Category Archives: 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment
Idolatry
The night sky shines less brightly for me now, stars seem to have been obscured. American Idol finale? Who cares?
Danny Gokey is gone. Danny! Gokey!
Daaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeyyyyyy……whyyyyyyyy?
Plus I am sick of the judges acting like infants. They stink. And America has let me down. Way down.
Peter Cottontail just better watch it!
I hope I am not accusing wrongly.
I hope this is not the work of the neighbor’s 2 cats (and btw-why is it OK for people’s cats to hang out in my yard, leaving their poo-poo and harassing my obviously “fraidy-cat” of a dog??). Why should my carefully prepared garden soil be an invitation for kitty-frolic? People, I implore you!
But for the past several mornings, my garden has been in disarray.
The onions have been pulled out (which I am able to plop back in: they are a hardy bulb plant and seem none-the-wiser that they have been messed with). And my 1″ high radish seedlings are half gone. Gone! Now the itty bitty tiny carrot seedlings were pulled out and of course, died in the sun (I am starting over), but half of my radish seedlings are gone without a trace. Not a leaf left lying. Some lettuce and mesclun, too. And I am blaming Bugs (as in Bunny)!
I have seen the little bunnies. Our neighborhood is full of them. Full! They apparently did not get the notice that this is no longer open farmland and that to stay will require a vote by the HOA.
You’d think our mangy Lady-in-the-Water*-looking dog would scare them away, but they still sneak back here – to my Eden, my little farm-in-the-dell, my back 40 (feet).
Peter had just better watch out…Mrs McGregor, aka Old Jeanie MacDonald
NOTE TO SELF: I will have veggies! God as my witness, I will have veggies!
*Referencing the “Lady in the Water” movie which was one of the lamest storylines ever from one of my favorite storytellers, M. Night Shyamalan (a bit of indulgence for the writer himself, I fear), but I still watched again recently because the characters are great and the setting is superb. Just a crappy story (but some great visual appeal), with a grass-mange dog-thing of some sort.
pictured: google image
Square Foot Gardening
When I first started gardening (1997), I checked out the BEST book EVER from the library, Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. See a 3-minute introduction in this youtube video:
The book has been updated and is better, all-new and improved they say. The early SFGs were not that great looking and are now much more attractive. But I still have the actual copy I first read – not because I stole it from the library! No, they sold it a few months later because some one had apparently watered it along with their garden. Silly person…Great sentimental value to me!
Mel, the Square Foot Gardener guru, says if you have never gardened, he can teach you all the principles of successful gardening in an hour. But if you have done “traditional” farm-style (rows and hoeing, for instance) gardening, it takes waaaaaaaay longer to teach you (can you say: hard-headed?). Luckily, I was a total novice, so I LOVE Mel! And I love all the produce I have been able to grow in very small spaces!
Mel taught me:
- to plant seeds in vermiculite which acts as a sponge to hold the moisture around the seed so it will germinate quickly. Gavin and I planted lettuce, radishes and spinach that way exactly one week ago and it has already germinated! Tiny little sprouts are smiling up at me!
- not to plant handfuls of seed and then go back and get rid of 2/3 of it (called “thinning”…there’s no thinning in SFG!). With Square Foot Gardening, you plant the right amount of seeds in a 1-foot space and enjoy every single thing that grows!
- to plant smartly: 16 radishes at a time. I have 16 growing right now. In a few days I will plant 16 more, and so on. Why would I plant an entire package of seeds at once when I cannot eat them all at once?
- weeding doesn’t have to take over your life because in a SFG, there is hardly any weeding!
- and he taught me how to get the BEST tomato harvest ever! And that alone makes Mel one of my all-time favorite people.
This year I have discovered the Square Foot Gardening website along with instructions on how to grow potatoes. Mel’s current website: http://www.squarefootgardening.com/ …F U L L of incredible gardening knowledge! Good times!
Benefits of Square Foot Gardening:
- Uses 80% less space per harvest.
- Uses 90% less water.
- Uses 95% less seeds!
- You get 5 times the harvest
- And? It makes me feel so green!
This is the method I am passing on to the grand-bebes!…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Never go another year without gardening!
pictured: my ragged copy of the first Square Foot Gardening book….still much used and greatly loved…
Summer’s Hot Read
From the Denver Post: http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_11584824 Wow.
The challenge – The Bible in 90 days (June 1 – August 29) http://www.biblein90days.com/index.php?option=com_challenge&pgID=5 “Dive into the Good Book and read the Bible from cover to cover before summer ends. The Bible in 90 Days Summer Reading Challenge is designed to unify your whole church family in a simple but life-changing goal – to read every word of the Bible this summer.”
I much prefer digging in deep and taking more time, but there is also the beauty of immersion. The summer seems a ridiculous time for it (with a family reunion, traveling, vacation and a little thing called Heaven Fest), but that is what is intriguing me….
Amy Jo’s Sacred Romance Epilogue
Found in drafts folder from last summer. Mea Culpa. This was part of the writings by a group of us who read Sacred Romance last summer and wrote about it. Wrote a lot about it! My apologies to Amy Jo for my delay in posting this, but she did include a quote about April which makes it seem as though it was meant for now. Maybe it was…
Amy Jo and her husband, Damon
EPILOGUE: Remembering Toward Heaven
From Amy Jo: How lovely that Tolkien, T.S. Eliot and Annie Dillard should all be quoted in the epilogue! Interspersed in our authors’ final thoughts, there are jewels I must point out…
On Living From Desire: It is in this section that the authors quote T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land,
“April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire.”
“Sadly, many of us have been led to feel that somehow we ought to want less, not more. We have this sense that we should atone for our longings, apologize that we feel such deep desire. Shouldn’t we be more content? Perhaps, but contentment is never wanting less, that’s the easy way out. Anybody can look holy if she’s killed her heart; the real test is to have your heart burning within you and have the patience to enjoy what there is now to enjoy, while waiting with eager anticipation for the feast to come.” (p.199)
On Rehearsing the Story: “Our acts of remembering must therefore involve both essential truths and dramatic narrative. I believe we need to hold the creeds in on hand and our favorite forms of art in the other. There are films, books, poems, songs, and paintings I return to again and again for some deep reason in my heart. Taking a closer look, I see that they all tell me about some part of the Sacred Romance. They help wake me to a deeper remembrance. As Don Hudson has said, ‘Art is, in the final analysis, a window on heaven.'” (p.205) It is my opinion that the last two sections, Where We Have Come From and Where We Are Headed, are part of the very rehearsing the authors recommend. I am encouraged by the quote of Annie Dillard on p. 209, “The world is fairly studded and strewn with unwrapped gifts and free surprises… cast broadside from a generous hand.” These gifts and free surprises are to me, what inspires encouragement to live, a desire to dream of the future, and an insatiable urge to see, imitate, manufacture, and praise God for beauty.
May God use these things often to refresh my memory of His faithful and Sacred Romance!
Yes! Yes! Yes! Thanks, Amy Jo! And AMEN!
PS – April is being kind of cruel…S n o w ! ? ! today…
Ga-Ga for Gokey!
In no particular order…
Allison Iraheta is an amazing rocker!
Kris Allen is a cool kid with less-obvious genius.
Matt Giraud is the new “Piano Man” for sure! Hip, talented – the judges save was the right thing to do.
Adam “Ant” Lambert is always entertaining and thoroughly-likeable. I think he could very well win this competition just because he is such a great performer.
O, Danny boy…
But the boy who reaches my heart and makes me love one song I never-ever-ever thought I’d love (“Jesus Take the Wheel”) and made me fall in love all over again with a song from the summer Dave and I had our first date and married – 1981 (“Endless Love”) : DANNY GOKEY!
Gokey-Goofy!
Next week, two contestants have to be cut. Anoop can go home already and Lil deserves a great career, but just isn’t hitting the mark these days. Bye-bye.
But I am so hoping Danny Gokey makes it at least to the top two. And if I were an American-Idol voter, I’d vote for Danny Gokey and his 27 pairs of glasses!
Go, Danny Gokey, go!…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: The week Danny did “Jesus Take the Wheel” Carrie Underwood was on as a guest artist/returning winner. I am recording the fact that I am calling it: a Danny-Carrie relationship…after he has sufficiently mourned his late wife , that is. Cute, no?
btw-according to news reports, Danny is legally blind so his specs aren’t just for looking cute, and he only has 18 pairs…
I Got You, Steph
When Steph first got her bangs I kept asking, “Who do you remind me of…?”
Remember Cher before all the weird surgery-altercations? She was so late-60s cool! The “I Got You, Babe” days (you know, before Cher literally tried to “Turn Back Time”)…
Dear Billy Mays
Dear Billy, No one is going to respond when you yell for help someday because you yell all. the. time!
My heart is still racing because I just endured yet another 17-minute (OK – maybe only 60-second) Billy Mays commercial. Could some one ask that guy to tone it down a little? I have ceased to even know what he is advertising (there are at least 517 products) because I have to run for cover everytime he shows up.
You are not at a construction site, my friend. You’re in my living room. Show some respect.
Dave’s Money-Saving Tip
In these challenging economic times, it seems there is a free-flow of tips and tricks on the news and in the magazines about how to be frugal and save money.
I was telling Dave how a women’s magazine writer had spent two or three paragraphs telling how she saved $2 a week by having her high school daughter take her lunch instead of buying it one day a week during the school year and how ridiculous I thought it was that they wasted good paper and ink to even print such a lengthy and lame “tip.” C’mon-you’re a novice if saving two bucks a week is a revelation to you. I can think of 101 ways to save $2 a week (which would give you a total saving of $202, btw). What a lightweight. {insert smirk here} Thank goodness the magazine was given to me free.
Dave (apparently ignoring my sarcasm) responds, “I can save $38.75 a year by getting your books back to the library on time.”
Because I never do.
But I also see it as a contribution to the library and a good-citizen-type thing to do.
Hmph.
image: google (I would NOT have a cat book…)