Aardvark Art Glass

I saw this squirrel bounding across the street carrying a whole bagel in his mouth this morning. How unlikely was it that he would climb a tree in my yard and face me when he ate the thing? And that I would have my camera in my hand? Bask now with me in the glow of this unlikely incident.I feel vindicated now for missing that picture of the squirrel carrying the peanut butter jar up the tree.

I’ve been cooking food lately. It started innocently enough at the end of summer when I had tons of free beans from the backyard bean pile to work with. I just steamed them and ate them. No big whoop, though the experience left me pro-vegetable in a way I had not been before. Once the beans were gone (I ate almost every bean those plants produced, by the way) I started looking for other vegetables to cook and eat.

I decided that the most efficient way to go about this was to look up nutrition data on everything, pick the vegetables with the most bang for the buck and eat those. Over and over. No problem as I had just come off of a two month bean and tomato eating jag and I still wasn’t tired of them. I find comfort in eating the same thing every day–I’m not unlike a dog in that respect.

Anyways, the vegetables I deemed most worthy of my time were: sweet potatoes, beet greens (and beets, since they are attached and you can’t very well throw them away) green beans, broccoli, spinach and collard greens. Especially the collard greens. Because Lucy the iguana eats them every day and she seems pretty on the ball. For a while I was eating boxes of white mushrooms, too. I thought it was novel that they were perhaps the only vegetable that is a source of vitamin D. I wanted to give them props for that. But then my shrink told me I needed to be ingesting 2000 IU/day of vitamin D through the winter so, rather than eating truckloads of mushrooms, I started taking tablets. Now my diet will be without selenium, whatever that is.

So, spare time wise, that’s what I’ve been doing–cooking and eating certain vegetables. Over and over. It’s a hobby now. I gotta tell ya I don’t think I feel any different from when I subsisted on frozen pizza and canned soup. Except I’m gassier. The other day I cut one while sitting on the couch with Don and, so unaccostumed was he to my producing that particular sound, he thought his cel phone was vibrating. That was a spinach day, so, something may well have been vibrating.

My kombucha matured! And it is crazy delicious. After sitting in the fridge all night, it kind of tastes like apple cider. I had Don test it first to make sure it was palatable to a normal person. I ask him to do that with a lot of things but he doesn’t always oblige, usually for very good reasons. Curiosity must have gotten the best of him this time. Anyhoo, now I’m consuming it and waiting for something to happen. From what I’ve read that might be a) Nothing, b) Something very good or c) Something very bad. I’ve heard a lot of good things about kombucha and since I am very susceptible to the power of suggestion, I’m probably not going to be a very credible source for tea effect reporting.

That being said, so far, I think the drink perks me up. It’s weird stuff. It has some caffeine and a tiny bit of alcohol in it. According to my brain, which has been exposed to much pro-kombucha information, five ounces has a more noticable effect than a cup of coffee. I would not drink  it before going to bed (again). I know people who do, without issue, so maybe the peppiness wears off. Or all that could be a placebo effect. I don’t know. Making the stuff is both fun and something to do. It carbonates after you refrigerate it, which makes it different and more interesting than tea without a big pancake-shaped bacteria mat floating in it. If you’re drinking a lot of coffee or Red Bull, you ought to give the kombucha a try. Just so we can have something to talk about.

Smokey is a good plant. He had about a week-long brush with death. Something buggy was visited upon him after I brought him inside. Always with the unintentional harm-doing. Animal, mineral, vegetable…lizard, hedgehog, tobacco plant…no one is immune. I gave him a bath and he’s doing better now. Got some new growth. So, in case anyone was wondering, my tobacco plant is ok for now.

In other news, East Johnson St. businesses are trying to lure children, and by extension their parents, into their respective venues with the promise of free candy on Halloween afternoon. For some reason, I am really down with this trick-or-treating idea. Brand loyalty can be instilled easily on impressionable, young minds. If, when they grow up, they don’t end up shopping here, maybe they’ll be less likely to damage my property. I doubt the event is going to be real successful on account of foot traffic being so minimal, but, despite that, I put myself in charge of making a poster advertising the event and spent a couple of hours scouring the web for unforgettable candy. Even if Halloween rolls by without anyone becoming unwittingly loyal to Aardvark, I believe my time has been well-spent because I have found the best candy ever:

Gummy roadkill. It’s even cooler in person. I ordered four more bags today because this first one I got is going to be gone before Halloween even gets here.

I guess this is part of the garden round up. The tobacco part.

Last Spring all the Lost School smokers, I among them, were outside discussing how high the price of tobacco. At the same time, also on the porch, me and Don were trying to decide which plants would be in and out of the garden. Of course, the suggestion that we grow our own tobacco was met with favor. I pooh-pooed the idea because…look, that’s just not going to work. I’m not into growing plants that I have to research on the internet in order to know what to do with them. And I really don’t want any plants that aren’t pick-n-eat types. And frankly, I prefer tobacco that has all the accelerants and junk in it. It’s just better. End of story. Don’t want the added responsibility. No tobacco plants.

So anyway, a month or so later, Don brought home 4 or 5  tobacco plants. The tires were at critical mass so he planted them here and there around the yard.  Our grass got super long in some places so we don’t know for sure what happened to all them. We’re pretty sure one plant got mowed over and we know we stuck another in a planter (Smokey). Then there are two other robust-looking plants in odd parts of the yard that look a lot like tobacco. The thing about those plants is, our next door neighbor claims that a Google search diagnosed them as weeds. He apparently is blessed with a natural curiosity about plants that grow in or near his yard, probably because he lives next door to Clusterfuck Gardens and who knows what the heck is going to crawl over the property line next. So that was handy. No one plants weeds on purpose so no one’s really responsible for harvesting them. I really try to utilize plants that I bring into the world  but I feel no connection to the tobacco.

That being said, last night I made Don haul in Smokey and his quarter barrel planter. Smokey is pretty puny and I like the underdog or “thing that will probably die soon”. Can’t really help the “weeds” so much. Now I have two things to take care of–a tobacco plant and a kombucha fungus.  What a fun and successful winter growing season this is going to be. Hopefully, Smokey will make a good house plant–if the smokers can keep their mitts off of him.

Quiet, please! The kombucha, it is sleeping!

Do all of you know what kombucha is? It’s tea that gets its whammy from this big pad of fungus that grows on top of it. Supposed to be good for you. I can’t remember all the health effects but I know it helps you poop so I’m all for that. I got a hunk of the fungus about 6 weeks ago from the Aaron/Erika/Missy family kombucha fungus farm that they house in their refrigerator. Now I’m making my own. It is very exciting! Together we can watch the fungus pad unfold and produce a second fungus pad that I can use to make more tea or give to a friend. Indoor amusement!

If you’ve ever tasted kombucha you might be wondering why I want a big jar of it right under my desk. Well, the one time I tasted it I liked it a lot. Yes. That is the truth. I know it’s supposed to taste like feet but I thought the stuff Missy made was good. And my fungus is a relative of the delicious fungus that made the tea that I liked. So it’s all perfectly normal.

Did I ever tell you that I have a taste bud anomaly? I think I do. It’s not that I can’t taste vinegar–I can taste it but unlike most people who dislike it, vinegar tastes good to me. Like, I can’t tell when wine is bad. Also, I really liked that batch of Kombucha even though Missy said it was vinegary and not all that great. So, if I just drink down this batch of kombucha without running it by someone who can tell me if it’s good or not first, I could get really sick. Doesn’t this sound like something you’ll want to follow? I can’t wait to see how it all turns out. We’ll know in two weeks!

I told this story to Don yesterday:

So, I’m walking down Dayton St. on Sunday, on my way to the shop and I see this squirrel with its head in an empty plastic peanut butter jar.  I stopped and took out my camera just as the squirrel pulled his head out, seized the jar in his jaws and tried to climb up a tree, which was even better. By the time the camera was on, however, the squirrel had dropped the jar and skittered away. So that was a bummer but, no big deal. I never get my heart set on successfully photographing squirrels, what with them being so squirrely and all.

Anyway, then, not a minute later, still on Dayton St., the Wienermobile (colorful, phallic-shaped mode of transportation used by the Oscar Mayer Co.) came whizzing by:

The squirrel episode left me clutching the camera so I was able to whip it out right away. I thought this picture was as good or better than a squirrel. Wienermobiles are like Yeti’s or Indigo Buntings–usually you just see them out of the corner of your eye and then they zoom away, leaving you confused and bereft of cocktail party material, as you can’t be sure that you saw anything at all. But there on my camera was a picture of a moving wienermobile. I felt so clever. Like I should call the paper and tell them to hold the presses or something.

Of course Wienermobiles, being famous  and all, unlike Yetis and Indigo Buntings, which are also famous but not usually still, frequently park and pose for pictures. So, around here, everyone’s got a Wienermobile picture and no one finds a photo of a moving one especially novel, even though they are. I should have realized this but, to me, this was quite possibily the most novel and serendipitous and important photo I’ve ever taken (perhaps because I believe that sightings of moving Wienermobiles, like sightings of groundhogs or robins, are harbingers of change. And wouldn’t it be a good idea to know when that’s supposed to happen…so you could get out your winter coat…or hide in the basement…or sell all your stock…or whatever.)

Anyhoo, my enthusiasm for the Wienermobile picture was not shared by Don, who after hearing my warm-up story, was all tasted up to see a squirrel picture and not much interested at all in seeing a picture of a Wienermobile. After, might I add, all my hard work taking pictures for his amusement. So I guess that’s what I want you to take away from this insightful little essay: If you have a story about two separate, interesting events and photographic evidence of only one of the events and, apparently, it’s not the more interesting of the two, don’t even bring up the story. Because your audience be disappointed that they didn’t get to see a squirrel and you will be angry with them for not sharing your interest in random Wienermobile sightings. God! At least you’ll get a blog out of it.

This last weekend me and Don went to Trempealeau (near La Crosse, up nort, near Minnesota, by the Mississippi) to bike around where it’s pretty. We also stopped at an antique shop in La Crosse and picked up this nifty giant owl lamp. Unless you see it in person, you can’t really appreciate the scale of this thing. The whole thing is about 30″ tall. And it was only $25.00. Between the mechanical bat hanging from the ceiling fan and this we probably won’t have any more crow issues in the living room. So, woot for us.

Earlier in the trip, when we were driving about looking for a room at an inn around Trempealeau and the neighboring areas, we noticed a lot of road kill resting on the shoulders of the highway. That’s when Don gave me the title for this blog. It is most lyrical if you say it in Bob Dylan voice. Do I need to tell you to use Bob Dylan voice when talking about hard times in  towns with rhythmic names? I thought not.

Here’s a picture of a wee turtle that was almost bike-trail-kill:

Isn’t he cunning? I understand that you shouldn’t pick up snapping turtles because the mother turtle will push them out of her lofty nest if the turtles come back smelling like people. Also, they bite hard. But this one was really cold and sluggish and his mouth was tiny and ineffectual. About an hour later, in the same spot on the return trip, we saw a turtle that looked just like this one but with two important differences:  it was flat and it was no longer alive. It was probably not the same one. Nothing bad is ever going to happen to Ol’ Lucky, as I like to call him.

Here’s a picture of another tiny turtle Don found on his side of the path:

 Doesn’t he have a long, beautiful tail? This guy was loaded for bear when I picked him up to move him off the path. Even though he was smaller than a quarter, it freaked me out how lively he was. His name is Ol’ Kicky. He’s a strong little bugger. Hope he’s ok, too.

So, what else we got? Here’s a picture of the view from atop a bluff somewhere in Perrot State Park:

That was a nifty spot. Couldn’t stay long because it was getting dark and we didn’t want to get eaten by creatures or, more likely, fall and roll ass over tea kettle all the way back to the ranger’s station.

Lasty but not leasty, here is a picture from a port-a-potty that we ran into on a bike ride:

First of all, aardvark snouts are short. Second, even if they were long enough, they wouldn’t use them to suck sewage out of a portable toilet, which, I believe, is the conclusion toward which A-Aardvark Pumping is reaching. That’s just gross. People who use the aardvark in their logo should respect the aardvark, at least a little.

That was the trip that was. I know I have to get back to the garden thing. I’ll do that someday. All my banal observations seem to be channeled elsewhere…not sure where. Usually Facebook sucks them up but I haven’t been on there much either. It’s a mystery.

Fall is coming now and I bet you’re all wondering how went our dainty tractor tire garden. If you can think back to…May? I don’t know. It was ago, whenever that ‘Deadliest Warrior’  show was on. Anyway, due to garden space constraints and just plain ignorance, back then I was taken with a plant battle scenario wherein I would plant two different plants in each tire and watch them fight it out. I understand now that for good reason such planting isn’t common garden practice. More than once I really hoped that the neighbors weren’t paying attention to what was going on.

We  ended up mixing beets, radishes, strawberries, various flowers, tobacco, herbs, peas, beans, lettuce, spinich, several varieties of tomatoes and a mystery green which I ate but had difficulty swallowing. Some things grew into what they were supposed to grow into and some died. Some just acted funny and took up space. Because I have a good picture of it, I’m going to start out with the most spectacular tire-the pea/bean tire.

There’s a couple of things about this growth that are kinda fucked-up. First off, I planted WAY too many beans and peas in this tire. Second, rather than giving them a little trellis up which to grow, we made a kind of maypole structure with strings coming off of a central post. We thought it would look like a nice green tee-pee, which it did at first when the peas came up. But then the fifty or so bean plants happened and they engulfed the weak, worthless peas. Worthless and ineffectual! I got maybe five pea pods before they succumbed to the mighty bean. The bean growth is now a good three feet above the top of our pole and the Pea vs. Bean battle is now becoming Bean vs. The Neighbor’s Lilac Tree, or “nature’s trellis” as it has come to be known. The green beans have ripened just this past week and there’s an awful lot of them. Me and Lucy the iguana eat them every day. I try to be quiet when I’m picking them because I don’t want to answer a lot of questions about what’s happening to the neighbor’s tree. Hope the birds got out of there.

Here’s a picture of the mystery plant.

This was one of the plants my pal Jeanne gave us. Originally, she thought it was lettuce but then she recanted once it started to grow. I forgot all about this thing–it was totally covered by tomatoes. It’s not a root and it does not flower. It’s not poisonous and, unlike beans, it minds it’s own business staying the same all year. I guess it does look like a lettuce but those leaves have got some really sharp edges. It’s very shiny, too. Funny plant. I’m going to feed it to Lucy.

I don’t have a picture of the radish/beet/strawberry tire. It’s mostly strawberries now anyway. The original plan was to designate a “root” tire, which I did, but then some strawberry plants came along and they had to go somewhere. If you have had none of your own, it may interest you to know that radishes have a surprisingly high edible material to effort expended ratio. Probably the highest of any plant we planted. Unfortunately, they’re radishes, so you’re not exactly jumping up and down when they start producing. Nor do people jump up and down at the prospect of free radishes. But they mature quickly and they’re good for you. I ate them and Lucy liked the greens, so that was a success.

Beets, not so much. They were plagued by something right off the bat. I got enormous greens from them but only one beet that was larger than a small super ball. I waited all summer for that one beet. So, thumbs down for beets.

Strawberries will multiply with no assistance from anyone. We started with two tiny plants in June and now the whole tire and some of the ground around it is covered with plants. And did you know they come back on their own each year? And that you get more delicious berries each year? Based on the fact that everyone does not have strawberries all over their yard, I assume that that is not common knowledge.

This is getting long and I have stuff to do. I’m going to have to finish this up later. I’ll be back with tomatoes, lettuce and tobacco.

I’m in the store now. I just realized that if I open up my bathroom door and the covering over the secret bathroom entrance (large hole in the office wall) I’ve got a clear view of the front door. Problem solved.

Anyhoo, it’s pretty slow here so I’m trying to make my own fun. I found a website called wonderhowto.com. The site has all kinds of  informational videos  about everything from glass pipe making to hacking into vending machines. I made a pipe the other day from one of the videos.

Having tried a few more since this one, I think this is going to be one of those things that works the first time you try it and then never again. I think my pipe making career is going to be cut short. Bummer. I’ll save that hacking into the vending machine video for later. Maybe I’ll be really good at that.

In other news…

Caffeinated  jelly beans! I found these at the bike store when I went in to buy a helmet the other day. They’re not the best tasting things but you have to give the Jelly Belly co. credit for coming up with such a super idea. I’m biking kind of a lot now, on my heavy bike with the giant seat. I probably have enough energy to get by without Sport Beans, but why would I want to do that? They’re 15% off in the Jelly Belly Shop. Hopefully they’ll start making them with sedatives too…or anti-depressants. Jelly beans are the perfect vehicle for anything.

So, speaking of biking, yesterday I was winding my way thru the Arboretum (many acres of forest and prairie and marsh land owned by the University) and I saw not one, not two, not three, but four wild turkeys wandering down the road. Here is a terrible picture of two of them:

A car came along right after I took this and the turkeys plodded off into the woods. I tried to take more pictures of them but once they were in the woods they were all but invisible. Maybe they were ghost turkeys. In any event, that was quite exciting, seeing the wild animals. And they didn’t walk up to you and demand food, either, like all the ducks and the sparrows downtown. Which is good because I can’t resist a mooching animal–and all I had on me at the time was a bag of Sport Beans.