From The East Wing, In The Garden, In The Frost, Microscopes & Telescopes, Newt & Sophia, The Pear Tree, Bomber Birds of November.

Greeting to all and welcome to my new visitors to the East Wing

Well ya just know it’s fall when your thought turns to frost and when it’s gona happen. This time of year, ya know it will just don’t know when. So here’s a way to tell if it’ll happen tonight when the radio or TV says “frost tonight”

How warm’s it been that day. If the temperature reached 75 degrees F (in the East or North) or 80 degrees F (in the desert Southwest), the chance of the mercury falling below 32 degrees is slim to none.

Is it windy? A still night allows cold air to pool near the ground; a breeze keeps things stirred up. Is it cloudy? If the Sun sets through a layer of thickening clouds, the clouds will slow radiational cooling and help stave off a frost.

What’s the dew point? As a rule of thumb, don't worry about a frost if the dew point (the temperature at which water vapor condenses) is above 45 degrees on the evening weather report. How is your garden located? Gardens on slopes or high ground often survive when the coldest air puddles down in the valleys and hollows.

If you're a gardener, here’re a few tips on getting ready for the frost. When nights get cold, protect tomato, eggplant, and pepper plants with old sheets, paper bags, or plastic at night and remove the coverings in the morning, else they’ll cook when the sun comes out. Bring geraniums indoors before the first frost arrives. Keep them in a sunny window in a relatively moist room, the kitchen is a good spot. ‘Course your other moist room is the bathroom, but ya just don’t want too many geraniums in the potty.

Cut the basil and other tender herbs before a frost. Even if they survive the frost, they don't do well in cold temperatures. The same is true for summer squash, peppers, and most annuals. Harvest all tomatoes and let them ripen indoors on tabletops or counters out of the sun. Another way for tomatoes, it to pick the green tomatoes and wrap ‘em up in brown paper, put ‘em in a cool dark place and guess what, they’ll turn red. When I was a kid, my dad done the brown paper tomatoes every year. Not as good as the regular thing, but it’ll be better than nothing after the frost.

Now ‘bout that coming frost, we don’t have to guess when it’s coming to the East Wing this year. At ‘bout 4:30 AM this Sunday morning, when Pup Baby hada go pee, the frost was on the pumpkins, not a lot, but enough to call it a frost.

But ya gota love the weather of the fall. Not even talking ‘bout the color yet, just the mild days and the oh so cool nights. Ya sleep good in the Autumn Nighttime.

Did ya ever see photograph of a snow flake? Frost is much the same thing as a snow flake, just a lot smaller, a whole lot smaller, ice crystals both. I’ll never forget the first time I saw a snowflake under a microscope, it was magic. I remember the last time I saw one it’s still magic. They’re all different ya know, those snowflakes and frost crystals.

Everybody has things in life they’re thankful for, and for me, two things come to mind. When I was a kid in downtown Toto, I cut grass for a lady by the name of Burger, never knew her first name, always just called her Mrs. Burger, every time I cut her grass, she paid me 25¢, ‘course that was pretty good money, back in the day. It was a reel type mower, not horsepower, boy power, and we, that reel mower and me, we just kept the grass cut for Mrs. Burger.

Now Mrs. Burger also gave me two things that were more important than the quarters, things that changed my life forever. One was a typewriter and the other was a microscope. With that little typewriter I taught myself to type, and haven’t shut up since.

With the microscope I found myself looking at anything and everything small, really, really, small. Eyes of flies, legs of ants, fingers of frogs, hairs from things , and lots of things have hairs, inside the wings of butterflies and bugs, lots of bugs, they all became friends of mine. Grains of sand become boulders under my microscope.

I’d found stuff that nobody I knew, knew. And so I’ve spent much of my life looking at both really little stuff. It was not too long after the eyes of flies that I discovered oil immersion on a microscope and another whole world opened before my eyes. Telescopes and microscopes, one sees little and one sees far, far away and both show magic when ya look thru ‘em.

With all that being said ‘bout getting your garden ready to deal with the upcoming frost. If your garden was like most folks I know, your garden didn’t do well this year. Too much water early, too little water late just don’t make for a fine garden all summer long. Oh well, just like the Cubs, there’s always next year, and there’s a thing called hope. I think hope spelled backwards is CUBS !

Sophia’s beside herself when it comes to the upcoming midterm elections, she’s so excited I thought she would pee her pants the other day as she answered a phone call from Newt Gingrich. Oh sure, the Newt wants Sophia the Republican Cat on his team ‘cause he’s running for president, just like all the other also ran’s in the republican party.

Yet none of ‘em will tell ya so. They go about it in a subtle kinda way, those republicans. Always downgrading the president and his efforts to improve the economy and the overall situation within the country. Yet never offering any real alternative to the situation. And, God forbid, if the President reminds ya of the former administration and the short comings there, well there ya go again, blaming Bush.

But with 30 days or so out from the elections, it does smack of the rats abandoning ship it ya look at what is happening at the White House. The big guns are all jumping overboard before the ship hits the iceberg. “Ya can’t blame me if I’m no longer a part of that mess at the White House. It’s them, not me. I know nothing”.

Chicago Politics just kinda sucks. Always has, always will. It don’t work anywhere in the world except Chicago. Don’t work in Washington D.C. that’s for sure. The people of this great land still have a voice in the way things are handled in Washington D.C. It will be most interesting to see the real outcome, come November. One thing for sure, Sophia is looking forward. She can hardly wait.

One of the really neat things ‘bout this time of the year, Pears, yes Pears, I love Pears. Too many people just don’t give the Pears the respect they deserve in this world. Apples, apples, apples it all ya hear ‘bout come the fall season, apples and pumpkins, apples and pumpkins. Seldom ever a word ‘bout Pears.

Just down the road to the west from the East Wing was one of the very best Pear Trees I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing in my lifetime. First met that ole Pear Tree shortly after I met the she, and that was a ways back. One taste from that Pear Tree and I was a fan for life. I don’t even know the number of years I’ve picked Pears from that, my favorite Pear Tree, but alas, no more.

My favorite Pear Tree was fenced into a feed lot for finishing out steers, and guess what. Yep, you’re right, the steers ate all the bark from around my Pear Tree, and yep, it died. RIP my very favorite Pear Tree, I’ll miss ya next year. A hundred year old Pear Tree eaten by a dumb cow. AUUH!

There are too few Pear Trees in this world. Pears in cans is just not right, it’s just not right. Try to imagine, if you will, how different this world would be had Adam simply eaten a Pear. That thought brings a whole new meaning to “life was simple and easy back then”. But even if Adam had eaten a Pear, I still wouldn’t like snakes.

Ya know there’re some flavors that are just made for each other, like cheddar with apples, coffee with chocolate, and pears with blue cheese and almonds. The sweetness of pears is the perfect complement to the creamy tang of blue cheese and rich, nutty flavors like almonds. I’m telling ya, if ya don’t like pears with blue cheese and almonds, ya got a problem in life, ya may not know it yet, but ya do.

Before ya know it it’ll be time to go see the sand hill cranes again. Did ya ever see those big birds? Large things with 6’ wing span, some maybe even larger. Seeing these sand hill cranes in flight sure gives ya an idea of where the Stark Track people got their designs for alien space craft. If these birds had cloaking technology, well, it would be a site to see, or maybe not if they’re cloaked.

Somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000 sand hill cranes arrive over in the Jasper Pulaski Game Preserve, just ‘ bout 15 miles or so to the west of the East Wing starting in late October and stay till mid December. We’re on the north south fly path and the birds stop here to eat and rest and look at the people who come to see the sand hill cranes.

They eat the left over gain from the just picked corn and soy bean crop here in northern Indiana. Each day the birds will fly out as far as 25 miles in search of food and water. Both are always readily available from multiple sources. It’s sand hill crane county come late October. Seems those big long necked birds show
up ‘bout the same time as pumpkins. Wonder if anybody ever tried to eat sand hill crane and pumpkin pie.

It’s hard to tell who has the most fun gawking, the people or the birds. I’m voting the birds. The best of the bird show for the sand hill cranes starts just a few minutes after day light each morning when they go out for breakfast. Few things are more spectacular than seeing over 30,000 birds take flight all within few seconds of each other. They split the wind, those sand hill cranes, when they fly.

Coming home at night is almost as spectacular just in a different fashion. One time I set along the road side, looking to the east, with all the crops having been harvested, the horizon to the east was several miles from my vantage point. What stopped me in my tracks was the site in the sky, flying in formation, looking much like what I recalled seeing movies of WWll bomber formations flying out of England toward Europe was the sand hill cranes returning home for the night.

As far as I could see to the east, the bombers filled the sky. I stood underneath the flight path of those sand hill bombers flying in formation. As one of those bomber bird formations flew overhear and the splat sound from my windshield reminded me these bombers carry different ammunition.

Stay safe in Afghanistan

From The East Wing, In The Garden, In The Frost, Microscopes & Telescopes, Newt & Sophia, The Pear Tree, Bomber Birds of November.

I wish well,
BobbyRay