Friday Music

Written, composed, and performed by Bob Dylan - Mr.Tambourine Man - was released in 1965 on his album Bringing It All Back Home in 1965.  Coincidentally, California folk rock band - The Byrds - also recorded their version of the song the same year.  The Byrds’ recording reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the UK Singles Chart and (along with Dylan) made Rolling Stone's list of the 500 best songs ever.   

There’s not much to watch in this eleven minute clip nevertheless, turn-up the volume and give it a listen.  These are the Master Tapes recorded very early 1965 at Columbia Studios in Hollywood, California.  It’s cool to listen to all the tracks laid-down coming-together as they’re mixed at the very end.

Tweet Of the Absurd

 click on the tweet to enlarge 

President Trump tweets the absurd.     

And that's his right.  

Senate Bill struggling.  

Russia investigation continues.  

Response is predictable.  

I call D-I-S-T-R-A-C-T-I-O-N.

The Red Coats are Coming

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The local deer population is now sporting their stylish, ruddy red, roan summer coat.  This lovely summer style includes no underfur or hollow insulating hair - only thin, short guard hairs.  These hairs are straight, solid, and about an inch long.   The bottom portion of the hair closest to the skin tends to be gray while the majority of the hair is reddish.   Since the whitetail deer has very few sweat glands they cannot keep cool by evaporative cooling like people.  As a consequence the short thin solid hairs on the summer coat allow air to move freely and the animal to stay cool.

Mothra

When I serviced the trail cameras last weekend I discovered another infestation of gypsy moth caterpillars hiding behind and underneath a couple of cameras.  It was an excellent opportunity to squish them to death with my gloved hands and them stomp them with my boot for extra measure.

This one took a selfie before it died.

 

The Help

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You're enjoying this blog post and its accompanying photo courtesy of the ten-pack of SD cards I purchased from Amazon.  Yes, Amazon.  Competitive pricing, fast delivery and a vast selection a key stroke away - all from the warming glow of my laptop.  Amazon is pretty amazing - wouldn't you agree?  I digress.

I had a suspicion that any number of my twenty or so older SD cards were becoming faulty or harboring flaws because the trail cameras were not rendering the usual number of photos they should.  Software updates and fresh batteries didn't make a lick of difference so there was little evidence of fault in any of the Moultrie trail cameras.  The frustrating part of all of this was there wasn't a particular pattern.  No diagnostics revealed which card would predictably fail and all of the cards look alike.  Nevertheless, my pal Smokey Joe told me awhile ago that memory cards wear-out eventually and become failure-prone.  So, I purchased a new supply of cards and deployed them in the five trail cameras for a couple of weeks.  I fetched them on Sunday.

Voilà!  Pictures produced on all five cameras.  Old cards went into a Ziploc to keep them out of circulation and for later disposal.  I date-stamped the new cards with a Sharpie.

More pictures are in the queue and the cameras are performing their patient duty.  It is remarkable indeed how the hired help around here figured this out and by process of elimination solved the technological riddle.  It's hard to find good help nowadays but the staff here at The Platz is hardly ever asleep at the switch.  Stay tuned...

The Garden Chronicles

It has been a curious year for sure for gardening.  Cold and rain.  Rain and cold.  Three additional inches of rain in the past week alone.  And cold.   

Some of my gardening efforts have taken it all in stride as the onions, potatoes, green beans and peas are thriving.  Alternatively, I think it has impacted the proper germination of other veggie seeds and stunted several of my tomato plants. Tomatoes don’t like cold but you’d think lettuce, spinach, beets and radishes would love the cool conditions.  It has to be the abundance of precipitation.  Seed rot perhaps?   

I’ve had to re-sow spinach, lettuce, beets and radishes three times and I’m hoping the third time is a charm.  Pumpkins were replanted yesterday.   

 click on image for a better view

Tomato plants – stunted in the foreground and a healthy couple in the background   

Peas and spuds are the dominant features     

Sweet peppers in the foreground  and Blue Lake green beans above    

Nothing better than a fresh-picked radish

Rant of the Day

The weather has been for crap lately.  Nothing but cold and rain.  Standing water everywhere out on the tails and in the woods.  The ponds are filled to the brim and the creek is running full bore.  Mud season is extended into sudden death overtime and we've had to fire-up the wood stove several times to chase the dank and damp out of the house.   Seriously, it can end any time.  Rant over.

Empty Nesters

If you've been following this blog no doubt you've been reading about and following the nesting robins in the giant rose bush growing against the garage.  My pal Braumeister refers to it as:  the rose bush that ate Cincinatti.  That's probably because it has a tendency to grab you with a thorny branch trying to sneak past on the walkway.  But I digress.  

Baby robins are ready to leave the nest when they are about 13 days old - which is the age of the pair of birds in the nest in the rose bush.  They fledged yesterday and we initially thought it was because we disturbed them.  

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And we returned them to the nest only to learn they jumped right out and hid among the flowers bordering the picket fence.  Baby robins can't fly well when they leave the nest and they have to build up their flight muscles and feathers to master the art of flight.  So, they’ll be vulnerable to predators for another week and a half or so.  I guess we’re empty nesters

now...