You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘A Stroll In The Gardens’ category.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Were you to sit yourself down in Robbo’s favorite comfy chair in the library at Port Swiller Manor, you would find to your immediate right, just beyond a small occasional table loaded to overflowing with books and covered in hot beverage rings, a large window. This window looks out into the back yard of the Manor’s demesne and generally takes in the flower garden, the tree line and the gels’ rope swing. In the immediate foreground, it offers a view of the patio one floor down and the side of the back deck at eye level. If you were to slouch down just so to look under the table, you would be able to see both the lower bird feeder hanging from the underside of the porch and a bird house attached to one of its supporting pillars (one of those Williamsburg – or, as we like to say for reasons too complicated to explain here, “Weeeyamsburg” - glazed bottles).
As I say, this is Robbo’s favorite chair, in which he spends as much of his leisure time as possible. One of the primary reasons why he likes it so much is the view described above, to which he often turns in contemplation of the sky, the light, the clouds, the various flora and fauna that visit from time to time and other manifestations of the Maker’s handiwork. (We are also very close to the outer marker for air traffic coming in to Reagan National from the North, and I confess that teh little boy inside me never gets tired of seeing the coo-el jets powering down overhead.)
I mention the bird bottle. We put it up when we first moved in thirteen years ago. (I’ve a hazy recollection that it was a housewarming present from somebody.) In that time, I have seen multiple broods of chicks raised in it, usually either wrens or sparrows. However, the other morning as I sat idly gazing down, I suddenly spotted what had heretofore not been much of a regular visitor to the immediate vicinity of the porch and patio, a bluebird. He was sitting on the deck railing looking indignant, and every now and again would jump off to go after other birds trying to get at the feeder. (Truth be told, it really is a bit too close to the bottle, but numerous onslaughts by deer, squirrel and raccoon had left its corner the only viable spot to hang it.) He also started flying up and perching in the ivy around the windowsill no more than two feet from me, fluttering up every now and again to attack his reflection in the glass.
Peering more closely, I suddenly spotted the reason for Mr. BB’s actions; peeping out from the neck of the bottle was Mrs. BB.
Oh, dear.
This genuinely surprised me. I’ve often seen bluebirds in the yard. But it’s always been my understanding that they like to nest right on the edges of open spaces. (Indeed, there are several birdhouses in the neighborhood – including one of our own in the little area behind the back hydrangea hedge- that they have inhabited over the years.) But I never thought they would take up residence in what is a comparatively confined space and one so close to the house.
On the one hand, I was delighted. I love bluebirds, considering them to be amongst the handsomest of the local native species and also admiring their self-contained, aggressive attitude toward the world.
On the other, I was disturbed. You see, within the next couple of weeks, the support to which the bird bottle is attached will be no more: This evening, we signed the contract for the construction of the new porch, and the process is rayther going to involve first getting rid of the old, rotty one.
At the moment, I’m not really sure what (if anything) I can do about the bluebirds. I’m virtually certain that no chicks have been hatched yet (it’s far too early), but I don’t know if any eggs have been laid.
I know that Nature is red in tooth and claw and that things happen to nests of eggs or chicks all the time – branches falling down, lightning strikes, invasion by predators and so forth. But I also feel the tug from that part of Man’s soul that is above Nature. (No, it’s not Bambi-like anthropomorphic sentimentality. More like the responsibility of stewardship.)
Not so much as to halt construction, you understand. The bird bottle has to come down one way or another. But enough to do a little research to see whether there is any way to transfer it to another spot within the immediate vicinity without damaging or harming its content. I think I’m going to call around to some local pest control outfits and see if they have any recommendations. Who knows? “Humane” transfers have become all the rage these days. Why, my own Sistah, rayther than summarily tossing the foxes that have been caught having a go at her hen coops straight into Casco Bay in brick-filled sacks, has ponied up the dosh to have them transported and released somewhere inland (where they are no doubt free to plague some other unfortunate shmucks). Why not the “humane” relocation of widdle birdies?
I think I’m going to do this even if there’s no realistic way to save the nest. The last thing I want is to try and take the thing down myself with a furious pair of bluebirds going for my head. Sparrows I could deal with: they seem to be fairly placid. Wrens are more aggressive, but tend to hover around the perimeter making lots of sound and fury but taking little practical action. Bluebirds, on the other hand, are more into the pecking and scratching thing, which I, frankly, can do without.
I’ll keep you posted.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Well, another Saturday dawns at Port Swiller Manor and finds Robbo staring at the radar and wondering whether he has time to spritz the weeds with Round-Up before the thunderstorms move in. Probably not. At least I got the grass cut last evening, so that’s something.
♦ I mentioned the Gels of MASN in the post immediately below. Now I will tell you something about my own gel of summah. The eleven year old has inserted herself in a rotation of two or three regulars playing catcher for her softball team this season. T’other evening I was watching her in action behind the plate when it suddenly occurred to me why she enjoys the position so much: It’s a spotlight. The catchers are constantly complimented by coaches and crowds for their handing of what can be quite eccentric pitching at this level. There’s also great satisfaction in staring down a runner at third who’s thinking of stealing. However, she especially loves dramatically sweeping off her face-mask when pursuing a pop foul. What a ham. (To her credit, she is good at it, too.)
♦ Speaking of ball clubs, ol’ Robbo’s beloved Nats find themselves on a little five-game winning streak and look to be settling back into their true form. My blood pressure has dropped several points over the past week or so as a result. Go, NATS!!
♦ I look with horror and revulsion at the information coming to light about what happened in Libya. (Well, not just that, of course.) But I am all the more horrified by my feeling that nothing will really come of it. Why? Because if you ask the opinion of the average low-information voter, you’re likely to get the answer,”Ben Ghazi? Who? Isn’t he that NFL player who just came out? Or is he the one dating a Kardashian?”
Sigh.
♦ Speaking of such things, I don’t usually read much political or social science, but by happenstance two new books have seized the Robbo attention. The first is Roger Kimball’s The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia. Jay Nordlinger has been quoting and reviewing the book extensively over at NRO, and much of what he cites goes right to ol’ Robbo’s heart. The other book, by another NRO writer, is Kevin Williamson’s The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure. I believe that I’ve written here before of my belief that we, as a nation, are hurtling toward catastrophe. But I also said that, however hard it’s going to be, there isn’t reason just yet to save that last round for yourself. Williamson’s theme, from the blurbs and interviews I’ve seen, appears to follow this same line. Anyway, I like his writing style. (UPDATE: Here is The Czar’s review. Makes me all the more eager to dive in.)
I’ll let you know what I think.
♦ Some might suggest that ol’ Robbo spend his valuable reading time not with works that reenforce his own world view but with those that challenge it. To them, I respectfully reply: Get stuffed. Through some horrid process of social evolution, I seem to have become a bona fide member of the counterculture. I look out from the redoubt and see the “challenge” swirling around it continually. No need to unlock the gate and let them in.
♦ Oh, since I am posting so sparsely these days, let me get this out of the way: Happy Mother’s Day.
♦ Tomorrow is also Ascension Sunday. Or, as Father Z rants about it, Ascension Thursday Sunday. Go on over and enjoy if you like this sort of thing (which I do).
♦ Speaking of rants, alert friends of the decanter may have noticed the absence here of complaints about tourons, a subject which in past years has consumed so much of Robbo’s thought. This is simply due to teh fact that I have been driving into work since last August instead of taking the metro, so just don’t have that much personal contact with them anymore. However, this change in commuting practice has not done away with the touron menace so much as transformed it into another shape. Yes, I’m talking about the dreaded tour busses. As the weather warms, these behemoths are starting to seriously jam up my afternoon drive. (And when it takes me an hour to go ten city blocks, I have every right to be cranky about it.) As a rule, I try to be a courteous driver – giving people room to merge in, for instance; stopping to let somebody pull out of a driveway. Not so with these busses, from which I use every method, legal or otherwise, to dodge, cut off or otherwise distance myself. Grrrrrrr…….
♦ And may I just remark here (perhaps again) on what a wonderful city car the Jeep Wrangler really is? Its small size, quick pickup and sweet maneuverability make it ideal for nipping in and out of traffic.
Well, I glance out the window and here’s the rain. Too bad. Everything was probably too wet to begin with anyway.
UPDATE: In re the low-information voter above, I should have noted that their next sentence would have been, “Hey, when do I get all my free shite?” ”Low-information voter” is one way to describe them, but I think “Bread-and-Circuses voter” is even more apt.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
My name is Robbo and I’m a moron.
As noted in the post below, yesterday saw the annual razing of the forsythia, a long-standing tradition at Port Swiller Manor.
Unfortunately, as became clear after the fact, yesterday also saw another long-standing tradition at the Manor, that of Robbo succumbing to heat exhaustion.
Now it just so happens that the weather at the moment is very bright and sunny but still a bit on the cool side. That’s where my moronism comes in because in all these years I’ve never seemed to learn that one can overdo it in such conditions. Indeed, they’re really rayther a trap. One instinctively knows to pace oneself and drink lots of fluids when it’s hot and nasty out. Not so much when it’s this pleasant – then one is far more likely just to keep powering through whatever it is that needs to get done, without taking any precautions.
Hence the resultant dizziness, headache, shaking, cramp, nausea and mental torpor. (One year, after a weekend very much like this one, I actually fainted on the Metro going into work on the Monday morning.)
Mrs. R said I ought not to be doing so much work. I pointed out that we don’t happen to have a Guatemalan yard crew handy, so if I don’t do it, nobody will. I did promise to be more careful, however. One of these years, I will remember that promise before the fact.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo has been busy with all kinds of grown up stuff lately.
Yesterday found him and Mrs. R in the offices of an estate attorney putting our signatures to a complete set of new wills, trusts, powers of attorney, medical directives – indeed, the whole ball of wax barring funeral instructions. Not that we’re expecting anything to happen to us any time soon, you understand, but it’s nice to get these things out of the way.
Then this morning we had yet another meeting with our building contractor. Regular friends of the decanter may recall my mentioning a few weeks ago our plan to replace the porch at Port Swiller Manor which has now come close to the end of its useful life? Well, our idea was to put up a new covered and enclosed one. When first we explained what we wanted to the contractor, he came back with a plan for what was really a genuine room – with siding and windows – that would be indistinguishable from the rest of the house except that it would not have heat or air-conditioning. This was far more than we wanted, both in terms of “room” -iness and (needless to say) price. So today we had him back to explain in greater detail exactly what we wanted, which is essentially something far closer to a screened-in porch than a genuine room. I think we’re on the same page now. Whether I did not sufficiently explain myself the first time around or whether he was trying to hustle us into an upgrade we didn’t want, I couldn’t say. But he took our restated desires in good stride. We like the guy and he comes highly recommended, so I’m eager to see what he comes back with this go around.
All these new experiences typically act to unsettle ol’ Robbo. So it was with a sense equivalent to that generated by snacking on comfort food that he toddled out into the garden this afternoon to perform an annual (or at least biennial – I don’t seem to recall doing it last year) task familiar to long-time friends of the decanter, that of razing the forsythia hedge. I know that in past years this doesn’t seem to have had the slightest effect in producing more enthusiastic blooms the next spring, but dum spiro, spero and all that.
Perhaps I was a little more jangled and preoccupied this year, or perhaps I’m just aging, because although this job is always a nuisance, I don’t recall it previously giving me such a physical beating. Several times I managed to knock both my hat and my glasses off with wayward limbs. I also went after too thick a stem with the cutters and was rewarded by a very serious cramp in my ribs. And once, while trying to dig out a stubborn root, I fell backwards and landed on my hand at a very awkward angle.
This year, I cut them waaaaaay back – to within 18 inches of the grounds or so. As I made my way along the hedge, I couldn’t help imagining losing my balance and falling backward on one of the relics, thereby impaling myself on five or six cut stalks. (What do you call those traps the Viet Kong used to set? Pungee sticks?) What an idiotic way to cop it, I found myself thinking.
The root that I mention belonged to a giant weed of some sort that bedevils my planting. Imagine a cross between a carrot and a potato, put it on steroids, and you’ve got one of these things. If left undisturbed, it will eventually produce an eight-foot tall plant with red stem, long, smooth, skinny, horizontal limbs and small, black, shiny berries. I’ve no idea what it is, but it’s quite common in this neck of the woods. If you get it early enough, you can dig the whole root out, which is very satisfying. Past a certain point, you’re likely simply to shear through the thing with your spade. That’ll slow it down, but won’t stop it.
Then there’s the wild grapevine, which sneakily gets itself into the hedge and the trees when my back is turned, and has a root system so vast and complicated that no power in the ‘verse seems to be able to stop it. If you have any suggestions for dealing with said vines, I’d love to hear them.
At any rate, mission accomplished.
UPDATE: Behold the all-seeing, all-knowing power of the Innertoobs!: The mystery weed I have in mind turns out to be American Pokeweed. According to Wiki, the berries are poisonous, something I could tell just by looking at them. The catbirds and mockies chow down on them, though.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
You know, the women-folk of Port Swiller Manor have long professed to be great fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the spirit with which she faced frontier life. Yet let ol’ Robbo absent-mindedly forget to turn the heat back on after a cold front comes through, making the house perhaps a tad chilly overnight, and see what kind of reaction he gets. Hot house orchids ain’t in it.
Speaking of flowers, I was musing about what needs doing around the grounds after I get home from Mass today. It’s actually a short and sweet list: The annual stringing of new deer netting for the hydrangea hedge, the placement of supports for the peonies, some weeding on the garden path.
Somewhere or other I have seen an illustrated Examination of Conscience. For the Commandment about keeping the Sabbath, one of the pictures is of somebody sweating over an old-fashioned push-mower. Now I personally feel that mowing the lawn does come under the definition of unnecessary Sunday labor, which is why I always try to take care of it on Saturday. But I don’t classify fooling about in the garden the same way. To me, it’s more a sort of hands-on appreciation of God’s glory. (At least until the weather turns beastly hot.)
UPDATE: Speaking of Flower Power: Legalized weed, “Earth Day” counterculture and Colorado hippie pot-heads. What could possibly go wrong?
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
My name is Robbo and I am the sometime host of this blog.
My apologies for the sporadic posties of late. The fact is that Mrs. R had to go in for some emergency surgery two weeks ago and things have been rayther at sixes and sevens since then. (She’s fine, btw, but just now getting back up to speed.) Also, Mr. Pollen has been putting the hurt on me over the past couple days.
Thus, my Muse, instead of sitting proudly on my shoulder and inspiring me to heights of erudition and eloquence, has instead been cowering in the corner in a fetal ball, whimpering and muttering, “No hablo Ingles, senior…”.
******
Anyhoo, good God Almighty what a week it’s been, no? As I type, Drudge is suggesting that they may have nailed have captured the second Marathon bastard bomber bastard. And all the usual suspects are already starting the crimination/recrimination games. I positively swear that I heard a few seconds of somebody on NPR this evening suggestion that the younger brother was a “victim” himself, a troubled yoot that our cold, crass system had allowed to “slip through the cracks”.
And so we navel-gaze while the barbarians undermine the wall.
Remember how in M*A*S*H* Alan Alda often delivered that smug and smarmy line, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” Well, either through idiocy or willfulness (or probably both – see Jonah Goldberg’s Tyranny of Cliches), he never finished the thought, and thereby skewed it exactly wrong. The line is from a poem called “What If?”, usually attributed to Bertolt Brecht and criticizing pacifism. It runs in full:
What if they gave a war and nobody came?
Why then the war will come to you!
He who stays home when the fight begins
And lets another fight for his cause
Should take care:
He who does not take part
In the battle will share in the defeat.
Even avoiding battle will not avoid Battle,
since not to fight for your own cause really means
Fighting in behalf of your enemy’s cause.
I am not (yet) of the camp that attributes our confused and self-destructive response to Jihad to a deliberate ploy by Libs to ruin this country. Instead, I still believe it is a matter of naiveté, fecklessness, hubristic posturing and a vague desire that it will all somehow just go away by itself.
Well, it won’t.
*******
Speaking of battles, I ran off the movie Red Tails the other evening, a film that purports to tell the story of the famed Tuskegee Airmen of WWII. I won’t say much about the film itself, as it turned out to be a horridly cartoonish thing, indulging in cliche and caricature and doing absolutely nothing to actually honor or, more importantly, EXPLAIN these remarkable pilots and their stunning record of success. Instead, I use it as yet another exhibit in support of a policy I intend to implement upon becoming Emperor of the World. Under my wise and benevolent reign, CGI-created machines (in this case, WWII-era fighters and bombers), will not be permitted to act in ways physically impossible for their real-world counterparts.
Do you hear, George Lucas (who was behind this movie)? If you make a P-51 Mustang act like one of your freakin’ X-wings on MY watch, you are going to be subject to a public flogging. You’ve been warned.
******
Speaking of warnings, the youngest gel, now aged 11 and quite full of herself, has taken to calling me “Dude” lately. Each time she does it, I promptly correct her. She just as promptly apologizes. But that doesn’t seem to prevent her from doing it the next time. Grrrrrr.
******
One of my resolutions this Easter season is to dip into various authors I’ve not read before. To this end, I recently acquired the collected works of Flannery O’Connor. I also procured Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. Two other authors who have appeared on my radar are Walker Percy and John Buchan (of 39 Steps fame). Any suggestions re these two would be appreciated, although I must warn you that I gather Buchan is mostly a whodunnit kind of fellah and detective stories (even those concerning Sherlock Holmes himself) have never really grasped my interest that much. Oh, and friends of the decanter are always welcomed to suggest other authors and books. Regular readers probably know ol’ Robbo pretty well at this point, so you know what might interest me.
Of course, if you were to ask what I’m reading at this very minute, for all my talk of expanded horizons I would have to confess that I’m working my way through the Waugh cycle for the umpteenth time and thoroughly enjoying myself.
******
Speaking of expanding, we are in the initial steps of doing away with the weather-beaten and code-violating back porch at Port Swiller Manor and replacing it with a three-season room. The building guy and architect were out this morning to take measurements and discuss ideas. I kept an eye on the architect as he free-handed a sketch of the existing and proposed structures in his notebook. It was absolutely fascinating to watch the virtual blueprint emerging from his squigglings. I suppose it’s routine when you’re in the biz, but as a layman I was deeply impressed.
******
Well, not much else to say at the moment. This was one of those horrid evenings in which Mrs. R and I were required to transport the gels to and from various activities in a logistical scheme that made Operation Overlord look like a game of pickup football. I loathe such days. To add to the fun, the area has been subject to torrential rains off and on all evening. The poor visibility, coupled with my rotten night vision, had ol’ Robbo tooling about the highways and byways muttering under his breath about “driving by Braille”.
The upside of such an evening’s toil and travail is that when everyone finally returns to base safe and sound, that extra glass of wine tastes especially good. I invite you to join me!
Greetings my fellow port swillers!
Well, I think there can be no doubt that Spring has finally got her act together and begun operations in the neighborhood of Port Swiller Manor. There’s greenage on the trees, the bleeding heart in the front bed is in bloom and the windows are wide open. Also, today was the first day that ol’ Robbo had to pull out his mower and weed-whacker. Always a nice thing when they start right up after sitting idle in the garage all winter. (I would mention that I also put the hammock out today, but since I seem never actually to get the chance to use the durn thing, this is an annual milestone of much less actual importance.)
Of course, this being Spring means that the weather has turned schizophrenic, with temperatures yo-yoing all over the place and extremely fast-changing conditions. Indeed, Friday morning we had our first thunderstorm of the year. The middle gel and self were sitting in the ol’ Wrangler down to school, waiting for it to be time for her to go in for choir practice, when suddenly a bolt of lightning hit one of the towers above us. Scared the bejaysus out of both of us, I assure you.
This morning saw the annual parade and opening ceremonies of our local Little League. The opening pitches were thrown out this year by none other than Robbo’s beloved Nats’ right-fielder, Jayson Werth. (He and 1st baseman Adam LaRoche both have kids in the program.) For all his alleged ball-handling prowess, Werth managed to put two out of the three pitches into the dirt.
At any rate, as the “Star-Spangled Banner” was sung at the ballpark, I found myself musing sadly. It seems that every day the headlines become more and more horrible, filled with bread and circuses, bald-faced lies and behind-the-scenes Orwellian power-grabbing. There can be little question that we are and have been on social and economic paths that are simply unsustainable. (Of course, we’ve done this to ourselves through softness and lack of vigilance and our failure to drown all the Baby-Boomers in buckets at birth, and a lot of people still somehow don’t seem to understand how deep the trouble is that we’re in.) But now, I think, we’ve finally reached the point where it’s all coming to a head one way or the other.
Personally, I don’t believe that the country is actually doomed. What I think is going to happen is that those trying to finish up installing the Brave New World are going to overreach in a way that finally makes the citizenry wake up. (No, strike that. I actually think they already have. Now we’re just waiting for the math to catch up.) It’ll make ‘em wake up because it’ll hurt like hell. Collapse of the dollar? Food shortages? Riots a la Cyprus? Persecutions and scape-goatings? Oh, you betcha.
But you see, I also think there is something that sets up apart from late-Republican Rome or Paris in the Terror or early 20th Century Russia or Germany or, for that matter, Modern Europe. I think that although, as I say, we’ve got lazy and complacent, there is still a seed of autonomy and self-reliance in our national character. When push comes to shove, I think, I think, that we will remember what we’re made of. (You see that, for instance, in the public resistance against draconian gun-control. And the Tea Party.) It’ll be ugly, to be sure, but I believe that in the end we will come out intact on the other side, without either Caesar or Big Brother and hopefully wiser and stronger for the experience. (Do you know that I actually had a conversation with the Mothe a week or two ago about what the military would be likely to do in the event they were ordered to turn on trouble-making citizens? And that it was a conversation in earnest? We agree, by the bye, that it is extremely unlikely they ‘d cooperate in any such strong-arm tactics.) At least, that’s my hope and I’m sticking to it.
But as I say, I am saddened by all this. Not so much for myself, but for my children. I’m betting that the Crisis hits in the next five to ten years, right in the midst of their young adulthoods. I figure that I can face whatever comes with a kind of resigned stoicism and a sense that if I get caught in the crossfire, at least I’ve already had my turn. But it pains me to think about what they’ll have to go through when their world is turned upside down.
Ah, well. Better go jump in that hammock while I’ve still got the chance…..
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Perhaps because I’m out of practice, I completely forgot to add an item to yesterday’s randomness that linked many of the other items together. Specifically, I had meant to say that I only recently learned that this summah will see another outbreak of periodical cicadas in the neighborhood of Port Swiller Manor. This time, it seems we will be visited by Brood II.
I well remember the last infestation, which occurred in 2003. The first intimation of what we were in store for manifested itself one hot, hazy Saturday morning when, standing on the back deck having a kahfee, I realized that the sound I was hearing was not a car alarm going off in the neighborhood, but the combined croonings of a whooooole lotta bugs. After the novelty wore off, the constant ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh began to get quite tedious. Oh, how sweet the day was when I was able to do the old Alan Alda gag from MASH whenever the artillery barrage was over: “Do you hear that?” “I don’t hear anything.” “Exactly! They’ve stopped!”
And then there were the damned things themselves, clustering all over trees, smacking into windshields, turning up in unexpected and unwanted places. And once you’ve run over your first batch with a lawnmower, you really don’t care to repeat the process.
Back then, I was still driving a Toyota Camry. I remember one day passing a fellah in an open convertible on the Gee-Dub and wondering idly how he dealt with all the bugs. (He was so tall that his forehead actually protruded over the windscreen. I didn’t half like to think what it would be like to take one of those things between the eyes. They’re big.) I suppose I’m going to find out this year, since the ol’ Wrangler doesn’t have A/C and it is essential to keep the sides off during hot weather.
When I relayed the nooz to the gels, there was a storm of outcry and protest, together with much criticism of God for devising such an annoying and yet apparently pointless form of life. Sleep for seventeen years and then emerge just long enough to mate and die? I duly chided them for questioning the Almighty’s wisdom, but I confess that I can’t really see the math on this one myself.
Well, after my mini-hiatus (assuming it’s over) and the condolence/reminiscence post below that more or less wrote itself, I thought I’d try dipping the port swiller toe back in the water with a little bit of randomness. Here goes:
♦ After a very late dose of cold, Spring has finally and truly come to the environs of Port Swiller Manor. Today was the first day of the year that I took the top off the ol’ Wrangler. Spring and fall are, of course, the optimal times for this, the days of High Summah being too darn hot to lose all that valuable shade.
♦ I’ve decided that when we get our next cats, one of them is definitely going to be named Mr. Joyboy. There are few names in liddershur that make me snigger quite so much. Now all I need is a suitable companion name, since we’re probably going to wind up getting a couple. The leading candidate at the moment is Tobermory, although I fear that might be too phonetically similar and cause some feline confusion.
♦ We had a bit of a medical scare over the weekend at Port Swiller Manor that involved Mrs. R having to rush to the hospital for emergency surgery. All is well now and she is resting, but your humble host is in the doghouse just a bit for having dismissed the preliminary symptoms as nothing more than “too much Chipoltle”.
♦ Whoever it was who recommended to ol’ Robbo http://www.freetaxusa.com last year, thanks again. After my second year with it, I have to confess that it is superior to my flailing about with pencil, calculator and foolscap.
♦ Well, so much for Robbo’s beloved Nats going 162-0 this year, which is what I think we fans were secretly hoping/expecting.
♦ On the other hand, the youngest gel’s team is 2-0 after this past weekend’s battles. So we’ve got that going for us.
Enough to start?
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
How odd to wake up on March 25 and find Port Swiller Manor under a couple of inches of heavy, wet snow! Must be Global Warming. Or sumf’n.
It so happens that the gels are out of town still visiting Fort LMC. They’ll be furious that they missed the opportunity to cavort.
Since winter storm naming has become all the rage this year, I am officially dubbing this one “Son of Snowquester”. If Jim “Mimbo” Cantore has a problem with that, he knows where he can find me….
UPDATE: Well, it’s all over and done. I’d say Port Swiller Manor got about three inches or so as I sat messing about with the taxes. Very pretty to watch coming down, with the added benefit that it’s all already melted off the drive so no shoveling for Robbo.
As to the storm name, it seems that my suggestion has been ignored (we artistes live unappreciated lives, we really do) and the commenters over at the post-mortem are collectively dubbing it “Passnover”. (Which, in all fairness, I have to admit is pretty good, too.)
Recent Comments