Sheijicon pix are up…
by CJ | Sep 23, 2014 | Journal | 18 comments
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Books
- spoiler potential: caution: book questions.
- Bibliography
- Alliance-Union Guidebook
- Foreigner Guidebook.
- Foreigner Guidebook.
- Gene Wars Universe: Spoiler Alert
- The Map Room
- Book Discussion: all books: spoiler alert in effect…
- Fantasy books: Spoiler alert.
- About the Foreigner series: Spoiler alerts
- Foreigner Series: Spoiler Alerts: Page 2
- WHO’S WHO in Foreigner
Archives
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| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |
Thanks once again for the fine hospitality. We should have bought more wine at Latah Creek and more Triticale Whiskey at Dry Fly, but other than that we had a spectacular time, and hope we can do this again sometime soon.
Lol! I imagine both WILL ship… 😉
http://www.latahcreek.com & http://www.dryflydistilling.com
How did we manage to overlook doing a formal group class photo? With or without tinfoil hats. Quel dommage.
Indeed! We should have!
Doubly bummed that I missed this. Illness, lack of cash and deadlines conspired. The pictures make me want to visit Spokane now. I went to college on the West Side of the state and Spokane was always described to me in terms of that pit stop between Seattle and Missoula. Looks like there’s a lot of neat stuff there. Maybe this next year I’ll have that touring bike and the need of an excuse to do an epic bicycle tour. Any excuse will do.
Yes, I hereby apologize to the city of Spokane for unkind things I have said about the place over the years. In the 40 years since my first and last visit it has become quite civilized, and has greatly benefited from the craft brewing/distilling/winemaking movement. The road system probably has more one way streets than is strictly necessary for the amount of traffic; a sentiment that the locals seem to endorse (from the number of people driving the wrong way on those streets). But there are some gorgeously walkable parks and it seems to be quite bike-friendly. Though I rode the tiger on the Looff Carousel, I didn’t get a chance to see the museum; so that is something to check out if we all do this again. The only drawback is that it’s a long, tiring drive for me to do in one day (impressive geology though).
I’ve always felt a lot of gratitude for Spokane. On my trip from college to grad school, Spokane had an auto-parts store that was not only open Sunday, but stocked the parts I needed for my vintage, and barely resurrected, VW Microbus. Without that, I never would have made to South Dakota where 1%er motorcycle gang helped me make further repairs. Spokane was the gateway to a pretty serious adventure.
You might try the Mt Baker route via Leavenworth and break your journey there for a night: it’s got an alpine theme, and the road, while slow and windey, has glorious scenery.
Spokane underwent a massive revision when it hosted the World’s Fair: it took the railroad yards to the edge of town instead of center, and created the park, and lately it’s been creating an art and theater district around the Davenport, with extra policing to be sure it stays walker-friendly at all hours. It is a bike-friendly city, and has no few dedicated lanes.
I believe my sister went to Leavenworth for her honeymoon. But I wonder if it survived the big fires you had in that area. I seem to remember somebody mentioning it for some reason.
(Picked (100#?) Niagara and (160#?) Concord today for wine making. Was under a big leaf for a cluster and got nailed on the left wrist by a yellow jacket! 😯 Went right away for some benadryl pills and cream. The cream helped, didn’t need the pills. Didn’t swell but a little, but it still hurts. Going tomorrow morning for Pinot Noir, if I’m able. Back’s sore! 🙁 )
Yellow jackets are nasty tempered little beasts. Since they can sting multiple times, having a smooth stinger, they’re more prone to do so. They also release a pheromone that alerts any other member of their hive that they’re in danger, and that excites the rest of them to attack. I’ve also read that if you smash a yellow jacket, it also exudes the same pheromone (I don’t know how), and you suddenly find yourself under attack by lots of bad-tempered stinging insects.
Bald faced hornets are another type, they’ve got white faces, might be dark in color on their bodies, but they also have the same attributes as the yellow jackets. They and I do not get along, either.
The best cure I have found for things such as yellowjackets is to find their nest (usually a small bare spot in the ground with a hole in it, and a number of the cantankerous beasts flying in and out of it). Wait until dusk, when they have mostly gone home, dump about a cup of gasoline down the hole, and toss in a lit match. It might not be the most ecologically polite thing to do, but it is effective. If you are lucky, a passing raccoon or possum might take advantage of Deep Fried Bugs and dig up the remnants of the nest for you. Waiting until dark is the best way to be sure that most of the stinging insects are in their nest and torpid; it works for paper wasps as well, if you have to pry loose one of those football-sized nests and set it on fire.
(I can’t remember if I’ve told this one before) My poor brother had a run-in with a yellowjacket nest and a lawnmower when he was younger. He abandoned the mower once the yellowjackets started pouring out of the nest he had accidentally run over and ran for home. A long-winded neighbor was visiting, and the kid was too polite to butt in and say that there were yellowjackets in his clothes stinging him. OW!
Wasps raid honey and my family kept bees all the time I was growing up, so we dealt with wasps’ nests on general principle. The wait until near-dark and then eradicate the suckers is the basic approach, though around our place they tended to nest under tree roots and other flammable places so gasoline was contraindicated. Shooting most of a can of Raid down the hole seemed to do the trick. This works with paper wasps too, and then you can carefully detach the nest into a heavy garbage bag, seal it until you are sure there are no survivors, and take the nest off to show-and-tell or wherever. However, if they aren’t raiding your beehives or getting in the way of your lawnmower, wasps kill more pestiferous insects so on balance are actually good things to have in the garden. Live and let live, unless stings cause you to go into anaphalactic shock, then get somebody else to declare war on them.
Oklahoma has yellowjackets and black wasps, mud daubers, rarely hornets. Their beautiful nests are fascinating for a child…
I found a large lovely one cast down by a storm. I took it home and put it in my Specials drawer. Oopsie. Some months later, I came home from school to find my mother just a wee bit upset with me. A mysterious infestation of paper wasps had broken out in the house, notably in my room, she had been stung more than once, and had finally id’ed my bottom dresser drawer as the source of the plague.
When I lived out on the farm, one of the guys who goes out to the woods to hunt was telling me that he’d found a really good-looking, intact hornets’ nest in a tree in the dead of winter. He figured it was winter, the hornets weren’t in there any longer, so he took it home. He was unpleasantly surprised a few hours after he brought the nest into his cabin and had it sitting near the fireplace…….hint: hornets don’t migrate, and they don’t die off during the winter…….
I’ve used the gasoline treatment, but never lit it, and that’s also/just as effective. I like to use an old coke/beer bottle and just shove it in the hole to plug it up.
Yesterday the sting was a little sore but that’s all.
Last year wasn’t bad, and the vineyard produced ~900# of Pinot Noir. We took home less than our allotted third, and produced ~15G. Well… This year we harvested 1622#, our share was 562#, which my wine-making buddy suggests might make ~50G! 😯 He had to get extra fermenters, because we’ve never done this much. Have I mentioned we’re supposed to take 1/3 of the Riesling too, and the vinyard owner expects a ton of that? I’m hoping to find volunteers to take that. But fruit is plentiful this year.
@CJ – The taxonomic name for (most) native American grapes is Vitis labrusca. I’m wondering if that species bit refers to something like “Laborador resident”, and back to when the Norse were calling it Vinland. What does the construction of the word tell us?
More than he bargained for:
“The grower took orders from Paul,
‘A third of your grapes in the fall’,
But the yield was so vast
That Paul is aghast –
Fermenters from wall to wall!”