At the AT&T by Richard

Frances and I went on Feb.7th to the AT & T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am Golf Tournament, in beautiful Carmel.

We were in luck, because it didn't rain, but it was cold. The sun felt good when the clouds passed by.

We set up our chairs on the 3rd green, all wrapped up and watched all the players go by.

We enjoyed hot coffee and lunch and left for home about 2 o'clock. On the way home we stopped at the In & Out for a great hamburger and more coffee.

It was a long day and we were glad to be home in our warm house with our dogs.

[Editor's note: This story was written by Richard]



AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am

So How Does YOUR Garden Grow?

A. Nonymus

Houston Garden Report - #1
The First Day of Spring – March 21, 2013

How-dee from H- Town! Well it's that time again!!

I've been putting in this years attempt at a garden – again... I'm reminded of the classic definition or 'insanity' … repeating the same actions... but expecting different results.. [lol].

I had been planning to give another try at a garden this season – and in recent days, whilst pondering 'n cogitatin' on it as the weather got nice, I got a bit of a shove when I found 44 miniature roses in 4” pots on clearance .. and after a bit o hagglin' got 'em all for $25!! … the basic garden I had seen in my near future, had jumped out and grabbed me, moving near future to right NOW!! Hopefully, this future, doesn’t put me in the 'past-ure' [wink]...

I gathered the roses up, and got'em home. This greatly accelerated and necessitated the need to rapidly dust off the sundry accoutrement and remnants of our previous years container gardens, and I quickly lined out a revised battle plan of attack. The small container garden of veggies would now encompass color and flowers !!

This was quite a push, as my gardens have a mixed history - with some having been very nice and productive – and others … well, not so much.. see previous comment on 'insanity' [wink].

Now the flowers are an exciting new feature this season … and hopefully will add a nice bit of color and character to our usual cast of veggie suspects – tomatoes, peppers, squashes, cukes, herbs etc.

This year we are also toying with onions, garlic, and I'm quite excited about experimenting with fingerling potatoes. I received a wonderful selection of fantastic fingerlings donated by my Chef friend; lovely yellows, red, orange, black & blue skins – and about the size of extra large eggs. I found some great videos on YouTube on ways to grow fingerlings in burlap bags – perfect for small / container gardens.. I'll add the links below. I've also put in some Idaho baking russets from the store that had sprouted – separated in an old bin. It will be interesting to see what turns out.

I'm going with a nice simple and basic herb bed – the traditional basics – Cilantro, Basil, Mint, and Spearmint – with onions, and garlic in the separate potato bin.

We're trying out a “Topsy-Turvey “ tomato kit - you know the one on late nite infomercials. It's a hanging upside down earth filled bag, planted with a nice hardy cherry tomato, which is already thriving and has many tiny flowers. This bit of fun seems quite promising. My gardening friend had one last year, and marveled & bragged at the results. So we're enjoying the promise of a long season of cherry tomatoes.. and hopefully won't have to fend off the birds, possums, and various critters that may be laying in wait for those most delicious morsels of goodness.

Another first: We are trying to grow some items from seed. I've never done well at germinating / sprouting, but the feed n supply guy said they are almost foolproof ...usually [wink]. From seed we are going for – cukes, Asian small eggplant, and 2 exotic bushing squash.

There is a nice variety of peppers from starter plants; Mammoth jalapeno, Bell – red n yellow, banana, gypsy, jalapeno, salad cherry peppers, and one volunteer hot jalapeno that survived from last year.

Keeping the lineup simple in the tomato department – cherry [hanging basket], grape, Big Boy, Lemon Boy [yellow]...

Gardening tips
New information to me, and worthy of experimentation...

Just learned about growing potatoes in a burlap bag … wonderful stuff, and excited to give it a go... see the links.

Another green thumbed friend suggested I add Epsom Salts and a multivitamin tab in each pot as cheap fertilizer. She swears this is like magic! Apparently, the Epsom Salts are especially good for roses, tomatoes, and peppers, but makes all plants lusher and greener. My friend insists that the yield and quality was amazing and I was highly encouraged to pursue this. After Googling this, it seems to have merit and the folk lore has been around for years with good scientific and anecdotal results. Use the cheapest products, which is usually available at the 99 cent store.

So now we're off to the races... the garden is pretty much in place – Here are some photos, and a few links that I found with great information on growing potatoes , the basic 411 on Epsom salts, and using human multivitamins for the plants.

That’s about it for now... I'm reminded that a battle plan is only effective until the first shot is fired, then gets tossed immediately out the window [wink] ... hopefully we will not have too many curves in the road. The regular problems are planned for – as best as possible – the heat, drought, mosquitoes, bugz n critters... oh and laziness – rofl!

Ciao for niao – H-Town signing off until next time.

Links:

[Editor's note: Some of these sites have mandatory preview ads or other merchandising on their sites. Please exercise good computing practices when visiting any of these links.]

Videos:
Potatoes in a bag.
Fingerling Potatoes
Epsom Salt as enhancer for color and yield

Blog:
Multi-Vitamins as enhancement

[Editor's note: This story was written by A. Nonymus.]



Container Row



Tomatoes Roses Peppers Cucumbers

Herb Box

Ski videos

There are some extraordinary ski and snow boarding videos on the internet. I never get tired of watching the expert twists and turns with the magnificent spray of powder snow as a skier swerves to change direction or come to a sudden stop.

I marvel at a skier's ability to keep their balance as they glide down steep mountain slopes. To successfully fly thru the air when taking one jump after another is a skill that looks effortlessly, but it requires perseverance and courage to master.

It's one thing to ski down a hill or mountain with a ski on each foot, but some do it on one board ! As if that isn't accomplishment enough, they also take jumps to become air born so they can do somersaults and all manner of maneuvers in the air before landing upright. That is really pushing the limits!

One of the web sites with ski videos is that of Whistler Blackcomb Ski Resort in Whistler, BC Canada. You can tool around their site and see other interesting things like different web cams and info about snowfall etc.

Whistler Blackcomb video The Wonder Reels: Episode 4 - The Deep is an astounding video showing two skiers on a mountain run, one is on a snowboard.



So How Does YOUR Garden Grow?

Kim

The race is ON! Spring has sprung and the race to the first tomatoes is going at full speed.

I bought some more seeds that are special for container gardening and also some unusual seeds to try out. I bought some miniature eggplant, miniature bell peppers (yellow and red). I also bought some seeds for tomatoes that are red, orange or black. Plans are for more container zucchini and cucumbers too.

The miniature watermelons were not successful last year so I'm skipping those.

I've already planted multi-colored carrots and the seedlings have started to popping up. The taters are LOOOKING GOOOOOD after the winter too. I'm making notes to myself, to give them lots of fertilizer this year. I even got some fish emulsion liquid for later on.

I've started some of the more delicate seeds indoors using some plastic cold drink cups. First, I used an ice pick to punch some holes in the bottom for drainage.  I found that the ice pick holes are too small for the water to escape well, so I used some pruning shears to clip out a small triangle in the bottom on both sides of the cup.  You can just get the shears to catch on the bottom edge and it makes a good enough hole for the water to drain.

[note: The cut actually forms a diamond; the section on the side is a triangle and there is a matching triangle on the bottom of the cup from the snips.]

I wanted a gentle method of watering them. So, I took a plastic water bottle and punched 4 ice pick holes near the top to use. A gentle squeeze on the bottle and just enough water comes out.

Seedling Cups

Watering Bottle

Spell Checkers by KimB

I cannot type.

I cannot type fast.

I cannot type without making errors.

In the online games I play, we call this "typonese". It comes from a) not knowing how to spell and b) from trying to type a lot of information in a short time to another player. Most players understand whatever it is you are typing just the same.

Spell checkers help but sometimes you have the problem that if you don't know how to spell it to start with you can't find the correct word to use.

Google has started to add a dictionary to search results. I guess they figured out that a lot of people like me, use Google as a dictionary, just to find the correct spelling of a word.

Spell checkers are like GPS systems, they can only take you places you already know about. It's hard to get a GPS to show you the directions for: I-Want-To-Go-That-A-Way. With spell checkers it's hard to get them to show you: How-Do-You-Spell-The-I-Dunno-How-To-Spell-It-Word.

[Editor's note: This story was written by KimB.] 

The Spell Chequer Poem

Eye have a spelling chequer,
It came with my Pea Sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss Steaks I can knot sea.

Eye strike the quays and type a whirred
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am write oar wrong
It tells me straight a weigh.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your shore real glad two no.
Its vary polished in its weigh.
My chequer tolled me sew.

A chequer is a bless thing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right all stiles of righting,
And aides me when eye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The chequer pours o'er every word
Two cheque sum spelling rule.

The original version of this poem was written by Jerrold H. Zar in 1992. An unsophisticated spell checker will find little or no fault with this poem because it checks words in isolation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spell_checker