momentum in the upward direction. Pro-prorogationists are dismissing protests on the basis that the PM's actions were all "legal." We all know that sometimes "the law is an ass."Consider these; the Senate is a legally instituted body which many protest and strive to change. Slavery was once legal. Women were legally non-persons. The list is long. Many see prorogation as an abuse of power and they strive to change that situation. That change begins with protest.

I'm sorry there isn't more snow this year for snowshoeing. There's an activity that is richly rewarding and ironically its greatest reward comes from looking back not forward. There is beauty in the stitch work the shoes make on the snow blanket. The path is there, every step, and every slight and not-so-slight deviation from that path. You see it in the solidity of the snow and the ice that supports it. There it is, for a time.