Author Archives: Old Jules

Freecycle Groups

Posted on December 28, 2011 | 16 comments

If you’re interested in giving things you were otherwise going to toss to someone who can use them, or if you’re interested in finding something you’d have otherwise bought as one more Chinese imported product to help destroy our economy and improve theirs, you might have a look at what sort of Freecycle group activity is going on where you are.

For example, someone just gave away 28 chickens on Kerrville Freecycle and the traffic’s picking up with people giving away appliances, exercize equipment, all manner of things still working but now redundant because of Christmas gifting.

There are 10609 Freecycle groups on Yahoo, so there’s probably one in your area.

http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=Freecycle

Here’s an example of the first page of that search:

  • freecyclenewyorkcity

    Welcome to Freecycle™ New York City! BE AWARE: this group … Every item posted must be free. Freecycle New York City is open to all …

    • Members: 50990
    • Latest Activity: 9 hours ago
    • Created: 8 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • freecycleportland

    Freecycle instructional Video Click here to enlarge. Changing the world one gift at a … . If you are outside of Portland, please join and support your local Freecycle group. All Freecycle groups, worldwide, can be found at Freecycle.org …

    • Members: 45922
    • Latest Activity: 10 hours ago
    • Created: 8 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • SheffieldCity-Freecycle

    Sheffield City Freecycle is open to all who want to recycle … link below: This group is part of The Freecycle Network, an international and UK charity …

    • Members: 26339
    • Latest Activity: 8 hours ago
    • Created: 2 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • FreecycleBristol

    Welcome to Bristol Freecycle (UK) Please note – a message will be … this in order to join the group The worldwide Freecycle Network is made up of individual …

    • Members: 40409
    • Latest Activity: 8 hours ago
    • Created: 7 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • OxfordFreecycle

    … somewhere else! The Oxford, England Freecycle (R) group is open to all in the … one of the busiest FreeCycle groups in the country, with up …

    • Members: 40765
    • Latest Activity: 8 hours ago
    • Created: 7 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • hackney_freecycle

    Welcome to Hackney Freecycle. You are welcome to join, if like us … in the correct format. Click the link:- Hackney_Freecycle MessageMaker Need a van? Use the Common Resource …

    • Members: 24257
    • Latest Activity: 4 hours ago
    • Created: 5 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: Yes

  • freecycle-exeter

    Welcome to Exeter Freecycle. This group is for people in and around … for more info Any queries? Email freecycle-exeter-owner@yahoogroups.com or …

    • Members: 23775
    • Latest Activity: 11 hours ago
    • Created: 7 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • haringey-freecycle

    The Haringey Freecycle™ group is open to all who want … This group is part of The Freecycle Network, a nonprofit organization and a …

    • Members: 17376
    • Latest Activity: 8 hours ago
    • Created: 5 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • FreecycleTO

    The Freecycle Network (R) is open to all who want to … constraint: everything posted must be free. The Freecycle Network is a nonprofit organization and a …

    • Members: 23832
    • Latest Activity: 12 hours ago
    • Created: 6 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • freecyclelambeth

     

In Texas  http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=Texas+Freecycle&sort=relevance  there are 210 groups:

 

AustinFreecycle

 

… Freecycle Network (AFN), the first Freecycle group in Texas. WINNER 2005 Keep Austin Beautiful … please join the Austin Freecycle Café group. Copyright …

  • Members: 20831
  • Latest Activity: 6 hours ago
  • Created: 8 years ago
  • Archive: Membership required
  • Moderated: No

 

 

  • HoustonFreeShare

    We are NOT a member of the “Freecycle” movement. If you are … . The reason for the breakoff from Freecycle, is because Freecycle wants …

    • Members: 16126
    • Latest Activity: 2 months ago
    • Created: 8 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: Yes

  • clearlakefreecycle

    Hi! Welcome to the Clear Lake Texas Area Freecycle (TM) Network (http://groups … , etc on the Clear Lake Freecycle site. DO NOT send inappropriate …

    • Members: 5353
    • Latest Activity: 8 hours ago
    • Created: 7 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • Humble-KingwoodTXFreecycle

    … or improvement ideas about the Humble – Kingwood Freecycle Group! Freecycle Group Information Group Name: Humble – Kingwood Location: US – Texas More info: Freecycle.org

    • Members: 5724
    • Latest Activity: 13 hours ago
    • Created: 6 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • ShermanTXFreecycle

    … Freecycle Group! Freecycle Group Information Group Name: Sherman Location: US Southwest: Texas More info: freecycle.org Copyright © 2003-2006 The Freecycle Network (http://www.Freecycle.org). All …

    • Members: 4234
    • Latest Activity: 11 hours ago
    • Created: 6 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • FriscoTX_Freecycle

    … exchange or communication. Freecycle Group Information Group Name: FriscoTX_Freecycle Location: Texas, United States More info: freecycle.org Copyright © 2003-2008 …

    • Members: 3284
    • Latest Activity: 10 hours ago
    • Created: 4 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • lakejacksonfreecycle

    Welcome To Lake Jackson Freecycle (TM) OUR PURPOSE: The goal of Freecycle(TM … READ IT.) We encourage you to go to www.freecycle.org to read the history of freecycle and …

    • Members: 3284
    • Latest Activity: 9 hours ago
    • Created: 7 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • beaumont_tx_freecycle

    … The Beaumont,Texas Freecycle™ group is open to all … about our area ! © 2003 The Freecycle Network ( http://www.Freecycle …

    • Members: 2391
    • Latest Activity: 11 hours ago
    • Created: 3 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • HOTFreecycle

    Welcome to Heart of Texas Freecycle ™!!! Cooler than a garage … for profit. Since this is FREEcycle, items must be FREE! Items …

    • Members: 2938
    • Latest Activity: 17 hours ago
    • Created: 7 years ago
    • Archive: Membership required
    • Moderated: No

  • SanMarcosTXFreecycle

    … Freecycle Group Information Group Name: San Marcos Location: US Southwest: Texas More info: Freecycle.org Copyright © 2003-2011 The Freecycle Network ( http://www.Freecycle.org ). All …

    • Members: 2018
    • Latest Activity: 2 months ago
    • Created: 6 years ago

Not to suggest you shouldn’t run down to WalMart to buy a new toaster from Asia, or put that old XP computer out by the garbage barrel to go to the landfill.   Just depends on what sort of person you are, I suppose.  And what sort of person you want to be.

Just saying.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in 2011, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Survival, Texas, Thrift Stores

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Important Updates From the Middle of Nowhere – Breaking News

Posted on December 28, 2011 | 16 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by.

Things have slowed down here a bit, but exciting things are still happening.

The freezer compartment never had a natural door, so it frosts up somewhat rapidly.

You’ve probably been through this, too.  Defrosting it’s a challenge.  Two days so far with it turned off and the door open.  Slow going because the ambient temperature’s not getting much above freezing.

Someone in south Texas cut down a Texas Ebony tree and Gale managed to lay claim to part of it.  He’s itching to begin working on it, but the bearings, both on his lathe and the sawmill went out suddenly and simultaneously.

He decided it’s time to upgrade his lathe anyway, so the old one’s got to be dissassembled and moved out and the new one assembled and installed.

We’re still waiting for the sawmill bearings to arrive from China or somewhere.

Meanwhile, the wobblyhead extensions still aren’t going to do the job on the Commie Toyota starter.  I think the 4-Runner’s down for the count until I can pull that engine out of there and get to it.  The nut-head rounded off more every time I applied torque.  I dassn’t do anything to round it off more.

Otherwise it’s business as usual here.  The cats and chickens send their regards.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in Admin., America, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Transportation, Trucks, White Trash Repairs

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Cultivating a Taste for a Lousy Attitude

Posted on December 27, 2011 | 20 comments

One blog I subscribe to and don’t dare delete until I’ve allowed the several minutes it takes to download the images on this dialup is There, I fixed it – Close Enough – Redneck Repairs .   

The folks who run it are insufferably smug, downtalking, and annoying smarty-pantses.  But they evidently have a cadre of followers scouting the planet for good ideas, which they post as ‘fails’, or bad, or quaintly bad taste compared to the tastes of the higher-minded posters and readers there.

So several times every day I open an email of the latest good ideas they’ve posted, allow them time to load and study them carefully.  Ignoring the source.   And every few posts another lightbulb goes off in my head as a result.  Someone, somewhere had a problem similar to one I share, and figured out a way to solve it in a way I might also solve mine.

I suppose the people running the place are just out after hit-counts and making as much money as they can any way they can, and the downtalking smugness, they’ve found in their statistics, appeals to more people than the alternative approaches.

But whatever the reasons, I’m grateful they do what they do, and I sincerely hope they continue doing it.

Old Jules

20 Comments

Posted in 2011, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, White Trash Repairs

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A Brain Teaser

Posted on December 27, 2011 | 8 comments

Re-blogged from Understanding Uncertainty http://understandinguncertainty.org/probability-paradox

I’ve been mulling over this puzzle on David’s blog.  Thought perhaps that microscopic few of you readers who are here because of discussions elsewhere about simultaneity and the ‘randomness’ concept might enjoy it too:

A probability paradox?

 
david's picture

Submitted by david on Mon, 10/31/2011 – 08:49

I recently tweeted a link to this problem drawn on a blackboard, which got a lot of retweets.

Multiple Choice: If you choose an answer to this question at random, what is the chance you will be correct? A) 25% B) 50% C) 60% D) 25%

This is a fun question whose paradoxical, self-referential nature quickly reveals itself – A) seems to be fine until one realizes the D) option is also 25%.

A quick search reveals hundreds of discussion contributions of this problem, for example here and here and from a year ago. People often appear very confident that their answer is the only possible solution.

I am no logician and so unqualified to place this within the grand structures of mathematical paradoxes. I have not waded through all the discussions and so there may be something I have missed, but in among all the arguments there seem to be four conclusions that could be considered as ‘correct’. These are my personal comments:

1) There can be no solution, since the ambiguity of ‘correct’ makes the question ill-posed.

It’s true the question is ambiguous, but this still seems a bit of a cop-out.

2) There is no solution.

This seems to take this interpretation of the question.

Which answer (or set of answers) of “p%”, is such that the statement ‘the probability of picking such an answer is p%’ is true?

Then this appears to be a well-posed question, but there is no solution.

3) 0%.

Consider a different interpretation of the question.

Is there a p%, such that the statement ‘the probability of picking an answer “p%” is p%’ is true?

Then this appears a well-posed question and has the solution p = 0, even though this is not one of the answers. Of course if answer C) were changed to “0%” (as it is in this 2007 version of the question ), then this would also have no solution.

4) We can produce any answer we want by changing the probability distribution for the choice.

Why should ‘random’ mean an equally likely chance of picking the 4 answers? If we, say, assume the probabilities of choosing (A) (B) (C) (D) to be (10%, 20%, 60%, 10%) then the answer to either formulation (2) and (3) is now “60%”. But if we make the distribution (12.5%, 15%, 60%, 12.5%) then we seem to back to square one again, since there is now both a 25% chance of picking “25%”, and a 60% chance of picking “60%”.

I like conclusion 3) best, ie 0%.

Maybe the main lesson is: ambiguity and paradox are often the basis for a good joke.

It won’t lead you where you’re trying to go, but it might offer a hint as to whether you can get there from here.

But you might also want to have a look at BRAIN TIME [6.24.09]
By David M. Eagleman http://tinyurl.com/m6zkx4.  Likely that won’t help, either, but it’s bound to introduce some new doubts if you needed any.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2011, Uncategorized

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The Long Watch

Posted on December 27, 2011 | 12 comments

 

Lot’s of high-powered rifle ammunition flying around the surrounding ranches this morning. But I don’t think it’s a government SWAT team come all the way out here to shoot my face off between breaths this fine morning.

In fact, I think it’s deer hunters out trying to squeeze in a last-minute set of antlers on an umpty-ump-point-buck to take home and put on the wall.

I only mention this because a few of you readers and a particular slice of the population of preparedness blogs I read are taking the “Come in and get me coppers!” approach to reflecting on what the US Congress has been doing lately.  There’s a high-anxiety factor leading people to say things on blogs suggesting they think if the government wants them it’s going to have a tough job on its hands getting them. 

Anyone who stops to think about this concept a moment ought to be able to figure out that’s not how it’s going to play out.  Even if they’re correct in thinking someone thinks they’re important enough to send in the cavalry to get them. 

No matter how good you guys who’ve been collecting a thousand different great knives and 200 each calibers of weaponry and ammunition anticipating what you believe is happening, if they want you, they’re going to get you.  If you’ve been shouting challenges at them from your blogs, they’ll most likely do it to your face between two breaths from a distance of a quarter-mile while you take an outdoor leak.

This isn’t the best moment in history to be talking about going to war with the US government.  Even in a whisper.  They’ve spent the last decade developing tactics, strategies, surveillance gear and weaponry intended to deal with people a lot uglier, smarter, sneakier and more highly motivated than any US citizen is likely to be.

I’m not saying what the US Congress did over the past couple of weeks won’t change a lot of things in ways you’ve come to see as your ‘rights’.  I believe it probably will.  I’m just saying you might be well advised to think things through more carefully than you’ve been doing.  You’re all dressed up to play checkers but the game has changed to chess.

Thinks I. 

Old Jules

 

12 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Communication, Country Life, Politics, Survival, The Lone Psychiatrist

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Wheat Flour for Pie Crust

Posted on December 26, 2011 | 11 comments

About 55-60 years ago I had an experience with cherry pie I thought had ruined it for me for life.  The rodeo in my town was a community affair, had events such as greased pigs for the kids to chase around the arena with a prize for the one caught it, a calf with a bull durham bag containing a dollar tied to its tail, and a pie eating contest.

Might have been the year I was twelve we kids chased the pig, and were covered with grease and manure, then topped it off with the calf and more manure before we lined up either side of a table full of cherry pies.  We were to feed that pie to the kid across the table who concurrently fed us pie.

Across from me was a kid named Jerry Haynes, who’d been out front with the pig and calf, so his hands weren’t a pleasure to look at holding a piece of pie intended to be consumed.  But I gave it my old junior-high try.

And from that day until yesterday I’ve never since enjoyed the sight of, the taste of a cherry pie.

But yesterday Gale and Kay invited me up to share Christmas dinner with them.  Kay had made a pie, but had discovered she was out of white flour.  She’d never heard of anyone using wheat flour, but it was all she had, so she tried it, expecting it to be less-than-hoped for.  A cherry pie.

My heart sank a little when I saw that pie, not because of the crust.  But I took a piece of it prepared to do my best to enjoy it.   But instead of it being forced I was surprised with a crust with a nutty flavor and among the most enjoyable pie experiences of my entire life.  Absolutely delicious.

I’m thinking now it might have broken the cherry pie curse Jerry Haynes handed me all those decades ago.

So if you’re scared of wheat flour for pie crust you might be glad afterward if you take a shot at it.

Old Jules

 

11 Comments

Posted in 2011, Country Life, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Shame and a Confession About Inter-Species Sex

Posted on December 26, 2011 | 13 comments

Good morning readers.  I’m obliged you came for a visit this morning.  In case you’re experiencing post-Christmas letdown this morning I’m going to indulge in a couple of guilt-ridden confessions to provide you a measuring stick so’s you’ll realize whatever troubles you have aren’t all that bad.

First I’m going to tell you something dawned on me about the Communist Americauna hen.  All my life I’ve known about clucks.  Everyone who’s ever been around chickens knows about them.  Every flock of any size has a cluck.

Farmers and town folks who’d lived on farms when I grew up had an expression, “Dumber than clucksh*t” as a means of describing me, frequently, and others of my ilk, and everyone knew the exact reference in the comparison.  A cluck is a chicken that’s crosswise with the world, with humanity, out-of-step with the flock. 

I raised these chickens around here except for the Great Speckled Bird, either from hatchery chicks, or from eggs hatched by brooding hens.  I’ve always taken a great deal of pride in the fact I don’t have any clucks.  My flock is comprised of all good chickens.

But over the past few weeks something sinister’s been creeping into my mind.  I’m being forced to acknowledge the Communist Americauna’s a cluck, right here in MY flock.  Always has been.

So if you think you have troubles, if you had a war with your relatives over Christmas, if you bankrupted yourself buying doodads, if your dad didn’t like the gloves or socks you gave him, forget it.  Forgive yourself.  At least you probably haven’t raised up a cluck and had it right there in your life all this time without knowing it.

But as if that weren’t bad enough:

Now the inter-species sex confession.  That silky rooster’s always been a source of amusement to me.  Back when I had silky hens he fathered the other bachelor rooster here and was always good to the hens when he could catch them.

But now the Communist Americauna’s moved in nights with the two bachelor roosters this one’s become odd-man-out.  His filial son got the Commie.  When I turn them out he’s spending his time lying constantly claiming he found something good but the Commie and other hens aren’t paying him any mind. 

The same people who used the word ‘cluck’ to describe me had another in their arsenal they used on me a little later, and it applies to this poor old rooster, too, same as it once did to me.  “Hornier than a three-peckered billy goat” crept into the language as I reached young-adulthood, and here it is again referring to this silky rooster.  I, at least, stuck to my own species and the opposite gender.

The guineas here came from the hatchery with a rooster chick for every four keets, the reason being guineas are braindead stupid and the only way they can learn to survive until they have a chance is having roosters to teach them the basic tricks like breathing, drinking water and eating.  All but two of those guineas got picked off by predators over time, but the two remaining still venerate the Great Speckled Bird and these two bachelors.  They listen to the rooster lies about what they’ve found and come running.  And when the roosters fight the guineas try to be peacemakers, interfering any way they can.

The other day I was outdoors and noticed the silky lying to the two guineas, which he’ll do, but then he started doing his rooster-dance and quicker than I can tell it spang mounted one of them.  And she cooperated.  An unsettling sight.

But then, somewhat later, Shiva the Cow Cat was down in the meadow digging one of her holes to relieve herself in when I saw the silky approach her, dance a couple of steps and he was on her so fast it took her a second to react.  She couldn’t believe what had happened, and neither could I.

Next thing I know he’ll be trying to mount my leg like some poodle dog.

So whatever problems you think you’ve got in your life this morning, console yourself.  It ain’t that bad, most likely.

Old Jules

13 Comments

Posted in 2011, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Homesteading, Nature, Outdoors, Relationships, Solitude, Texas

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Old Sol Rejects A Christmas Gift

Posted on December 25, 2011 | 5 comments

http://spaceweather.com/

I don’t know what Old Sol got for Chrismas, but he was pretty hot about it.

Or maybe it was something he ate.

CHRISTMAS EVE ERUPTION: A filament of magnetism connected to sunspot AR1386 erupted during the early hours of Dec. 24th. Extreme UV-wavelength cameras onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the picturesque blast:  http://spaceweather.com/images2011/24dec11/christmaseve_strip2.jpg

The C5-class eruption hurled a billion-ton coronal mass ejection (CME) into space, but not toward Earth. With the cloud sailing wide-left of our planet, Christmas geomagnetic storms are unlikely. Nevertheless, this active region merits watching as it turns toward Earth in the days ahead, possibly positioning itself for the first storms of 2012.

On the other hand, a minority of physicists and astrophysicists theorize Old Sol’s just hurling back all those marching orders he got from Alpha Centauri and other nearby stars telling him what kind of Christmas to have.  They support their premise on the evidence hasn’t eaten anything lately and the instruments haven’t recorded him getting anything for Christmas worth getting upset about.   Unless he objects to Chinese manufactured products.

I’d suggest we all try to stay calm until we have a clearer idea what’s on his mind.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 2011, Astronomy

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Jeanne’s Christmas Gift to Visitors and a Few Non-Gifted Words

Posted on December 25, 2011 | 39 comments


Jeanne does Christmas but she has a gift worth giving.  I mostly don’t do Christmas so I tips my hat in gratitude she’s here to give it.

Note from Jeanne: This is one of the largest gel pen drawings I’ve ever made. It’s 24 x 24 inches square. I did that size as an experiment for a contest entry for a casino, but when I didn’t win, I re-worked it quite a lot and decided to show it in other exhibits.  I hope you enjoy looking at it!

Morning Readers,

Hope all of you are getting the cobwebs out of your punkin heads sufficiently to maximize whatever joy a person gets out of sitting around a Christmas tree unwrapping packages.

I overslept here, didn’t wake until dawn.  Maybe some of this Christmas spirit thing rubbed off on me and disrupted my routines.  Nice morning.  Quiet outside, cool, but not a shock to hit you when you climb out from under the covers or hit you in the face when you venture outside.

A red dawn.  Sailorman would be concerned about that, I expect.

Last night the cats refused to keep me entertained, so I began reading H. D. F. Kitto’s, The Greeks.  It’s a book I’ve read before, but I occasionally read it again as a refresher course.  Kitto’s work is a fairly expansive treatise on life in Greece during the Classical Period, but he constantly jumps backward so’s to demonstrate how they got where they were and why.

Those Classical Greeks are worth the effort of remembering about.  They’re as much how we got where we are as Homer, the Dorians, the Minoans are how they came to be what they were.  We owe our ability to think in particularly organized ways to them, mathmatics, philosophy, their practical use of democracy, even our concept of drama to some extent.

But we in the West also owe the curse of the Utopian Ideal to their pointy little heads.

That Utopian Ideal has haunted us every since, even though the Greeks, themselves never actually believed in it.  They knew perfectly well that human beings are fundamentally flawed in ways that assure they’ll poison their own watering holes, then run them dry.  They knew that wherever human weakness fails to do the trick, fate, or the gods will step in to lend a hand.

Those Greeks studied Homer much the way really devout Christians study the Old Testament.  And Homer, whatever else it might be, is a refined catalog of human strengths and weaknesses.  Of the drumbeat repetition of human experience.

In their own way, the Greeks were experts on a few thousand years of history in ways we aren’t.  They learned from it, not as we believe we’ve learned from it, but haven’t, but rather as an assurance that human beings make the same mistakes over and over.  That they’ll go on making them as long as there’s a human being left to do the job.

The Greeks derived a wisdom from their knowledge of history, but the wisdom was an oblique one that provided a separate wisdom….. one that included the certainty there’ll never be any Utopia.  Never be any meek inheriting much of anything and holding onto it.

But that’s my premise, not Kitto’s.

I hope you’ll spend a bit of time remembering what Christmas was supposed to be the anniversary of the beginning of.  Not baby-Jesuses or Santa Clauses, readers, but a beginning of a spiritual commitment to peace, love, understanding.

An ideal for breaking the endless cycle of power struggles, killing, worship of gluttony and greed.  A beginning for human beings to take responsibility for their own behavior, attitudes and lives.

Christmas.  Jesus.  A beginning of not being so frightened of everything.  So angry.  So aggressive and downright rattlesnake ugly mean you want to kill strangers a long way from here who are no threat to you if you’ll leave them alone, and take joy from doing it.

A beginning of having the faith that death is part of human experience, and that isn’t something you have to be so damned cowardly scared of it keeps you furious and wanting to look away at anything at all to take your thoughts away from having to do it.

I hope you’ll remember that for a few moments, readers, but I know you won’t.

I ain’t a Utopian.

Old Jules

39 Comments

Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Country Life, Education, History

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Winter Garlic! Hot Diggidy Damn!

Posted on December 24, 2011 | 24 comments

I figure most of you readers really wish you could be me, and I regret you can’t.  The Universe only allows one at a time.  But I’m obliged to all of you for not saying so.  I’d be forever having to work my mind around in ways so’s I don’t feel sorry for you because I recognize you don’t visit here looking for sympathy and pity.

Part of the reason you probably wish you were me is that the Universe is always dumping surprise blessings on me just for the hell of it.  Same as It does you, the difference being I tag and number them so’s they don’t go unnoticed.

It’s a low-overcast day out there and on the cold, wet side.  I just went out to make sure Tabby and Shiva the Cow Cat were staying warm and dry, took them out some old clothing and wadded it into the cat houses just to provide an edge. 

But while I was folding a Mexican rug into Tabby’s hideyhole I glanced across the meadow at the garden, which fared poorly past summer because I was hauling water and it was a drought.  ” Something green over there,” thinks I, and proceeded to soak my footwear mucking over for a looksee.

The moisture’s brought back the garlic I put out year-before-last!  Just look at that stuff enjoying life it thought had spang passed it by.

Law law law!  I don’t blame you for wishing you were me.  If I weren’t so would I.

Old Jules

24 Comments

Posted in 2011, Country Life, Human Behavior, Nature, Solitude, Survival, Texas

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