Korth (not Kurth) Farm. FAIL

First - cathy (or whatever your REAL name is) you should get a hold of me concerning fractals (A piece of software I no longer have).
---------------------------------
Columbus had 0.32 inches of rain last night in that storm.
---------------------------------

I went to Sweet Lips in Lake Mills to talk about their wanting pieces in their gallery - the people in charge were not there so I went around looking for other interesting Lake Mills photo opportunities.

I had been asked to take photos of a barn on the Korth Farm which seems to have been the Udey Dam of Lake Mills. Something about a 150 farm being torn down and so forth. Well, my search was for that barn which I BELIEVED a woman had asked me to take photos of.

About the time I became temporarily blinded by sweat in my eyes I asked a passing pick-up about a barn and he said they had torn it down about five years ago!

SO - I took some shots of a tree instead.

Tree on the Korth Farm

I drove back to Lake Mills and thought I would get one of those famous American Legion hamburgers.  DJ and I had tried one last year and it was the worst tasting piece of meat I had ever tasted - even Blake did not like it.  bu I though "one more time".  They were closed so I went to the cafe' next door and have a frozen well done hamburger patty which tasted like it sounds.   Sweet place inside though, just not the hamburger haven I was hoping for. 

---------------------------------------------

Kestrel Ridge Golf Course decides to kill all it's trees!

Kestrel Ridge Golf Course is either refusing to kill their Jap Beetles or they refuse to believe they have a problem.  The devils defoliated one tree last year killing it even after I TOLD them they were killing a tree.  Now the beetles are eating the TWO trees next to it (Linden/Basswoods, they LOVE those trees) which is right next to my yard.  I'm going to take matters into my own hands.  It's like they don't care if all their trees are killed!!!  They should just cut the trees down now as they will be dead in 3 weeks.  

Speaking of golf - I golf tonight in league.  I've golfed in extreme heat before, not a problem.  I have a wet towel on my shoulders.  It's the same thing you do brewing beer.  To cool a carboy you drape a wet towel around a fermenting carboy - it can cool it down 5 to 8 degrees!   I just hope I don't start to ferment.

When we lived in Madison our neighbor dropped dead on the 16th green at Yahara on a hot day so DJ is always concerned when I golf in heat.  He did not use the towel method.  I golfed yesterday morning in 90 degree weather and was fine.  Today there will be wind and that will help the towel cooling a lot.

-----------------------------------------

Monday night a storm sprung up over Lake Mills and there are a lot of photos around. It looked like a huge mushroom cloud, truly magnificent.  About 10 minutes after I took this lightning starting flashing and streaking through it.

Armageddon over Lake Mills

---------------------------------------------

I'm going to do a little gorilla gardening.  Our neighbors to the west abandoned their house after spending $12,000 on landscaping. Now it's all going to hell and after talking to the landscaper who is in contact with the neighbors he said go ahead and take a clematis which is laying on the ground dieing. 

 

It was an unknown variety but after searching a lot a Piilu Clematis.  I took this hovering over it as it lay on the ground wilting (before I was again temporally blinded by sweat). 

And lastly - the butterfly garden is getting ready to full bloom with the clay garden in the background.

Have a great day 

Rod

Read More

Complete liquidation

OK - I'll come right point and say it. I'm glad Japan won the World Cup. There, it's out there and I can't take it back.

Actually I really could care less (which is an odd saying, it should be I CAN'T care less). Not a soccer fan and come on, Japan has had a rough year. I did not see one second of the World Cup and I know the tears were running down the streets of America but in 2 weeks no one will even remember the horrific loss (was it?).

What turns me off on soccer is how the game ended. A kick off thing? Why not have baseball decide a winner of a tie game with a home run derby!!
-----------------------------

I attended the Lake Mills Art Fair and what a wonderful fair that is. The best art fair yet. Not only was there a ton of very good artists but as DJ said, my canopy was like attracting bees to honey!  Typically around 1:00 things die off in art fairs but I sold my last piece AFTER the closing. Many artists stayed open after 4:00.

Another wonderful thing was that I was invited to show my work in a gallery and commissioned to do several freelance jobs. And ALSO I was contacted twice from Portage by phone to show my work next year at Trails End Lounge AND by a couple wishing to buy a piece they saw at Trails End.

Photographically - it was a great weekend.
-----
I started a project for taking photos of wild flowers that I see along the road. I immediately realized that I have to rethink this.  The problem is that we see the flowers from above, but when I take them and lay them down (to cut out wind and get a black background) the camera see's them from the side. The flower is not at the right angle.   I have to build a better box so I can take the photo from above.

The below are the tall blue flowers you see along the road, they are Chicory. The tap root is used in coffee and is of the aster family.  It's very edible and full of nutrients but sort of bitter.

Chicory

Hidden Gardens.

This shot was taken behind The Department of Corruption (oops Corrections).  They have a WONDERFUL large garden behind their building.  I'll have more photos in the future of that garden.

Complete liquidation.

Any wine makers out there?

I had a complete liquidation of all my internal organs last night and am trying to find what entered my body to keep me up until 3:30 this morning.

The only thing that is standing out is at the store yesterday a guy had me tasted some homemade wine which had issues.   Tasted like funky grape juice.  I know there is nothing in homemade beer that can be bad for you unless you get a little gas from yeast but this - HOLY CRAP!!!   I bloated out like a blow-fish, stick a pin in me and I would have flown around the room like a balloon.   Then all hell broke loose.

Maybe I was just getting ready for late nights this week as the Brewers play on the West Coast and I will get very little sleep this week. 
-------------------------------------------

Golf - I golf Wednesday in the heat.  I'm actually looking forward to it as I have golfed in 100 degrees and know how to handle it.  My plan is to have a wet towel around my neck.  Really helps a lot.  Cools your whole body and you can wipe your face with cool-ish water.    GAME ON HEAT!!!

------------------------------------------

Got an email from Graham Man (remember him?).  He has been called to Chicago to have his Mustang appear in the new Superman movie!!   Congratulations.  New name  MUSTANG MAN!!!

-----------------------------------------

Have a cool week.
Rod

Read More

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Getting right to the point - what you want to get to kill Jap Beetles is this stuff. 

Bonide Eight Insect Control kills the Beetles and will protect your plants for UP TO FOUR WEEKS (which to me means from one hour to four weeks).  I take a trip around the yard each day and spray on all infected plants.  Seems the beetles are drawn to certain plants, for me I start with my prized dogwood, move over to the shasta daisies and purple cone flowers and then to the black eyed susans. They love the cotoneasters and the black chokeberrys and this year they are starting to chew on the Don Wyman Pear Tree.

GET THEM NOW before they leave a trail for others to follow.   Also by some Milky Spore and sprinkle it on your yard once a year for a long term strategy.  DO NOT - I repeat DO NOT buy traps as they have proven to actually draw in more beetles then they kill (give them to your neighbors as gifts :-)

I mention this because my buddy balderdash calls me after golf league last night and at Manards he found . . .a product called . . . . SEVEN.  Which of course is not as good as EIGHT!!  Not sure what it is but . . . .

Speaking of golf - I'm HOT BABY!!   Since I have been submitting scores for a legal handicap I had my best round ever last night and my last 2,4,6 and 8 rounds are the best I have ever had (moving average-wise).   The newest swing thought (among many) is to make sure my club head is actually speeding up as I contact the ball.  This seems to straight the shot and give more elevation.  Of course everyone knows that but among the other 15 swing thoughts sometimes that thought get's shoved to #10 or something.

Last night I birdied #1 and missed two other birdies by less then 1/2 inch.  So I had a disappointing 40 because I took a 7 on a par four.  That is the problem with golf, you can always do better.  So instead of celebrating a 40 I look at my round see that if I make those two doable birdies AND par the par four I have a 35.

sigh.

HOWEVER - my partner had what I consider the best putt I have ever seen.  A long long uphill bending 87 footer to finish with a 42.   
--------------------------------------------

Then there is the Brewers.  They made what can be termed a CC Sabathia style trade . . . with baggage.  Now they have two closers.  K Rod is an OUTSTANDING closer,  Three time All-Star and he will be a set-up man for Axford.  The problem is that if K Rod finishes like 25 more games the Brewers have to pay him 17 million dollars. Well , THAT ain't going to happen.  So will K Rod be an angry player that pisses off the clubhouse? 

If he is a team player for the half year he is on the team this REALLY helps the Brewers.  I mean the guy holds the record for saves in a season.  I just hope he finds a good anger management class in Milwaukee and does not get arrested for any more assaults.

---------------------------------------------

Weather is looking pretty fun. Starting Sunday expect to have triple digit heat index for at least 4 straight days with NEXT Wednesday being the warmest.  We will be touching record highs for all 4 days and could easily, easily, have the heat index in the one hundred teens.  OH - GAME ON HEAT!!!

I think I will mow the lawn tomorrow just to make sure I will not have to mow it next week.  We should have 6 days with the low in the mid 70s.
--------------------------------------------

Ever wonder how fast your internet is?  Go to www.Speedtest.net and click on  BEGIN TEST!    Right now I have 16.25meg download and 1.06 upload which I am very very happy with.  For as much as I hate Charter their internet is pretty darn good.  Way better then any DSL.

----------------------------------------------
What do mosquitoes like more than clean, human skin? Stinky socks. That's right and stinky socks are now being used to fight malaria because they can attract mosquitoes and then the mosquitoes can be killed. 

How did they find out about stinky socks?  Seems Dutch scientist Dr. Bart Knols first discovered mosquitoes were attracted to foot odor by standing in a dark room naked and examining where he was bitten.

I wonder if this was one of those tests where you give people money for research?  What's that place in Madison called?  I can see it now, you go there and they give you $50 and say - "take off all your clothes and stand in this room, we will fill it with mosquitoes to see where you have bites." 

You know what "I" would be covering!!!    
--------------------------------

I believe this is a down turned pasta strainer

And finally - An Austrian man's been allowed to appear on his new driver's license with an upturned pasta strainer on his head .. because he's a Pastafarian.

It's taken three years and a trip to the doctor to check he was mentally fit to drive .. but authorities decided they're okay with the colander as a religious accessory.
  
Entrepreneur NIKO ALM says he gave it a go after reading that headgear was only allowed in official pictures for "confessional" reasons.
  
The atheist says he belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster .. and he now wants to apply for Pastafarianism to become an officially recognized faith in Austria.

yea . . uh-uhhh   OK then.


Have a great Thursday!
Rod

Read More

Columbus BBQ competition.

TRADE ALERT - Loe is not the set-up guy anymore - Francisco Rodriguez will be the set-up guy for this year and then will leave for greener pastures.  We got him for cash and a few cases of beer. 

http://bleacherreport.com/tb/baaYm
 -----------------------------
I mentioned I had some lilies I wanted to vacate from my garden as they did not fit. Here is a close up of the dark yellow one I found.

So my relatives are finally home back in sunny Texas where the temps will be over 100 for the 12th day in a row with at least 7 more to come and Matt took like 2100ish photos on their vacation.  AWESOME - have fun with that. Been there done that! I now make sure whenever I take a set of photos I get them off the camera as soon as I can and put them in a folder on an external drive.  THEN, at SOME POINT I can look at them in the future.

For instance I took this a while ago and am collecting a few to give to the Columbus Country Club for their website in exchange for free golf (I hope). It's nothing AMAZING but people want to get an idea of what the course looks like. 

 
A lot of photos of course's are good but you always need golfers, otherwise all it is is a landscape shot, not a golf course.

---------------------------------------------

Speaking of the All-Star game festivities. Monday night I was listening/watching the Home Run derby and I swear Chris Berman was like a stuck record.  BACK BACK BACK GONE!!!!   OK, how many times can you say that (I guess 40ish)!  And like EVERY 400 foot home run was like the longest he has ever seen.  WOW THAT WAS AMAZING!!!!  Well, dude, so were the last 20 Home runs!   Plus I think each person in the crowd had a foot marker on him and when a guy caught the ball they knew how far it went.  And WHAT was with that 6 foot tall kid catching balls in the outfield!  He was like 3 feet taller then the other 30 kids.

Then before the All-Star game I kept reading national news guys railing on Bud Selig about the AS game.  They were saying the stupidest rule in baseball was to have the All-Star Game decide home field advantage for the World Series. They say "It's an exhibition game, keep it that way".  Well yea - let's keep it a meaningless game so NO ONE watches it. 

I think making the game mean some is a FANTASTIC idea!!  I do feel there are too many All-Stars.

-------------------------------------

I just watched the first episode of DAMAGES!!  Anybody else watch this show?  Seems interesting, not sure who I'm rooting for or who the hero is.  Seems a lot of villains around.

Harry Potter - I think this could be a hit although I have never read one page of a Harry Potter or seen more then 30 seconds of a Harry movie but someday I'll give him a shot!

I see Princess Kate (or whatever she is being called) is bringing back sheer nylons!  They are the big big rage now.

I also see that that evil Obama leads all GOP challengers in a mock election.

Wisconsin is rated the 25th fattest State which seems to be just about in the middle of the pack.  I think we better get eating if we don't want to slip farther (further?).
----------------------------------------

OK - here is my idea and I think I have to form a committee.  How about next summer having a the first Columbus BBQ Competition.

Charge anybody that wants to participate $25.  He/she provides his own cookers, fuel, meat (pork, chicken, beef).  Get sponsors to help out (after involving the Fire Department).  Then charge $10 a head to try all the food and vote.   Winners get cash prizes and all extra proceeds go towards some community of fire station equipment.

It can't be TOO hard can it?   Comments?  We would need advertising but I believe this is a viable competition. 

Just thinking out loud!!

Have a great week.  I see the temps for the weekend are SLOWLY sinking a little.  Not 90 but down to 88 to 85 now.  But Sunday and the beginning of next week are REALLY heating up.  I saw one forecast of 97's

Looks like we will have a Football season and the Superbowl will be moved back ANOTHER week to near the end for February!


Cheers
Rod

Read More

DUDE - What do you THINK we are doing!!!!

I'm BACK - I'll touch on a few highlight thoughts for this here blog today.

Total rain last night in Cbus 0.92 inches!

Last week we had special guests all week as relatives from the Dallas area visited. We had to introduce them to Cheese Curds which turned out harder then we thought. The carnival, who have GREAT deep fried curds had a line 1/2 hour long. So we figured the next day when we went to Dotty Dumplings we would get curds. HOWEVER - their cheese curds were more mozzarella.  Ended up going to Sassy Cow for 3 hour old FRESH curds.

Here is Matt, Veronika and Kameron on top of the State Capitol.  Seems we did not know that Kameron had a little issue with height, thus all the shots of this little firecracker are next to solid walls. 

They are using Facebook the way it is intended to be used, by showing us their adventures as they go.  After leaving our place they traveled to Green Bay to see Lambough Field, then Milwaukee, Chicago and I believe they are going to St. Louis today.
-------------------------------------

And for Columbus residents - I was serving beer and brats at Cannery Friday night for a tasting and talking to an older woman from Arizona.  Seems she was a long time Cbus resident, Cathy Anderson says hi to John P as her parents(??) owned the JC Penny that was next to the F&M Bank?
------------------------------------
Garden - the Clay Garden FINALLY bloomed about 3 weeks late.  Looking at the charts most things are about 2-3 weeks later then last year.  A funny thing happen on the way to take some photos.  It was so humid out yesterday that my camera fogged up when it hit the hot air.

Here is the Clay garden which is called clay because it is in rich deep hard clay.

Then I come to my foggy  lens shot.

 And the Butterfly Garden which is a week or so away still,.

I'm at a stage where I'm giving some flowers away - anybody with a garden want some flowers?  At the moment I have some BRIGHT yellow lilies and some lighter yellow lilies!  Free for the asking.  I'll also have some wonderful ground cover coming up and some yellow daylilies!  Anybody have space?

Next year I have a Sweet Autumn Clematis which will have it's own blog!  Seriously.  We gave up on Alpha (it's name) and thought it was dead, as it had not appeared out of the ground until June 6th.  Well, since it popped it's head above the ground it has grown AT LEAST 4 inches a day!  That is 2.5 feet a WEEK!!  So next year it's going to have it's own blog with it's adventures climbing out deck, goals and aspirations from a Clematis.  We have 2 more planted!

Also - yesterday was the 1st day for Japanese beetles to emerge.  GET THEM NOW!!    They are laying a trail for future bugs. A bowl of soapy water and knock them off their perch into the water.  KILL THEM KILL THEM NOW.   Also Milky Spore is a good long term plan!
----------------------------------------------

So Elwood and I were driving around the country with a project, or I actually had a project.  I HOPE anybody that drives 151 has enjoyed the wild flowers. They are magnificent.  So my idea is to have one large canvas image that displays Wisconsin wildflowers in chronicle order.  It'll take a while but it's a plan.

So we were driving around looking for good country roads  that had specimens.  I had my camera and Elwood had my book of Wisconsin wild flowers which he was now memorizing their  Latin names and we came across some Leucanthemum vulgare which I will call Ox-Eye Daisy.

We were discussing the flower/weed when a dude in a red pick-up stops and ask "What are you boys up too" in a very menacing way! 

I tell him the truth and that we are out looking at wild flowers.  He say "uh-uhh, sure you are" and stares at us.  Well - in my BRAIN I say "fuck you" but what comes out is "really, that is what we are doing, I'm a photographer".

"uh-uhh, OK" and he stars at us.

Well - I have thought of MANY things I SHOULD have said but I go to the car ignoring him and start to drive - SLOWLY as we look for more flowers.

He follows slowly and I sort of am pimping him goign even slower.  Elwood is pretty much involved in the book memorizing or he has gone to his happy place, whatever.

I turn and he goes straight and we continue to look.

 We stop as we come to a field of Zizia aurea or Golden Alexanders.

and while I'm taking photos a dude that looks a LOT like the last dude zooms by on a motor cycle, staring at us.

We move on looking for those orange wild day lilies - they are not in my book but are everywhere (anybody know their name?).  At the dude AGAIN goes past us.

OH - this shot looks like a big smiley face does it not?

Anyway - we head back towards Columbus and the SAME GUY, AGAIN, goes past us glaring.  WTF!!!

So that is today's story. Maybe I'll start a website with wild flowers.  hmmm

Have a great day
Rod

Read More

There is a blog coming - stay tuned 7/11/11

There is a blog coming - stay tuned 7/11/11

Read More

SORRY SORRY

We have had relatives from Texas here all week - schedules are all out of whack. The big adventure today will be going to Sassy Cow Creamery for their first experience with Cheese Curds!

I'll be back on a normal schedule . . .soon!!!

BTW - they say 88 degrees is AWESOME and so nice and cool!

Read More