Smartie's Bar & Grill #72

I wish that I'd taken a 'before' picture for this, the "Better Living Through Chemistry" section of the bar.

The concrete guy was afraid to remove the form from the end of my wall. It will be exposed and came out looking like this:



I went and got some hydrochloric acid and dissolved the surface cement and washed it off. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better. It now looks like this:

 

Mikezilla is also on FB. Most just burned out on politics. Now they talk about where they're having dinner and with whom.

 

Politics or punditry like most things in life requires Practice,Practice,Practice.
No one not even Jack Nicholas takes up an endeavor { say Golf }
and right off the bat is good.Really good.Having a style may or may not add
to that craft.Painters are grouped into their particular style.Like Picasso.
Andy Warhol was not an artist.He luckily managed to skip that endeavor
and go straight into a Movement.His New Yorkish interpretation of Pop Art.
Which let's be honest,was not art.Nor were his underground films.
Warhol,a strict Catholic,was a fraud.
Jackson Pollock and Jean Basquiat were also not true artist
but more into interpretations on a theme.Of the Big Apple variety.
We have entered a phase of politics that is closer to Dadaism
than actually Politics.A movement of devices to change the landscape
of political will via chicanery and deception and outright intimidation.
Mikezilla folded because he wasn't up to the task.
Keeping in mind Superman dint learn to change into tights and
zip out the window on the first try.

 

Good morning Sunday lovers. Gonna be another hot one here. Might OD on popsicles.


Bonnie Parker @ Marco Cafe in Dallas.

 

Amazing.I was browsing the Web and saw a site of famous people
who died in 2019.All it showed in the little clip-out was a pic of Peter Fonda.
Turns out Peter Fonda died this Friday { Aug. 16th } I never saw it reported.
Of course I turned off the TV yesterday.But it wasn't on the Web or
Drudge,that I recall.
There are two Peter Fonda movies I consider as good or better than
Easy Rider { due to it's getting jaded over the years }.
- Race With the Devil - { 1975 } with Warren Oates.
- 92 In the Shade - { 1975 } again with Warren Oates.
- The Trip - { 1967 } wasn't half bad.With Bruce Dern { " know what ah mean " }
- The Wild Angeles - { 1966 } With Dern also is so-so.
I ordered a cool biker flick 4 months ago.
- Devils Angels - { 1967 } with John Cassevetes as the lead gang biker.
With cool chick Mimsy Farmer.
Mimsy baby ... like Mimsy ... ya got it y'all.
Then take yer shoes off and sit a spell.

 

It is like deciding you don't like hanging out at the same place and maybe FB is a better fit.
Fairies and Publishers Clearing House are two things that are hard to believe in.

 

She looks so harmless in the picture.

 

Good morning and welcome to Moanday. Gonna be a busy week... need more coffee.

 

Two please, to go!!

 

One coffee and one ME to go! (Having a hard time wanting to be here today)

 

Crisis at the wall! Now that two feet of dirt have been removed, I was digging up the dirt in preparation for planting. Just below the new surface, I hit a long buried, crushed rock driveway. It's going to be a job getting that out.

 

For what it's worth, my first choice would be an evergreen. If you want a little extra color and visual interest in the winter you might want to look into some variegated evergreens.

 

I'm going to have a lot of green. It might be better to have a little variety. Right now, I'm thinking of having the shrubberies above the wall, with some of that Emerald Carpet flowing over the wall, into a bed of the Tuscan Sun.

 

How bout filling the space with crushed rocks. No mowing... and you could always do like ive seen some, um, recent immigrants from south of the border... and stick plastic flowers down in the rocks. Oooooh, pretty.

 

LOL - A weekend ain't bad. I had to do that for about a week and a half after my hernia surgery.

 

Just wait until I get my concrete chickens!

 

Sounds nice. I don't see why you can't have both and perhaps even more.

This is an extreme example, but I've always liked how some gardeners build their arrangements using small plants up front and larger ones behind them. The added benefit is that the smaller plants in front can shade the roots of the plants behind them. Ideally, that should require less watering if you live in a dry, sunny area and increase the health of the plants:



I kind of stumbled onto that during my experiments with tomato plants. I found that the plants I massed together so that they shade each other's roots became much stronger and productive than the plants I spaced apart, and I didn't have to water them as frequently. Of course, you have to be a little more judicious with perennials and shrubs but if you prune them you can plant them at the minimum recommended distance, if not a little closer. I've become a big proponent of mass planting over the years, but if you live in a hot humid area where there isn't a lot of sun and wind that can lead to potentially fatal mold and mildew problems but it doesn't look like you're going to have that problem with the Tuscan Suns.

Another short, showy perennial I like are Arizona Sun gaillardias:



but you have to deadhead them to keep them blooming. I don't think you have to do that with the Tuscan Suns.

 

The driveway is too much for me. While I'm on hold, I'm digging out my neglected backyard garden. I love my new Zenport J6-09 cultivating tool.

 

So that's how it's gonna be.Starting the week off with
Flowers and Greens and Shirley Temple Jelly beans.

 

I agree, and while I didn't mention the great Russian writers because we didn't read them in school, I have to recommend to of their books to all my friends on the Right - Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. While Dostoevsky wrote about the Nihilists who were hacking at the pillars of Russian society and laying the groundwork for its destruction by the Bolsheviks, he could have been writing about the Nihilists in our own country today. As for Doctor Zhivago, while many of us have seen David Lean's wonderful film, it pales in comparison to the novel it scarcely resembles. Even though it has been translated from its native language, Zhivago remains one of the most beautiful works of literary art I have ever read. You can tell it was written by a poet who took years laboring over his craft and you can see why the Soviet authorities refused to publish it in the USSR, denounced Pasternak in Pravda after he smuggled it out of the country, and hounded him and his loved ones even after his death (his mistress Olga Ivinskaya spent ten years in the Gulag).

For example, consider this scene from the novel that conveys the theme of the book, both of which are conspicuously absent from the movie. This is a conversation between Yuri Zhivago and his lover Lara, which conveys Pasternik's full-on assault against the Bolsheviks, their revolution and communism itself:

And there you have the theme of Pasternak's novel - Man is born to live - but that is nowhere to be found in a film that is essentially about a physician's love affairs with two women. The novel is actually about one man's spiritual struggles through one of the most turbulent and violent periods in human history. Not only is the book different from the movie, it is FAR better. However, if they have one thing in common it's that they are both incredibly long. The film is 3 1/4 hours long and the book is 648 pages (note: the original Hayward and Harari translation is the best and closest to the language in Pasternak's manuscript).

 

I miss Flounder - he was a wonderful soul. I'm sorry to hear about Frogger, too.

Another bittersweet reminder of how short and precious our time here on earth is...

 

Diggin' in the garden.

 

The Problem I have with Doctor Zhivago is not the writing but the
overall plot.I still don't undertstand it.Almost every year I see it on
AMC or Turner Classics I have to go back and check stuff.Like the
timing of events and what the heck the movie is basically about.
Of course Poe is another writer who makes his stories kind of
difficult to comprehend.Whereas Jack London and John Steinbeck do the
opposite.They brings characters and events into simple,brilliant
focus.Tennessee Williams also makes his characters so conflicted
they appear like watching old vaudeville on drugs.When drinking was
the thing ... not drugs.