Onion Seeding

by | Mar 2, 2014 | Talk Dirt to Me

Students tend to leave a lot of detritus behind when they leave the lecture hall I teach in. I usually check to see if anything looks valuable; supplementary income always helps. Usually though the debris field consists of oil stained picked over food containers. A...

Ice cream man

by | Aug 17, 2014 | Talk Dirt to Me

I read Remembrance of Things Past twenty years ago so don’t actually remember the famous scene in which the narrator bites into a madeleine cake and is transported back to his youth. Your garden variety English nerd will point out (or Wikipedia) that the scene...

Budnip

by | Mar 5, 2014 | Talk Dirt to Me

A few weeks ago my sister forwarded me a clip from the fretosphere featuring a young girl who had conducted an “experiment” with sweet potatoes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exBEFCiWyW0). Our hero, Elyse, took a conventional sweet potato and placed it in...

Mexican Bean Beetle

by | Aug 27, 2014 | Talk Dirt to Me

A lot of my crops have been harvested. The onions and garlic are in and curing. Except for some remnants the potatoes are out. The peas have long been eaten and the first few plantings of green beans, carrots and lettuce are all spent. These have left big gaps that...

Duck Boots

by | Mar 12, 2014 | Talk Dirt to Me

I have always been stingy with household climate control. Even when I lived in Texas I kept the air conditioner off. It was partly the expense; I barely had money for Lone Star tallboys back then and I had priorities. Beyond the money problem I worried about the...