It took longer than I’d expected to break out of my lazy cage this Saturday. That morning I had grand handyman plans to tackle several indoor projects and one outdoor one, but literally didn’t/couldn’t get going on them until way late that afternoon, when Susan and I piled into the Ford Escape and made a …
Off the cap of my cranium I can’t remember how long ago exactly  it was that I amended a patch of soil in the backyard and we planted several pumpkin plants… I think it was near the middle/end of August. We knew we’d gotten a late start if we were thinking about harvesting a would-be …
Today’s snapshot update on our thriving backyard pumpkin patch comes with a bonus: it is pumpkinless no more: It’s been flowering very well, but so far the all-important pollination thing hadn’t happened. Until now! Hiding under the umbrella of leaves up against the fence, will you look at that!? Sure, it’s not even the size …
After a regular bombardment upon my few dear readers with all manner of sunflower posts these last couple months, things stopped rather abruptly more than a week ago in part because the prize of the patch finally fell victim to some ratzafratzin’ arboreal rodent. I closed the book a few days later on this year’s …
In response to my post about helping my daughter learn how to drive at the Hollywood Bowl (where I also had my first driving experience at 10 years of age), reader Gary commented that he, too, experienced his first motor vehicle operation at the fresh age of 7 running over empty beer cans with his …
I think the straw that broke it was stepping on the scale yesterday and having it show me the third in a straight string of increases, this one a  1.4-pound gain to 229.6 from the previous day. It’s certainly not the intake that’s driving that number in the wrong direction; I’ve been pretty good at …
Read more “Oh Where Oh Where Have My Cycling Legs Gone, Oh Where Oh Where Can They Be?”
What can I say, I’m a sucker for cereus cactus blooms, which open nocturnally this time of year for one night and one night only, closing up the next morning never to bloom again. As such, the local bees (and occasional carpenter bee) waste little time diving in to frolic in the flower’s funstuffs we …