Today’s guest post comes from Sherrilee.

Whenever someone on the Trail brings up a book, I check it out and usually try to find it and read it. So someone mentioned Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, I quickly checked it out from the library. It was horrifying; I was appalled by the ethics, the chemistry and the economics of the tomato industry that were laid out by the author. In addition, it made me think about the taste of tomatoes that I’ve been purchasing recently. All of this led me to the decision that I really wanted to grow my own tomatoes this past summer.

Unfortunately I have two big dogs who have no respect for my gardening efforts. Many of my perennials are protected by fencing or tomato cages; past vegetable gardens have been mowed down in their infancy by these marauders. For several years I’ve tried growing tomatoes in big pots on the driveway but I’ve never had any luck with that. After deciding that I really wanted to grow more tomatoes I did some research on raised bed gardens and fences, searching the internet to find some cost-effective methods. That was when I stumbled across straw bale gardening. You plant your vegetables directly into straw bales. Whenever anything seems that simple I am instantly skeptical so I spent several days finding websites, blogs and online photos of this method. Everybody seemed to think it was a great way to grow vegetables.

So one weekend morning, the Teenager and I drove down to the garden center and came home with four straw bales (no easy feat in our little Saturn Ion). For fourteen days I followed a schedule of watering, then fertilizing, then watering more. After two weeks, I dug little holes in each bale, added a handful of potting soil, then set the plants into the bales. Since the plants are on the top of the bales, they are safe from dogs and bunnies. And a side benefit that I hadn’t anticipated – no weeds!

The plants went wild. I’ve had to add tomato cages and stakes and eventually I had to pull two of the bales apart because the peppers weren’t getting sun. I got tomatoes galore – way too many for even the Teenager and I to eat fresh, so I now have lots of roasted tomatoes in the freezer to enjoy over the fall and winter months.

So I will definitely be having a straw bale garden again in 2013. I think I’ll do more bales and only put 2 plants in each bale. And I may branch out with peas and beans!

What are your gardening plans for this year?

Good or bad, advice is free and easy to give. We are ALL Dr. Babooner.

Dear Dr. Babooner,

My spouse and I recently returned from a dream vacation in a condo on the east end of the island of St. Thomas in the Caribbean.

Before leaving we asked friends for advice on what to do and heard plenty about restaurants, shopping, and sightseeing. Everyone seemed so excited about all the things they were suggesting! And they were nice ideas, but instead of taking those recommendations we skipped the rental car and spent our time taking walks on the beach, playing in the ocean, watching iguanas and sea birds, taking naps and playing cribbage on the lanai.

We had fun, but we skipped everything we were told to do. Now when friends ask how the trip went, I remember their enthusiastic suggestions and I’m afraid to say anything. And when they ask to see pictures, I lie and say the camera was eaten by a duck.

Here’s why – if you look at our photos, you’ll see that you don’t see any shots of the fort or the plantations or the shopping district – in short, there’s nothing there from any of the major tourist destinations.

This was a fabulous vacation, but my friends are convinced that something went terribly wrong because I’m so close-mouthed about it. Rumors are starting to circulate that we both came down with the Virgin Islands Pelican Flu and are depressed from taking massive amounts of antibiotics.

Dr. Babooner, I want to share my vacation with those close to me, but I’ve waited too long and now I’m afraid I will never be able to tell anyone anything about it. What can I do?

Confusedly Yours,

Deeply Conflicted By Island Respite

I told DCBIR that we shouldn’t arrange our vacations to please other people, and if she and her husband came back happy, that’s the only thing that matters. Anybody who would criticize you to your face for not taking their advice is a boor and a snob. Decent people will criticize you BEHIND YOUR BACK for not taking their advice. That’s how it is, and how it always should be.

But that’s just one opinion. What do you think, Dr. Babooner?

Today’s guest post comes from Sherrilee

I am a reader. Many things define my life; I am a single mother, an organizer, a cook, a friend. But at my core, I am a reader. I read every day and I spend more time than you can imagine keeping track of what I’m reading, what I have out from the library, what I have requested from the library. If I could figure out a way to have someone else pay the bills, shovel the snow, cut the grass and buy the groceries, I would be perfectly content to spend my days reading. On the sofa, laying in the hammock or sitting on a park bench – all wonderful places to read.

I used to have to finish any book I started. For years it plagued me that I had started Ulysses after my freshman year in college and had never been able to plow through it. While I still struggle through a few books, these days a book has to grab me pretty quickly. There have been books that I give up on after just a few pages and occasionally there is a book that I abandon half way through because I realize I’m just not enjoying it.

This past week I reread “The Earth Abides” by George Stewart. I read this book back in high school at the suggestion of one of my favorite teachers and it was the first “science fiction” that I recall reading. Ideas from it have stuck with me over the years, so when I noticed on the library website that a new edition has been rereleased, I checked it out. Not only did I enjoy it greatly after all these years, but it struck me on a more emotional level than I remember from first reading it and I cried towards the end.

There have been many books over the years that have made me cry. When I was in the 8th grade, I read “Flowers for Algernon”. I couldn’t put it down and started to cry early on, when it was clear what direction the story was going. I read until 4 in the morning and cried until I could hardly breathe and thought I might throw up.

“Doctor Zhivago” was another one. I had already seen the movie before I read the book and was unprepared for the emotion of Pasternak’s words. I cried for an hour.

So I’ve been thinking about the difference in books – why some grab you and why some don’t. A few years ago one of my book clubs read a book about 4 brothers and was filled with baseball and baseball analogies. All the other members of the club relished it from beginning to end and I had to work hard to get through it; every time the author started to bring baseball to the page, I started to glaze over. And I have a friend who cannot understand why anybody reads anything by Jasper Fforde, who is one of my favorite authors.

Even though the tears stuff me up and made my eyes puffy and read, I consider crying over a good book a great cathartic experience and I look forward to the next “cryer”.

When have words on a page affected you physically?

Today’s guest post comes from Sherrilee

My Samoyed is named for Thorin Oakenshield, the king of the Dwarves from “The Hobbit”.

He was a rescue dog and came with two names. His first family named him Angel and his second family changed it slightly to “Aingie”. Ick. We didn’t even make it home from St. Paul with him before we knew we couldn’t live with either one of those names. Since “The Hobbit” was one of the very first fantasy/science fiction books that I ever read, we decided that would be a good place to troll for names.

Although we think Thorin is a great name, I do have to explain it to almost everyone.

Thorin is a very sweet boy but not the brightest bulb on the tree. He has allergies in the summer that lead to eye and ear sensitivities and he has an insatiable appetite for paper stuff. He loves tissues, toilet paper rolls and anything that finds its way to the floor, even empty boxes. He’s also sampled books. If you ever need to know how much the library charges for a destroyed book, just ask me. He once ate a scrapbook.

Online descriptions of Thorin, the character, paint him as “officious” and “greedy”.

These two words may not be enough to capture the literary Thorin, but they do describe my canine Oakenshield.

Officious? My Thorin has a tattle-tale bark. It is completely different from any of his other barks and yowls. If one of the other animals is getting into something, he barks his special bark to let us know the rules are being broken. When my other dog got up on the counter and was eating the chocolate chip cookies off the wax paper, Thorin barked. When the kitties got into a bag of cat food on the buffet, he barked.

Greedy? Oh yes. If the spoils are being shared with him, you don’t hear a peep. Obviously this goes against his tattletale urge. Over the years, Thorin has quietly shared banana bread, dog treats, devilled eggs and recently an entire jar of sauerkraut.

Two possible explanations.

1. When his mouth is full, Thorin chooses eating over barking.
2. Thorin’s silence is for sale.

What would it take to buy your silence when others are doing wrong?