June=Wildflowers

June=Wildflowers
More Pix in the blog below

Spring 2012 Inspiration

Spring 2012 Inspiration
Bluebirds Invade Brooksbend. Time only for one new house on the property. See below for more info and pix.

Somebodys Home

Somebodys Home

A Rare Peek Inside

A Rare Peek Inside
Due to multiple images, I had to place the brief posting about some new "art" that showed up at our home way down below. This Blogger medium won't let me post but this one sample piece, a poster that has invaded and taken captive our living room. See below is you care for it at all.

July 2011 Update

July 2011 Update
That's a mason bee house in the picture. Whether my poor honey bees survive this year or not, I'll be making a major comiittment in 2012 to import and nurture Mason Bees. ///// The garden has really taken off with monster squash plants eyeballing the house for additional support. Unfortunately, I've had a major change in lifestyle over the past 2 weeks as a miscreant EKG test led me to a triple artery heart bypass and it has fully crimped my ability to do anything requireing physical activity, even watering the garden. Debbie has done her best to keep up with things but I have to admit I created a monster of a garden - al with the intent on my devoting 1/2 my time to it. I can't even lift the sugar water buckets to feed the honey bees, although they seem to be having a good old time playing in the assortment of fruits, vegetables and flowers arounf the place. Funny, I can't get anyone to volunteer to feed those bees! ///// Hopefully things will return to near normal in a few weeks and I'll atone for my wayward gardening obligations and the bees.

John Lopez thought for the Day

John Lopez thought for the Day
He must have come straight from the WalMart in that get-up. Scroll further down for more garden pix from June, right before John and Jane lopez and Debbie R put up a huge deer fence.

April 2011

April 2011
The soil is actually tillable compliments of 3 CYds of leaf compost. More pix way below.

The Only Bet I Cashed in Spring of 2011

The Only Bet I Cashed in Spring of 2011

No Extra Charge for the Snow

No Extra Charge for the Snow
So Debbie and I decide to go to Williamsburg, Va. for the umpteenth time but the first time ever on Christmas day in 2010 and wowsa on Xmas eve we catch a rare snowstorm that paralyzes the north East but wallops Glouster Counter, Va. with over a foot of snow. The Williamsburg Inn can't figure out how to charge guests extra for it so everyone makes the bset of it and has a good time. It is....beautiful. Quiet, uncrowded, people are are polite, staff are making the best of it, cresste fires are burning in the old town along with some street fires. The silence and snow scene is a real rarity and beyond a price. I'm going to post some before and after pictures below. The after pix are compromised by my shaky hand and a cardboard camera with electrical tape over the flash. Flash doesn't work so well on landscape pix...apparemtly a shaky hand does't either.

May Harvey be with you

May Harvey be with you
Throughout my last 4 years of employment with the County I pretty much worked alone, that is in an offive with no one supervising me and no one to supervise. I managed my own time and projects, came up with my own ideas, work schedules, and promotions. Some people who passed by though I was talking to myself but they didn't know about Harvey, my 6'3" closest friend and Pookah. Harvey was left to me By Mr. Elwood Dowd in his will when he passed in 2002, that's him in the picture with Harvey. Harvey has sustained me in the most difficult of times with some of the best thoughts on life and companionship when I needed it the most, like when I got into the ATV melee as Zoning Administtrator and when they told me I have leukemia. He does have a penchant for getting snockered around 3:30 every day on abisinthe but there are worse habits. He loves to spend time in bars with other folks, just listening to them talk about their woes. The great thing about Harvey is he can always be there for you too when you need him - he'll never actually leave me though.

Hard Times In The Job Market

Hard Times In The Job Market
First things first, I am very thankfull to former County Commissioners Julia Gouge and Dean Minnnich for being stand up individuals who honored my contract with the County and paid me the severance and leave allowed for in that contract. They are now taking a shellacking in the press most undeservedly and are not being given the credit they deserve for all the good things they did for the county while they were in office, Dean for 8 years and Julia for 20. The number of things to their credit are many but the big one I must mention is that they opened up government to the public - I participated in it and assisted in it - it was their mandate from the year 2002 forward and the changes were huge. I am sorry that their decision to do the right thing by me and three other County managers has put a damper on the story of their successes in their terms in office./// Well cry me a river, I left, or got lefted from, my County job on December 1st 2010 and I haven't found a job yet! The fact that I'm 61 years of age, have a slight medical problem involving some fugged up cells in my bone marrow and a bad wheel (recalled hip replacement) hasn't helped. Add to that, it's not unlike when I was 18, I'm not sure what I want to be when I grow up, again. I have a few clues, some of which sound like self-employment but also require money, spell that debt - something that I don't ever need again in my life, particularly after a little surprise incident 3 years ago that liked to have killed me and the person who created it. Besides that, I can see me taking the first pfou, pfou latte de creme that some 20 something would complain about and pouring it over their head so that cafe / music thingy idea probably wouldn't work out too well. So if you see me sitting out alongside MD Rt 140 selling Cozy Custom Cuckoo Cottages don't be surprised. It's either that or I finally buy that racehorse that my Dad always wanted. I could name it Chicolini after my favorite character in the Marx Brothers' Movie Duck Soup. I want to hear the track announcer call the race: " And hereza come Chicolini downa the stretch. Looka that horse a run. Heza passin' all the other horses. By golly it's Chicolini to winna by a nose. Chicolini he winna the race!

Life in the slow lane

Life in the slow lane
Well ain't this a bitch. Three weeks out of a job and I'm ready to go nuts for sure. There appears to be something wrong with my right wheel and that has to be settled before I get serious about looking for a new job. Either my hip replacement has gone bad - the best possible evil - or the leukemia has oozed out of the bone, which it ain't supposed to do. Meanwhile my home desk is so tidy I can't stand it, my notes are neatened up and anything I write past this point is sure to get me in trouble. I have actually established a daily routine! Ugh! Soon it will be Christmas, who cares. My new blog, Chaos In Carroll.com is up and running but I have it on hold as I'd rather not nit pick and second guess the new Commissioners, figuring they will provide plenty of material in due time worth writing about. So I guess I'll be cranking up Cornelius' Cottage shack sooner than expected. Stay tuned for some new Art Deco designs.

Who is this Man?

Who is this Man?
Damned if I know. Never met the guy. He sure ain't Jose Jimanez. He claims to be Brooks Emmory from Union Bridge and he corresponds, if only telepathically, with me pretty routinely. Well, he certainly raised a bit of a ruckus with his blog, Chaos Comes To Carroll County over the last year and scored one helluvalotta hits every week. Unfortunately, he didn't make so much as a dent in the results of the election, despite all the ruckus and disclosure. Brooks now tells me that he may continue to write on about matters in Carroll post the election but that he doesn't mind if I go on and try my hand at it too and borrow from the name of his blog, so I am. Look soon for a new blog with a link to Brook's at www.Carrollinchaos.com

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Everybody needs a theme song. I finally found mine. Here I was, feeling sorry for meself with a wee bit of cancer, I got the IRS on my ass over the one winning bet I made at the OTB last year, I've been suspended from work for having a sense of humor, 1/2 the gawddam appliances in the house are broke from a lightning strike to a lovely copper trellis I made out in the veggie garden and along comes this 2nd bolt from the blue as a song. I tell you its a miracle it is! People have been telling me to cheer up and not let all the bad news drag me down. By golly they're right! [you may have to cut and paste the link to your browser which will knock off this silly blog but it's bloody well worth it] http://pythonline.com/youtube_archive/always-look-bright-side-life

Crazy Cornelius' Sustainable Cuckoo Cottages

Crazy Cornelius' Sustainable Cuckoo Cottages
I do not make ceramic birdhouses like the one above. I do make perfectly nice wooden birdhouses from wood salvaged from construction sites and finished to last a very long time outdoors. If you are here to look at samples of these birdhouses scrool down past all the silly conversation below until you reach the birdhouses. They make sense to me and I've never had a bird complain about a one of them.

I Started With Nothing

Fortunately I Still Have Most of It.

Go Figure

Go Figure
Bees. I got bees. Has nothing to do with honey. Just something I've wanted to do for 30 years. I suppose it all has something to do with what all makes it all work.

Two Queens from Hilo and their Wop Workers

Two Queens from Hilo and their Wop Workers
So I go out and buy enough bee hive boxes and gear to produce 400 pounds of honey and a zillion bees. What do I know? Turns out 2 nucs need all of 2 boxes and 2 feeders - that's right, I have to feed them! The queens are genuine Hawiians and the rest of the gangsta bees are Italians. I'd name them all but it's hard coming up with a few thousand Italian names. You can only stick an "o" on the end of so many names after all: RobertO, ThomasO, EugeneO...

Other bees

Other bees
I really didn't expect this experiment to work but sure enough by the 1st of May the Mason Bee gizmo I made during the winter is now filled with little Mason Bees.

More Masons

More Masons
So now they''re working on filling up gizmo #2 which is made from cut bamboo...

At least it's being used

At least it's being used
More winter pix below

Spring Jumps in

Spring Jumps in
I'm pushing all those snow scenes down the page! It was interesting while it lasted but here are a few of the place now thatMay and some flowers have arrived.

The Ecclectic Garden

The Ecclectic Garden
This year I decided to add some more permanent "crops". Asparagus, raspberries, grapes, Loganberries.

What's up with those poles?

What's up with those poles?
They'll make more sense in a month or two. They are for the clematis and passion flowers to grow up into, the tomatoes to use as support and even the squash to get their carcasses up off the ground.

Garlic

Garlic
If nothing else, I have garlic. 3 kinds in 3 locations and it's looking good. The idea is to harvest it in a few weeks and replant the area with sunflowers. I can't wait to bake up some of the elephant variety.

Gotta love Clematis

Gotta love Clematis
But it takes patience

Two years for this one bloom!

Two years for this one bloom!

Worth the wait

Worth the wait
These will reach 10 ft. this year

Satomi Hybrid Dogwood

Satomi Hybrid Dogwood
It survived the winter of winters and is almost 18 ft. tall and as wide.

A pooped out perennial garden

A pooped out perennial garden
Some day some year, I'm going to renovate it, not that it's such an awful place to sit with a cockatoo or three.

1st Butterfly "House"

1st Butterfly "House"
A pretty rough affair but no complaints from the residents so far. New router blades will make future efforts a tad better.

Snow. More Freakin Snow!

Snow. More Freakin Snow!
This is one of the guys up on the roof. It's the 7th of February 2010 and I just finished digging out the mailbox for the second time and I'm puffing like this guy. We recieved between 26 and 30 inches of snow and where it felt like drifting, like in front of the garage doors and on top of the deck it was an easy 48 inches. Gotta feel for the wildlife. Pine branches breaking sound like rifle shots. Very pretty but very hard to find a place for it all.Now if you want a great laugh at it all, click on the first pic and watch Herr Hitler flip out about the snow int the bunker scene from "The Downfall" with some new subtitles! [Editors note May 2010, the SOB's took the video down because of complaints from the original film maker who obviously didn't see the humor in it all]

Enough already!

Enough already!
It's February 10th and Snowmageddon II has arrived. So far about 10 new inches of snow. My employer has closed for the day (1st I can ever remember) and the DC Federal offices and Congress are closed for the 3rd day. It is coming down strady and the report calls for another 5 to 10 inches. Where I put it I haven't a clue. Not good for trees or our flat roof. This maybe a personal record for an old guy.

Run fer it!

Run fer it!

Affordable Housing waiting for the Spring Market

Affordable Housing waiting for the Spring Market

Cheap Wine Talk (aka Talk about Cheap Wine)

Anybody can talk about expensive wine. Hell at $40 to $120 a bottle the damn stuff better have a boquet of ripe blabberberries fine Corinthian leather and taste like Cleopatra's derriere' on a spring day in Sicily after it was rubbed in olive oil and aged honeyberries.
The challenge for the rest of us is to find a wine that tastes like well aged grapes of one sort or another that will go down well with pizza, spaghetti, burgers, subs or calamari. Or a rack of lamb for that matter.
For now check out the marvelous wine ratings below until I can figure out just what and where I'm going to post the CWT column permanently. And don't hesitate to send in your suggestions for cheap wine sampling!



Bobby

Bobby
I think he was the perfect horse. We'll never know that but no matter because he showed us all such courage after breaking down in the Preakness thatit doesn't matter. And his human connections taught us all a lesson as well. Jockey Edgar Prado, the Chapmans, the Vet and his staff. But look into that horse's eyes, look at his huge chest and his gait. Barbaro will always be #! to me and many others.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Cheap Wine Update

Update for May 12 2010I'm still on the damn wagon and even with Gabby Hayes driving and Andy Devine riding shotgun I haven't fallen off. I have a little help from a tablet called Naltrexone, which tells my brain it couldn't care less if I have a ginger ale with my pasta. I really don't miss the stuff but challenges are sure to come. Meanwhile I have lost between 20 to 25 lbs. depending on which scale I'm using. If there is one thing I miss it's the mystique of red wines. I guess there's no sense in my taking that trip to Italy now.

Update for April 2, 2010, much to my chagrin, I have pulled up the wagon and climbed aboard so there won't be much more written here for a while about wine. Seeings how booze is guilty for about 3/4 of my daily calorie count it's gotta go while I enter the diet of my lifetime. Either the two sacks of cement I'm toting around on the front of me go or I'll be going, if you catch my drift. Meanwhile, be sure to drink one for me when you do.
/////I couldn't wait until February for this update to the cheap wine assemblage since my package goods store rolled out a caseload of a rare new vintage (2008)  of an old favorite on mine (2007) Estampa Estate Malbec / Petite Sirah blend with it being 60% the former and 45% , give or take a little, the latter - which is a shame because Petite Syrah is amy absolutest bestest favorite grape - wine.
Well this one is a real winner at $11.oo people. It's from the Colchagua Valley in Chile which has a very small growing area to begin with considering the length of the mostly costal Central American Country with nutty neighbors.
Estampa Winery apparently makes many other wines, fine wines according to their web site :
http://estampawine.trustpass.alibaba.com/ (alibaba???) and this very nice blend may be at the bottom of their efforts.
I find it has a beautiful red color, good nose of burnt cherries and a taste of ... well... grapes...yes thats it...nice ripe grapes that have been squoze, fermented, aged and bottled. Hard to beat that!
OoooOoooThey have a Cabernet Reserve called "Ticket to Chile Reserve" that's 14.5% alcohol, this I have to find!
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