The Red Elvises will be in town Wednesday night, and you can bet that I’ll be there. I’ve been a big fan since even before I saw them in Six-String Samurai.

A year ago, I posted this picture of a flower I stumbled across in my yard while mowing (with my non-motorized push mower). It’s very small, less than an inch high, and I almost mowed right over it. I didn’t know what it was, but I liked it, so it stayed. I’ve since found that the little fellow was a Grape Hyacith, a woodsy wild flower native to these parts. When they find a spot they like, they multiply quickly. Last year there was one. This year there was sixteen. I’m hoping for several hundred next spring.

To help you better prepare your finances, I will now disclose that the Dow will continue to fall until it reaches the 7200 mark, will then level out, and will slowly climb back up again. The NASDAQ will do the same, levelling out at the 1200 mark. I’m not certain how long it will take to reach the low-water mark, but I expect it will be late next winter.

Eeeee ooooo eeeeee whoooo eeeeee oooooo eeeeeeeeeeee whooooo eeeeeeeee oooooooooooo eeeeeeee! (From Backup Brain)

Here’s an interesting weblog portal. I’m on there twice: an edge-on spiral galaxy near the lower right (the one with a bright red star just above it), and again as a single white point (either a star or a distant galaxy) just above and to the right of my other link. Unless your memorization skills are grand, this would be a good randon-weblog selector.

Call Me Trimtab. I adore R. Buckminster Fuller. He’s most famous (to the average person) for inventing the geodesic dome, but he was exactly the kind of person I try to be. His tombstone is inscribed with his guiding phrase, “Call me tribtab.” The trimtab is a small moving extention of a ship’s rudder. By moving the trimtab just a litlle bit, expending very little energy, the rudder is compelled to follow. And after the rudder, the ship. So changing something very small can change the course of something very large, like an aircraft carrier. Or society. Call me trimtab. A fellow has written a one man show about R. Buckminster Fuller, and it’s gotten rave reviews in California. I’d love to do it here sometime. I’ve finally gotten the contact information for the author, now I need to follow through.

Livestock are burning across Great Britain and Europe. British poet David Anthony has written a villanelle, a formal poetic structure, about the events. I post it here, unapproved and copied from a mailing list I’m on: Plague The guns are loud across the land tonight. Grim beacon flames flash out from shire to shire and horror groans without an end in sight. Best not to look as marksmen expedite such slaughter! Hired to empty every byre, the guns are loud. Across the land tonight Spring flinches at the foulness of the blight that lurks within the pall above each pyre, and horror groans without an end in sight of pallid flames where all is darkly bright. So draw the drapes and turn the music higher– the guns are loud across the land tonight! Take up the children; tuck their blankets tight: try not to let them see that life’s a liar and horror groans. Without an end in sight there seems no point, why carry on, why fight? --not only cattle perish in the fire. The guns are loud across the land tonight, and horror groans without an end in sight. -- David Anthony, 2001

I had one of those enjoyable weekends I like so much, filled with cooking and gardening and entertaining friends. The same couple that I had over for my birthday (see the sidebar) (the same couple, in fact, that I will be marrying in May) came over to relax for Friday night and Saturday. Preparing to get marrying is very taxing, you see, especially when you’re the jet-setting type like they are. And besides, it was the soon-to-be-Missus’ birthday, so Chris and I invited them over. I made four tea smoked Cornish Game hens for the occasion, accompanied by a morel mushroom & asparagus pasta, and proceeded by a wonderful mushroom soup they brought. It was all wonderful, and the smoked hens came out fantastic. So much so, in fact, that I think I’ll give up western mesquite & hickory smoking for this. When the hens were done, I threw in a chunk of salmon, saving it for smoked salmon and cream cheese omelettes the next day. I made a surprise rum pound cake with rum cream cheese icing for dessert, and we drifted off to sleep with bellies full. Saturday was as perfect a spring day as one could ask for. We brought the chickens out and put them in their coop for the first time (pictures were taken and will go up here later), much to the amusement of the cats. We took the stray dog we’re desperately trying to find a home for a walk. We worked in the garden. We had the aforementioned omelettes. Later, Steve showed off his impressive French culinary skills with a Cassoulet (not actual recipe used) and some homemade duck confit, something I’ve not had before. That man can cook! Tragedy struck while the confit was frying, though. Right before me, too quick for me to do anything about it, the stray dog burst through the screen on the coop and killed one of the chickens. It was our only Rhode Island Red, and we’re down to twelve. I’ll need to reinforce the bottom couple feet with metal screening – the plastic keeps the chickens in, but not the large predators out. Yesterday game me more garden work, preparing beds for the true planting season in a few weeks. I harvested the last of the collard greens, bringing in nearly a bushel. For you northerners, collards are nothing more than a heat-tolerant kale. It can be used anywhere you’d use kale or cabbage or the other leafy brassicas. I shredded all the leaves, blanched them, and froze them in meal-sized portions. By the time the blacking was done, the bushel had reduced to a gallon – still plenty of future food. So that’s the lengthy diary-like entry. I’ll supplement it with pictures at some point, and eventually I’ll be able to do a bit of web surfing and provide links like I used to.

Shuttlecocks will sing the news, doo-dah, doo-dah.

With Springtime comes yard renovations. And what better resource for yard planning is there than The Third Annual Tacky Yard Art Contest entries?