Our Capt. and our 4th Mate

It's the British Virgin Islands!!!!!!!!!!

Shoot. Nathan is on my ass....does this guy do anything else but blog???

O.K. So Julia won. It's the BVI's. Amazing.

YAY. Way too easy though. Now you need to guess why our boats seem so small and why Shawn is giving a shirt to a homeless guy? 

Where In The World Is Tropicaligal?

Where in the world is Tropicaligal?

I kinda hate to rub it in...or do I?

I didn't say specifically where we were vacationing...thought it might be fun to guess.

So my first picture is of one of the many favorite places we found to loll away the hours. The Soggy Dollar Bar. Go Fish.

Vacation from Vacation

Posting:

Back soon.

On Vay-cay. No computers where we're sailing! Ouch!

Friday Cat Blogging (an homage)

Last year our cat Hazel hit a truck. A white pick-up. The truck was o.k., and the driver was not hurt...as a matter of fact he was so fine, that he didn't even stop or slow down, but just continued down our quite little 25 mph street at more than 45 mph. See he was fine.

Hazel on the other hand, (not being made of steel yet, but fat and fur mostly) did not fare as well. She was fairly well...broken. After months of internment, (I will post her letters from that dark period in a future blog, if I can get the rights) a better cat emerged from a stinky cage. Armed now with bionic pins and plates in her body and a lust for sleeping, eating and lounging the likes of which I've never seen...Hazel went forth to lounge professionally about our home.

Today,...a Friday...,which makes for good Friday Cat Blogging, Hazel decided to re-enact her accident using our neighbors Honda. 

It's good to see she can finally laugh about it.

Play With Jackson

Hey, I don't think anybody was listening here....cuz I got no kinda response about this Pollack link. I wasn't just suggesting that you go and read some boring Art History book excerpt about Jackson....I was saying you HAVE to check out this link. Come on people. Play with me.

Hungry For Change Bake Sale!

Hey, Check this one out. I absolutely love it.

Organize a yummy bake sale in your neighborhood for Move On's, Obama Campaign.

Join us, join great communities like Brattleboro, VT, (yes the town that passed a new law to arrest George Bush and Dick Cheney for "crimes against the constitution" upon entering the township!) in baking for change.

ORGANIZE NOW

"Democracy Is Not A Spectator's Sport"

Check out another blog where people are getting on board and offer recipes and support for your sale.

On purely image alone...

No Contest!

...or you try making stale, old, "McSame" cookies...but they probably wouldn't taste very good.

Nifty AND Thrifty

This is probably all over the internet already. I got it from my dad a few days ago. I've just got to post it. I love shit like this....but it just makes me say, "those bastards!"

This one goes out specially to my nifty thrifty friend. You know who you are. :)

Pollock-esque

More on the porch floor project:

After exploring a bunch of ideas using cats, leaves and other household items coated with paint, (the cat by the way, could not be found after "the incident" for her photo)...

...I took one more look at a painting for inspiration  and I got started...

Wait, that's not it...

that's it...

A bit of practice on paper first...

...and then on to the porch floor! I was nervous, I mean, we have have to live here you know...but it came out alright. I like it. I may even love it! It was fun, and not as hard as I thought it would be. Maybe I channeled Pollock, (minus the alcoholism) for a minute there. Anyway, I definitely went with Abstract Expressionism.

I call it: Porch Floor

I'm sitting on Porch Floor right now.

Love him or hate him...to more experience the man himself  DO check out this Jackon P. link. Bug Out!

What Is Painting?

What is painting?

One definitions says, it's the  practice of applying color to a surface, and when used in an artistic sense, the term painting means the use of this activity in combination with drawing, composition and other aesthetic considerations in order to mainifest the expressive and conceptual

 intention of the practitioner.

William Hunt, in "Talks About Art" says painting can describe everything which can be seen and suggest every emotion which can be felt! Art reaches back into the babyhood of time, and is mans only lasting monument!"

Hmmmm

Well for me, it's about a quiet Sunday afternoon, a looming thunderstorm, a few cans of paint, some disposable brushes, and a brand new purple porch floor.

Shawn did the detailed work here...now it's my turn.

...and I need some inspiration. 

Where to start? where to start?...

Realism

leaf.

  dog.

Surrealism

cat wearing shoes

Cubism

Expressionism

not sure?

but I think I'm getting some inspiration. Now let me see what I can do with it...more later

Sooty Mold

Wow. Today was a day of deep cleaning. You know the kind...under the kitchen sink. Behind the garbage can. On top of the fridge. And of course...EVERY SINGLE LEAF OF THE ORANGE TREE! What? You say you cleaned your Orange Tree? Yes I did, and I learned a bit about insect excretions in the process.

A few

 days ago I noticed the orange tree was, well,...not orange,...not green,...but black. Yikes! A dark, dull, ashy, gritty, sticky, black substance thickly covered all the leaves on our mid-sized, (5 years old?) orange tree. I had to do something. This does not look good for happy chlorophyll pumping activity.

So I did some research, and found through the Ag Extension and various sites, a bit about the problem. It's Sooty Mold combined with insect honeydew, (which is aphid or whitefly secretions). Turns out I was kind of right about the food production "blocking effects" of this stuff. Invading insects secrete a clear, sticky stuff, (honeydew) on leaves, and then wind-borne, Sooty Mold spores stick to the honeydew and create the thick, black coating which does block plant photosynthesis.

Yowsa!

My readings suggested washing the leaves with Murphy's Oil soap, so I went for it. It took over an hour and I was covered with sticky flaky bug shit by the end, but I got great aesthetic results. See my before and after pics!

Before

After! 

After the long, meticulous and loving cleaning, I also gave the whole tree a nice soapy spritz and then moved on to all the other citrus trees in the yard. They are unaffected with the mold so far. Let's keep it that way. So I spritzed them all with Murphy's too. The soapy spritz is also supposed to help keep the critters away. I looked and didn't see a lot of bugs, but I do think I saw some tiny whitefly larve on the underside of one leaf. Bye bye suckers (literally).

I'll keep trying the soapy spritz, (just found a suggestion to try baking soda and vegetable oil with the Murphy's -might try that) on all the tress. I'm avoiding pesticides at all costs and I'll keep you posted on the results. And if I get a bumper crop of citrus next winter and you come down for a sunny visit, I'll squeeze you a glass.

In any case, my orange tree looks much better and looks to me like it feels much better too.

...and now, after the grossness of that job, I better go look and feel much better too.

Splasssshhhhhh.................Ahhhhhhh

Elephant's Ear (Taro), Colocasia esculenta

This Elephant's Ear is a big part of my shade garden. SO big.

Completed Projects (partial list)

The Cedar Fence It really helps this old country gal with the looming nearness of neighbors without being too solid or unfriendly (I hope). Like Robert Frost said...

The Brick Patio and The Pond  (or the plaza as I like to call it). 

I enjoy sitting out there so much these days. It adds another room to our house. It's where I go when I first wake in the morning. Yet I cannot shake the crushing feeling of a mallet against my hand and fingers when I recall the weeks I spent laying it in.

The Paint Job

This one is all Shawn (and all Virgo). But we picked the colors together. Some of the neighbors asked, " Are you going to paint the whole house those colors"? Yep.

Kitchen Window

It's good to like the view from your kitchen window. Makes the food taste better.