Mick Fisch

Jenny kissed me, when we met.
Jumping from the chair she sat in
Time, you thief, who loves to get sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad, say that health and wealth have missed me.
Say I'm growing old, but add, Jenny kissed me!

I prefer a loose belt with suspenders that hook to the belt.  Suspenders that snap onto the pants are to wimpy to hold anything up.  In cold weather a loose waist in the pants allows air to move up and down, so you have a single warming system, rather than two isolated systems.  Your legs generate a fair amount of heat if you're moving around.

my grandma used to fry up cactus.  She would cut it up and steam it to remove most of the slime.  Then she fried it up in bacon grease and salted it.  It tasted a little like okra, but way better.  Okra hopes it can taste that good someday.

A note from southeastern Idaho.  (I wish people would note their area in their messages.  The timing, and challenges of the south texas coast are quite different from, say the Canadian Plains or the intermountain west.)

I went out a few days ago and saw my honeyberries and juliette cherry bushes survived the winter.  Major WIN!!!  Other survivers were, my juneberry trees, my gooseberry and current bushes, and my linden trees.  I wasn't worried about my seaberries, they are tough!

The first year is always a worry, the plants often just limp along that first summer and I wonder if I wasted time and money trying to grow these things.

In a while I'll see if my apples, plums and hazels also survived.  I think they wake up a little later.

I've already planted 60 strawberry plants this year, along with more raspberries and a bunch of cold weather garden crops.

Also going into the ground this year, a mess of chinese chestnuts, more apricots, apples, (altogether around 100 tiny trees) grapes, hardy kiwi, mulberries, triple crown blackberries and I can't remember what else right now.  

I got one of those flow hives.  I'll be driving to Twin Falls, Idaho in a few weeks to pick up my bees.  The neighbors bees are very productive here and one of my neighbors bought a flow hive and loves it.

As long as they are on top of the ground rather than dug in, I think they will be great for a garden.

Moose are browsers.  The poop looks like sawdust if you break one open.  But as browsers they eat the twigs, leaves, etc.  So what you're going to get is basically the same as if you took a bunch of twigs, etc and put them on your ground, except they've been through a gut and are already partially broken down.  The advantage of this is that the 'little branches' they eat are actually fairly low in carbon and pretty rich in all of the good stuff, as well as partially digested, as compared with the kind of sawdust you would get from a sawmill.  Even so, I think they would be better on top of the ground as a fertilizer rather than dug in (they may take up the nitrogen to break down the still relatively high carbon content).  

How about sweet potato.  According to google it's perennial in zone 9.  It would provide a creeping vine ground cover and an extra harvest if you want to dig some of them up.

not on subject, but semi-related.  My wife and I have a king sized bed, using two single mattresses.  2 singles are quite a bit cheaper than 1 king and we can each pick the hardness we want.  Besides, since there are two of us, neither of us sleeps in middle, and any other activities are on one side or the other.

maybe some maximillian sunflowers?

Bread.  Not all bread is created equal.  Wonder Bread is a poor, misbegotten imitation of real bread like you can get in german bakeries.  When I was a kid living in Germany back in the 60s you could almost gain weight walking by a bakery.  It smelled so good!!!  I've made my own bread, had bread that was supposedly freshed baked.  For some reason it isn't the same animal as what I got when I was in Germany or France.

I have a brother in law who is an economist.  He told me there are only 2 jobs where if your right 50% of the time you are recognized as a genius.  Economist and weatherman.