Category Archives: Nature

Baboon Achievers, books, Food, gardening, Nature, Stories

Tomato Land

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It’s all your fault that I have too many tomatoes. Six years ago I read Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook, based on somebody’s recommendation on the trail.  That made me want to grow my own tomatoes in the worst way.  That led me to straw bales which had led me to today; tomatoes are taking over my kitchen!

This past weekend I tried to make a dent. First I made salsa for the freezer (2 jars):

  • 4 cups diced, fresh tomatoes (Roma) – I didn’t peel them because I used an immersion blender after the salsa cooked down
  • 1 medium green pepper, chopped
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 4 chopped loco peppers – didn’t seed them so I could keep the heat
  • 1/2 cup tomato paste
  • 1/4 cup vinegar
  • 1 Tbs. sugar
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 2 tsp. garlic powder
  • 1/2-1 Tbs. cayenne pepper
  • 4 Tbs. chopped cilantro

That didn’t make a big enough dent so then I made Tomato Veggie soup in the slow cooker:

  • 3 cups diced tomatoes – again left the skins on
  • 2 cup water
  • 1 ½ cupsw green beans, cut into bit-sizes
  • 1 cup diced potato
  • 1 cup diced turnit
  • 1 cup chopped cabbage
  • 4 Tbs. cooked onion (sautéed w/ the garlic)
  • 4 cloves of garlic, minced
  • ½ green pepper, diced
  • 2 bouillon cubes (I used vegetarian cubes)
  • Salt & pepper to taste

Everything into the slow cooker, on low for about 8 hours.

Then today I came home and found another batch of ripe tomatoes on my vines. Help!

What do you like to do with excess garden produce?

Art, books, History, Nature, Stories, Travel

Its Own Magazine

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Turns out the Mississippi River has its own magazine. I have finally finished reading my latest issue of Big River, which covers news of the Mississippi River from Minneapolis, MN, down to Muscatine, Iowa. Its byline is “Covering the heart of the Driftless Area for 24 years,” although there is usually some news about the Twin Cities. (The Driftless area includes Hastings and Red Wing, as well as La Crosse and Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin, Dubuque and the Quad Cities in Iowa, Galena in Illinois.) It is published six times a year here in Winona.

I devour this magazine. First I read all the Big River News segments, which give updates on everything from the Gulf of Mexico’s Dead Zone to a new plastic pollution problem:  tiny plastic particles from people’s microfiber jackets. Besides environmental issues, these paragraphs cover items like a new bike rental system in Clinton, IA, and an expansion of the National Eagle Center in Wabasha. My favorite tells of a new happy hour in St. Paul – the Kellogg Park Craft Beer Overlook: 3 to 6 p.m., Tuesdays through Fridays till mid-October. This September-October issue also has a special sidebar detailing and picturing which ditch weeds to NOT PICK because some part of them is poisonous (poison hemlock, giant hogweed, wild parsnip, and cow parsnip).

Feature articles range from “A Tale of Two Neighborhoods”, about North Mpls. and Northeast Mpls, to a short two-pager on kestrels. For the exploring traveler, an article details sights and places between La Crosse, WI to Winona, MN. Restaurant and book reviews are regular features, as are lots of glossy ads – I don’t mind because they are for things and places that interest me.

I just checked, and Big River is available at Minneapolis’ Central Library, but only for “in-house” use. I’ll bring some back copies next time I get to BBC (Blevins Book Club – see top left of this “page”, under Blogroll).

What river, anywhere in the world, would you like to explore?

Fifty Words, gardening, Nature

Monarch Party

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As I walked up the driveway yesterday afternoon, I noticed the monarchs having a party on one of my sedum plants. I don’t know if they’re really monarchs but they’re orange.  They were only interested in that one plant.  All the other sedum plants were bare!

What makes a good party in your world?

Fifty Words, Nature, pets, Stories

Eeek!

29 Comments

Last weekend I saw this dog sitting in a nearby car. The owner returned as I was standing there and I told her what a well-behaved dog she had.  She said “Last week she saw a mouse in the basement and now she won’t go down the basement stairs.”

Do you have any irrational fears?

 

 

Family, Kids, Nature

Looking at Clouds

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This post is from littlejailbird.

Barbara in Rivertown’s comment on Name That Carrot: “It’s kind of looking at clouds…” inspired this post.

My mom is a big fan of looking at clouds and seeing various things in them. She has told me, more than once, of how, when she was a kid, she liked to lie down outdoors and just see how many things she could see in the clouds. I suppose when you grow up in Iowa there is a lot of sky and clouds to look at.

This penchant for looking at clouds has apparently passed down to other generations. One day, when the twins (her great-grandchildren) and I were outside, they were looking up at the sky. We talked about what the clouds looked like. Twin 2 said, “I see a…BUTT!” and they both dissolved in laughter.

Tell us something funny that a child you know has said or done.

Family, Nature, Stories

Losing Peanut

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Today’s post comes to us from Crystal Bay.

RIP dear Peanut. Last night, as I was weeping knowing it was our last night together, the old guy walked up to me and licked my tears. He’s been hiding for days, but last night he came for what used to be our nightly ritual. He hadn’t done this in months as he grew weaker. He walks up to the cover I pull up to my chin, paws it down, then I lift it into a tent for him to enter. He then makes three circles before finally plopping down close to my face. I then kiss him a dozen times while repeating, “I love you, Peanut”. Every night for 14 years. I wish that I’d created more of a dialogue with him over all of these years, but this is all I ever said to him.

The vet showed up at 10 this morning. He was on my lap relaxing in front of a space heater he’s always loved. My dear friend, Bruce, was here, and right up to the moment of the quick-acting sedation shot, I kept asking if I was doing the right thing. Did he have more time to live? Should nature just decide when it was his time to die? Was he really suffering or just old and skinny? The sweet vet told me that I didn’t have to go through with it; that she’d come back another time.

He sprawled across my lap as she administered the sedative, and slowly got sleepier. “Peanut, I love you” over and over. I was still so ambivalent that I asked her if he could revive from the sedative if I changed my mind. All I could think of was how spending the last day and night with him was so painful that I couldn’t go through this process again a few weeks or even months from now, so she very gently inserted the needle and pushed in the medication which would stop his heart.

I held his limp body, crying my heart out. I had decided just this morning that I didn’t want to bury him after all because the vision of lowering him into a black hole was just too much. The vet brought in a small kitty bed with a soft little blanket. I placed him in it. And then he was gone from my life. A piece of me and a part of what’s kept my world in balance went with him. I wrote a letter to him:

Dear Peanut, I found you in the middle of Crystal Bay Road 14 years ago on September 1, 2003. Your little eyes were glued shut with infection and your back leg was crushed. I rushed you to the vet who said that you were, at best, 4 weeks old and doubted that you’d survive. I came back several hours later, and there you were, bright eyed and bushy tailed, eating dry kibbles.

For the next two months, I kept you on or very near my body 24/7. When with clients, you nestled on my shoulder. I took you grocery shopping in a tiny box, to my volunteer work, to lunch dates. And every single day, I kissed the top of your head a thousand times, saying, “Peanut, I love you”.

For the twelve years following my divorce, you were the only warm body in my world who alleviated my loneliness. No matter how my day had gone, you were there at the end of it with our silly ritual, letting me know that you loved and needed me. I thank you for that.

Your buddy, Izzy, is already searching the cottage for you. I’ve always cared for her, but she’s not you, Peanut. Perhaps, after the six years she’s been here, she’ll come out of her shell and show some affection and bond with me? Right now, she’s lying next to me on the foot stool by the heater, something she’s never done before. Only an hour ago, you were there.  She’s always deferred to you, even in this last year as you grew weaker, she’d box with you then suddenly jump off the bed out of respect for you.

You were my fur person, my devoted companion, and the only constant presence in my life. Thank you for the 14 years you graced my life.

I love you Peanut, Mama

What’s the name of your favorite pet?

Art, Business, Media, Nature, News, Radio, sports

Ostrich or Monkey?

34 Comments

today’s post comes to us from tim.

you know i am finally there.

i don’t want to listen to the news anymore…

houston had a flood. did you hear?

donald trump had a thought… did you hear?

not only did I hear it i can’t shut it off.

my tv station in the morning plays the same story every 15 minutes from 4 am until 7 when they hand it off to the new york team who tells the national story of the day 2 or 3 times before i can get away and listen to it on the radio.

then I see all the pop ups from internet news, yahoo, google, whoever I have on my email news blasts

from huffington post or email blasts from my senators or local political folks, or people I like to hear from.

i have begun to do podcasts and downloaded music to stay away from the antimotivational news

but the twins are doing good, the lynx are wonderful again cmon lindsey whalen… and the vikings don’t suck yet. the timberwolves should be really wonderful this year. the soccer stadium is going to be fun and

the joy through sports seems shallow but it is kind of like taking pride in the guthrie theater and the minnesota orchestra or the st paul chamber orchestra the voyageurs national park, minnehaha falls or the fact that we have winter.

lots to pay attention to out there in the world. the news knows what people say they want to know about but i wonder if there would be a place for the good news station on the dial. i know i’d tune in.

what do you love most about the trail?

 

Media, Nature, News, Science, Stories, Uncategorized

A Mystery

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Today’s post comes from billinmpls.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed the sign you see in the header photo planted on a street corner near my house. A commonplace, innocuous sign, one I might have not noticed at all except for two things:

1. Except for the picture, which looks a little impersonal- like the sort of photo that comes when you buy a picture frame, there’s no information about the dog. Nothing about the breed or his name or the neighborhood he usually calls home.

2. That curious statement, “Do not approach or chase”. Did that mean that the dog was dangerous in some way to approach?

I would likely have forgotten about the sign except that, recently, I saw the same sign in a completely different part of Minneapolis, three or four miles from where I saw the first sign. Usually when a pet is missing, you see a few signs posted  on telephone poles around the neighborhood. They’re not generally as elaborate as the two signs I had seen and they don’t usually blanket the city.

And then, when I was driving in a fairly distant northern exurb—Blaine or Coon Rapids—and I saw almost the same sign. It had a different dog photo and a different phone number, but the same layout and the same exhortation: DO NOT CHASE!

The thought struck me, “What if the signs are not about lost dogs at all?  What if they are some sort of anonymous signal to someone or some group, hiding in plain sight? After all, nobody who doesn’t recognize the sign as a signal is going to call the number if there is, in fact, no lost dog.

I had decided to keep my eyes peeled for more of these “Do Not Chase” signs and to try to discern some sort of pattern in their placement and then tried searching online to see if anyone else had noticed these curious signs. And that’s when I came across an article in a minor paper that purports to explain the mystery. It turns out that there is an organization of volunteers who make it their mission to help people recover lost pets. They call themselves “The Retrievers” and they have established a protocol for how they proceed. One thing they do is to put up signs over a very wide area. Lost dogs sometimes travel surprisingly far from their home, apparently. Another distinctive feature of their protocol is that they always urge informants not to chase the dog if they spot it. Lost dogs are stressed as a rule and in survival mode. Chasing them exacerbates that and can make them harder to find and coax into confinement.

My mystery turned out not to be especially mysterious after all. That is, unless the article in the little local paper was just a red herring to throw us off the trail. But there are other unsolved mysteries around us, mysteries that beg an explanation. Like that business that never seems to have any customers and yet has been there for years. Is it a front for something? What about that house where you’ve never seen anyone come or go? That guy you’re always seeing. Doesn’t he have to be somewhere? What’s he up to?

I was walking the dog one morning and passed by an unremarkable house. A pickup truck was in the driveway of the garage and the hood was open. One of the truck’s doors was open and the radio was on and playing an Ernest Tubb song. The back door of the house opened and an older man came out and walked toward the truck. He had on a seed cap of some sort, baggy jeans, a heavy plaid wool shirt. And red high heels. I thought to myself, “I’ll bet there’s a story there…”

Noticed anything unusual lately?

gardening, Nature, News, The Future

August Garden Update

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  • Oh my! the Baboons have been busy in the garden in July and August. Here are some recent submissions of garden activity.

Barbara in Rivertown sends these beauties:

 

 

Reneeinned sends these:

Here is what is growing for Anna:

Here is what is growing for Jacque:

LJB sends these lovely photos:

These are photos of August gardens.  What are your plans for next summer’s gardens? What gives you hope for the future?

 

 

Baboon Achievers, Nature, News, Science, Stories, Technology, The Future, Travel, Weather

Verily’s Geek Adventure

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There hasn’t been a total solar eclipse anywhere near my location since before my birth and the geek inside me was thrilled to realize that I would be driving distance from the epicenter of the eclipse path this week. I started making my plans about 3 months back when I was arranging my summer schedule.  Although folks knew I was going, I resisted any “hints” that maybe I needed a travel companion.  I also resisted a concerned neighbor who thought I would be safer if his adult son (who was also traveling to see the eclipse) went along with me.

I headed out on Sunday morning with directions, a cooler full of food and drink, several books, two GPS systems and two eclipse apps on my phone. I35W was its normally fun summer mess of road work with no work happening, but I eventually made it to Osceola where I roomed for the night.  Relaxation, reading and an early bedtime were the only things on my agenda.

My alarm went off at 4 a.m. – not knowing what traffic into St. Joseph would be like, I didn’t want to take any chances. Was on the road by 4:15 and made it to the East Hills Mall at about 6:30 a.m.  I chose that location as it was right in the middle of the epicenter as well as being on the edge of the city (hoped that would help with traffic after the eclipse).  There were people already parked in the lot, but not too many.  As the morning wore on, more and more people showed up and vendors got their tents all set up.  There was music inside the mall and most of the stores were having eclipse discounts. Parked near me there was a family from Sioux Falls who had painted their van, a guy from Jordan with a SERIOUS camera, a young couple from Texas who played cards while waiting, a woman who had flown in from California the day before and an older gentleman from Iowa wearing his safari hat.

It rained twice before the first stage of the eclipse happened and both times everybody scrambled to get their camp chairs and equipment back into their cars. In between the showers the sun came out, making the humidity jump.  When C1 began (when the moon begins its trip in front of the sun), the clouds were still breaking up a bit so we could see the progress.  It looked like a big cookie with a bite taken out of it.  Due to the clouds (and me just using the camera on my phone), I never got a good photo.

Then about 25 minutes before totality, the clouds closed up and it started to rain again. Just like folks who can’t wait until the end of the 9th inning, folks started to pack up their stuff and head out.  By the time of totality, it had stopped raining, but was still cloudy, so while we didn’t see the total eclipse, it did get very dark and cool.  Then, like a little miracle, about 2 minutes after totality, the clouds broke up for a minute and those of use remaining got to see the sun covered 90% – just a little bitty sliver of light.

I had said several times that I would be skedaddling back home after the eclipse but the non-construction zones on 35W with the extra traffic made the 6 hour drive into a brutal 10½ hour drive. I tried to get either of my GPS systems to re-route me, but nothing worked out.

Even though the driving wasn’t great and the weather wasn’t great – I had a great time! I’m glad I got to see what I got to see and if I’m still around in 2024, I’ll try to get to Indiana or the boot heel of Missouri.

What makes it an adventure for you?