Home brewed beer

It is raining today, a good day to do some work inside. I bottled 66 bottles of beer. Cream Ale, from Brewer's Wort made in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada by Festa Brew. I bought 23 liters of wort. The kit also contains Brewer's Yeast sachet. On April 15 I  poured the wort into a pail, added the yeast and waited for the fermenting to take place. On April 20 I transferred the fermented wort into a glass carboy, put an airlock at the top and let it sit to clear. Today, 38 days later, I bottled it. I could have bottled it earlier, but I just didn't have the time. It is not that critical, as long as there is an airlock on the carboy to prevent bacteria from entering the wort it is okay. In fact, the beer already ages in the carboy. Before bottling, I transferred the wort into a pail, added 1 1/2 cup of dextrose and siphoned the beer into sanitized bottles. The dextrose is needed to carbonate the beer, otherwise it will taste flat. Now I have to wait a few weeks until I can drink it. It gets better with time.

I read on one website that home brewed beer doesn't last as long as beer brewed by the breweries. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's just the opposite, bought beer doesn't last long, but home made beer will. I just finished the 3rd last bottle of beer which I bottled March 22, 2008. That's over 5 years ago. And the beer tasted great. I'd like to see commercially brewed beer last that long! I still have 2 bottles left, but I will drink them in the next few days. Why would I have beer that old? Actually, I forgot about it. I have about 500 empty bottles, those stubby ones without the screw top. The bottles are in their original cases. For some reason I still had about 3 dozen full bottles among the empty ones. The last time I made beer was in 2010. I drank that, but left the one I made in 2008. It is actually dark beer and I'm not too fond of dark beer. But now with the price of beer I decided to drink it. I'm running out and it was time to start making beer again.

These 5 1/2 dozen cost me about $35.00, compared to $132.00 had I bought commercially made beer. That's quite a saving. Suddenly, the dark beer tasted very nice.

Should you live in a country where beer is cheaper, you'll wonder why beer in Canada is so expensive. Easy answer: our government is greedy. They have the monopoly and can charge anything they want. Besides, the high-priced employees working for the liqueur commission need to be paid.
Everything with alcohol is expensive in Canada. That's why I also make my own wine. I don't drink hard liqueur, only whiskey mixed with ginger ale once in awhile, so I don't worry too much about the high price of hard liqueur.

In case you wonder how I know when I bottled the beer in 2008, I keep a log of every batch of wine and beer I make. That way I always know when it was made. Also how many batches I made over the years. But that is my secret -:)  

Seeds in the Garden

I finally finished seeding my garden. I did most of it last week, but today I seeded Kohlrabi, Swiss Chard, and some radishes. I couldn’t find any Kohlrabi plants in the garden centers, so I bought seeds. I haven’t been very lucky in the last few years with seeded Kohlrabi. We love Kohlrabi, but it has to be tender. It does have a tendency to become woody, especially when the weather gets too hot.

My pepper and tomato plants are growing too tall for the pots, but I can’t transplant them into the garden yet, the weather is too unstable. I’m hoping next week I’ll be able to work in the garden and get it finished, but there is no guarantee that we won’t still get frost. Should that happen, it will be running back and forth with the tarps to cover up the plants over night. That is always lots of fun.

I didn’t buy as many tomato plants this year, because I always tend to overplant. I bought 6 Super Fantastic, 6 Fantastic, 6 Celebrity,  but I will use only 3 from each tray and discard the others. It will be tough to do that, but I must not fall into temptation like other years and plant them all. I also bought 6 Roma, which I will plant. We use them for Salsa. In addition to that I also bought 4 Cherry tomatoes (my wife loves them), 1 Health Kick (it is actually a type of Roma tomato). Then I still have a few tomato plants which I seeded myself. Can you see where it will end up again? How can I destroy the plants I raised with so much love and patience?

My tomato plants are quite leggy, so I transplanted one of each variety into 3 inch pots yesterday. Hopefully, by the time I put them into the garden they will have developed roots on the buried part of the stem. I have 12 different types, some are Heirloom, some are from hybrid tomatoes I saved, which is not really a good idea. I will keep a close watch which ones are good and which ones are not good. I will cut down next year with growing my own tomatoes from seeds. The seedlings are not expensive to buy and they are better than what I can produce. I just do it for fun and for the challenge.

This year I bought white plastic labels at the Dollar Store to replace the ones I’ve had for the last few years. I wrote the name of the vegetables on the labels with a permanent ink marker. I hope they work out. The ones I had were cedar stakes with plastic sleeves on top. I put the pictures of the vegetables inside the sleeves. They didn’t look so great anymore. The sun bleached the pictures and the rain and dirt that splashed up made them pretty much unreadable. I love these new labels. They look so professional.

Our grass is growing, especially since I spread fertilizer on it a couple of weeks ago. I cut it last week but left the cuttings on the grass because of the fertilizer inside the grass tops.

Yard and garden work is physically demanding, but if you want a nice yard and your own vegetables, there is no getting around it, you’ll have to do pull up your sleeves and get to working. Sometimes it seems too much work, but it keeps me in shape, and we love the fresh vegetables. There is nothing better than eating tomatoes ripened on the vine, I mean, on the actual living vine, before they are picked. Besides the taste there is the additional benefit of eating something that doesn’t have any chemicals on it. I can’t wait to pick the first beans. They are just so tender fresh from the garden.

Today I noticed that my Goodland Apple tree has many blooms beginning to form. The tree is 5 years old and didn’t bloom last year. Hopefully, we’ll get some apples from it this year. We used to have 2 Goodland Apple trees on our last residence in Winnipeg. The apples grow to about 3 ½ inches and taste great. They don’t last as long as store bought, but they are wonderful in cakes and pies, too.

If they grow good, they are heavy producers. I remember one year we had over 350 pounds of apples. We couldn’t use them all, so we gave many away.

Highway Robbery

We are being robbed and there seems to be nobody doing anything about it. I'm talking about Gas prices.

Today I filled up my tank at Costco and was surprised to see the price of regular gasoline at $1.269 per liter. Usually, Costco sells gas 10 cents a liter cheaper. Then I found out that prices for gas have risen to $1.359. And it's not even the long weekend! What is going on? The price of a barrel of oil has fallen, so why would gas prices go up? This is blatant robbery. I wish our government would step in and do something about, but they won't, because the higher the price of gas the more money flows into government coffers. They need more money so they can pay those high salaries and fringe benefits, and high pensions, to the senators, who have to work only 72  days a year to earn the money. And let's not forget the high salaries and pensions government workers get, but that is another topic.

But, anyway, it all boils down to the oil companies. They are gouging the consumers. Why? Because they can do it and they can get away with it.

We so desperately need an alternate power supply so we are not dependent on oil anymore.  There has to be a better and cheaper way to power cars and trucks and trains, lawn tractors, even airplanes. Somebody just has to discover it. But will the oil companies allow it? That is the question. They will fight to the death to keep their hold on the world and go to extremes to keep any new invention suppressed. One can only hope it is their death.

Was it a kind act?

Yesterday I saw a report on the news which made me wonder if what some people think of kindness isn’t really a good thing. There was this man who had been feeding a stray cat for about seven years. The cat came to his place to eat but always left. It lived in the streets, or wherever cats hang out. Apparently, stray cats usually don’t live longer than 2 or 3 years. They have to fight off other cats, dogs, and possibly other  wild animals. Most of them get hit by cars. Now this guy figured this cat was getting old and should have a better life and a chance to live longer. Somebody started a website or a Facebook page, I don’t recall, but that is not important. They collected money. Then they caught the cat and took the cat to a shelter, where it was examined, got shots and whatever they do with stray cats they catch. Now they are waiting for somebody to adopt this cat. The cat has to get used to living with people and other animals. From what I saw this cat didn’t look overly exited about its futur

What got me thinking was the fact that here was an animal that had been free most of its life, foraging for itself, roaming around doing whatever cats do when they’re on their own. And so far it had been quite successful surviving all the dangers it might encounter. Now suddenly it has to live in a closed environment, can’t roam around on its own, has to lie around on a blanket or whatever when it would rather be outside, enjoying the outdoors. Perhaps chase a few squirrels, or stalk a bird, or catch a mouse. Things that  cats do naturally.  Sure, now it has all the comforts of home, but is it happy? Did they do this cat a favor?

Why do people always think they know what’s best for an animal? Why would they assume an animal is happy living with people, living inside a house where the air is not as fresh as the air outside? Where there is no open sky above them, where they can’t bask in the sun and lie in the dirt or on the grass. That’s what they are used to, not soft blankets or pillows.

Animals are not people, be they cats, dogs, rabbits, or monkeys. They are wild animals that should not be treated like people. I cringe when I see people dressing up their cats or dogs to make them look like humans. That is already a little bit sick, as far as I’m concerned.

I’m not saying people should set their cats and dogs free. That would be a disaster. There are too many stray animals already out there. Most of them ended living like that because people got tired of them and just abandoned them. That is not right either.

My wife and I are not quite innocent either when it comes to keeping pets. We have a canary in a cage. When it was young we let it fly around as long as it wanted to. It always flew back into its cage. But our canary was born in captivity. It doesn’t know any different and it is happy. We assume that because it sings. Should we decide to set it free, it probably would never survive on its own, because it has been spoiled, getting food and water every day, getting its cage cleaned every day, and even getting its nails cut when they grow too long. It  has never been free and doesn’t know any better.

People have been keeping pet animals around for thousands of years and will still have them thousands of years from now if humans survive on this planet for that long. The way things are going, kept animals will probably be the only ones alive, since the wild ones will all have been eliminated by then. We’re destroying their habitat at an alarming rate and are poisoning them with our pesticides.

To come back to that stray cat. I hope it is happy with its new life and doesn’t miss its freedom too much. One can only hope it has a short memory and adjusts easily and quickly to living the ‘Good Life’.

Oil companies gouging consumers again

I was going to fill up my tank today, but I drove right by the gas station when I saw the price: $1.289 for one liter. A few days ago it was $1.229, and before that $1.199. So what happened? The price of oil is down, so what's the excuse?

Ahh, I figured it out. It's the long weekend. Many people drive out to the camp grounds or their cottages. They need to fill up their cars, their RVs, their boats. What  a great opportunity to cash in and to gouge the consumer. And is done so blatantly. The oil companies know that nobody will do anything about it. Not the government, that's for sure. And people will still buy the gas, even if they complain bitterly. It doesn't help anyway. I'm just always surprised to still see all those gas-guzzling trucks on the road.

When I looked at the gauge in my car I figured I'm not going anywhere this weekend except for doing a little shopping in a nearby store. I can last until next week. Usually, after the long weekend the price falls again. I hope I'm not wrong, otherwise I'll drive my bicycle. Oh, just a minute, I just remembered I don't have a bicycle. Well, I guess I'll have to buy one. I need the exercise anyway. I can always put a small motor on my bicycle. I remember it was the thing in Germany in the 1950s. I was a kid then and couldn't afford a motor for my bike, but one of my friends had one. I was envious then. The only thing I could afford was a piece of cardboard between the spokes to make it sound like a motorcycle, and the faster I pedaled the louder it sounded. What fun. But it was cheaper than driving a car. Perhaps I'll go back to that.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Spring is one of the nicer times of the year. We get all kinds of birds coming to our yard and bird feeder. Some stay for a while, some move on quickly. We had another visitor to our bird feeder today. A Rose-breasted Grosbeak. I tried to take a picture, but I just couldn't get a good angle. Besides, it didn't hang around very long, so I borrowed a picture from Wikipedia. What a beautiful bird. This is a male. The females are not as colorful.

My Garden

Any outdoor activity usually depends on the weather. So does gardening. Yesterday I tilled my garden. The sun was shining and it didn’t rain. And the winds were not too strong, either. We have willows on our property. They are nice but the branches are soft and they break with every strong wind we have. One of the first chores for us in Spring is to collect all the fallen branches from the property. We always pile them up in the garden and burn them. This can only be done when it is not windy or raining. Last week the weather was favorable and we managed to burn the collected branches. It always is a huge fire. After that I can start my work on the garden.

It was twenty years ago when I announced to my family that I was going to have a garden. They looked at me as if I had just told them I lost all my marbles, that I had gone completely bonkers.

“What do you mean you’ll have a garden?” one of my sons asked.

“A garden,” I said, “you know…growing vegetables like tomatoes, carrots, lettuce and other stuff.”

Then they all laughed. I can still see the pity in their eyes.

“You can’t have a garden,” my wife said. “Do you have any idea how much time it takes to have a garden? You don’t have the time. Besides, you know nothing about gardening.”

She was right. It was all true. I didn’t really have the time. I was still working at the time, and swamped with work in my electrical business, which meant working long hours.

We had just finished building our house. The property had no landscaping. We had no grass, just one-meter-high thistles growing all around us, no trees, no flowerbeds. Nothing. It was all still in the planning stage. And that’s why I decided now was the time to start a garden. Before I began seeding the grass I needed to have everything laid out, like flowerbeds, patios, etc. So if I wanted to have a garden, I had to make sure I didn’t seed that spot with grass.

“Busy people always find time to tackle another project,” I told them.

So I staked out my garden. I made it approximately 30 by 30 ft square. Big enough for all the stuff I wanted to grow.

It wasn’t easy to keep up with everything, but we managed to seed our grass, put in flowerbeds, and plant hundreds of trees. The property (about one acre) needed to be tilled to get rid of the thistles, so I bought a Honda tiller. It cost big bucks but it did the trick, and it is still coming in handy with my garden every Spring and every Fall. And it sure beats turning the soil with a spade, the way my dad did.

Most of the work was done on weekends and evenings. I remember riding my garden tractor until past 10 pm every night. All my neighbors were doing the same thing, so noise wasn’t a concern. We were all new to the area. This area was new. It had been farmland before it was divided into lots. This all meant there weren’t any trees, shrubs, or any grass anywhere. We all worked hard to make our properties looking nice.

Pretty much everyone had a garden then. Now most don’t have one anymore; I’m one of the few who still does gardening. It is a lot of work and you have to enjoy it.

Well, I do, and I don’t mind the work, especially now that I’m retired. It is fun and so much joy to plant and seed and watch everything grow. There is nothing more satisfying than picking the first tomatoes from the vine. And they taste so much better than the tomatoes you buy in the store. Picking beans is a joyful experience and I wonder every year how so many beans can be produced from just one small bean in such a short time.

When I started I didn’t know much about how to grow vegetables, actually I knew nothing. So I bought a book about gardening. I couldn’t find any information on the internet, because I didn’t have a computer and there was no internet, not twenty years ago. When I say there was no internet I mean nothing like the way it is these days where everyone and his dog has a computer and wastes most of their time cruising the internet, looking for something or just writing a blog, the way I’m doing right now. (And you who is reading this ^_^)

The book I bought was written by Dick Raymond. It is called: The Joy of Gardening.

It is my gardening bible and I still use it as my reference book to this day. Every Spring I look through it to brush up on my gardening knowledge. I’ve learned a few things over the years and I’ve developed my own methods, but it is always good to go back to basics.

If you’d like to read more about how I prepare and plant my garden click here: Gardening for Fun

Or go to the top and click on ‘Gardening for Fun’

American Goldfinch

The finches have finally arrived. Last year I saw the first one on April 30th. They are such beautiful birds and a pleasure to watch. There were three of them, but I could never get all three into one picture. They just moved around so fast. I did manage to take a few pictures, though. It took lots of patience and luck. Here they are:

Having a drink from the birdbath

Sampling the Nyger seeds

sitting in the chokecherry tree waiting

A red-winged blackbird, the reason the finches didn't go to the feeder

It was a nice day

This morning was quite windy, but after lunch the sun came out and the wind died down. I finally managed to till my garden. I also tilled under a few bags of leaves, 15 kg of claybuster, and two bags of Alfalfa pellets (it's good organic fertilizer). Now I'm ready for the next step, which is planting and seeding, but that won't happen until probably the first week in June. I must be patient. In the meantime my pepper and tomato plants are growing on the shelf in our sunroom. 

Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day. As I've been doing for years now, I wrote a Mother's Day poem for my wife. I usually don't write poems, I write poems only for my wife. I never buy a card anymore. I make my own. It is fun doing and I enjoy making them. I guess, my wife inspires me.

We'll be going to the cemetery today to put flowers on my mother's grave. I know she is not there, but it is tradition and makes me think of her.

So, anyone visiting, if you are a mother, enjoy this day and let your children pamper you. If you are a man, give flowers to your mother or your wife, or take her out for supper. She deserves it, especially after all the grief you probably caused her -:)

Happy Mother's Day 

 to all the mothers who visit my blog.

If things can go wrong...

Went to the dump this morning to get rid of the bags full of grass I put into my van. The weather people predicted rain, but not until the afternoon. When I left it was cloudy, but didn't look like rain. Well, I was wrong. No sooner did I get to the dump and started unloading the first batch of bags it started raining, but I didn't give in to the temptation to leave. I worked like a man gone mad to dump the grass out of the plastic bags. By the time I was done I was quite wet but happy to be rid of the grass, especially knowing there is still another load waiting at home.
Guess what, after I got home, the rain stopped and we had sunshine in the afternoon. That's Murphy's Law again.

I went to get gasoline. I paid $1.229 for a liter. The attendant told me the price had dropped from $1.259, but a couple of days ago it  had been $1.199. The gas companies are playing their game again. It is maddening. I wish we could find a totally different source of power to drive our cars and finally break the hold the oil companies have on the world. We are held hostage by the oil companies. Much of the problems we have on our planet can be traced back directly to the oil companies. That's why we are in the Middle East, that's why we have all the problems with those countries. If we didn't need the oil everyone would pull out and leave those people alone. Perhaps then we may have peace. But that is another topic.

My wife and I are quite concerned with our intake of salt. There is too much salt in everything you eat, even drink. We used to drink Soda Water, but then we discovered there is quite a bit of sodium in it, we also found out there is no salt in carbonated Spring water. So we started buying that. We usually buy it at Extra Foods or the Real Canadian SuperStore (used to be called SuperValue). Most of the time we paid $1.00 for a liter bottle, sometimes it was on sale for 88 cents. Lately Extra Foods are asking $1.69. Super Store wants $1.49. What the heck happened? Are more people buying it now? So they decide to raise the price? I think we'll be going back to drinking water out of our tap. We have well-water and it is good.
That reminds me of something in the 1970s. Yes, that long ago. For a long time we barbequed and ate Porterhouse Steaks. That's the filet on a T-bone steak. Suddenly the price went up and we switched to Cross-rib Steaks. The meat was a bit tougher but it was a fine tasting steak. And it was cheap. Well, it didn't last. I guess, more people started buying Cross-rib Steaks, so the stores realized it was a big seller and they decided to raise the price. It happens all the time. Now you can't even buy those steaks anymore, because for some reason I don't know they are removing the rib part and sell only the meat, at a price to high to make it a good buy. After all, the meat is not that great. It is a bit tough and you have to marinate it. The little riblets gave it the great taste.

Today my wife made Roladen. (No, it's not for an upset stomach.) It is a German dish, rolled meat filled with onions, bacon, and mustard. The meat was actually deer meat. Roladen are cut from the part that is the Roundsteak. With the Roladen we ate Spaetzle (Pasta German style. They eat it in the the south of Germany), and we also had broccoli and a salad. And a glass of red wine. The meal made up for the lousy weather in the morning. Usually, we eat fish on Fridays. Not for religious reasons, not anymore anyway. It is a custom still left over from the Old Country. We ate fish yesterday. Don't ask why. It just happened that way.

Yard work and the Monkey Syndrome

 

This has nothing to do with Monkeys, or perhaps it has, just a little. Read to the end to find out.

It’s that time of year that I’m anxiously waiting for and also dread. Springtime brings warmer weather, no snow, but also plenty of work. The yard looks dreadful after a long winter. The thick blanket of snow that covered the grass has flattened it and the lawn needs to be raked. The dry, brown grass needs to be removed to make room for the new, green shoots appearing among the brown grass left over from last year.

Our property is divided from our neighbors’ yards by a ring of willows. Red ones, yellow ones, and Pussy willows. The Pussy willows have beautiful fluffy little pussies again this year and they look nice in the vases. There is only a window of about two weeks to pick them while they are still nice before they grow too long and turn yellow. The other willows have nothing to offer aside from making a great barrier between properties. The only problem, and it is a huge problem, every time we have a storm or high winds the branches break off and get blown across our yard and even the yard of our neighbor who lives behind us.

I spent the whole day Monday to gather all the dry branches off the property. I put them into piles and on Tuesday my wife and I moved them onto our garden where they will be burnt. We have to do this every Spring and every Fall. In Fall there is usually more work, because that’s when I also cut the trunks and thicker branches that are black, in other words dead.

I couldn’t burn anything because the winds are blowing too strong right now and the grass is dry. There is the danger of grass-fires.

Yesterday I still managed to rake the grass and today I spent the day cutting it, therefore removing the old grass and trimming some of the new green blades of grass. I cut it really short and the lawn looks green.

It was a grueling job. I have about one acre to cut and that’s a lot of grass. I bagged the grass and loaded the bags into my van to be taken to the dump where it will be composted. That will probably happen on Saturday, depending on the weather. However, I can’t just dump the bags, because they don’t want any plastic bags, only grass, which means I have to empty the bags. That is usually also a dirty job with all the grass flying around, depending on the wind. That’s when I wear a breathing mask and protective glasses. When I’m sitting on my tractor and cutting I’m also wearing ear protection for the noise. I’m trying to preserve the hearing I still have left.

In the beginning I never used to wear protective lenses and many times I got tiny slivers of grass blowing into my eyes, irritating them. I used to have red eyes for days sometimes. It is painful and could even cause an infection. There isn’t only grass but also plenty of fine dust. When I take off my breathing mask the cloth filters are black from the dust. That stuff would be in my nose and in my lungs. So I’ve learned to protect my eyes and ears, and my lungs.

A monkey sometimes does learn, and let’s face it, deep down we still are monkeys. All one has to do is look around at the people, especially the young people. They see something on TV or read it in the papers and suddenly everyone does it. It is evident mostly in the fashions. One guy wears an earring. Next thing you know every guy seems to feel obligated to wear one. It used to be only homosexuals wore earrings, now that isn’t the case anymore. Maybe it depends on in which ear a guy wears a ring that distinguishes him from either being straight or gay, I have no idea and I don’t really care. In fact, I don’t think much of guys who wear earrings, it looks sissy, not macho at all, but that is my opinion. What do I know. Some even wear more than one ring in an ear. Usually it’s the girls. It doesn’t make them look any prettier. Like I said…Monkeys. Monkey see, Monkey do.

Well, here I went again, talking off the topic which was cutting grass. Or maybe I didn’t. Some of my neighbors were also cutting their grass. One person cuts grass everyone else does.

It’s part of the Monkey Syndrome.

To give another example: We had lots of snow this year and some of my neighbors worried about flooding. One guy used his snowblower to cut a trench through his property so the water would run into the ditch as the snow melted. He also shoveled the snow away from the culvert. Then I saw quite a few people doing the same thing. Some even shoveled the snow away from their house. My wife suggested I do the same thing. Everyone else is doing it, she said. Well, I didn’t. I refuse to get caught up in these things. Just because everyone does it, doesn’t mean I have to. I may have a monkey as my ancestor, but I don’t always have to act like one. As it turned out, we had a slow melt and had less water sitting on our property than most other years.All that backbreaking work would have been for nothing. At least this time I didn't give in to the Monkey Syndrome.

The Right to bear Arms

I am baffled by this obsession with guns the Americans seem to have. I am a hunter and I have guns, but I do believe in some kind of gun control. Automatic weapons, be they handguns or machine guns, do not belong in private citizens’ hands. There is absolute no logical reason for that. The whole gun thing is nothing but political fueled by big business (weapon’s manufacturers, dealers, sporting goods stores etc.) and by people who are into criminal activities.

Today I heard something on the news that made me shake my head. The President of the National Rifles Association apparently said, “Didn’t you wish you had a gun when you were at the bombing in Boston?”

What?

That is one of the most idiotic statements I’ve heard in my life. What would having gun have done? Nothing, except for idiots shooting at shadows or at each other. There were only a couple of bombers not an army of attackers shooting at people. There wasn’t anyone there to defend against.

The other disturbing thing happened in Middlefield, OH. At a routine check a man got out of his car and opened fire with an AK47 shooting at 2 police officers in their car, who incidentally were wounded by the suspect. They finally shot and killed him. A 42 year old man. A motive has not yet been established. They found more weapons and instructions on how to make bombs in his car.

After that incident I’m asking this question: Do automatic weapons like AK 47s belong in private hands?

Anyone answering this with ‘Yes’ is a total moron with no mind of his (or her) own and has no idea what he (or she) is talking about. Yes, there are women also who want to have guns. I can almost see one reason why they want to own a gun: To defend themselves against an abusive husband, but if they shoot and kill him, they’ll end up in jail. So, there goes that reason.

Some people say they need a gun in case a burglar breaks into their house. See what happened to that runner in Africa who shot and killed his girlfriend. He thought she was a burglar. Very fishy story, but possibly true. Had he had no gun she would probably still be alive. Most people are not proficient enough with a handgun to hit a human target and would probably end up dead if they should try to defend themselves against a robber. Criminals have no problem shooting people, regular people do. It’s a psychological thing. And our laws are such that you’d better be really careful when shooting at someone...even a burglar. You will get charged. Victims always lose, even with the law.

That is my opinion for the day.

Spring Cleanup and an unpleasant discovery

Spring cleanup and an unpleasant discovery

It was a beautiful day today. Temperature in the double digits. That’s Celsius for you people who are still using Fahrenheit, but there is nothing wrong with that. All the snow is gone except for a few small patches here and there. Time to start with the Spring cleanup.

We have a septic field. For the winter, we spread about 50 garbage bags filled with grass on top of the field to collect the snow to keep the field from freezing. I removed the bags today and put them onto our driveway. I will have to take them to the garbage dump, as I do every year. I also took off the Christmas lites and stored them away for next year.

I found a few tulips, lilies, and Irisis poking their heads out of the ground. I also saw one little Ladybug, and some Earthworms hiding under the bags. They disappeared quickly into the ground below. Earthworms are good for the soil.

It was high time to remove the bags because the grass underneath it is already turning yellow.

We still have a lot of juncos feeding from the feeders. I have to fill up the feeders every second day. There is a rabbit hiding under our sunroom. He will be welcome as long as he doesn’t start eating the plants later on. Last year he ate most of the pansies, so my wife won’t have any this year. He also likes to nibble on my lettuce in the garden. I’m only assuming this is the same one. It could also be a she-rabbit. Right now he’s munching away on grass and seeds from the birdfeeder. The grouse that came for a visit a few days ago came back. This time there were four of them. I didn’t get a chance for some good pictures. They were hiding under the spruce trees.

Found a crow’s nest in one of the spruce trees. Don’t know yet if I’m happy about that, because crows are noisy. Last year they made such a spectacle outside. There was a whole flock of them. It was in the fall and I’m guessing some of them were youngsters. I don’t know where they had their nest last year. It may already have been in our tree.

Anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis probably knows about the ‘egging’ we suffered at Easter. Some hoodlums threw eggs at our house and emptied a can of used oil onto our driveway. We managed to clean the eggs from the garage door but didn’t get around to cleaning the window until today. That’s when we discovered the unpleasant thing.

There was a piece of glass wedged between two bricks right under the window that had been egged. Then I found more glass on the ground. The piece between the bricks was the bottom of a whiskey bottle. This leads me to believe that someone threw a bottle at our house with the intention to break a window. They missed, fortunately. Now, egging our house is bad enough, but trying to break something is a totally different ballgame.

All this talk about terrorism these days. Well, I would consider this kind of stuff some form of terrorism. There is a similarity between throwing a bomb with the intent to kill, maim, or cause damage to property and throwing a hard object at a window intending to break it. Throwing a bottle is just something on a small scale, but the thought behind it is the same: Intent to destroy and cause physical damage to property or people. Sounds crazy? Imagine if they would have hit the window, shattered the glass, the thrown bottle could have done more damage inside or even hit a person sitting in the room, causing injury or even death.
Farfetched? Strange things have happened.

I kept the larger pieces of glass, the bottom and the top of the bottle as evidence, in case I ever need it. I made sure I didn’t touch it so not to contaminate the fingerprints. By the way, the little bastards who smashed our driveway lites last year, left good prints behind. They are now in Ottawa in a database with the RCMP.

The first Robin

I saw a flock of Robins this morning on one of our neighbor's yard. Haven't seen any yet on ours. Last night it snowed and there is supposedly more snow to come tonight,with the temperature dipping to minus 8C. I got this cartoon today from one of my friends. I thought I should share it, because it is just too funny.

There is a moral in this besides the obvious: Don't put your tongue where it doesn't belong