FunnyStrange.com

It's the first day of spring! We celebrated by spending the day outside. In the morning we worked on Operation Destroy Bamboo, Phase 1B: we finished loading the truck with that rotten wood pile, which I had started on Thursday; took it to the dump; came back and filled the truck again.

While we were working, Georg figured out where the wood came from: previous owners had had an aboveground pool in the area which became the bamboo patch. We know this because we found pool cleaning tools in the shed, and there's a large metal ring in the ground which must have been the foundation of the pool. The wood must have been used for either a frame or deck around the pool. When they moved out and removed the pool, they stacked up the wood and left it in the back of the yard. And we didn't care about the yard when we moved in, so we let it lay until now.

I must say, moving a pile of wood that's been allowed to rot for over a decade is ... gross. It's really gross. Crumbling, turning to sawdust, full of creepy crawlies. The rusty nails in every board just add that je ne sais quois. We've been using the wheelbarrow to carry the wood to the truck, so we wouldn't have to touch the wood more than necessary. Good thing too, because in the bottom of the wheelbarrow we found a spider that we think was a brown recluse. (We looked at a photo online to identify it.) I had heard that brown recluses like rotten wood. Because I'm a sucker for living creatures, even horrible poisonous spiders, we didn't kill it. I went over to a corner of the yard and tipped the spider out. Maybe it will find a fallen tree in the empty lot to make a new home in.

By the time we got the truck loaded again it was too late to go back to the dump, so we went out to lunch and then did more yard work in the afternoon. Georg cut down volunteer saplings in the bamboo patch, while I weeded out front and then dug up a forsythia by the shed. I want to plant hollyhocks in front of the shed so all the vines and scrubby shrubs have to go.

It was positively hot out in the sun, so we took frequent breaks. During which I obsessively read Twitter updates on health care reform. I wish I could watch the vote on CSPAN tomorrow. Alas, I'll be on the air until 4, and then there's a mandatory DJ meeting. I'll just have to play lots of long songs so I have time to check Twitter constantly.

On breaks I also checked the locations of various perennials, to see what's starting to come up. The brunnera Jack Frost is looking good. It's a beautiful foliage plant for shade, which needs moist soil, so I planted it right next to a rain barrel. All the hostas I planted last fall are starting to sprout! We got all big ones, mostly blue: Blue Angel, Krossa Regal, Sieboldiana Elegans, and Hollywood Lights. I never planted hostas before so I'm excited. Also very excited to see sprouts from the calanthe. It was a splurge last fall from Plants Delight, and when we checked out the guy said "Whoa, Orchids 202!" That made me a little nervous -- I do all right but I've lost more than my share of plants, and this one was expensive -- and it was such a wet winter, that I'm incredibly relieved to see the calanthe survived. We passed Orchids 202!

Now we are both very tired. I'm so glad we had nice leftovers and didn't have to worry about cooking.

On Monday Georg, S and I went to a Senate candidate forum sponsored by DFO (Durham for Obama). They invited all the Democratic candidates to attend and four showed up: Elaine Marshall, Ken Lewis, Cal Cunningham and Marcus Williams. Each candidate got to make a short speech, then they answered questions (all submitted in advance) and then closing speeches.

It was fun to go to a DFO event again. I saw lots of people I knew, though most of them were volunteering so I only greeted a few. I felt kinda guilty that I hadn't volunteered! To be perfectly honest, I've been avoiding politics. I didn't know they needed volunteers because I haven't looked in my "politics" email box for weeks. I didn't even know about the event until S. asked us if we were going.

I wasn't expecting substance from the candidates at this event, and I didn't get any. It's not a forum where they're going to talk about hard truths or specific plans. Their campaign statements were all very similar, and mostly boiled down to "babies should eat!"* What I wanted to find out was which candidate felt credible, gave a good speech, seemed like they'd be able to handle Burr in a debate. My thumbnail impressions, for what it's worth:

Elaine Marshall: better than I expected. I went into it thinking she was a boring candidate, pragmatic and uninspiring. But she was lively and enthusiastic. Not perfect -- she had a good story about her youth which she told twice -- though I'll be comfortable with her if she wins the primary.

Ken Lewis: was a somewhat flat speaker, didn't seem to wake up until the very end. He told a great story in the closing statement though, about his grandmother who had lived to be a hundred, and the changes that had occurred in America in her lifetime. It was the only genuinely moving moment of the entire evening, and if he had been like that all night I'd be firmly in his camp. On the other hand, he has no legislative experience. And he was the only candidate to slam the others (in his closing speech) which seemed like a sour note to me. Still, I'll be comfortable with him if he wins the primary.

Cal Cunningham: I went there wanting to support Cunningham, wanting him to give me a reason. Unfortunately, he was a terrible speaker. He might be the most sincere, most earnest guy in the world in real life, but on the stage there was something completely phony, Mitt Romney-ish about him. When he told his big story in the closing statement -- it was about seeing his family for the first time after returning from duty in Iraq -- it sounded so contrived that all three of us rolled our eyes. Maybe it was just us, and the general public wouldn't be so put off by him. However, based on my impression I think he would be a disaster as a candidate.

Marcus Williams: By far the best speaker, and clearly the least qualified. He connected with the audience every time he spoke. If only we could have a candidate with Marshall's experience and Williams' demeanor!

At the end of the night we all voted for our preferred candidate. The idea was that DFO would endorse the winner, but as it turned out they set the bar too high -- 70% needed for an endorsement -- so they didn't endorse. Ken Lewis won the vote with a simple majority.

*The first political comedy I ever saw was when Al Franken hosted nightly coverage of the 1992 conventions on Comedy Central. I think it must have been 1992 because I remember he did a hilarious parody of the video introducing Al Gore and his family. Anyway Franken had a panel there to talk about the speeches, and one of the panelists was Chris Rock. Every time someone said an empty platitude (which was constantly) Rock would shout "Babies should eat!" Ever since, when I watch a content-free political speech that's what I hear in my head. Chris Rock saying "Babies should eat!" over and over.

Here's a photo of something besides bamboo! Last fall I planted these tiny "Pixie" irises by the back door. I had no idea what they were going to look like. They're cute! It's going to look great in a few years when they multiply.

Okay, I did a little bit of Operation Destroy Bamboo today. I took the truckload of cut bamboo to the city dump. I took Jane with me, which was probably a mistake. She's a nervous dog, and the truck is a lot louder than my car, and then there was all kinds of heavy equipment at the dump. So she spent most of the trip clinging to me and/or shivering. Poor thing! I wonder if taking her with me again would help her get used to it, or would just scare her even more.

Phase 1 of Operation Destroy Bamboo is complete! !! !!!
Well, almost. All the bamboo is cut down, except for there's a stack of old lumber on the left by the fence, which we think was there when we moved into the house (we can't find any photos old enough to confirm this), and a pile of yard waste on top of it which was ahem gifted to us anonymously. There are about a dozen stalks of bamboo growing out from under that.

You can see in the above photo, on the right, that Georg started raking up the leaves & debris from the ground. We thought this would make Phase 2 (find and knock down shoots as soon as they emerge) easier. He said he saw lots of roots, no shoots. I'm sure an explosion of bamboo growth will start soon enough.

What I'm calling Phase 1B will be the removal of the pile of yard waste and lumber, cutting down the last bit of bamboo, and removing the mountain of cut bamboo which currently takes up almost as much space as it did when it was still standing.

Phase 1B begins tomorrow, when I take a truckload of bamboo to the dump. Alas, the photos above show the mountain of cut bamboo after Georg filled the truck.

It may be worthwhile to rent a big wood chipper and see how much of it we can grind up in a weekend. We have a small electric chipper which works well on sticks, but as I recall it can't handle bamboo leaves. If we had to trim every stalk and feed them into the chipper one by one, that would take forever.

The neighbors put up a privacy fence yesterday, or at least most of one. I'm not sure if they plan to finish the fence or if they're going to leave that gap.

That reed mat isn't ideal; I was thinking about planting climbing roses along that fence but I fear it would be too heavy and pull the reed mat down. Then again since it was no cost or effort to me I guess I can't complain.

The upper level, up behind the parking area, is a revelation. It's been hidden by the bamboo for years.

Shame about this tree. It has a nice shape but the bottom 2/3 of the branches are dead, and that kind of evergreen never grows back. I think it was a cypress.

Georg has been cutting down the volunteer trees, which were mostly if not entirely dead already. I think we're going to leave the one in the foreground of the above photo, and put a birdhouse on it. It's the least we can do for the birds who lost all that greenery they used to hang out in. On the other hand, the hawks love this new clearing we've created. We've seen more hawks in the past two weeks -- sometimes so close you can almost count their feathers -- than in the previous two years. Happy hunting!

I realized this was a bad head cold when I thought the casserole had tuna in it, and it was actually bacon.

A couple of photos of our latest progress on Operation Destroy Bamboo. We're working on the upper area now, above the wall. It's going faster because the bamboo mostly isn't as thick up there. First the before:

Now the after:

All those volunteer saplings will be cut down. They're mostly dead already, smothered by the bamboo. That wooden fence in the back is going to be in full sun. Maybe that's where we'll plant the Russelliana rambling rose. The soil up there is surprisingly good. I guess because leaves have been falling from the trees and just rotting where they lay for years. And the bamboo never got too thick because it was shaded by the thicker bamboo in front of it, in the parking area? Not sure. In any case, my hope is that we'll be able to plant up there, if not this year then maybe next year.

We also spent some time cutting vines off the chain link fence (on the left in this photo) because our neighbors are going to put up a privacy fence. Just reed mat but it will get the job done. It turns out that while the bamboo was going crazy in our yard, they started cutting it back, last year I think. And they only have one spot near our yard that still has bamboo, which they worked on cutting down today. It was kind of weird for us all to be out there working at the same time.

Had so much fun doing today's all Oscar winners radio show. It turned out to be more work than I was expecting, but so worth it. Most of the prep involved getting the movies from Netflix and ripping the songs -- or in some cases, discovering that the movie version of the song sounded awful, and then choosing another version. When I didn't go with the movie version I tried to play one that was as similar as possible (ideally recorded in the same year) so it would sound similar. The only one that was completely different was "Call Me Irresponsible." It was sung by Jackie Gleason in the movie, and he's supposed to be drunk, and it makes sense within the movie, but as a song it's not something you would want to listen to on purpose. So I played Bobby Darin's version.

I did play a couple of songs that hadn't won: first, I started the show with two songs about Hollywood, "Hooray for Hollywood" and "Hollywood Party." Which I have to say, I've had "Hollywood Party" stuck in my head for days. It's a silly little song from a silly little movie, and fiendishly catchy. You can tell it's from a pre-code movie because it includes the line "Bring along your girl, go home with somebody else's; forget about your girl, she's going to do all right!"

Besides that, I also played "Blues in the Night," which didn't win and probably should have, resulting in some controversy. And under the talksets I mostly played instrumental versions of songs that were nominated & didn't win.

At the last minute, this morning I stumbled onto a CD of old movie commercials, which I had never gotten around to listening to and didn't even remember I owned. Popped it in the computer and it turns out they weren't short commercials, they were 15 minute promotional radio programs about the movies. And there was one for The Gay Divorcee, the source of the first winner, "The Continental." And it took me about 5 minutes to make a one-minute clip that I used to introduce "The Continental." It was great! It actually included the line "The Gay Divorcee is surely the gayest picture ever to grace the screen." Best of all, the show had been one minute short, I was thinking I was just going to have to pad it with a couple of extra long talksets or something. And so this fabulous little clip finished off the show perfectly. It was like the cherry on top.

The most interesting thing for me about hearing all those Oscar winning songs together, was the variable quality. It ranged from songs for the ages, songs that I believe people will still be listening to in a hundred years -- "Over the Rainbow," "It Might as Well Be Spring," -- to songs that should have been allowed to die a merciful death long ago -- "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" for example. (In truth that was the only song I played that I consider genuinely bad. Then again, I stopped at 1965 because 1966's winner was "Born Free.")

I guess it's for a few reasons: first of all, Oscar winning songs are all new, and it's hard to tell in the moment which songs are going to hold up in future years. Well, I think professional songwriters are probably better at judging that, but the entire Academy votes on Best Song. Also, the Academy has its own reasons for rewarding a song, which don't always line up with what I would consider the best song in a year. It is puzzling sometimes though, how they made the choice. For instance, the very first Best Song, "The Continental." The same movie included "Night and Day," which in my opinion is clearly the far better song, and wasn't even nominated. How did they decide which song was worthy of recognition? I have no idea.

Or another example, the year that "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" won, the nominees included "Something's Gotta Give,"Love Is the Tender Trap" and "Unchained Melody." Looking back their choice seems almost perverse. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I did a trivia contest during the program, which was also fun! I tried to come up with questions that went along with the flow of the show. The tricky part was that as the show went on, the songs I was playing answered the questions. I had to discard a couple of questions because I couldn't ask them all at the very beginning. Anyway I think it came together well, and though not all of them got answered, I did get winners for about half. Here are the questions:

1. We're about to hear a song from a movie, which begins with the fanfare played under the studio logo. Listen to the fanfare and name the studio.
(obviously you can't answer this one just from reading this. It was Warner Brothers, the song was "Hooray for Hollywood" from the movie Hollywood Hotel. The rest of the answers will be behind a cut.)
2. The singer who performs an Oscar-winning song in the movie doesn't share in the award, even though a memorable performance can have a lot to do with the song winning. What singer gave the most performances that resulted in a Best Original Song win?
3. At first the award was called "Best Song" and the only rule was that it appeared in a movie in the previous year. "Sweet Leilani" (which I had just played before asking this question) was a radio hit for Bing Crosby in 1935, and then they put it in a movie two years later and it won the Oscar. Now the award is called Best Original Song & the song must be written specifically for the movie. Why was the rule changed?
4. Who is the only Oscar to win an Oscar?
5. What happens to an Oscar statuette when its winner dies?
6. Last year "Jai Ho" from Slumdog Millionaire won best song. That was only the 3rd time the Best Song was not in English. What was the first?
7. For decades there was no rule, but by tradition only one song was nominated per movie. What as the first movie to get more than 1 Best Song nomination?
8. Who was the first woman to win Best Song? Either composer or lyricist.

No progress today but here are a couple of photos I took this morning. First, the lower area is clear!

The fence is still pretty messy from dried up vines and stuff growing in it. We're going to finish cutting the bamboo first and then go back to tidying jobs like that.

The pile of cut bamboo is on a slope, so I think it's an optical illusion that makes it look taller than the truck.

I think it's an optical illusion. Anyone need cut bamboo? Anyone?

No progress on Operation Destroy Bamboo today, because I was with clients all day and also it's freezing cold and raining. Instead, here's a little incident that really brightened up my morning.

I was feeling so virtuous about having worked so hard yesterday, so I thought I'd get going early this morning and treat myself to breakfast at my favorite breakfast place, Nosh. We go there almost every weekend, so they know us, and I've gone in enough on weekdays that the weekday folks mostly recognize me too.

I like to sit at the row of tables by the front window, so I can keep an eye on my car. Vandalism isn't a huge problem for me, but with an art car it's always a possibility. So when I park UMJ someplace with heavy foot traffic, I like to sit where I can see the car if possible. There was only one table free by the window, and while I walked to it, a guy at the next table said, "Anyone who would drive a car like that is crazy" just as I passed by his table. His friend knew it was me, and started making awkward "can it" gestures, like a nervous head shake, to which the first guy was like, "what? what???" Then I realized that I had forgotten to get my drink cup, so I got up again, and the friend actually pointed at me with his thumb as I passed them again. Smooth, gentlemen!

I was so amused that I told the woman at the register about it, and she said I should go over and introduce myself. I think "At that point I would make my presence known" was the way she put it. I thought that was good advice so when I sat back down I said "Good morning! How's it going?" The first guy had his back turned and didn't respond. The friend looked monumentally uncomfortable, I think he literally cringed, and tried to acknowledge me without speaking or making eye contact. Doubly smooth!

After that I ate my breakfast, read email on my phone, and ignored them until they left. The friend left first, then when the guy who called me crazy walked past I said "Have a good morning!" He smiled nervously and said thank you while hurrying past, like he thought I was going to attack him or something. You never know what crazy people will do!

What a weasel. He said something stupid and rude about a stranger, and got caught. When I said good morning, it had to be obvious that I had heard him. If he had apologized and laughed it off that would have been totally cool. The funny thing is, I see that guy in Nosh all the time. He just didn't recognize me because when Georg and I go together we always take his car. I'm debating whether to greet him every time from now on, or let him alone. I was laughing about this all morning. If I can make a rude jerk uncomfortable just by smiling and being friendly, it's a great day.

I think I mentioned over the weekend that I expected an explosion of bamboo growth after we started cutting back, and was surprised not to see it. Well, I can stop being surprised. I was working on the bamboo today, and a few times I brushed the dried leaves away to look at the ground. And several times (not everywhere, but several times) I saw little bamboo shoots, lots of them, just starting to poke out of the ground. I don't know if it's because of the cutting, or because it's just the time of year for it to come out of dormancy. Whichever, here it comes!

We had decided a few days ago that we'd wait until the parking area was clear, and then rake up all the leaves so we can watch for new shoots. Which is good timing, because I just about finished the parking area today! I found this foam block used for yoga, and used it to kneel/sit on while working on the bamboo. What a godsend. The bamboo was so thick where I was working today that I wouldn't have been able to kneel on the ground like I had done over the weekend.

Besides growing really thick, the other annoying thing about the bamboo by the fence is that it got all tangled up in vines and tree branches. So when I cut a stalk, instead of falling over the cut end would bounce up into the air & it would just hang there. So I had to stop every few minutes and yank everything I'd cut out of the tangle.

While I was working, I had this horrible vision of falling and impaling myself a dozen times on the punji sticks. Yes, I'm a worrier! It's a good thing I don't have kids because I'd make them live in a plastic bubble. I didn't stop working, but I did get my phone and kept it in my pocket. I figured if I stabbed myself on the bamboo, at least I'd be able to call 911.

There's still a massive pile of cut bamboo and debris to be cleaned up, so I didn't take any photos today. It looks like a hot mess & I thought photos would just bum me out. We talked about it and I think we're not going to try to chip all the bamboo. There's just too much of it. We'll start taking it to the dump next weekend.

It's really weird to have the chain link fence between our yard and our neighbors suddenly exposed. I hated that bamboo but it did an excellent job of creating privacy. I'd love to plant rambling roses along the fence. I've been wanting a place to plant Russelliana, a dark purple rambler. Of course it will be a long time before we can plant anything in that ground. In the meantime maybe I'll get containers and plant an annual like morning glories, which will grow fast and give us some privacy, and then go away at the end of the year.

The silver lining to the sudden lack of privacy between us and our neighbors is that Jane finally noticed the dog next door. He's been mooning over her for years, while she's never even known he's alive. Well today she saw him! They had a nice little tail wagging nose nuzzling moment.

When we started, it seemed like half the bamboo was in the parking area and half was up above. Now that the parking area is clear, we can see that the area above is much smaller. Georg said he thinks we're 2/3 to 3/4 done. Woo!

I had a fun show this afternoon! I tried to play lots of jazz and swing, since next week is going to be so pop. Also had a lot of birthday tributes to cover. I got a few requests, including a very frustrating series from one person: they wrote to the request line and requested Frank Sinatra singing "Moon River." Well "Moon River" won an Oscar so I'm already planning to play it next week. Which I said on the air, and invited them to request something else. They wrote in a few minutes later ... and requested "Moon River," sung by Audrey Hepburn! Okay... obviously they were not listening to me the first time, so I just ignored it & didn't bother explaining again.

Didn't get back into Operation Destroy Bamboo today, although Georg did some work this morning. I had planned to work on it after my show, but when I got home it was 45° out and the place where I needed to work was in shade. My rule of thumb is, if it's at least 50°, or a little colder and I'm in the sun, then I can warm myself up enough just by working. Cold than that is just too cold for me.

Maybe it was better that I took a day off, because I was really sore last night & early this morning. I think I need to balance my movements better. Because my right knee & shin are all scratched and scabby, and my left arm is scratched up too, and my left shoulder hurt a lot last night (as in, I woke up in the middle of the night and it was kind of numb down the left arm). I think I must get into a rhythm where I kneel on my right leg (so the right knee gets all scratched up by the punji sticks, thank you Raynor Grace for that term, it's very helpful), lean forward on my left foot, and do all the work with my left hand. It makes sense since I'm left handed.

I did spend a little time outside, since Clovepod alerted me that bamboo can actually be rooted from cuttings. I'm planning to use a bunch of the cut bamboo to trellis up my peas, which means sticking the cut stalks into my vegetable garden. I sure don't want to accidently spread the bamboo to my vegetable garden! I did some research and it sounds like bamboo isn't that easy to propagate from cuttings: you have to keep it warm and moist, get it into rooting medium right away, keep the leaves attached, etc etc. I figure leaving my stakes outside to dry out, and freeze every night, for weeks ought to prevent them from rooting when they finally do go into the ground. Also I went out this evening and cut all the leaves off them, just to be safe.

While I was at my show Georg brought the grow lamp in, and tonight I got a bunch of seeds started! I planted up two trays, about half of what I'm planning to start indoors. Plus there are a bunch of seeds that will be sown direct outdoors, after it warms up. It was a little alarming when I laid all the seeds out to sort through them. Did I really order that many?

I have to say, Fedco is my new favorite seed supplier. They have a great selection, and they offer these mini packets which are priced like the big box stores (around $1 a packet). There's only a few seeds in a mini packet, which is perfect for a home gardener like me. If I'm only planning to grow 4 of a plant, then I'd rather pay $1 for 10 seeds than $3 for 30 seeds. The excess is wasted, and it really adds up when you're buying dozens of varieties.

Johnny's Seeds is geared more for small farmers & they're still a better deal for large quantities. So I'll keep ordering from them to get things like cover crops and sunflowers, which I plant a lot of (also Johnny's has an incredible sunflower selection, I never knew there were so many kinds). But next year I think I'll do most of my seed ordering from Fedco.

Also, note to self, next year I have to get myself one of those little squeezy things for measuring out tiny seeds. Every single year I wish I had one.

Due to weather and work, "week 2" is a slight exaggeration. It's been 2 full days and 2 half days of work. (Last Saturday and today were full days; Sunday and Monday were half days.) And I'm really happy with our progress:

The parking area is almost completely cleared! There's just a narrow strip along the fence on the left. Georg and I worked for a couple of hours this morning, then after lunch he had to go to the radio station so I worked alone all afternoon.

We're still using the same method: cut the stalk close to the ground and immediately press a sponge soaked with Roundup against the cut end. It's slow going as opposed to, say, spraying the entire area with Roundup, waiting a few days and then chopping it down with a machete. That would be the easy way. I'm happy with this approach because so much less Roundup is used. Using a sponge there's almost no excess Roundup going into the ground.

I had expected an explosion of new bamboo shoots during the past week: bamboo is infamous for fast growth, cutting a plant back always encourages new growth, that whole area is getting way more sun than before, and we had heavy rain early in the week. I thought we'd spend a long time this morning cutting new shoots, before we could get back to clearing the older growth. To my surprise we didn't get that at all. There were a few new shoots, I found maybe about a dozen and a half. And all of them were in the area we were newly clearing today, none where it had already been cleared. Maybe the Roundup really is slowing it down?

The massive pile of cut bamboo has grown even more massive. We're planning to shred it, though I'm not sure if we need to let it dry out first. Our shredder is fussy about bamboo: it can cut stalks but jams up on leaves. I guess we'll just have to try a fresh stalk and see how the shredder does. We can put the leaves in the compost pile.

A couple of unpleasant discoveries today: first, the retaining wall which had been hidden behind the bamboo for years is in serious disrepair. I wonder how difficult it will be to fix.

I've got almost all the prep done for the Oscar Sunday show. It's all planned out, which versions of all the songs, now it's just a matter of getting the movies from Netflix and ripping the songs from them.

It's going to be a pretty good show I think, both for edumacational merit and for entertainment value. Because the songs that win Oscars tend to be good. Pure pop; I usually play a mix of pop and jazz, and this show will be all pop. All good songs though, with a few notable exceptions. I can't decide which song will be the worst: "Gigi" or "Love is a Many Splendored Thing."

Well, that's not totally honest. "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" is a truly, deeply bad song. It's definitely the worst, and may be a contender for worst song I've ever played on my show. I'm just super bummed about "Gigi" because I had gotten it confused with "Mimi," the Maurice Chevalier song from Love Me Tonight. I think my confusion came about because Maurice Chevalier is also in Gigi. Even though I knew they weren't the same song, and every time I thought about it consciously I'd remember no, that isn't the song. Still everytime I saw "Gigi" on my flowsheet, in my mind I'd hear Chevalier singing "My left shoe's on my right foot, my right shoe's on my left..." and I'd feel happy.

So when I got on Youtube and heard the actual song "Gigi" it was a major disappointment. If the song has any rhythm I can't hear it over Louis Jourdan shouting the lyrics, Broadway-actor-forced-to-sing style. And the song is six and a half minutes long, with no obvious place to cut. In a lot of movie songs, especially the early ones, they sing the song, then they do a dance number, then they sing all or part of the song again. So it's easy to cut an 8 or 10 minute song down to a manageable length. Not "Gigi."

I think what I'm going to do is use the instrumental version that plays under the opening credits, and talk over it. I was trying to avoid doing that, using any the winning songs for talkset background music I mean. But I think it will work better than playing the vocal version. And this way I'll have time to play a fun little song at the beginning of the show called "Hollywood Party." It didn't win any awards, but it is from a movie (surprisingly enough, called Hollywood Party) and it's kind of the perfect song for the Oscars.

I don't care that it's freezing cold, I don't care that it snowed yesterday. The daffodils are starting to bloom and therefore it's spring.

Yay! Spring! Actually only those few in the photo are in bloom; the rest are still coming up and/or budding. Usually the first to bloom are the ones planted under the water heater exhaust. They're in a protected spot next to the south side of the house, and the exhaust blows hot air on the ground every time we use hot water. It's the perfect spot for tender plants -- the bay leaf is there, and the gardenia nearby --and the bulbs in that spot always bloom first. Not this year though; the daffodils in the photo are way down front, on the hill by the road. I have no idea why they bloomed first.

I've been meaning to get the grow light out of the shed and start planting seeds all week. This weekend for sure! And I hope the weather tomorrow permits working on the bamboo.

I decided to go ahead and do a special show for Oscar Sunday. And now that I've started planning it, I'm getting excited! I'm going to play 30 years of Best Song winners, starting with the very first, "The Continental" in 1934 and going through to "The Shadow of Your Smile" in 1965.

I already have almost all the songs I need. Though there are a few that I want to play the version from the movie, so I'll be getting a lot of Netflix in the next ten days. (Audio Hijack Pro, how I love you.) I'm trying to play the movie version wherever possible, and if not -- sometimes the movie version is really long and full of tap dancing, or is just a bad version of the song, or what have you -- then a hit version that was recorded in the same year, so at least it sounds similar.

I was concerned that I'd end up playing the same singers over and over again, but that ended up happening much less than I expected. Frank Sinatra four times, Bing Crosby three times (that was a surprise, I thought there would be much more Bing), and several singers twice: Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Bob Hope and Doris Day.

Anyway I think the show is going to be fun!

Utah is about to pass a law criminalizing miscarriage. The law would make it illegal for a woman to deliberately induce a miscarriage, or to engage in "reckless behavior" that causes a miscarriage at any time during the pregnancy.

"Using the legal standard of "reckless behavior" all a district attorney needs to show is that a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn't intend to lose the pregnancy."

I read that about 1/3 of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. Women, if you live in Utah and you're pregnant, want to get pregnant, think you might get pregnant, or are even fertile, be sure not to fall down any stairs. Or get on an airplane. Or ride a horse, or a bike. Or have an infection, or a fever. Or take NSAIDs. Or drink alcohol. Or smoke. Or drink coffee or caffeinated tea. Or eat blue cheese. Or have an argument, or get stressed out for any reason. In fact, best to just stay in bed all the time. According to Utah law you're not a person anymore, you're a fetus incubator.

In a way, I almost want to thank the Utah legislature for making it so plain that the anti-choice movement really is about punishing women.

Looks like it's going to rain today. Dang! I was hoping it would hold off until tonight. Since I can't work outside today, I took a few photos of our progress.

Here's the "before" photo. The bamboo patch fills the parking area and has spilled out into the gravel driveway.

Here's where we are now. We cut the whole thing back a couple of feet, back to the front of the parking area, then we focused on the right half and got about 3/4 of the way back.

We did it that way because our neighbors (the source of the bamboo) were out in their yard having a barbecue on Saturday, and we thought it best to stay back from the fence while they were right there. It would have been really weird for us to suddenly emerge from the bamboo in the middle of their barbecue. We're going to have to figure out something for that fence when the bamboo is gone.

Here's what the ground looks like as we work. Whatever you do, don't fall!

Does anyone need bamboo? After I take all I need for trellising the sugar snaps, we still have hundreds of canes. It's about 1/2" thick and 10-12' long.

Unfortunately today was my show, so we were only able to work for about an hour on the bamboo. Very frustrating considering what a nice day it was! While I was at the station Georg moved the pile of bamboo. It was getting difficult to walk in and out of the bamboo patch because the pile of bamboo covered the entire front of the area, and the stalks would slip under your feet. So he moved it out of the way, and set aside a few dozen nice straight lengths for me. I'm going to use them as stakes, to trellis the sugar snap peas.

We've been using bamboo stakes I bought at big orange a few years ago, and over the years they've gotten nasty and mildewed. I was thinking I would have to bleach them before putting them up this year. Instead I can throw the nasty old stakes in the compost and make new ones from the bamboo forest. I don't know why I never thought of this before. What was I thinking, buying bamboo stakes when our yard is being taken over by a field of bamboo.

I also did a couple of non-bamboo yard tasks: cut down the butterfly bush, which we do every year about this time, and started removing straw from the tender plants. They don't need to be protected from the cold anymore; now they'll do better if the ground is warmed by the sun. Best discovery: the alliums are starting to come up! Last fall I planted 25 Globemaster alliums in the backyard -- those are the ones that grow 3 feet tall with a giant purple pompom-like ball of flowers -- and 25 tiny little blue ones (called allium caeruleum) by the back door. As of today, 14 of the Globemasters and over a dozen of the tiny ones are up. So exciting! I can hardly wait until they bloom. I know it will be months from now. I'm so ready for spring.

The first day of Operation Destroy Bamboo went pretty well. We spent about 8 hours working on stage 1, cutting down the bamboo. It's a two person job: one person cuts the stalk a few inches from the ground, then the other paints Roundup on the cut end with a sponge. The Roundup has to be applied immediately, like within 15 seconds, because the sap draws down as soon as it's cut. If you wait too long then the Roundup just sits on top and doesn't get down into the rhizome. At least, that's the theory. We'll find out if it works or not.

It was slow going, and harder work than we expected. It's all the crouching and stooping. The person with the loppers can stand and crouch over, but the person with the Roundup sponge has to be down at the ground. And once we got into the middle of the bamboo patch, the ground was covered with pointy bits of bamboo sticking up. It was hard to find a place to put our feet, and forget about kneeling comfortably. I was terrified one of us would fall and be impaled on dozens of bamboo spikes. Really, the ground is starting to look like a set from The Most Dangerous Game. Luckily, as we got further back into the bamboo patch it thinned out somewhat and became a little easier to kneel on the ground. Georg speculated maybe because there's less light back there, it can't grow as close together. Or maybe because the soil is poorer & sandier back there.

So we worked for about 8 hours. Part of that time I was on my own -- Georg had to go to the radio station -- but most of the time we worked together. And we got close to half of the parking area done. Less than I had hoped, but when I look at the area we cleared, and the size of the pile of bamboo on the ground, I'm not disappointed.

The bamboo is skinny, the stalks range from 1/4-1" in diameter, and 12-13 feet tall. They have leaves only at the very tops. The stalks are green, and have a sort of husk attached to the ridges, so they look striped: half green, half tan. I should take a picture. Now that I think about it, I should post on Craig's List and see if anyone wants it. I know someone who wants bamboo but he needs it much thicker, more like 2" diameter. He wants to make candle holders out of it.

We found some interesting things in the bamboo patch. A bird's nest on the ground. We don't know if it fell out of the bamboo, or if the birds nested on the ground. Which would have been really stupid seeing as there's a dog running around in there every day. A rodent's nest inside a plastic bucket. See, the Durham County landfill used to sell mulch and soil. The price was fantastic and we used to buy a lot of it. The only drawback was, since it was made from other people's yard waste, it was always full of bits of trash, mostly plastic bags. We used to keep a bucket nearby while we were unloading the mulch or soil, and every time we found a bit of trash we'd throw it in the bucket. Well, one of those times we apparently forgot to empty out the bucket. We must have left it at the front of the bamboo patch, and then the bamboo grew around it and we forgot it was there. And eventually it tipped over, and rodents found this little hidey-hole full of scraps of plastic, and decided it would make a great nest. It had little soft things like fabric scraps and clumps of dryer lint in it. Alas for the rodents, we threw it out. It didn't look like anyone was still using it. We also found a rubber snake, the kind used to scare away birds and rodents. Which was obviously not very effective since we found it a couple of feet from the bird's nest and the bucket nest.

By the end of the day we were exhausted. We got cleaned up and had a lovely dinner at Spice & Curry. A paneer dosa, aloo palak and chicken pasanda, which is my favorite thing they make. Great food and we have lots of leftovers. Now we're sitting in front of the fire and watching the Olympics.

The only really annoying thing about the first day of Operation Destroy Bamboo is the well-meaning people on certain social networking sites who feel compelled to tell me ad infinitum how much I'm doing everything wrong, and how I should be doing it their way instead. I'm happy for advice and suggestions, in fact I've gotten some great suggestions. What I'm not so thrilled about is being scolded by someone who isn't offering to help, just to tell me how wrong I am. Actually I'm just cranky because I spent all day chopping down bamboo and now I'm tired and sore. (Note: I'm not talking about anyone who reads this blog.)

We have a bamboo problem in our backyard. The problem is that, when the bamboo started creeping in from the neighbor's yard, we didn't realize what a problem it would be and didn't deal with it right away. And now we have a thicket, nay, a forest of bamboo.

I've been reading up on bamboo removal, and there are almost as many opinions on the subject as there are people posting on the internets. This is what I learned: You can kill bamboo by cutting it down, then cutting down the new shoots every time they appear, until you eventually wear it out. Simply cutting down the bamboo, without herbicide, is totally ineffective. Roundup works best. Roundup doesn't work. Roundup does work, but only if you cut the stalks and paint the Roundup on the cut end within 15 seconds. The best method is to liberally apply rock salt, and if you want to replant with something else, too bad. The best method is to flood the bamboo for 2 weeks. The best method is to get a backhoe, dig out the entire area, and replace the soil. The best method is to pave it over with concrete.

The one thing that everyone agrees on: it takes a long time. Every method takes a couple of years of watching for new shoots and (depending on who you believe) either digging them out, cutting them down, or applying more herbicide. Well, no time like the present!

The backyard is partly terraced, so we've got two bamboo regions to deal with: the lower area was used by previous residents for an above-ground pool, and the "soil" is actually hard-packed sand. I'm more agreeable to heavy applications of Roundup there, because we won't be planting there anyway. When/if the bamboo is gone we'll probably use that spot for parking the truck. If we did decide to plant there for some reason, we'd have to replace the sand with garden soil anyway. The upper area is soil, though I'm not sure how good it is. If we could get rid of the bamboo without going crazy with the Roundup, that would be great. We'll have to get up there and see how bad it is.

Anyway, now while the bamboo is dormant seems like the time to start. Tomorrow marks the beginning of Operation Eradicate Bamboo! We're going to mix up some Roundup and try the "cut the stalk and immediately paint Roundup on the cut end" method. With both of us working together I'm hoping we'll get it all cut down this weekend, but if not, then as much as we can get done.

Then the next step will be separating the clump in our yard from the neighbor's yard. We talked to a tree service who will come with a ditch witch, dig a trench and put in a barrier. I read that running bamboo is all one plant underground. So you can't kill the part invading your yard without separating it from the rest. Just like, if you had a big shrub and cut a chunk out of one side, the rest of the shrub would still be alive and eventually it would grow back where you had cut away. Once the barrier is in place, you have to check it a couple of times a year and cut back any runners coming over the top.

After we have it all cut back and the barrier in place, we'll see if the "knock back the new shoots until you wear it out" method seems at all effective. If no, then I guess we'll find someone with a backhoe to come and dig it out.