Wednesday, July 7, 2010

dog days



The duckweed on the pond SO thick! Our ducks come out with leis and the turtles look like plates of dinner salad. From a distance it looks like scum, but its actually one of the worlds smallest flowering plants and apparently pretty usefull stuff. People make biodiesel out of it, use it for animal feed and of course appreciate its water purifying abilities. Me? I scoop it out with my spaghetti strainer and throw it in the compost then stomp on it... repeatedly. I can see why its popularity is cyclical, it goes something like this "Oh my god! This stuff is amazing! why isn't it EVERYWHERE!" to "Oh, my hell! We got to get rid of this shit! It's EVERYWHERE!" and back again. we hope to interrupt its growth long enough for something else to have a chance (read: lotus), while not eradicating it. though I do need to rig a skimmer soon, I miss spaghetti.

These are the days when you wonder why you didn't get more projects done in spring. You know? Back when it was fun to be outside? That's right, we were sick of winter and it was TOO nice out to work, time to play!! Oh well. Random useless information: dog days are called such because the Greeks and later the Romans believed it was Sirius, the dog star, that made summer so freaking miserable. They would even sacrifice a brown dog to him in the hope he would just back the hell off. Huh. Here puppy, puppy, puppy.... I kid. Swiped from wiki: Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies" according to Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, 1813. True that.

We drove an hour to Henderson last evening to get Daisy and her baby and only got lost twice. We were met by Joan and swept around back to meet the worlds BIGGEST nigerian dwarf. Or was she? At first I thought she was, but maybe that was just because she was on a platform? She's not as big as say.. a nubian, maybe it's just me. So we load her into the focus hatchback and hit i85 south back home (to all those who pointed, honked and especially the lady in the silver convertable who gave us a thumbs up.. HI!). They were very good goats, only pissed on the shower curtain once. So, the big moment finally arrives and... she IS huge! Or Gyp and Jun are very small. They are the exact same size of three month old Avril (was Carley, but it's an A year). But in truth, I can't tell a nigerian dwarf from your great aunt milly... something about the beard. I only know what craigslist tells me. Oh well, I wanted a mutt herd and it looks like I've got it.

I'll post some pics as soon as a find the camera battery...

Watch out for those phrensies!

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