Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Jan. 18

Above, from Don in Kansas, -1℉

Well, in lots of places where there is not fire this week, there is snow. How is the landscape looking where you are?

Below, from Don in Kansas, The last echinacea

Here in East Tennessee, we were not spared the recent snow fall that affected everyone else. I found these sets of bird footprints that I thought were interesting.

Here, I'm not sure what is happening--is the bird trying to skate? Being blown by the wind?

Always enjoy the weekend threads!

Best

BeckoningChasm

Intriguing. What do you think is affecting that second set of footprints?

Snow removal idea (may not work in all conditions:

Peeling away the snow from driveway.

📹_jackmcpherson pic.twitter.com/zT9LWeuLcb

— Game of X (@froggyups) January 12, 2025

Edible Gardening/Putting Things By

The Pirate Who Penned the First English-Language Guacamole Recipe

William Dampier’s food-writing firsts included the use of the words “barbecue” and “chopsticks.”

For all the perceived glamour of piracy, its practitioners lived poorly and ate worse. Skirting death, mutiny, and capture left little room for comfort or transformative culinary experience. The greatest names in piracy, wealthy by the day’s standards, ate as one today might on a poorly provisioned camping trip: dried beef, bread, and warm beer. Those of lesser fame were subject to cannibalism and scurvy. The seas were no place for an adventurous appetite.

But when one gifted pirate permitted himself a curiosity for food, he played a pioneering role in spreading ingredients and cuisines. He gave us the words “tortilla,” “soy sauce,” and “breadfruit,” while unknowingly recording the first ever recipe for guacamole. And who better to expose the Western world to the far corners of our planet’s culinary bounty than someone who by necessity made them his hiding places?

An interesting life story. Not real sure about the guacamole recipe.

Avocados are good here locally. Mandarin oranges are great. How is produce holding up to winter where you are?

Water for personal survival:

Opening and testing 70 year old can of Survival Water from a Fallout Shelter. This Emergency Water was produced by Royal Crown Cola Co in the 1950's. Test results can be seen on the jar in video by comparing the colors.

📹mrs.fallout pic.twitter.com/eqLywn9ZdH

— Game of X (@froggyups) January 12, 2025

A personal story about California fires

Sgt. Mom: The Fire Next Time

And there will be a fire next time, and another after that. Und so wieter. Because that is how it is, the peculiar mild Mediterranean climate with the gusty, hot and dry winds which usually come blasting down the mountains from the desert beyond. Winds which mostly arrive in the fall, but this time in mid-winter. My late father, the professional research biologist who gave the best nature walks ever, told us over and over how the native ecosystem was engineered by nature to burn every twenty-five to thirty years; to burn fast, clearing away and revitalizing dead grass and overgrown chaparral. We lived in near-constant awareness of the danger posed by those fires in that brush which covered the hills where my parents preferred to live – especially in the fall, when the high winds roared over the mountains, straight off the baking-hot desert. A couple of acres at the end of a dirt road was absolute heaven to Mom and Dad. Hell to them was tightly packed suburbia, elbow to elbow with the neighbors.

So we lived in the hills as soon as Mom and Dad could afford a mortgage rather than rent, kept the brush around the various houses trimmed, the garden well-watered, had a mental list of the precious and irreplaceable items to be grabbed and taken with us in case of a sudden fire evacuation. (In the end, in spite of all care and precautions taken, Mom and Dad’s retirement house in northern San Diego County burned in the 2003 fires, destroying any number of inherited family relics.)I have never forgotten the peculiar odor of smoke from a big burn hanging in the air, the odd beige-orange color of the sky, how the smoke from a distant brushfire piles up in sullen beige clouds, and the peculiar deep roaring sound of a fire well under way. One night in the week of Thanksgiving 1975, we watched the Mill fire burning downhill towards Sunland, Tujunga and La Crescenta. Through Dad’s binoculars, we saw a fire tornado sucking flying debris into itself, while a line of advancing flames stretched as far to the east and west as we could see. Fire engine sirens wailed almost constantly, near and far that night, along the streets below us.

The LAFD were able to beat out that massive fire in the Angeles National Forest within three days or so. But that was then … . . .

I recognize that sky color. The whole piece is full of great facts and insights. Worth your time to read the whole thing if you are interested in why this pattern of wildfires burning homes continues.

Puttering

These percussion wooden frogs feature an authentic "ribbit" sound which is created by scratching the wooden beater on the frog's back.

[📹 MEINL]pic.twitter.com/ZIe18pQEJA

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 16, 2025

Adventure

Log rolling contest: Young one vs. the OG, experience wins 😎 pic.twitter.com/eieRI7tiLg

— Game of X (@froggyups) January 10, 2025

Weekend

Don in Kansas posted some magnificent humor for the year. Click over and keep scrolling.

Gardens of The Horde

Hi Katy

It's hard to find color during these winter days in central Virginia, but the red twig dogwood provides some bright pops of color on a grey day.

Thanks,

The Pilot

What's going on in your garden or neighborhood?

Hope everyone has a nice weekend.

If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Saturday Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, the address is:

ktinthegarden at g mail dot com

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Week in Review

What has changed since last week's thread? Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, Jan. 11

Any thoughts or questions?

I closed the comments on this post so you wouldn't get banned for commenting on a week-old post, but don't try it anyway.