sleepytime

I should be sleeping right now. I didn't mean to stay up so late. Several hours ago I started listening to episodes of those old radio shows to pick out songs I wanted for tomorrow, and the shows are all so good that I just kept listening, and here I am.

The DJ before me needs a sub and can't find one, so I may end up doing four hours tomorrow. It would be hard to fill that much time so I'll probably pad it by playing an episode each of Command Performance and Jubilee in the first hour. It was hard to pick an episode of Jubilee because first of all, though the music is outstanding, the sound quality is not great. Second, each show includes a comedy segment, and they tend to be, well, objectionable to the modern ear. Amos & Andy cracking jokes about being lazy and Butterfly McQueen cracking jokes about being desperate and man-crazy were two favorites. I finally found one where the comedy was much less offensive, Burns and Allen cracking jokes about how Gracie doesn't understand jive talk. The show also featured Cab Calloway and the King Cole Trio, great music.

I had also picked out the special VJ Day program of Command Performance because it included 1. a speech by Truman to the troops and 2. no offensive comedy. On reflection I think the program might be too serious for a whole half hour. Then again, Memorial Day is a serious event so I guess it's good to balance out the irreverence on Jubilee. And who knows, I might get lucky and not have to do the extra two hours, if the dj before me finds a last-minute sub.

Besides show prep we had a great day. Fun time at the farmer's market this morning. It's gotten so busy! Tons of vendors and crowds of people. We bought strawberries, plants and doughnut muffins, and then we ran out of money because I had stupidly left my wallet in my other purse.

We took Jane with us as part of our ongoing effort to get her used to being around people. I have to say, Operation Socialize Jane is going well. She's getting so much more comfortable around a crowd. She even let a little boy come up and pet her head. She wouldn't make eye contact with him, but she didn't flinch or try to get away. He was a nice kid, politely asked permission before petting her.

The rest of the day we did yard work. Digging up brambles in the front and vines in the back in the morning, which is going well! There's an area near where we park the cars that's almost totally cleared and ready to plant. Unfortunately it's right under a tree we need to take out, and we can't plant until that's done. Removing the tree is already going to be a chore because it hangs over a phone line. It will be that much harder if we have to avoid stepping on plants right next to it.

Then in the afternoon we got out the wood chipper and went to work on the branches left behind by the goats. We have a wood chipper, a small electric one. In retrospect it might have been better to rent a big gas model when we needed one. This one jams up immediately on leaves, so we spent a lot of time stripping leaves off branches, and clearing the jam if any leaves do get in. On the other hand, the motor is quieter, cleaner, easier to maintain (aside from the jamming) and does well chopping sticks up to about 1" thick. Thicker than that and we'll cut them up and save them for firewood.

We got the entire pile of wild rose bushes chipped, woo! That pile was blocking the path up to the shed and I'm so glad to have it gone. It's kind of amazing how this giant pile of brush creates a tiny pile of wood chips. You can't put freshly chipped mulch like that on your plants, because the wood releases toxins as it begins to decompose. But we have plenty of areas to mulch with no plants we want to keep, so this is a feature, not a bug. I might have even put it into the compost bin, except that we're going to have to move the bin (alas, it is right in the way of the natural place to put a path in our newly spacious yard) so I don't want to add any more to it than necessary.

The pile of non-thorny shrubs and saplings is bigger but will be much easier to deal with, since the branches won't stick to each other or attack us. Maybe after the show tomorrow we'll go to work on it. Though if I have to do four hours on the air, maybe not.