Chicago Weblog

A co-worker told me that Norton HealthCare, one of our local medical megacorporations, was sponsoring a walking club: free signup, and you can walk around the Louisville Zoo early in the morning before it opens up to all the rug rats.  I called the number he gave me and spoke with a nice lady who took all my information.  Sure enough, a few days later two packages arrived in the mail, one for me and one for my wife.  We each got a t-shirt, maps of the zoo and the malls, a pedometer, a wrist or ankle packet, and other schwag.  All free.  Well there’s no such thing as a free lunch, of course, so I figure somebody managed to get a grant.  Perhaps the zoo got some money to get more people in the gate; perhaps a green grant as part of the stimulus plan?  Who can say?

The Topsy Turvy Planter

I’ve decided to try three different tomato plants (Early Girl, Celebrity, and Black Prince) in the Topsy-Turvy (As Seen On TV!) containers this year.  When I went to hang them up, however, I discovered that the hoop on the planter is very small and I needed some S-hooks to get them up on my plant hangers.  Another trip to the hardware store ($4.22).

The big dark rabbit was out for silfay behind our house last night, and when I went to confront it in an effort to direct it away from my lettuce plants, it hopped toward me instead of away.

Awfully cheeky, I thought, until I saw it had hopped over to the side of another rabbit, this one a wild one, not a bred one like itself.  “Well,” I thought, “he’s found himself a native wife.  Or she’s found herself a wild husband.  In either case, they seem to make quite the pair.”

What I fear, of course, is that this lapine canoodling will lead to more rabbits,  more silflay, and my garden will be rendered “zorn”.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Many will not come again,
And take from seventy springs fifty,
I’m only left with some twenty.

And since to look at things in bloom
Twenty springs are little room,
About the parklands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

OK, so the second stanza doesn’t scan, but then I don’t believe Housman was twenty when he wrote it either.  And the trees here may not be cherry ones, but they are beautiful and full of flowers this week, so we went to Cave Hill to soak in the spectacle.

First, though, we made the rounds of several gardening stores, picking up an eggplant, three tomatoes, a marigold, banana pepper, bell peppers (2 green, 1 red), a jalapeño, basil, lemon balm, and swiss chard. ($33.56).

Cave Hill spring scene

Then we were off to Cave Hill.  The grounds there were simply stunning, and just like at our house, the ducks and geese were frolicking and quacking and honking like mad.  Charlaine said that the honking got on her nerves after a while.

At one point we saw an orange fox prowling about; Charlaine said that she hadn’t ever seen a fox in the wild before and I said that its presence here probably had something to do with all those waterfowl nesting about.

We wrapped up the trip with a visit to Burger’s, a wonderful little local grocery store across the street from the cemetery (Charlaine loves to visit fancy little grocery stores).

The big dark rabbit was back again this evening, and I think he is even bigger than ever.  How he is avoiding predators I don’t know, unless it is because his size is so intimidating.

I told Charlaine that it takes a lot of lettuce to fill up a rabbit that big.  Looks like I’m going to be planting a lot of lettuce this season.

The peas and beans are in the ground, and the lettuce is looking healthy.

The seedlings that I started inside last month were apparently not longing for the sunshine as much I thought.  I put them outside for a day in the bright sunshine and it looks as though I nuked about half of them.  So I started another flat of seeds today.

(A second) miniature greenhouse and hooks for hanging vegetables: $36.20.