|
3127. ronski - 6/6/2005 5:12:44 AM Happy hanging basket, with petunias, on our deck:
3128. arkymalarky - 6/7/2005 10:05:20 PM On our front porch:
Bob wanted it down, but the birds had already nested before he could stop it, and he didn't have the heart to disrupt them. 3129. arkymalarky - 6/7/2005 10:22:06 PM An interesting encounter in the yard yesterday:
 3130. Macnas - 6/8/2005 4:39:25 PM I was at a steam rally at the weekend. I'll try and post some pictures tomorrow. 3131. alistairconnor - 6/8/2005 4:44:31 PM What variety of snake is that, Arky? Anything derogatory?
There's been a beautiful big viper seen down by our stream. I haven't seen one for years. 3132. robertjayb - 6/8/2005 5:04:45 PM A black rat snake is my guess. No wonder your birds are nesting high. 3133. Ms. No - 6/8/2005 5:27:43 PM Wow, I've lived in the city way too long. I'd completely forgotten about snakes. I'm amazed again that my brother and I lived through childhood. Sure, we'd been warned about waterholes and Cottonmouths and to be on the lookout for Copperheads, but I never saw a Cottonmouth. Hell, I never saw a Copperhead, either, that my father didn't see first and kill.
Garter snakes, King snakes and for some reason the Hooded Cobra (not native to the Carolinas) were the subject of many a childhood tale. "Jimmy caught a Garter snake, come see...." or "My cousin, Joe, saved a neighbor kid's life because he knew the King Snake the kid was poking at was really a Coral Snake" or "Did you see something move over there? It looked like a Hooded Cobra. I heard one escaped from the zoo down to Atlanta and it was pregnant!!"
It's hard to believe that I haven't thought about the presence of snakes when stepping outside in more than 15 years. 3134. PelleNilsson - 6/8/2005 6:09:54 PM Some years ago we had a fine fat viper at the cottage. It was there for a couple of weeks, probably digesting its latest catch. Otherwise we seldom see them, and then always in the spring when they are a bit stiff and slow-moving. Here, all kinds of snakes are on the list of protected species. 3135. arkymalarky - 6/8/2005 6:30:39 PM Yep, just a plain old black snake.
No wonder your birds are nesting high.
Mockingbirds made the mistake of nesting in a low shrub in the back yard and they're how we found the snake--one was attacking it. Unfortunately, they didn't account for Mojo, who grabbed their first fledgling as soon as it hit the ground, before Bob even knew what was going on. 3136. arkymalarky - 6/8/2005 6:31:28 PM I imagine Mojo will get the swift fledglings too, which I hate, but I don't know what to do about it. 3137. thoughtful - 6/9/2005 4:17:54 PM Reminded me of when I was a kid, for whatever reason, one year our yard in the back was full of black snakes. I used to go down and check them out, until after the babies were born and started growing. There were so many that I literally almost lost my balance trying to walk among them ever so carefully without treading on one.
We also had cotton mouth and copper heads, but I saw them only rarely over the years. When the pond was being redredged, the fellow did say he also saw an eel, which was a surprise. We also had snapping turtles as well as box turtles and painted ones too.
And we'd see the occasional muskrat...a bit of a menace as the ground above their tunnels would collapse leaving holes that were great for ankle sprains.
So many critters. 3138. arkymalarky - 6/9/2005 4:39:09 PM Bob saw a cotton mouth on the road a year or two ago when it was so wet, but that's very rare. When you float the river, though, they hang from limbs and will sometimes drop into the boat. That happened to Dad and Bro one year, and Bro promptly dived out the back of the boat, leaving poor old Dad to fish the snake out with the oar. 3139. jexster - 6/11/2005 1:44:54 AM Two weeks ago, we had our first annual parish Corpus Christi Faire. Food and crafts and fire eaters - the ususal but the food..really...it was nice that three neighborhood spots put booths together (one Arab family) but people don't go to street fairs to eat what they can 6-7 days of each week.
"What did they eat in the middle ages?" I asked..
Next year perhaps...
Midieval Recipie Translations
I volunteered to head the operation..
Want pig!
Here are recipes from several medieval English manuscripts and collections, each in its original language accompanied with a literal translation, and followed by a modern interpretation of the recipe and its cooking procedures. These recipes do not contain specific measurements and quantities, but are sufficiently explained that any competent cook will be able to prepare them
Pygge y-farsyd 3140. alistairConnor - 6/11/2005 9:45:28 AM May I suggest, in that case, that you also do a lamb on a spit (middle eastern méchoui, but I don't imagine the recipe's changed much in the last 1000 years) -- as you mentioned Arabs in the neighbourhood. 3141. Dubai Vol - 6/11/2005 1:59:10 PM Re: 3139
Wow! Jexster is human! (OK, I knew that, but it's nice to get confirmation) You know I love you, man!:)
"First Annual" events always tickle my funny bone: one of my more erudite teachers in high school pointed out that they really should be called "inaugural." But not being as precise about the language as Mrs Gage was, I'll let it slide :p
As nice as the idea is, Medievel food was by all accounts pretty uninteresting. I'd be tempted to slip in some Indian cuisine under whatever pretext. The tandoori (clay oven) style is reputed to be ancient....
Right now I am preparing a welcome home meal for Mrs Dubai-she's been in Kuala Lumpur all week on business. I hope a nice curry is not taken amiss. Apparently she spent last night in a German Bier Keller drinking Bier und Schnapps until 3AM. " My head hurts!" was her txt msg this AM..... 3142. arkymalarky - 6/11/2005 4:32:40 PM DV, I posted this elsewhere, but don't remember where, but we had dinner with a German woman last week who used to travel to Dubai on business regularly and she was saying some of the things you said in here about the country, and was talking about the islands they're creating that you've posted pictures of in here. 3143. arkymalarky - 6/11/2005 4:33:59 PM What would be the term for a subconscious fear of periods (those ending sentences)? Whatever it is, I think I have it. 3144. PelleNilsson - 6/20/2005 7:06:39 PM macnas
I read a story in the IHT about the North Atlantic salmon. The hero is Orri Vigfusson, "the square-jawed Icelander, a buttoned-downed Viking in tweeds". The villains are the Irish drift-netters. Excerpts:
The Salmo salar, or Atlantic salmon, begins as a pea-size orange egg in freshwater tributaries from Connecticut to Canada's Ungava Bay in North America and from Portugal to Russia's White Sea on the European coast. A year or so later, it emerges as a silvery, pencil-long salmon smolt ready to head to sea, toward the sheltered, crustacean-rich feeding grounds off Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
When they return to their native streams, the wild salmon must dodge seals and cormorants, leap dams and waterfalls, before finally and mysteriously finding their way home, where they mate and spawn.
These days, few of the full-grown salmon heading back to their rivers in France, Germany, Spain, Britain and Ireland make it past the wall of more than 800 drift nets seining off the west coast of Ireland. Consequently, fewer salmon spawn and the population plummets.
Once Irish nets are banned, Vigfusson says, the potential growth for European angling revenue is staggering. He cites a recent study by Indecon International Economic Consultants, which concludes that in its home nation of Ireland, a netted wild Atlantic salmon sells for €22, but that same fish caught in Ireland on a sports fisherman's line can generate up to €423 in indirect revenue generated by food, lodging and transportation expenditures.
Is this something that is discussed in Ireland? 3145. Macnas - 6/21/2005 8:43:41 AM Are you codding me? (ha! punerific or what?)
Indeed it is Pelle, and any one who angles is dead set against the drift netters. It's a bit of a political football, so it is not being resolved as quickly as it should. The unfortunate fact is that it will have to be banned outright, as no industry is more open to rule-bending than fishing.
The drift netters complain, with some justification, that it is the only industry they can make a profit from, due the way the EEC allowed Irish waters be raped by marauding Portuguese and Spanish fleets. The fact is that time is well up for drift netting, and it will have to go.
Your man Vig is quite right, river caught salmon is worth far more, and is one of those things that draws people from around Europe to bolster our tired tourist industry. Another sore point is salmon farming. It should be done using the Scandinavian model, but instead it is done in a slip-shod and poorly regulated way here.
This increases the amount of sea-lice in wild fish, and is another bone of contention between those who angle and those whose business is fish. The density of the farmed fish is too high, they are not in proper currents, they are too close to shore, and dead fish are not recovered in a timely manner.
One such farm was exposed on television, at the bottom of one of its containment nets, there was a meter of dead salmon, rotting away. The live salmon were rotten with lice.
3146. PelleNilsson - 6/21/2005 6:06:22 PM EU fisheries management is a disaster. Here we have huge trawlers virtually vacuuming the Baltic for herring which is then sold to mink farmers for 0.1 Euros per kilo. The situation this year is particularly bad. The production of rotten herring will be down by a third. Let's not talk about the cod.
|
