We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Hydrangeas are popular in New England, but you have to know what you are doing in order to have happy plants. As summer-flowering shrubs go, they are fairly easy. Summer-through-Sept bloomers. We have lots of them, even a climbing one.
- South of the New Jersey latitude, Hydrangeas can handle filtered light. North of that, they need more hours of full sun to be vigorous and to produce impressive bloom.
- As their name implies, many varieties like water, mist, and fog. Good mulching prevents summer wilt if that's a problem.
- A new or transplanted Hydrangea wants plenty of water the first year. They like rich soil too. Not hard clay.
- As we have said before, for good bloom you have to know the difference between your Macrophylla and your Paniculata. It's not rocket science. I think my favorites are the Lacecaps, which are Macrophyllas.
- There are so many varietals, it is difficult to keep track of them all. GMO hybrids.
- The Oakleaf varieties seem to be the toughest, least fragile. Big white blooms, late summer.
- Many or even most varietals never want to be pruned and just want space to grow. It does not work to try to control a varietal that wants to be 15' high and 20' wide. Those big ones create their own cool, moist microclimate underneath.
Studies frequently arrive at erroneous results. These are sometimes reported breathlessly by the press. When the results are contradicted, there is rarely a mention. Furthermore, negative studies often have difficulty getting published because they are unexciting.
How many people still think fatty meat causes heart disease? Many people never got the correction memo.
Young O'Donnell rushed into a church, placed his rifle under a pew and entered the confessional. "Father," he said breathlessly, "I've just shot down two British lieutenants!" Hearing no response he went on: "I also knocked off a British captain!" When there was still no response from the priest, O'Donnell said, "Father, have ye fainted?" "Of course I haven't fainted," replied the confessor. "I'm waitin' for you to stop talkin' politics and commence confessin' your sins!"
What’s happening across the West is the people are awakening to the fact that their rulers have a very different vision for their societies than they disclose in public. In many cases, it feels like the rulers have plans for the future that don’t include their voters. Those plans may be great ideas, but in stable societies, they must be debated in public. Otherwise, society becomes unstable. That’s what’s happening in Germany and America. The system is becoming unstable.
We already know Hillary plans to continue Obama's war on coal. Coal isn't, or rather shouldn't be, a dying business. But it is, and it's dying because of politics. At a time when politicians keep saying they want to create jobs and improve the general welfare, why would they be attacking a healthy industry? Yes, natural gas has become cheaper and more plentiful - but only because of fracking, and the people seeking to shutter coal are also trying to end fracking. So this is not strictly an economic consideration, there are political currents swirling everywhere.
As I drive my son to college in Ohio, I drive through coal country. Billboards about this war have been up for the last 3 years. The job losses are mounting. Some regions of PA and WV are starting to hurt severely because of this war. It's a political war, and it's driven by a lobby group with significant access to the current administration. Coal has long been one industry the US could rely on to produce energy when other methods faced economic uncertainty due to politics or economics. That is changing, and yet 4 years ago, we were told there was no threat. But even as other nations open coal fired plants, the US shutters its plants because of political, not just economic, realities.
This just happened. I was on the subway to work, and a fellow steps into the car. In a mellifluous, but loud enough, voice he announces that he recently lost his job and has medical bills to pay. He has 2 children who are staying with relatives. He has been looking for a new job, but in the meantime has needed to rely on handouts from strangers. It's a nice enough story, not too dissimilar to those I've heard with some regularity on the train. Depending on the look or feel of the person, I will hand them a buck or two. This guy looks legit.
However, as he passes one fellow, he collects a business card. In handing the card, the charitable soul says "This is a soup kitchen nearby, you can bring your children here and get hot meals."
The fellow looks up and replies, "Free food? Here, in Manhattan?"
"Yes."
"So I can bring my kids?"
"Yes."
"So you're saying I have to travel up to the Bronx to get my daughter, then travel down to Brooklyn to get my son, then bring them both with me to Manhattan to get free food? Is that what you're telling me I have to do?"
"Sir, you don't have to do anything. It's free food. It's your choice, but it's a place to go."
"Right."
He didn't get angry, didn't cause a scene. But it occurred to me if he was really destitute, this wouldn't be an issue. I realize some panhandlers are professional. There is one who sits by my office with a dog and a sign that "the dog comes first, I come second." I'd say he's been there for 3 years, except it's not a he. It's a them. There are 3 or 4 different people who switch out on any given day.
I don't mind giving money to people in need. There's a limit, though. When the ability to get a free meal prompts the kind of response I heard on the train, alarm bells go off. If you're in need, you don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Yes, everything requires work, even 'free stuff'. It's not as if his tromping through train cars isn't work. If he has real money issues, I'm sure he's not covering his costs by panhandling all day. But he must be doing well enough to keep doing it, and he should realize that it requires significant effort.
If this sounds like someone who has what he needs criticizing someone who is without, I'm sorry. That's not my intent. I'm not judging these people, I'm simply saying work is work. A 'free' lunch of any kind requires effort. It's a shame we don't have a political class that understands this when they make promises to people with money that isn't theirs.
Yesterday we were amused to see people freaking out about swastikas in a production of The Producers (!). Also, complaints about a play about the Orient Express ("Orient" is a racist word, and the train is all about shameful Travel Privilege). Sure seems to be a lot of pain and anger in the bullies these days, and a lot of spineless grow-ups too.
Today's Krazy Kontest will not be a list of all the things the moonbats want to ban or abolish. At the request of reader, it will be about Predictions for future kraziness.
So what do you think will be next on the Krazy front? (Thought crimes, bannings, genderisms, new racisms, microaggressions, etc)
Fascinating cultural fossils whose members are most likely not to thrive when introduced to modern civilization unless they have the savvy and brilliance of Squanto.
Leave them alone at a great distance as if they were endangered wild animals, film and study the heck out of them, or buy them a Big Mac and take them to the opera? The fate of these stone age tribes is entirely in civilization's hands. A strange situation:
Saturday was Don Pasquale at the Met. Act 3, the serenade and the duet. Turn up the volume.
(Travel tip: If you find yourself driving the A-4 in Italy, get off at Bergamo, park at the bottom of the hill, and take the funicular up to the tiny old charming hilltop city. There in the Basilica of S. Maria Maggiore is Donizetti's tomb, in his home town. Bergamo - an often-overlooked gem with great restaurants on the ancient piazza. Indeed, at one point even this was Venice's domain.)
To make his case, Harris must commit along the way what for many is intellectual heresy. It has long been the position of science that the descriptive and the prescriptive spring from entirely separate realms of human experience. The thinking is that science deals only with the descriptive—with facts. Science can tell us what the facts are, but it can never tell us what we ought to do in a moral sense. Rather, the latter is the exclusive domain of religious and philosophical discourse, a normative universe the morally indifferent instruments of science can never penetrate. This position is most associated with David Hume. Hume argued that statements of fact (“your mother gave birth to you”) can never lead to moral conclusions (“so you should be nice to your mother”). Yet against the cautions of Hume, Harris attempts to prove that it is in fact possible to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is.’.
Harris is very clear about his mission. To use his own words: he is not merely saying that “science can help us get what we want out of life.” (p. 28) Harris is arguing that science can “help us understand what we should do and should want—and, therefore, what other people should do and should want...” (p. 28) These are very different claims. The first is uncontroversial and rather obvious; the second is impossible. Harris is arguing for a “science of morality” (p. 27) that will provide humanity with the necessary toolkit to discover what is objectively right and wrong, and pinpoint a universal conception of human values. In advancing this science of morality, however, Harris takes enormous liberties in logic...
Science can tell me what I should want? What? Science is not my Mommy, and if my Mom had raised me scientifically I would probably be insane..
What the Sanders supporters and the Trump supporters have in common is this: the government will in fact take care of everything. Trump supporters get Trump: he too is for universal health care, he too is for the entitlement state, he too will provide the solutions [the deals] that individuals would otherwise have to provide themselves through self-discipline, hard work, and the refusal to conclude you're a victim of forces outside your control.
When asked "When is the best time to prune a (fill in the type) shrub or tree?" my horticulturalist friend replies "When your blade is sharp."
His point is that, even if there are optimal times to do it (ie late winter for most things), it's more important that it just get done sometime. Poor-pruning or neglected ornamental shrubs are not only unhealthy for these hybridized plants but also makes for an eyesore: leggy shrubs, overly-dense shrubs, and hedge-trimmer buzz-cut shrubs. (Hedge-trimmers are for hedges.)
Beware of pruning anything before 2 growing seasons.
Up here, probably the most common errors are made in neglected or wrongly-pruned hydrangea, lilac, and forsythia.
And I almost forgot to mention Privet. Here's the way to keep a Privet hedge going forever.
Here's a good primer on pruning lilacs. I advise people to Google "shrub name + pruning" before taking a blade to a plant. Rejuvenating a long-neglected or wrongly-pruned shrub can take years because drastic correction can kill the plant. Sometimes better to get rid of it and start anew, or leave it alone.
The reason to care about the timing of your pruning is because some ornamentals bloom on the previous year's growth, and some on new growth. For example, the Macrophylla types of hydrangeas bloom on last year's, but Paniculata types bloom on new growth (a good hydrangea pruning site here.) If you prune at the wrong time, you will have no flowers.
This good pruning summary from Texas A&M says this:
Pruning recommendations for most deciduous shrubs consist of thinning out, gradual renewal and rejuvenation pruning. In thinning out, a branch or twig is cut off at its point of origin from either the parent stem or ground level (Figure 8). This pruning method results in a more open plant; it does not stimulate excessive new growth, but does allow room for growth of side branches. Considerable growth can be cut off without changing the plant's natural appearance or growth habit . Plants can be maintained at a given height and width for years by thinning out. This method is best done with hand pruning shears, loppers or a saw, but not with hedge shears. Thin out the oldest and tallest stems first.
In gradual renewal pruning, a few of the oldest and tallest branches are removed at or slightly above ground level on an annual basis (Figure 8). Some thinning may be necessary to shorten long branches or maintain a symmetrical shape.
To rejuvenate an old, overgrown shrub, remove one-third of the oldest, tallest branches at or slightly above ground level before new growth starts.
The general pruning procedure shown for crape myrtle (Figure 9, applies to many large shrubs and small tree species. If a shrub is grown for its flowers, time the pruning to minimize disruption of blooming. Spring flowering shrubs bloom on last season's growth and should be pruned soon after they bloom. This allows for vigorous summertime growth and results in plenty of flower buds the following year.
Yes, for most things you prune from the bottom. Make sure you feed them afterwards and remember that roots get hungry before swelling buds appear. To keep well-established shrubs healthy, take out 1/4 to 1/3 of the oldest base shoots each late winter and thus, like lawn mowing, you keep them youthful instead of letting them attain their mature form. For many ornamental plants, we have to fool them into thinking that they are young.
Photo on top: A row of hydrangeas on the bella Isola Bella, with a little rain blurring my lens. Those Italian gardeners prune the heck out of everything, and they do it right.
A strong case can be made for a core curriculum for college undergraduates to serve as a corrective to the excesses of cafeteria-style elective systems and politicized identity politics. But the genre of triumphalist Western history, beginning with Homer and Athens and culminating in liberal democracy and free enterprise, of the kind represented a generation or two ago by popularizers like Will and Ariel Durant and Daniel Boorstin, was always crude presentist propaganda. We do not need a Western Civ 2.0 in which the ancient Greeks and Romans and Hebrews and medieval Christendom are part of a grand historical narrative that concludes with the triumphant technolibertarianism of Silicon Valley.
I understand Michael Lind's critique, but I feel it is a trivial one. If people do not know the foundational origins and concepts from the Bible and Aristotle through John Locke and Adam Smith, it seems to me that there is very little that you can read with understanding. It is no "triumphalist narrative," but just the story of how we got where we are. At's a map.
I don't get why anybody would want to pay for higher ed without this. I was the fortunate beneficiary of 2 years of it.
It could have been a worthy essay, but it turns out it's aimed at Donald Trump. Conservatives seem to hate him. Too much hate. I am no big Trump supporter, but don't blame him - blame his enthusiastic primary voters. As Trump says, "I am just the messenger."
12:1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.
12:2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.
12:3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
12:4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said,
12:5 "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"
12:6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)
12:7 Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.
12:8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
Hydrangeas are popular in New England, but you have to know what you are doing in order to have happy plants. As summer-flowering shrubs go, they are fairly easy. Summer-through-Sept bloomers. We have lots of them, even a climbing one.
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