[gardeners] State of the list, and other things
George Shirley (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sun, 21 Nov 1999 09:52:55 -0600
Good morning Gardeners! Thought you might be interested in a few
statistics about our list. As of this morning we have 125 members in 5
countries, the majority in the U.S. and Canada. Our sysop has
successfully filtered all of the spam out. Unfortunately I, as list
owner, get to see it all as it bounces to me. Fortunately it is easy to
delete. <VBG> We average about 30 spam messages a day to the list. Also
we get several "bounced" messages of the administrative type, including
messages from those who have misplaced or forgotten their instructions
for the list and messages from those who have heard about us but really
don't know how to subscribe. I try to handle those folks in an
expeditious way but am not always successful. Six of the original eight
subscribers are still members so we do have some longevity here.
As to gardening, it is turrible dry around here as the old farmer said.
According to last nights weather person we are 16.21 inches behind on
rain for this time of year. The alligators are carrying canteens as they
search for mud holes. Duck hunters are telling tales of low water in the
marshes and swamps. The farmers are definitely hurting and there will
probably be less of them in 2000 then there are today.
Our garden continues to grow because we are able to provide ground water
to the plants. We are gobbling up radishes on a daily basis now and
eating the radish greens as a side dish at dinner. The beans and peas
have pretty much had it and the broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, etc. are
still a bit away from bearing. Luckily there's plenty of lettuce so we
don't lack for salads. The chiles, peppers to us southeners, are still
bearing mightily and I have started a second crock of pepper sauce. The
Ponderosa lemons are ripening and we've already harvested about a dozen
with at least twice that many to go yet. Looks like Thanksgiving will
include a couple of lemon pies. The kumquats are ripening but the trees
are small enough that we just eat them as they ripen. Miss Sleepy Dawg
has evidently seen us do that and figured they must be good as we caught
her picking one of her own yesterday. She didn't much like it so we hope
this won't become a normal thing. She does like raspberries and
blackberries so picks the ones close to the ground. She's resting in
"her" sunbeam on the family room floor at the moment. Pretty tired
little pup since she was up most of the night caring for Miz Anne, who
has the sniffles. Sleepy gets worried when one of us isn't 100 percent
and spends a lot of time laying close to the sick person so as to
available for petting, scratching, rubbing of bellies, and other things
that humans do for dogs when the humans are feeling poorly. The perfect
therapy dog there.
We're preparing for Thanksgiving already as our daughter and her three
teenagers are coming on Wednesday to stay the weekend. This means the
cooking of copious amounts of food to keep the kids from chewing the
carpet, etc to assuage hunger pains. The two boys are both over six feet
tall now and the "little" girl, who just turned 13 on the 10th of the
month, is a little over 5 foot, eight inches tall herself. I don't know
how our daughter feeds them on a school teachers salary. Luckily they're
willing to help with the cooking and cleanup. Personally I think it's a
ploy on their part to get access to any leftovers.
Better go now and get on with the program, gotta start baking bread
early for the ravening horde. Life is good.
George