Tuesday, June 01, 2010

New Month and Sex in the Garden

It's a new month. The official beginning for what is expected to be a brutal hurricane season. It's Bryan's Name Day over at What Now? so Happy Birthday!

I hope everyone had a good weekend. Fairly nice here, just a few scattered thunderstorms but we needed the rain. Madam and I were invited to a friends mountain house on Sunday for a very nice dinner. Yesterday I grilled a dead chicken during a thunderstorm  and served it with fresh pineapple and potato salad.

Not a good weekend for peace in the Middle East. The Israelis decided that piracy and murdering NATO relief workers who were attempting to relieve some of the suffering in Gaza was a good idea. What's worse they are threatening to use even more force on the next ship headed to Gaza. What wasn't right for the British re: the ship Exodus seems to be just fine for the IDF against someone trying to help the Palestinians. Washington seems to be fine with it however. Not good.

Just getting worse with respect to the Gulf oil disaster. Today BP will attempt to cut off the riser and install another dome. There is a good possibility that this will make the flow of oil into the Gulf worse. My fingers are tired of being crossed but I hold on. Please let something go right.

I've headed out twice this morning to the garden only to be turned around by rain. Since I am not seeing the bee activity I think I should I have been manually pollinating squash. It's a rather tedious process of finding a male flower and cutting it off then peeling back the flower to expose the male anther and then using it to pollinate the female flowers. This time of year it is mostly male flowers with only the occasional female but that ratio should improve as it warms up. You have to do it in the morning as the squash blossoms are only open then. I might miss my window today. For some reason the process always reminds me of the scene from Doc Holiday where the mechanics are dressed in their bee costumes and doing their pollination dance during the Grady Squash Festival parade. I am out to give it one more try as maybe the overcast will keep the blossoms open a bit longer. I don't want to hear any cracks about candlelight and soft music either.

Update: Lots of bees in the squash this morning so my efforts are not required and I can let Mother Nature do her thing. I am sure the squash will be better if the bees do it. I must admit that doing the pollination by hand kind of 'cheapened' the whole experience.

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