Dave's Blog

Itty Bitty

Berry and I went out for our first morel mushroom hunt yesterday and found that we were a few days early. We found a bunch of little babies like this one (the only one we harvested) but left them for later harvest, this weekend maybe. Man, it's so hard to just leave them out there where someone else could pick them before we can get to them! Nobody seems to know how fast they grow; for all I know they could be the size of beer bottles today, and yet here I sit because I don't want to wastefully drive all the way down to... oops, almost revealed the top secret spot!

Rubber Laces: The Laces Of The Future

Alright, so I probably didn't invent this (I'm sure I saw it somewhere), but I'm as happy as if I did. I wanted to make my Converse All-Stars into slip-ons, so I cut an old bike inner tube into strips and laced them in, and it works so awesomely that I'm friggin' giddy! Not only can I slip these shoes on and off, they're more comfortable because the "give" in the laces makes the tightness more uniform. They're more snug. It's a revelation. In the future, everyone will wear shoes with rubber laces!

 

Weird and Kind of Creepy

For years I've been telling friends the strange story of how I was sitting in my kitchen on a warm summer night when suddenly it started snowing like hell for maybe one minute, stopped just as suddenly, and immediately melted. I knew I'd taken a couple of snapshots right after, but couldn't remember where I put them. Well, I stumbled on them just now, and noticed that the time stamp is September 8, 2001, three days before 9/11. I'm sure the two have nothing to do with one another, but they're both mind-boggling things that came from the sky within a couple of days of each other, so, um... there 'ya go!

Hunting And Gathering

When I was a kid I enjoyed hunting and fishing with my dad. To a point. That point was the actual killing and cleaning of the animals. We were pheasant hunters mostly, and if you've ever seen a pheasant up close you know that they are beautiful, as colorful as peacocks but as color-coordinated and classy as peacocks are messy and gaudy. And if you've ever had to remove a live, flapping one from your dog's mouth (at, say, age 12) and kill it by wringing its neck, and later skin and gut it, you know the unpleasant part I'm talking about. I think it's good to know and participate intimately in where your meat comes from, but that doesn't mean it's not difficult.

Foraging for things like mushrooms, on the other hand... what's not to like? You get all the fun, out-in-the-woods, hunter/gatherer-primal-fulfillment stuff with none of the blood and guts. And if you're successful you come home with incredibly tasty food that you often literally can't buy in any store. And unlike hunting and fishing, there's no special licenses or gear required; it's pretty much free of charge.

Anyway, I spent a lot of hours in the woods last year hunting for mushrooms so I figured I'd expand my quarry to other edibles while I'm at it. To that end, I just got these two books in the mail, and I can't wait to start studying them!

And... More Rhubarb!

Alright, you can probably see the same darn thing in your own darn yard with your own darn eyes, but I can't seem to help myself.

So You Say You Can't Play Bar Chords...

...because your fingers aren't strong enough or long enough or some such? Check out these cuties!

Addendum, 4/18: I figured out that these are North Korean kids. That's not so cute to think about...

 

More Rhubarb

Thanks in advance for indulging me, but I'm totally fascinated by the emergence of this rhubarb plant. What a friggin' miracle! Look how that leaf arrives neatly packed (brainlike!) into a hard red ball and then hatches and unfurls. Have you ever watched a monarch butterfly come out of its chrysalis? It's a lot like that. Just astounding.

Hey, anyone got a good rhubarb poem? A cursory look online yielded some not-so-great efforts. Seems like I've heard Garrison Keillor get off some good rhubarb stuff (as Bertie Wooster would put it). I only ask because this is National Poetry Month and I feel professionally obliged to post poems; then again, maybe this photo and the plant itself are poetry enough.

Rhubarb

I planted rhubarb a couple of years ago, and the guy said I should wait a couple of years and let the plant establish itself before I start harvesting. So it's finally rhubarb summer! Rhubarb pie, and rhubarb sauce on ice cream, and rhubarb crisp and rhubarb cobbler... this is going to be the best rhubarb summer ever!

Um, it's been awhile... I think I like rhubarb...

 

 

This Is Important

I usually don't get political here on my blog (though anyone who knows me knows that I'm super political everywhere else), but this is a short, well-written piece that I think is very important. Check it out and let me know what you think. And subscribe to my Facebook feed if you really want my opinions!

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. In years past we donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes surrounding Poetry Month events (poetry slams and literacy and such) and I traveled the country evangelizing for the cause of having fun with words and language. This year, I forgot all about it until today. These days the zeitgeist seems to be all about mere survival; things like art and poetry feel like frivolities. They're not, of course; they're as essential to human life as love and friendship. Anyway, in honor of this time of year and of Poetry Month, I submit to you this Robert Frost ditty that is a great one to memorize with your kids, or just for yourself. Nice one to have in your brain's back pocket when you see those first budding trees:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.