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Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Sundries first, just to mix it up a bit?
Ol’ Robbo is kicking himself a bit today because he missed last night’s display of the Northern Lights, a phenomenon which I have not seen before. Apparently, they were visible even well south of here. All I can say is that I had dismissed the possibility earlier in the evening because it was raining and overcast, and it didn’t occur to me to recheck the skies before I went to bed. Perhaps there will be an encore tonight?
Speaking of things meteorological, this week’s exciting news was the report of a tornado in Youngest Gel’s area. It seems to have missed her by about five miles. The story Ol’ Robbo got was that at word of the twister’s approach in the middle of the night, Youngest fled to her Young Man’s digs for shelter. I’ll concede that his place is rayther more storm-worthy than hers, but…….Mmm-hmm. (I think – I think – that those two are going to wind up together: they’re definitely making post-graduation plans around each other, but Youngest is being maddeningly coy about it all and hiding behind studying for her exams. Ol’ Robbo may have to go full paterfamilias when he heads out for graduation next week.)
And speaking of nothing in particular, how about Ol’ Robbo’s beloved Nationals, who are playing surprisingly competitive ball at the moment! (They’re just over .500 at the time of this posting, a height they last reached, if I heard the stat correctly, sometime in June 2021.) Lots of very young but strong talent coming into form, from what I can see. Of course, given our management, these kids likely will be incubated here for another couple years and then lost to teams like the Yankees because we won’t cough up enough coin to keep them. Eh. In the meantime, however, Ol’ Robbo is enjoying baseball again. What else is there to say except GO NATS!!!
So, as to gardening…..
Ol’ Robbo is happy to say that the damned dear didn’t get all of the buds off his roses: the survivors are opening out now. Meanwhile, the foxgloves are beginning to form buds, as are my blueberries and raspberries. It’s far too early to expect anything out of the butterfly bush and cupflower yet: my main garden plot doesn’t get into full gear until summah.
Today was pruning day here at Port Swiller Manor, with the focus on the holly hedge by the sidewalk and the large shrub, the name of which I cannot recall, by the front door. Ol’ Robbo is always a bit hesitant to pull out his shears, as once I start chopping, I tend to fall into berserker mode and overdo it. Today, however, I restrained myself, taking just enough off the hollies to thwart snerps in the neighborhood from leaving sanctimonious little notes in my mailbox about the requirement to keep the sidewalks free from overhang. (I’ve had this happen in the past.)
I also had another go-around with the wild grape that really seems to be coming out extra-aggressively this year. Like all terrorists, including those being loudly supported by idiot kollege kidz at the moment, the vines think they can shield themselves from attack by embedding themselves in civilian populations. Whelp, Ol’ Robbo is at the point of being perfectly willing to sustain collateral damage to purge the bastards once and for all: if firing Round-Up into a vegetative shield is what is required, so be it.
Finally, still no hummingbird sightings as of yet this year. This doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t coming into the feeder yet, just that Ol’ Robbo hasn’t spotted them at it. At the same time, they always seem to get to my feeder later than they do other people’s in the area, why I don’t know. Just one of those things, I guess.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Yes, after being away all weekend, Ol’ Robbo took today off in order to deal with what he had missed out in the yard.*** It is the time of year in the great Commonwealth of Virginny that one skips one’s weekly gardening chores altogether at one’s own peril because everything – grass, weeds, etc. – is growing like gangbusters and needs constant checking.
Indeed, just between Tuesday and Sunday, both Robbo’s wisteria and his peonies started opening up: As I type this post on the porch, I can smell the wisteria scent wafting in from the fence, much to my delight.
Much to my ire, however, as I went out to inspect what needed doing this morning, I discovered that almost all of my rose buds have vanished! Arrrgh!! I couldn’t find any hoof-prints or other tell-tales, but unless some eco-terrorist with a pair of scissors has been at work punishing me for my skepticism of the Glowbull Enwarmening fraud, it isn’t difficult to figure out who the culprits are. Well, whadaya gonna do? I suppose I’ll have to put some nylon mesh around them, and I prolly ought to do it soon before the deer start in on the leaves as well. (All the more reason to get another dog sooner rather than later, too.)
Regular friends of the decanter may recall Ol’ Robbo recently planting a Niobi clematis to replace the Duranndi he thought he’d lost? Turns out I needn’t have bothered: From what was a completely bare patch of ground, a brand-new stem of the latter has shot up a foot this week. I forgot that clems, while subject to periodic health issues, are really rayther hard to kill outright once their roots are established. Eh, Ol’ Robbo is perfectly willing to embrace the power of “and” here. One can never have too many clematis.
*** Mrs. R had asked, “Are you working today?” “Yes,” I responded, “just not at my paying job.” Mrs. R has never found that joke funny, for some reason.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo hopes you will indulge him in his pride over the two Elder Gels receiving their master’s degrees this weekend, Eldest in library sciences, Middle in public affairs, both from Indiana University. And in his relief that both Gels have well-paid jobs waiting for them as a result. Huzzay! Huzzah!
Yes, as noted below, Mrs. R and I traveled out to Bloomington this week to participate in the festivities and to assist teh Gels in their transition from students to alumnae. All in all, it went far, far more smoothly than Ol’ Robbo had dreaded it might.
On the way out, we stopped over for the night to visit with Youngest, who graduates from Miami of Ohio in two weeks. We took her out to dinner, along with her Young Man and four of her other closest friends. Ol’ Robbo has mentioned here before how impressed he is with this set, all of them being extremely polite and engaged? Said dinner did nothing to change my mind about any of them. Indeed, it gave me hope that the future is not totally lost.
We stayed over in Youngest’s apartment. It’s actually more of a studio, although a ridiculously large one, but it’s also fairly sparsely furnished. Since there really was no place other than the bed to sleep, Youngest graciously let us have the place to ourselves and bunked over at one of her friends’ place. Youngest’s digs are on the town’s high street, located at one end of a strip of bars and restaurants known as Uptown. Ol’ Robbo was fool enough to reckon that since this was a Wednesday in exam week, things would be rayther quiet. Ha, ha, ha. Various bands of drunken kids stumbled under our window into the wee hours of the morning. There was a time when Ol’ Robbo would have taken this as ordinary, but I’m way too old for it now. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep.
Next morning, we saddled up and headed out. All Ol’ Robbo can say about the drive to southwestern Indiana is that it is much hillier than he had previously imagined. Also that the beltway round the southern part of Indianapolis is a typical construction nightmare at the moment.
We duly arrived in Bloomington Thursday morning. All of Ol’ Robbo’s previous fretting about where on earth we were going to park proved to be groundless: We simply dropped off Mrs. R’s Honda Juggernaut at the football stadium and left it for the weekend, no problemo. Here, we stayed at Middle Gel’s digs, this time an apartment suite: One of her roommates had already moved out and the other was gone for the weekend, so it all worked out splendidly. Alas, Middle’s digs, while not on the strip, are still mostly student-infested, and the revelry Ol’ Robbo was forced to overhear at Youngest’s was also very much present here. Like Sergeant Hulka, I’m too old for this shite. ***
Thursday evening was Middle’s graduation ceremony. It went off just fine: An organist played a lot of Bach; there were the usual boring speeches; the doctoral candidates presented a lot of authentic academic gibberish justifying their degrees; and then the various batches of master’s candidates went forward. In her turn, Middle was duly hooded. Fortunately, she’s relatively high up in the list, alphabetically speaking, so the audience were not so utterly sick of clapping by the time she went across the stage. Everybody behaved themselves, and out of a couple hundred graduates, Ol’ Robbo saw exactly two who deemed it important to slap “Palestinian” flags on top of their mortarboards. Whatevz.
Eldest’s ceremony was Friday morning, although it wasn’t much of a ceremony. Unlike Middle’s, Eldest’s school did not do a formal hooding of its masters. Nor did it even allow robes. Instead, all undergrad and post-grad candidates were invited to appear in biznay-casual attire for a sort of generic “celebration”. Eldest is not one for ceremonial, but she believes that if it’s going to be done, it should be done right. Therefore, we didn’t bother. Instead, the four of us went out for a lavish celebratory brunch. Much to Ol’ Robbo’s displeasure, this involved hiking up to some swanky mall on the north side of Indy, which was quite a distance, but in the end a good time was had by all.
Saturday morning was devoted by Ol’ Robbo to assisting Eldest to clear out her digs. And I am here to tell you that I was downright Solomon-like in splitting her accumulated possessions into the chuckable, the donatable, and the stuff I was willing to help her bring home between her car and ours. In about five hours, we had filled up her downstairs trash tipster, made a run to Goodwill, and divvied into neat piles the loads to bring back to Port Swiller Manor.
The rest of the day was spent with strolling around the Indiana campus. Eldest and I must have walked about six miles, altogether. Ol’ Robbo won’t say the place, as a whole, is beautiful, although it has beautiful bits here and there. I’d just say that it seemed to have a competent set-up for a middling-large state school. Also that off-campus housing is a seriously lucrative biznay in those parts. A couple of the local bigs seem to have their hooks into all kinds of housing options. As to the local pro-Hamasshole rally, yes, they were there, camped out on the campus green. Really, it looked more like a bunch of idiot undergrads (but Ol’ Robbo repeats himself) catching some rays and languidly repeating half-understood slogans than anything else. As we walked about the streets outside of campus, Ol’ Robbo was delighted to see all the outdoor graduation celebrations going on.
Evacuation began at O-dark-thirty this morning. Ol’ Robbo will not bore you friends of the decanter with the details. Suffice to say that Mrs. R’s Honda Juggernaut and Eldest’s Mazda were saddled up and ready to ride out within ten minutes of the time we had planned. Convoying the eleven hours back to Port Swiller Manor, there is not much to report, except that Eldest was shocked at the vehemence with which Ol’ Robbo criticized her observed tail-gaiting when we stopped for lunch at the Craker Barrel in Cambridge, Ohio. 85-m.p.h. and the Gel is halfway up the tailpipe of the fellah in front of her! Ol’ Robbo cannot think of a quicker or stupider way to get involved in a major traffic accident than this, and I told her so. (Accusations of favoritism were quickly quashed, as I’ve chewed out Middle Gel over the same damned thing.)
Anyhoo, here we are. Mrs. R, Eldest, and Ol’ Robbo are back at Port Swiller Manor. Middle Gel is treating herself to a vacation in San Diego starting tomorrow. We all reconvene in two weeks to see Youngest graduate. This time, four of us will stay at her apartment. I’ve no doubt that hylarity will ensue.
Good times.
Two other completely random observations.
First, there is a night bird in southern Indiana that Ol’ Robbo needs to identify. Several times I awoke to its, and its fellows, incessant calls, thinking that it was time to get up, only to find that it was about three ack emma.
Second, coming east today, Ol’ Robbo reveled in Ma Nature’s weather decor. Although the first part of the drive was uneventful, I-69 between Morgantown, West Virginia and Hanckock, Murrland is damned dicey as a drive as it is, and Ma left a drape of clouds that came down in the form of fog and spilled over the front range of the Alleghanies at Sidling Hill, and then settled ever lower as we climbed up the lower slopes of South Mountain at the eastern end of teh Great Valley. No fun for driving, but as we got back to our little patch of the NoVA piedmont, it continued to drizzle, and as Ol’ Robbo looks out across the Port Swiller Manor garden this evening, he notes that the peonies and the wisteria are firing right up. (Apologies – there is nothing coherent about this observation. Ol’ Robbo just throws it down after a very long day.)
** Fun fact: “Academia Waltz” was the name of the cartoon strip Berke Breathed did as an undergrad at the University of Texas. Yes, that Berke Breathed, the one who does “Bloom County”. My high school Latin teacher was a classmate of his.
*** Ol’ Robbo dearly hopes you need not need a footnote for this reference.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Sorry about the minimal content. The pollen is draining my brain exactly the way that blobby sooper-smart bug did in “Starship Troopers”, and I can’t seem to generate any coherent thoughts. ***
That, and I’m feeling oppressed by the Elder Gels’ graduations later this week. I’ve an idea that the Hamassholes might start something to interrupt their ceremonies. Additionally, I haven’t the faintest idea where we’re going to find parking. Finally, Ol’ Robbo has an idea that he is going to be dragooned into moving some of the Gels’ heavier items as they empty their apartments.
We shall see.
In any event, I shan’t be around here much for the rest of the week, so help yourself to some more port and Stilton. I’ll let you know how it goes afterwards.
*** My apologies in advance to all Heinlein fans here. I’ve never read the book, not really being a sci-fi guy, but the movie seems to enrage you loyalists pretty universally. Being a crank about adaptations myself, I feel your rage.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
A cool and rainy day here at Port Swiller Manor. The forecast says it’s supposed to be twenty degrees warmer tomorrow. Ol’ Robbo knows things can swing awfully quickly in these parts, but I’ll wait until that actually happens before I believe it. (It may just be my paranoia talking, but lately I’ve begun to suspect the meteorological community of indulging in what one might call forecast inflation.)
In the meanwhile, a productive morning. The grass is very much at the stage in which skipping a week’s mowing is to invite all kinds of trouble later. Meanwhile, the peonies are getting ready to burst (and a sudden bout of hot weather would be just the thing to get them to), so I duly propped up the stems with some stakes and twine. (Is the fact that they need such support an indication that they are simply overbred?) I also thinned out the dead branches on my hydrangea hedge out back: Their leaves are mostly open now and the buds are starting to form. (These are oak-leafed, of course, and have big, conical clusters of flowers. Ol’ Robbo has never much cared for the other, pom-pomish type.) The buds are also forming on the roses and wisteria – another month and the yard will be enveloped in a thick blanket of fragrance.
Ol’ Robbo had to plant another rosemary today because I was idiot enough to leave the pot with the last one directly under my birdfeeder: The bottom-feeders had the thing dug out and dead in their search for fallen seeds before you could say knife. This time around, I moved the pot to a safer location. I also surrounded it with chicken-wire just until the new plant gets itself established.
Speaking of which, no update on the iris I tried putting in two weeks ago. They still haven’t perked up at all, but they’re not browning or decomposing, either so they can’t be completely dead. Whether they’re mostly dead still remains to be seen.
On the wildlife front, Ol’ Robbo can hear the sparrow chicks in the birdbox by the fence when I pass by. No sign of hummingbirds yet, but I’m not really expecting them for another couple weeks. The foxes have been quite active of late and, alas, so have the rabbits: Little Bunny Foo-Foo and his buddy have been running around in circles in the back yard, sparring with each other. Ol’ Robbo sees any sign of predations and he’s getting himself a pellet gun.
Well, that’s about all there is to say at the moment. The Former Llama Military Correspondent is in the neighborhood this weekend for some Knights of Columbus indaba, and we’re having him in for dins. I’m trying to decide if it is really just too chilly to eat on the porch or not. I haven’t yet begun to contemplate whether I’ll even be able to grill out if the rain keeps up. (Yes, while Western Civilization continues its headlong hurtle in the abyss, these are the things that tend to clutter the braim of Ol’ Robbo on a Saturday afternoon.)
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Sitting out on the Port Swiller Manor porch as dusk fell at the end of a lovely day last evening, Ol’ Robbo got an unexpected little treat: The high school senior next door decided to come out on his back porch to practice his viola. I say practice, but it was really more of a rehearsal, as instead of scales and arpeggios, and the like, he went right the way through a piece, into which he’d evidently put in considerable prior work. Given the time of year, I supposed his school’s spring concert is coming up very shortly.
Although I didn’t recognize the piece, it was evident to me that it was not a solo, nor was it likely symphonic. Based on the way it seemed to mark time between bouts of intense engagement, I surmised it was probably some sort of chamber piece. It was obviously from the later Romantic Era, and from some of the figures and cadences, Ol’ Robbo would have been willing to put a fiver on Dvorak as the likely composer. (I didn’t yell across to enquire, as I did not wish to discombobulate the boy. I mean to ask his mother the next time I run into her on the sidewalk.)
The kid was quite good – a bright, confident tone, pretty solid mastery of the more pyrotechnical passages, snappy correction when he began here and there to drift off the note. As I say, you could tell he’d put a lot of work into his performance. Interesting that he chose the viola, as it’s not exactly a high-profile instrument. Mozart was a great champion of it, though, appreciating all the nifty interior parts that it typically covers, and I can certainly see that myself. That said, I believe there’s a whole broad category of musick-nerd jokes devoted specifically to viola players.
All in all, Ol’ Robbo felt great contentment staring out into the gloaming, a glass of wine at his side, and the mellow notes of the viola floating across the way. Much better than the kid who lives farther over in the neighborhood and plays the trumpet. I’ve walked past his house now and again when he was practicing and he (I assume “he” but what do I know?) seems a typical marching band hack. God help his parents and siblings (and neighbors)!
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
A lovely day here in the neighborhood of Port Swiller Manor, the kind in which one goes looking for as many projects as possible in order to stay outside. Thus, with the wind at his back, so to speak, Ol’ Robbo tackled the rayther laborious job this morning of razing his forsythia hedge down to near stump level, it having finished blooming a week or ten days ago. I am going to make a very conscious effort this year to feed and lime the things heavily and see whether they will perhaps be more enthusiastic about flowering next year.
What else? Mrs. R brought home this year’s batch of porch and patio plants. These consist of pots of mixed annuals that vary from year to year as the whim takes us, plus a small collection of herbs and spices that have their own little sort of spiral potholder on one corner of the porch. This year, however, I am trying something a bit different with the rosemary, in that I’m giving it its own big pot on the patio and treating it as a perennial instead of an annual. I’ll just bring it inside during the winter. My sistah told me she does this, and if she can manage it in Maine then I don’t see why I can’t do the same down here in Virginny.
I am not certain whether the irises I transplanted last week are going to make it or not. They still seem to be in a state of shock, and while they’re not actually withering, they’re still pretty droopy. I guess time will tell.
Meanwhile, I also planted the new Niobe clematis I mentioned last week. I must say that the people I got it from, an outfit called American Meadows, did a pretty poor job in shipping it to me: the soil was bone dry and half the roots were exposed, and one of the stems had been pretty badly squashed. Fortunately, it snapped back after I set it out for a couple days, but still……
Well, that’s about that. Perhaps Ol’ Robbo will wander back outside and see what else wants doing.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
A (mostly) lovely day for pottering around here in the neighborhood of Port Swiller Manor. I add the parenthetical in part because it’s extremely windy, in part because the tree pollen is playing old harry with my sinuses, leaving me dizzy and lightheaded and feeling almost drunk. (For those of you wondering what’s wrong with feeling drunk, I will repeat Ford Prefect’s reply, “You ask a glass of water.”***) On the other hand, I got my first decent bit of sun today. (Ol’ Robbo does not tan but goes straight to “lobster”. In high summah, this process can take no more than twenty minutes, so I try to build up an undercoating early in the season.)
It turns out a friend of Mrs. R’s recently sold her house to a builder who is going to bulldoze the place, so the friend is handing out freebies from her garden. Thus, Mrs. R came home this morning with half a dozen irises and something with white flowers that looks like it must come from the rosemary family. As regular friends of the decanter will recall, Ol’ Robbo has been mulling planting iris in his rose and peony beds for some time now. I had missed the window to buy bulbs for this spring, but hey presto, opportunity came a’ calling after all. (We’ll see if they actually survive the transplanting, but it’s always been my impression that iris are pretty tough customers.) The thing-that-might-be-rosemary gets its own pot on the patio. The friend tried to tempt me with some hostas, too, but I declined. Ol’ Robbo would love to put some in and indeed has the very place for them, but the deer would just mow them flat. When I mentioned this, the friend said that her parents used to sprinkle human hair clippings all around and it kept the deer off. I’ve never heard of this before. “Yes,” said Mrs. R, “You could shave off your beard and use that!” Ha, ha. They never quit, do they.
Meanwhile, the growing season is now truly upon us in Ol’ Robbo’s neck of the woods. The peonies already have lots of buds (complete with attendant ants crawling all over them), my azaleas are getting ready to pop, and the lily-of-the-valley has broken ground. Meanwhile, the hydrangea are leafing out and the wisteria are budding. The climbing hydrangea that I planted on the old grape trestle last year and didn’t really grow at all, looks like it’s now ready to shoot up, and the raspberries that I transplanted not only survived, they’re sprouting babies. Ma Nature certainly is busy these days.
Alas, not everything is wine and roses. Ol’ Robbo still isn’t sure what happened to the pachysandra bed by the road, but it certainly took a beating from something. I begin to suspect it might have some connection with Mrs. R’s insistence on making an extra effort to pull as many dead maple leaves out of it as possible last fall and winter. Perhaps the extra disruption had a negative impact on the pacchies. (Even if it didn’t, I’m going to tell Mrs. R it did the next time she fusses over the leaves because I still think trying to get them all out is an exercise in useless futility.) Some of the bare stems seem to be budding again but I think we’ve also definitely lost some patches. Thinking about replanting them makes Ol’ Robbo tired.
Then there’s this stuff:
Regular friends of the decanter will recall that Ol’ Robbo has posted about this before. Indeed, one of you identified it as possibly being a species of invasive vine of Asia origin, a conclusion with which I agree. (I’d offer its probable name again, except that I can’t find the post at the moment.) In any event, it doesn’t seem to stop growing even over the winter and is spreading itself alarmingly all over the Port Swiller Manor demesne, popping up in every sheltered place it can find. Regular Round-Up doesn’t seem to affect it very much, so I’m going to try some the high-octane stuff designed to take out ivy. (I’ve also got to clear some ivy to make room for more roses and peonies anyway.)
Well, that’s that. Ol’ Robbo would love to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening continuing to potter around, but I have to go and get ready for the annual “gala” for St. Marie of the Blessed Educational Method, an event I’ve been able to duck successfully the last few years thanks to the covidiocy but which is now back in my life. (Grumble, grumble, grumble….)
*** Nope, no “spot-the-quote” credit on this one, it’s too easy.
UPDATE UNO: Oh, Ol’ Robbo knew there was something else: Regular friends of the decanter will recall I was wondering if one of my Durandii clematis had given up the ghost over the winter. Turns out it has. So Ol’ Robbo is replacing it with a Niobe variety, a clem much more suitable for lattice-work. Should look verrah nice.
UPDATED DEUX: Can you believe it? Ol’ Robbo goes out to check up on his new irises before Mass this morning to find that something – squirrel? woodchuck? – had been digging around a couple of them. Not eating anything, mind you – so far as Ol’ Robbo is aware, nothing eats iris – but messing with the newly loosened soil. Sigh. So this afternoon, out came the chicken wire cages again. I suppose I’ll have to leave them there until the ground firms up again. At least you can’t really notice them from the porch. (Well, I can’t at any rate.)
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo is taking the day off from work today just because. For the first time this season, I’m able to lounge comfortably this morning on the Port Swiller Manor back porch with my laptop and my kawfee. (I just wish the pollen wasn’t so awful at the moment.)
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I hope everyone had fun yesterday with the yclipse. (Middle Gel sent me a video from Indiana which I wanted to post here but couldn’t manage the platform translation from her phone to gmail to wordpress. I had thought these things happen more or less automatically now, but no. Technology will let you down every time.) Here, it got quite dark indoors as it does when a thunderstorm is approaching: It was strange to go back out and look up at the blue but dim sky. As I joked with Eldest Gel, it looked as if God was just about to hit the “smite” button (and I wouldn’t blame Him in the least for doing so).
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Ol’ Robbo’s Camillia is in full bloom and even a little past peak, and at the moment is swarming with honeybees. I regularly read articles to the effect that the honeybee population is doomed, and it is all my fault for having the audacity to exist, but, no, it would seem the little critters are doing just fine. Over the years I’ve got used to working around them in the garden, as they are usually pretty non-aggressive. My sister used to keep a couple of hives, but I don’t think I could stick that. At any rate, as Ol’ Robbo understands it, hive-keeping is actually detrimental to the population, as it concentrates the bees unnaturally. As a result, when something goes wrong (and things will always go wrong), it wipes out a much larger batch than it would in the wild.
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Looking in the other direction, Ol’ Robbo notices that the birdhouse I put up by the fence a few years ago is once again occupied by sparrows this year instead of the bluebirds for which I had hoped. Sigh. I don’t understand why said bluebirds seem to shun it. They’re perfectly happy with the one on my neighbor’s fence. The only thing I can think of is that the wisteria on my fence is too close to the box for their liking. (The neighbor’s fence is bare.) I’m very tempted to put up another one a bit farther away just to see if I’m right.
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Another thing which tempts Ol’ Robbo every spring is to put up a bat-house. I am quite fond of bats and love to watch them flittering around in the summah dusk gobbling up skeeters and whatnot on the fly. Alas, Mrs. R is terrified of the things, so it would be very cruel of me to encourage them this way. Anyhow, they seem to do just fine without my assistance.
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Well, as this seems to have turned into something of a gardening post, I will end by saying that I worry this year that the loss of Decanter Dog will mean the deer start coming into the yard again in much the same way as the Saxons started to raid Britannia after the Roman Legions pulled out. Some years ago, I was able to remove the wire cages from around my roses without fear. I’d hate to have to put them back. (All the more reason to get another puppy this summah.) My sister recommends wolf pee to ward them off, while I’m also reminded of a wag who used to comment here years ago who recommended that I, ah, take matters into my own hands, if you know what I mean. Hopefully, no such measures will be necessary. (I just looked up wolf pee online. That stuff’s expensive!)
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Well, here we are on the day of the much-ballyhooed total solar yclipse. I believe we will get an 80-something percent coverage here in the neighborhood of Port Swiller Manor. As it happens, all the Gels are sitting dead-center for the event in Ohio and Indiana. Perhaps not surprisingly, they, especially the elder two in Bloomington, are viewing the thing more as a major nuisance than anything else, as floods of gawkers pour into town to see the thing happen and totally jam the place up. (Ol’ Robbo first became aware of this yclipse-mania phenomenon ahead of the last total yclipse in 2017. I happened to be staying in Casper, Wyoming, a central target for that one, a couple weeks ahead of time and got chatting with an hotel clerk about it. He said that rooms which ordinarily went for $90 per night had been let for $1000 per night for the event and booked years in advance. Look, an yclipse certainly is an interesting event and all, but c’mon. P.T. Barnum was right.)
Two things about today’s proceedings strike Ol’ Robbo as signs of the wretched times in which we currently live. First, kids in our county’s public skools (and therefore those at St. Marie of the Blessed Educational Method) are verboten from going outside to watch and observe. They must instead confine themselves to coverage on teevee, unless their parents care to pick them up early and take them home. This is because the skool system doesn’t want to get sued to smithereens if Little Johnny manages to blind himself on their watch. I get the reasoning, but Cor lumme, stone the crows.
Second, Ol’ Robbo notices there’s been a minor kerfluffle the past day or two over NASA’s apparent slight miscalculation of the width of the path of total coverage, which might leave some areas out which it had predicted previously would be in. What’ll you bet that somebody who paid a thousand bucks a night for a total-coverage spot and only gets a 98-percent view sues NASA over this? My favorite take from the article I linked:
“NASA also acknowledged that exact measurements of the eclipse path are difficult to pin down. Accurate eclipse forecasts raise a small yet real uncertainty regarding the Sun’s size. Variability in Earth’s rotation can also impact such predictions.”
Wait! Wait! Wait!!! Variations in the Earth’s rotation and questions about the Sun’s size might impact calculations??? That’s just crazy talk! Ol’ Robbo has been informed by Our Betters that the Science is Settled! Acknowledgement of variables and impressions that may affect predictive outcomes is wrong-think! Thus, when I raise questions about the wisdom of completely destroying the infrastructure of our economy and, indeed, our very way of life on the basis of thin and questionable temperature records and outright fraudulent “computer models,” I’m labelled as a wrecker and a hater and a saboteur and a kulak! Sigh. Is it little wonder that Ol’ Robbo’s skepticism increases the older he gets?
Oh, and one other thing I believe I read somewhere: Evidently, the paths of today’s yclipse and the one back in 2017 form a giant “X” across the United States. Their crossover point? New Madrid. Now that’s the basis for an apocalyptic scenario that Ol’ Robbo could really get behind!
Anyhoo, I’ll put on my sunglasses and go find an excuse to potter about in the Port Swiller Manor demesne round about the time of the great semi-darkening. I hope some of you friends of the decanter will get to enjoy the phenomenon, which really is cool, as well.
The Port Stands At Your Elbow 
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