Memorial Day Update

It’s Memorial Day, so that means a day off for all the people with jobs out there, for the most part. For me I’m taking the day off too and going to hop into my art studio finally. I need to switch gears and start cranking out art work for I have a show coming up at the beginning of July. Today is also the wife and my 13th wedding anniversary but nothing exciting is planned to celebrate that….I just looked, traditional and modern presents are lace and textiles or faux fur respectively….instead we’ll write off the screen porch and plants from Chicago as our anniversary gifts.

We’ve had frost the last three nights down in the valley. The first night I refused to believe it so my uncovered veggies all go wiped out except the peas and sunflowers. That resulted in about $50-$75 worth of plants dead, plus all the baby cucumber plants Christine raised from seeds are dead. We’re leaving them in the ground for now, and covered them the last two nights but I suspect all is lost so I’ll have to replace them, probably next week sometime. The lack of rain is killing us too. Much of our landscape is showing some form of subtle distress, so I’m keeping a close eye on things.

This weekend found us hosting our first cook out of the season on Saturday. The weather proved to be pleasantly sunny, and a tad bit cold but tolerable. It was nice to have a day off and visit with friends, eat some good food and have a couple of beers.

We did awake to discover a tick on our youngest’s neck / head. We calmly removed it and we’ll keep an eye on him. Ohio is being overrun by ticks with the climate changing and this Spring is proving to be a banner season for the little bugs. One great by-product of man-made global warning that you don’t read about too often. I sent a photo of the tick to Glen Needham, professor of entomology at the Ohio State University and he promptly identified it as a male dog tick. There’s less concern that this type of tick carries any bad disease but we’ll be on the lookout just in case. Getting guinea fowl, and me building a coop has been added as a top project priority – the fowl love eating ticks and other pests in the garden and orchard. For now we just try to keep the boys out of the woods and tall grass and check them daily for the little arachnids. A note, in Ohio the Department of Health has lost funding to track ticks and tick borne illnesses, so it falls upon citizens to remain diligent in being aware and communicating sightings and looking for illness.

One last word before I go today. On this Memorial Day I want to say thanks to all the men and women who have served our country and sacrificed to assure we are free, can speak our minds, have cookouts, and worry about frozen veggies and ticks instead of worrying about bombs, persecution, and other nasty threats to freedom. Thanks to their parents, children, friends and communities for their sacrifice in sending their loved ones into harms way. I pray some day that won’t be necessary, and I truly believe it is possible. But until then I’m proud and thankful that we have such great heroes out there protecting us today, and throughout our history. For all it’s faults, real and perceived, it’s still a pretty awesome country to live in, driven by faith in humanity and the human spirit. From the first men and women who had the courage to form a better type of country to the guys and gals who have sacrificed it all in recent years, and everyone in between: thank you.  God bless.