Tomorrow, We Are Going to Blow Some Stuff Up

Manly and Baby Monkey came home with all of these pretty explosives. Now they are working on a control panel made of wires, a piece of board and light switches. They are in the living room right now doing math and electrical engineering. I think I am going to go hang out on twitter and hope they don't set anything off inside of the house.

This Was Amazing

I was feeling a little blah today, so I looked back through our vacation photos. The pictures above were taken at the Xcaret Echo Park. The performance is the four bird men. They climb up and descend from the Universal Tree. The music for the performance is played on pre-Hispanic instruments. This is a form of worship to the sun god. The four men represent the four elements. I couldn't find anything about the other spinning activity, but it looked really cool and dangerous.

The head guy, the one who played the instrument and stood on top of the poll while the others spun down, looked like he was in his late 70's or early 80's. He climbed right down that rope like it was nothing. None of these performers were young men. I was seriously impressed.

A Brief Visit to the Outdoor Education Center

Here are a couple of pictures of the Bog Garden at the Outdoor Education Center. It is filling in pretty well and should be show ready next spring.

Over in the Butterfly Garden a milk weed has gone to seed. Still waiting on the Monarchs.

A Trip To Canton

Saturday, after closing the library, Kathy and I went on a trip to Canton, Texas to visit the spring. The spring is a place for Canton residents, or anybody else for that matter, to get fresh clean water. We keep a container of it in the library work room. Now I have some here at the house. The picture is Kathy filling one of her many water containers. I am jealous as I only had one.


The next stop was a little vegetable stand. That little kitty was worn out.

The next stop was Mrs. Sides' pea farm. I bought okra, lady cream peas, cantaloupe and Noonday onions. Now the story is that Noonday onions are sweeter that Wala Wala and Vidalia onions. Never having had a Wala Wala or Vidalia onion, I cannot comment. However, the Noonday onions are very sweet. An onion can only be a Noonday onion if it is grown within ten miles of the town of Noonday.

Those lady cream peas were wonderful. They are like a very very good black eyed pea.


Finally, we found the Troubadour Blackberry Farm. This farm is run by the band director of Kaufman High school with his family. I wish you could taste the blackberry cheesecake his wife made. Most excellent. They are going to send me some information on their set up so there will likely get another post.

After returning from our trip, I started cooking. I made lady cream peas, fried okra, and hot water cornbread for dinner.

Lady Cream Peas

Pound of lady cream peas

2 Sliced of Bacon

Pinch of sugar

Enough water to cover the peas.

Simmer for an hour or so and enjoy.

Hot Water Cornbread

1 cup Corn meal

Pinch or more of salt

Boiling water

Add enough boiling water to the cornmeal to create a dough thick enough to shape into patties. Fry in a little oil until golden brown.

Fried okra

Sliced okra

Egg white

Cornmeal

Cajun spice mix to taste

Coat okra with egg white and dredge with seasoned cornmeal. Fry until golden brown.

A Little Cowgirl History

Cowboy historian Lee Powell is a patron of our little library. Each of the library ladies has a special patron and Lee is Glenda's special patron. She helps him do research on different Texas history subjects. He gives a ten minute history spot on radio station KNON Mondays at 5:00 pm. Lee has been a boxer, cowboy and stuntman. He also is a talented story teller. He generally comes in the library on Saturday mornings when we are slow and Glenda can spend a little more time on his projects. Yesterday, Glenda was off and Kathy and I were working together when Lee came in. His current project is on Elvis and Kathy hooked him up with some information. Lee hung out with us and entertained us with a story about a cowgirl stunt woman.

Lee told us that he was sitting with Roy Rogers and a little old lady one day. When the woman got up to powder her nose, Mr. Rogers told Lee that the woman was the best stuntman in Hollywood. The woman was Alice Van-Springsteen.

At another time, Lee was interviewing Dale Evans. Ms. Evans expressed that she would like to see Ms. Van-Springsteen inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Lee nominated her and two years later she was inducted. Lee, of course, phoned to congratulate her. During their conversation, he told her that his daughter had watched the movie The Yellow Rose of Texas as a part of her Texas history lessons at school. The kids really liked the part where the little boy almost went off a cliff on a buckboard. Just before the rig went over, Roy Rogers galloped up on Trigger and snatched the child off the doomed carriage. Ms. Van-Springsteen chuckled and said that she was the stunt double for that little boy. She also did stunts for the Annie Oakley TV show and performed for the Queen of England.

This is the kind of stuff you learn when you work at the library and pay attention to the patrons.

1 Trip Three Blog Posts

Anybody know what kind of bird this is? It doesn't look like a cardinal.

Today was a very interesting day. We have a library patron who is a Texas Historian. He entertained us with a very interesting story about a cowgirl stunt woman and the Nation Cowgirl Hall of Fame. I will get to that tomorrow. After we closed the library we took a trip to Canton Texas and stopped at a natural spring, a pea farm, a nice vegetable stand and an awesome blackberry farm. I will get to those on Monday.

Because of the things I was able to buy on our trip we were able to have lady cream peas, fried okra and hot water cornbread for dinner. Lady cream peas are awesome. I don't think I will grow black eyed or purple hulls again until I have a bigger garden. For this garden it will be lady creams from here on out.

Have any good veggies for dinner lately?

The Urge to Kill Has Returned.

Do your plants need a bath? Are you sure? We have had a major invasion of spider mites and squash bugs. I don't like to use anything that could poison us or harm fish and such. Very few insecticides are used here at all. The exception is soap. Soap will smother insects. In order for insecticidal soaps to work, you must get them on the bug. To avoid killing your good bugs, you must keep the soap off those bugs. I make my own soap mixture. It is pink and smells like roses.

Ingredients

Zote soap (laundry isle of grocery story)

Water.

Mix 2 to 3 tablespoons of chopped or shredded soap in 3 cups of water and nuke for one minute. Stir the mixture with a whisk and let cool. Poor through a fine strainer into a spray bottle.

Spray the mixture onto infested plants getting it on the bug. Do this in the evening in order to avoid burning your plants. After about five minutes rinse off the plants, again, to avoid burning the leaves. Squash bugs will die in less than a minute. It is fun to watch them fall over dead. As I cannot actually see a spider mite, killing them is not quite as much fun. A couple of days after treating a tomato plant for spider mites, it looks much better, so spider mites are obviously controlled.

Zote soap is really cheap at less than a dollar a bar. It last forever and really helps get stains out of clothes. Trust me, the monkeys can make some stains.

Got any organic bug control tips?