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Domain expiry – GoDaddy KOs it immediately
June 24th, 2008
Well that was a shock. This domain expired today, and GoDaddy parked it.
I often wait until the expiration date to renew (and I don’t do auto renew because you can always find a promo code for a discount) and have never had GoDaddy turn off my domain. Technically, I would think they wouldn’t park it until 11:59 pm on the night it expires. They obviously have changed their practices.
No clue why, but I don’t like it. I still prefer GoDaddy over any other registrar I’ve ever used, and I’ve used a number of them. GoDaddy doesn’t have shady practices like many of them do. I’ll just start renewing domains the day before they expire I guess.
Curry burgers
June 21st, 2008
Even though this is a gardening blog, I might talk recipes every now and then, because I like finding new things to do with all of the things I grow. Especially eggplant – I grow so much of it and always on the lookout for a new recipe.
I’m not a good cook, I don’t especially like to cook, and I’m often very overwhelmed by it. I have a handful of recipes that I can cook well; most are things like fried chicken and gravy because where I’m from pretty much everyone knows how to make that. (Except my first husband actually taught me. To be fair, most of my cooking skills come from his mother, who was very kind and patient.)
But sometimes I have fun trying. I’m constantly on the quest to make the perfect lamb curry. I’ve made some good ones, but never as good as my favorite Indian restaurant.
To me, there are two flavors you can’t overdo: garlic and curry. I put curry on a lot of things.
But I never thought of putting it on a burger. I actually think burgers are very hard to make. Mine never hold together very well, and they’re always ugly. So I’d picked up some preformed sirloin burgers at the store – we don’t eat regular ground beef.
For hubby, it’s because he prefers the taste of ground sirloin. Until I met him, I really had no idea there was a difference…that’s how tragic my skillz are. (Of course until he met me, he didn’t know the glory of a home-grown tomato, so I guess that evens it out.) The other reason is because I’m very paranoid about e coli and other things in food. (Due to some very bad experiences with food poisoning. Not pretty.)
Back to the burgers. I’ve kind of gotten spoiled on what may be one of the better burgers. I was watching a show with Gordon Ramsay, and he whipped up a bowl of beef and claimed he was making the best burger in the world. I went online and found people discussing it (the recipe was supposedly top secret), and it really just goes like this:
your ground beef, a lot of finely chopped red onion, three egg yolks (!), some bread crumbs, salt and pepper, dijon mustard and a large squirt of ketchup
Mix it up and make burgers. Really, really good. I’m sure it’s the onion and dijon mustard.
Having gotten used to that good taste, I was thinking these sirloin prefab burgers were going to be drab, so I decided to spice mine up. You can never go wrong with Worcestershire sauce, so I put that on the meat (which was starting to cook in the skillet). Then I added:
paprika, garlic powder, some Italian seasoning, and yes…curry powder.
FANTASTIC! I’ll call it the Juli curry burger, and it was the best burger ever. Hubby had to have his plain, because he doesn’t appreciate the curry. That’s his loss.
I really believe curry makes everything taste better.
I should also confess that years ago, I thought I invented the tuna melt. I just made it up, and it was fab, and months later I found out it was a real sandwich. So this burger probably already exists.
If I had one wish…
June 14th, 2008
It might be to have a ranch with horses I could ride, and goats. I’m mad for goats! I keep trying to talk DH into moving somewhere rural and getting goats; I’ve promised to milk them and make feta cheese. But it’s hard to convince a New Yorker rural living is good. He’s the Zha Zha Gabor to my Eddie Albert in my Green Acres fantasy.
I was trying to find info on thistles, because I think I have some and don’t know whether I should glove up and pull them, or let them be. Then I came across a site on using goats for companion grazing and weed control! We wouldn’t even have to mow…we could just let the goats do it!
How cute is this guy? I’m so in love.
Mama Robin
June 12th, 2008
A few weeks ago, I noticed a very messy nest made in the curve of the downspout on the side of the shed. My neighbor said it was a mourning dove nest. Mourning doves are one of my favorite birds. So I made a special point of telling any workmen around to be careful of the nest.
I googled it, and apparently the birds are known for their very untidy nests.
But I never saw any birds in it and forgot about it. One day, a robin flew over my head and landed…in the nest. I hadn’t noticed, but she’d built a very tidy nest on top of it. It was like this: mourning dove nest: built by Juli; nest on top: built by very organized hubby. Such a difference, and I need to try and take a picture.
Normally, I’m not fond of the robins. In the past, they have mowed down my entire vegetable garden of seedlings. Nobody would believe me, and said it had to be cutworms, but I put foil collars on my seedlings to prevent cutworms, plus I’d seen a robin do the deed. She just chopped it off with her beak, let the plant parts fall over and then flew away. Destruction for no purpose at all, and I was MAD. Plus I had to replant the entire garden.
After that, I used vinyl bird netting and a system of foil pieces on string, that I would weave throughout the garden. Oh, I tried making mean faces on old CDs and hanging them on stakes, but that did not work. I thought about getting a fake owl or snake, but was chatting with an old timer at a nursery. He said robins did that to get stuff for their nest, and you only had to survive a week or so, and then they were done.
Once I learned that, I did the netting for about two weeks, then removed it, and haven’t had a problem with birds since.
So this robin had built a new nest, and it was obvious she was sitting on her eggs. It’s too high up to look into the nest, without a ladder. But I’ve enjoyed her intense concentration and the glaring looks she gives me when I looked at her and her nest.
I kept watching, but for the last couple of days, forgot about the nest. It just hit me, and I ran outside. The nest was empty…..but within seconds, there she flew, into the nest, a worm in her mouth. And I saw teeny tiny heads and beaks sticking up!!! She’s birthed her babies!
I’m so excited. It’s the first time I’ve actually seen a bird’s nest in real life with baby birdies! My whole life I’ve lived in the country, and we allowed cats and dogs outside. So bird watching (or feeding) has never been an option until my move to the burbs. I really detest the burbs, although I confess liking some of the perks (like not having to drive fifteen minutes to run out for a loaf of bread, plus cable TV and DSL, and not being last on the list when power lines go down).
But being in the burbs means it’s not safe to let the cats outside anymore. On the flip side, for the first time, I can feed the birds. And now I’ve seen my first nest of baby robins. Imagine growing up in the country, a farm girl on a horse, and she’s never seen a nest of baby birds. Baby chickens, yes. Baby cows, piglets, rabbits, and other mammals, check. But wildlife? Nope, other than some possums I rescued, Mike and Possie. I was a kid then, hence the clever names.
I did see a fledgling last year, which was very exciting. He wasn’t excited, though, because I was oohing and ahing, and it invaded his bird space.
Baby birdies!!! I get excited at the silliest things.
I’ll help you get over the flu
June 7th, 2008
Ack, I normally detest those little “what kind of x are you?” quizzes, but I came across one that was “kind of flower” and could not resist.
This kind of freaks me out, because I do tend to be health aware and somewhat of a hypochondriac.
| “You are a health conscious person, both your health and the health of others. You know all about the health benefits and dangers of the world around you.” |
Keeping squirrels out of the bird feeder
June 3rd, 2008
Just a tip for people who have trouble with squirrels. I use only safflower seeds and have yet to have a squirrel go after the seed. The seeds attract titmice, gray jays of some kind, all kinds of finches, mourning doves (they love it!) and cardinals. The cardinals may fuss at first, but if you keep it up, they’ll come.
The nice thing about safflower seed is that the blackbirds and sparrows don’t care for it. We have finches and cardinals all day long with the safflower seed. The mourning doves are too fat to fit on the feeder, so I leave handfuls of it on the deck railing. They enjoy that, and the cats enjoy the show.
I need to…
April 8th, 2008
Take some pictures as things are popping up in my gardens. I’ve got baby hairy vetch everywhere and am excited about it! It won’t be long before the ladybugs start moving in. I saw a ladybug on my windshield about a week or so ago, and decided that it’s like a four-leaf clover: good luck.
The other thing I need to do is add links to blogs I like. I came across a gardening blog a few weeks ago, intended to go back and bookmark it and of course didn’t. I have no idea what it was called or how I came across it. But it was a dandy, cheerful blog.
I just realized this as I came across another blog I fell in love with: Yulinka Cooks. She has Russian recipes!!! And how double cool is it that we share similar names. Yulinka is a derivative of Yulia, similar to Juli.
So Yulinka Cooks is the first blog I’m adding. I should have done this long ago.
I was doing a little work on a family project – we’re putting together family recipes and I volunteered (lol) to do it on computer. I *thought* the whole thing was typed up. Instead, my aunt gave me a huge briefcase of folders. Untyped. Gads, oh well. I also thought it was to be old recipes passed on from Grandma and various great aunties, but as it turns out, there’s all kind of stuff. (Some fun sounding stuff, too!)
So I thought, well, if people have included recipes they’ve gotten at work or from friends and it’s not all Scottish-English-country type recipes, then I’m including some Italian stuff from my in-laws, and I’m also including my top secret Uzbeki shashlik recipe. Nobody who has ever had my shashlik (shish kebab) didn’t LOVE IT.
I got it from two nice Uzbeki ladies who were staying awhile in Leningrad when I lived there. I met them in a line for shoes and it was mutual enchantment: I was enchanted by these Uzbeki women (and later did my MA thesis ON the women of Central Asian Republics of the USSR, now independent countries), and they were enchanted by a goofy American girl who was thrilled beyond words to be in the USSR studying at university. (LGU, rah rah!)
They fed me shashlik and other wonderful things, and then taught me how to make the shashlik. Among friends, that’s kind of my signature dish if we’re doing a cookout.
These ladies told me the recipe came from the times of Genghis Khan, and they were descended from him. True or not, their stories were FAB.U.LOUS.
Anyway, privyet!
My secret wish for my front yard? A true Russian countryside front yard. They don’t mow, just let it grow up in wildflowers. It’s spectacular.
So I was searching Uzbeki shashlik stuff, just curious if the Mongols raised livestock.
Speaking of the Mongols, you can actually buy a yurt. I WOULD LOVE to have a yurt, but I don’t think that would go over so well here.
Now I’ve got to find a recipe for goluptsi. There is a church in Royalton, Illinois (southern Illinois) that is Russian Orthodox. For a time, I seriously considered converting to that just because it’s so beautiful and I was very moved going to services (officially forbidden at the time) and seeing the crying ladies and the icons.
Anyway, I got the best goluptsi (stuffed cabbage rolls) recipe ever from a man at that church in Royalton, but I can’t find it. I need to try and find a similar recipe because I’ve been craving it. I’m thinking of trying some with a stuffing of whole wheatberries instead of meat. I’m thinking the recipe I had may have been more Ukrainian than Russian, though.
First up, figuring out how to make links show up. It’s always something.
Phil Hendrie and wild animals
December 27th, 2007
Since I’m not yet to the point of starting seedlings indoors, there’s nothing much gardening to clack about. Back to Phil Hendrie.
Man, that cat sure doesn’t know much about nature.
I would never in a million years refer to a dude as a cat, but he does it and it makes me laugh. It makes me think of beatniks, pointy little beards and wire-framed glasses.
I ranted before about his seeming misperception that organic farming was a refusal to use hybrids. I’ve explained why that was incorrect. Last night, he went off on the episode in California where the Siberian tiger escaped, killed a guy and mauled two more.
I can understand his dislike of zoos. I get that, and even sympathize with his position. I grew up with a mother who launched into a lecture every time we went to the zoo that was similar. She did the same thing every time I wanted to visit Indian reservations and the “freak show” at the carnival. It was rude to stare, and even worse to take advantage of people’s curiosity for profit. (However, she never hesitates to exploit Native Americans by dropping a lot of coins into Native-owned casinos.)
But I’ve strayed from the subject: zoo animals.
Yes, one of Phil Hendrie’s guests did an especially moving reading of “How Deeply Oiled is the Oil Bird,” a delightful poem worthy of some kind of poem prize. But he is kind of misinformed about animals in captivity.
He advocates opening all the zoos and letting them free. (Personally, I fantasize meeting Tippi Heddren and she helps me start a sanctuary of my own, then PETA frees research animals and I take them in.)
Releasing animals in captivity into the wild is not practical. A bullet to the head would be more humane.
Animals that are born into captivity are fed by zookeepers. They don’t learn hunting and survival skills and would have a very small chance at surviving amongst their brethren who would likely immediately kill them for invading their territory. If they survived that, they wouldn’t have the skills to hunt and find food. They would then starve.
It really is that black and white in my world of mostly grays.
Look at these fools on Survivor, the reality show. Imagine if they weren’t given a staple of rice and told what fish were safe to eat, how to avoid sharks and other predators, what plants were poisonous and so on. Imagine that there were no camera people and other staff.
Drop one of those city people – or even a chicken farmer – into the middle of a habitat s/he did not know. A jungle, a lovely beach, a desert. Their instinct would tell them to hunt, fish and find water and shelter. But would any of them know how?
Phil Hendrie and probably countless others think that hunting skills are inborn. They are NOT. Once again, he’s a city boy and hasn’t had the experience of watching a mama barn cat teach her kittens to hunt for birds and mice. They are NOT born with the skills, just as a farm woman isn’t born with the ability to make the perfect apple pie. It’s learned. The tiger has to learn from its mother how to hunt for food. They aren’t given that class at the zoo.
Additionally, most of those animals aren’t from the wild, they’re born in the zoo.
Another point: Jack Hanna is always like that. He wasn’t nervous, he was just Jack Hanna, who is kind of giddy. He does a lot for endangered species, kind of like the croc hunter. That guy didn’t just wrestle crocs, he worked hard to protect wildlife. Hanna said exactly what Hendrie said, but Hendrie turned it around somehow (wtf?): a tiger, even though born in captivity, is still a wild animal and has the instinct to attack.
I don’t know what the story is, and there’s a lot of speculation. With the media, you need to always sit back and give it a couple of weeks while they have their frenzy and spread a lot of rumors.
My sadness was that the tiger had to die, and there weren’t tranq guns at every corner with trained personnel who could quickly subdue the animal. (I’m also sorry for the dead and injured, though if the speculation turns out to have meat and they were taunting the tiger, then my view will be “one less retard on the planet, it’s a shame it wasn’t more, and too bad the tiger had to be killed.” BTW, I’m on an anti politically-correct rampage and use terms like Merry Christmas and retard these days.)
A couple of other points about zoos while I’m at it. The Siberian tiger is endangered and there are a lot more in zoos than in the wild. Part of zoo programs is trying to keep these species alive, even though they have to live in zoos. (But kind of like the Muslim woman in a burqa who doesn’t know there’s a big, burqa-less world out there, the captive animals don’t know there’s a more dangerous but freer life. So they don’t miss it.)
My cousin is in her second year of college, headed to vet school. She has planned to be a vet since she could talk, but her specialty has changed from time to time. She had really been headed down the path of working with zoo animals (because she’s a cat lover like myself, and enchanted by big cats, and I’m sure she’s devastated over the death of this tiger). At her university, they immerse the students in animals stuff from day one so they see if they can handle the icky side. (Her first semester involved sticking her tiny little arm up a cow’s ass and doing an exam. I have pictures of the happy event.)
So this past semester, she did Captive Animals 101, and it involved a lot of field trips to various zoos around the midwest, going back where the public doesn’t go, and many guest lectures from zoo vets.
As it turns out, not only is being a zoo vet not a tidy 9 to 5 with holidays off, you don’t get to really spend much time with the actual animals. The biggest part of being a zoo vet is breeding and doing research on breeding.
So she’s rethinking it all now.
She didn’t grow up around the farm as I did, since the family farm is now almost a relic. But every farm with cattle knows about the artificial inseminator. That’s the guy that comes around with a container full of bull spooge (and the farmer with the lucky prize bull gets big bucks for that liquid). He sticks HIS arm up a cow vagina and does the deed. That, my friends, is his JOB. No one has ever answered my burning question: how do they get the sample? It’s not like you give the bull a Juggs magazine and tell him to go into the bathroom with a specimen cup. Does the inseminator manually do it? I really want to know, because if he does, it makes the job even creepier.
That’s life on the farm, sticking arms up cows. And the cows don’t like it either, poor things.
Jack Hanna has the best job in the world, as far as I’m concerned. He gets to play with all the animals. Watching him with baby tigers and little bear cubs on various talk shows…makes me all teary eyed. But they do grow up into big animals that can and do attack when provoked or threatened. (Doubtful that tiger was hungry; their diets are very scientifically controlled and they do get special treats and “enrichment” fun to keep their minds active.)
Phil Hendrie might give a thought to animals in a circus. How about shutting down Ringling Brothers? That’s some damn cruelty, making them parade around in friggin tutus.
I love Phil; I think he’s got to be THE most under-appreciated talent on earth. The guy is a friggin genuis. But this cat needs some nature lessons pronto.
Winter projects, growing sprouts, indoor gardening
October 26th, 2007
I’ve planted a patch of romaine lettuce for winter. It’s looking great so far. As the temps get colder, I’ll cover it with straw, and remove the straw during warm days to allow the sun to shine down. You can do the same thing with row covers.
I’m also planning on starting to grow my own sprouts, just for fun. I saw it on a gardening show and was intrigued. You really just need your seeds and a mason jar, and a few days to grow them. First up, I’m planning on broccoli sprouts, just to try them. I love sprouts when I’ve bought them at the store or have them on a sandwich at a cafe.
We’re also planning on a big basement project, so this will take a little time. For me, the planning stage on these things takes more time than the actual project.
Then in January, I plan to start some of my herbs/vegetables/flowers indoors to get a good start for spring. In previous years, I start in mid March and some things don’t get big enough for my taste (eggplants, peppers, some flowers), so this will be a head start. Two things I won’t be starting indoors again are impatiens and moss rose. That was a total bust. The varieties were unusual colors you don’t see at the stores, but they were hard to get going, and then they all died in infancy.
I like to have projects over winter to keep me from obsessing about next year’s garden. I’ll still obsess and plan I’m sure, but maybe less so.
Oh, I also plan on getting organized. Ha. I say that every year.
Frolics with monarchs
September 21st, 2007
The monarchs haven’t yet started to migrate south I guess, or maybe they are migrating and I’m a stopping point. My butterfly garden has paid off. All of the crazy watching the caterpillars, the delight, the excitement…just exploded.
They’ve been out there for days and I finally ran to Kmart yesterday to get another roll of film. With digital cameras, it’s not that easy to find film, and when you find it, the choice is very limited. (Unless I wanted to drive 30 minutes to a camera store, which I did not.) By the time I loaded the camera, they had gone elsewhere.
But here they were again today, along with other butterflies I can’t identify. I shot the entire roll in about five minutes, trying to get shots of their wings opened. We’ll see what I end up with, but I guess I’ll pick up a couple more rolls. Digging out my old camera equipment (that was high end when I bought it all) has been so fun. My friends still in photojournalism have been telling me that digital sucks, film still rules. It’s really true….the pictures are just so much more alive. Or maybe it’s me, enjoying the heavy lenses, remembering when I used to spend hours and hours in the darkroom, hanging out with all my journalist friends, chasing politicians and asking stupid questions. I miss it. I miss the chase, I miss the words, I miss the deadlines and I miss the newsroom.
Back to the butterflies instead of wandering down memory road…after I ran out of film I had no excuse to chase them. I just couldn’t stand the joy and began swirling, my hands in the air, my heart full of absolute pure happiness.
For those moments I could block out any stresses, any worries and bad thoughts. It was just me and the monarchs. They sailed, I twirled. I twirled like a child, and wished I had on a sun dress that would flow out at the skirt as I moved.
If any neighbors looked beyond the fence and saw me, I’m sure they now know I’m really, truly crazy. Maybe they wished they had the courage to just let go like that. It’s not often I have the abandon for it, but the monarchs drew me in, away from inhibition.
I wish I could have taken a video of myself. Anyone who would have seen me would have at least a moment of gladness.
For those moments, I swirled, the monarchs sailed through the air, landing and sipping nectar, then sailing back up and around. It was as if they joined me in a dance and we all just soared.
There was never a more perfect moment in life than letting go with these beauties.
And now I cry. It was that emotional. Only a fellow butterfly lover could possibly understand such triumph.