If you have a few extra dollars in your piggy-bank, you might consider purchasing some ammo.
Availability is pretty good. Prices aren't so bad. On sale, a brick of Armsco .22LR goes for $24.99 at Dunham's a local sporting goods chain store.
As we get closer to the election other shooters might panic and start buying. The shelves can empty in eight hours. We have seen it before.
Beat the rush. Buy now. Use cash.
I was chatting with my buddy Lucas. Lucas is gifted at quickly finding arcane information. Not just gifted...divinely gifted.
While arguing about minor issues to pass the time, I asked "How far can a duck migrate in a day?"
My guess was about 350 miles.
Lucas pushed a few buttons and then showed me this.
Make your guess and then check below the break.
The motherswort plant in the northeast corner of the (Eaton Rapids) orchard is still attracting bees but it is getting pretty tired looking. I posted video-footage on June 16 of the same plant, so that is over a month of feeding bees, parasitoid wasps and butterflies. That is a darned good run for a single plant.
Garden news
Not a great year for gardening for me. Some of the missteps have been identified and won't be repeated.
For example, the pickling cucumber seed I found was Boston Pickle. The leaves all turned yellow just as the first cucumbers were the size of baby gherkins. Obviously lacking disease resistance although the issue was exacerbated by an exceptionally rainy summer for us.
There have been some successes. Carlton komatsuna is the clear winner (so far) in the mustard greens race. Everything else except the Red Russian kale is bolting. Musica pole bean is the clear winner for vigor and getting ahead of the rabbits. Another success is Mrs ERJ's garden...the one with the fence around it.
The big news is that Mrs ERJ is encouraging me to put a fence around the garden just east of our "serious" orchard. Even though deer can easily sail over a 4' fence, they are lazy critters and will walk extra feet to avoid the effort. Since there is a lot of browse outside of the fence, MOST of the time they should leave the fenced in area alone.
Google decided that I am autistic
Probably based on one of my recent posts where noted that one of my workers suggested that I am autistic. My Youtube feed has been clogged with videos titled like "How to tell if you are autistic".
Perhaps the main point should be that algorithms and "A.I." are weighing every word we type and say. Voice-to-text is a mature technology. Computers are dirt cheap. Why wouldn't Microsoft/Google/Apple/cell-provider do it?
I did pop open one video to see what it was like. Based on the fact that I don't like people on my lawn and sometimes I wish Mrs ERJ would be a little faster to getting to the point of the story that she is sharing with me...according the the criteria of the video I am definitely autistic. However, according to one psychiatrist I know, the fact that value the emotions/opinion of ANYBODY negates those superficial traits.
A person who is comically bad at reading other people's emotions is not on-the-spectrum. The fact that they even CARE about other people's emotions makes their being-on-the-spectrum a non-starter.
Mirages within illusions
The legacy media rakes in huge amounts of advertising dollars during the election cycle. Sometimes it seems as if half of the TV content is commercials.
If the media reported that a certain match-up was "no contest", then neither side would throw money at the race and donors would not contribute. So it is in media's best interest to keep showing polls that show the race see-sawing back-and-forth right down to the wire. As long as they keep it a nail-biter, then dump-trucks filled with bales of $100 bills keep backing up to their bank and dumping loads of money on them.
Three hours at The Property
Staking out where replacement trees will be planted. Spraying herbicide. Dragging brush. Resetting traps (I heard one go off 45 minutes after setting it. I got to set that one twice). The squirrels are "cutting" the pears and eating just the seeds. حرامزاده
I did get to fish a small stream 0.7 miles away and managed to get one, 7" long Creek Chub to dry land. The others (mostly 4" long) grabbed the bait and would let go when they were 2' above the water.
I was using a cane pole, 4# line, a #10 hook at a bit of worm. I think I need to use smaller bait, maybe wax-worms or mousies. Bonus Link.
Creek Chubs make very fine bait for Northern Pike.
It has been a very, very good day!
The pet Orcs need their ration of blood. Hence the tolerance for the Orcs' misbehavior. Feral animals have no loyalty. They wander off and do not come when their masters call if too long of a period goes by without their ration of flesh-and-blood.
Napoleon famously prescribed "A whiff of grape-shot" as the cure.
I walked out into the orchard where I had been working last night and found the hand-pruners I had laid down in about fifteen seconds. That was after looking for them for fifteen minutes last night. The light was at exactly the right angle to highlight them this morning. OH HAPPY DAY! I am a simple fellow and easy to please.
Last night I used the nippers to cut some Poison Ivy stems climbing up a pear tree, laid down the nippers, picked up the sprayer and soused the cut ends. Then I put down the sprayer and the nippers were gone.
I got a rake. I raked the entire area. Nothing. The tool had evaporated!
It isn't that the nippers are expensive, but I have to get better at keeping track of them. I could just see hitting them with the mower...not good.
This morning I was carrying my tools in a fanny-pack with the pack in front. I don't think this is a viable long-term solution because the fanny-pack is not very sturdy.
The bottom line is that I need to make a tool apron part of my normal orchard attire.
Legacies
Maybe I am reading this all wrong, but I think the hard-left turn many churches are experiencing are driven by people who don't have kids and are "aging out". Staring their own, earthly mortality in the face, they have a sudden desire to leave a legacy.
The biology says that they cannot make their own children so that means they have to leave their finger-prints on other people's kids. There is a large moral-hazard with this arrangement. It is like spending other people's money. "Unique" and "Cool" are vastly more important to the person seeking to leave a legacy than "Sound" and "Prudent"...at least it is when they are mucking with other people's kids.
This is not a new problem. The Bible lists in multiple places that those who teach will be judged more harshly and that a very hot place in Hell is reserved for the "shepherds" who betray their flock and God's teachings.
I don't have much patience for the entire "Legacy" thing. Every person who wants to leave a legacy wants to start new programs at the cost of starving the maintenance of existing, proven programs. Somehow, they have it in their head that new programs throw longer-shadows. They must also think that "their" program will be able to run without ongoing funding and maintenance because, sure-as-shinola, it will be defunded thirty seconds after they are buried.
I think old people looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing that they left no legacy is a big reason they want to import people from illiberal cultures.
"Their ancestors will thank me!!!"
No, Buffy. They will not thank you. They will not think of you. Not ever.
Or they want to provide "safe spaces" for kids to research cutting off important parts of their bodies without their parents knowing.
Maybe the translation of the Bible sitting in their pews is different than the one in mine. "Honor your mother and father" is listed in at least three places (Exodus, Deuterotomy and Ephesians) in the translation our church uses.
A Rabbinical scholar might also point out parallels between Adultery and Genital Mutilation and Chemical Castration. Adultery is a sin against God, Tribe and Family because it "Adulterates" the family line. Gender tinkering cynically ENDS the family line and God's plan for that family.
If you think the Bible is neutral on this kind of topic, take the time to read Matt 18:2-6
So what should you do if you want to leave a legacy? If you like your church then treat them like the child you never had and leave them some money WITH NO STRINGS ATTACHED. You wouldn't reach up out of the grave and try to control your kid (if you had one), would you? They why do you trust your church (or gun range or flying club or youth organization) so much less?
When pressed by Ben Shapiro, presumed Presidential candidate Kamala Harris explained:
""What can be, unburdened by what has been" is a line I lifted from Modern Monetary Theory. It means that nobody has to pay back any of their loans because loan-payments are a burden and and the money was borrowed in the past." Harris explained in a moment of surprising lucidity.
Punctuating her explanation with a cackle, Harris continued "Everybody thinks I am saying that you can flunk out of high school and still be a brain surgeon at Walter Reed. Not so" she cautioned.
"I mean, I am open to them being surgeons at the other Veteran Hospitals but not Walter Reed."
"What I am really saying is that paying back loans is totally optional if you signed the contract sometime in the past which is the opposite of signing it in the future or signing it right now."
In other news, bond-values crashed across the globe as spooked investors dumped US bonds in the belief that the front-running Democratic candidate for POTUS intends to default on US denominated debt.
A group of former waitresses who used to work at Hooters recently filed a class-action suit against the State of Michigan.
The lawsuit states that the State's refusal to enforce laws that requires insurance companies to pay for "gender affirming care" resulted in their claims for reimbursement for breast enlargement surgeries being denied.
"I was a large-breasted woman trapped in the body of an IBTC girl" Dolly Bomshellicious, lead-plaintiff told the press. "Not only was the denial of gender-affirming care a violation of Federal laws prohibiting discrimination based on sex, but it was also a violation of the American Disabilities Act which considers mental illness to be on par with physical illnesses."
Ken Aarons, the lead attorney in the suit told the press "We are not going after the insurance companies because we understand they have to stay solvent and because they dance to the tune played by State Regulators and the State Attorney General."
Aarons continued "The pressure-points are at the Regulator and State Attorney General level. The actual language of the Michigan law does not specify that Quote -- Gender-affirming care is only available to the opposite gender -- Unquote because that would be nonsensical. How can changing something to its opposite be affirming?"
"And what could be more affirming of a woman's femininity than to bless a women with an Olive Oyl endowment with Rubensque bosoms?" Aarons concluded.
The ERJ blog reached out to Attorney General Dana Nessel and to the Michigan Insurance Commission but did not received a reply.
