The last frosts should be gone, and there's some of that newfangled globalized weather coming through next week -- 27 C + during the day, maybe 15 at night. If soil temperatures are still a bit chill, they won't be after the mini-heat wave is done with us. Finally time to get beans and tender crops in the ground. Going into early June - this is a time trees have been in full summery leaf for about 2 weeks, and "people" crops should finally enter vigorous vegetative growth, joining the perennial weeds, which have been active for a month.
We escaped major wild boar damage in the fall and winter. Some friends of ours in Veriora were hit hard while they were away in the States last winter. Their whole lawn was deeply gouged -- Biblical damage that took a mini-Teeme Ära and a tractor or two to repair.
Still, there are many ruts and brushy areas, so this will probably be the year of groundskeeping. I wish I could say it was the year of building structures, but I don't know where to begin. I have to hope that the plans for the house or sauna-dwelling are bubbling away in my subconscious and will come up to the surface when the time is right. Right now, after last year's plague of ticks, the focus is on making the property a tick-free zone. No ticks have been spotted this year, even after tramping in high weeds off-property. Unheard of. Last year, there were many tiny nymphs. I would be lying in bed in the cabin and my eyes would see something crawling across the floor in the dim light -- tick. Mosquitoes are also slightly under their usual intensity, despite lots of standing water in the wetlands. The first mosquitoes appeared in open areas (during cloudy periods etc) only around May 19-20. I did not know this: Most of May is a wonderful time to be outdoors in Estonia if it's not too cold.
Spent Saturday taking out about 10 birch and alder -- because of overcrowding, to reduce brush. We will try to plant ash if we can get them -- a great firewood tree, underrepresented in Estonia, harvestable in 12-year cycles. Though the late leaf aspect is depressing -- I was complaining in early May about the fact that even early leaf trees were bare.
We still have the "Olympic swimming pool" hole out back from a failed pond construction attempt before our time, and the pile of displaced dirt next to it. It's going to stay there. Some neighbors dropped by and said the pile could definitely be shoved back in the hole, but I think we would be unpleasantly surprised; instead of a hole and a hill, I think we would have a hole with a small hill at the bottom of it. Piusa-type sand is sought-after, so I wouldn't be surprised if whoever made the hole carted the sand off.
What's growing in the garden this year on the River Slough:
Squash -- Mother-in-law started some seedlings for us while we were in Italy. Two or three varieties of gourd. I made the same mistake as last year and put them in the ground early. Even earlier than last year, so their shock is deeper. I'm not sure how much of the shock is from the cold ground (nights are still +3-+9 C) and how much damaged roots during the transplanting. Looking back at last year's posts, I see I wasn't sure whether they would even survive well into June, then I wasn't sure whether they would ever start producing female flowers. So despite the awful yellowish condition of the plants, there's still hope. If 3 or so survive, that might be all the squash we need. Last year, this section of the garden was called "Little Guatemala", so no problems with luxuriant growth.
Brassicas - Considering the amount that Estonians eat, cabbage sure is a devil to grow. I still can't say they're vigorous, but looking OK with no major infestations. This year, half of the (expanded) garden is given over to them, an even mix of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and kohlrabi. Painted some long planks with Bordeaux solution and surrounded the garden with them, sprinkled wood ash and lime around. The very first night the tiny seedlings were in the ground about 2 weeks ago, something munched on them, but It hasn't been back. I put clear disposable cups over the seedlings for some of the time.
Peas - soil is probably a bit clayey in this section, but they're coming up .About the same schedule as 2009.
Rucola, lettuce, chicory, radishes, spinach -these are in a long raised bed of Biolan Black Gold, the way my mother-in-law gardens. (Her squash plants are lush and amazing.) Unlikely anything will mess this up, probably the heat wave coming up mid-week will be the worst.
Beets and carrots - do birds eat beet seed? These haven't come up. Might have to re-sow.
Potatoes -- potatoes and sunchokes will go in the ground soon.
Tomatoes - None this year. Had a good "open-air" variety last year, and the early July weather was incredible, almost too hot for tomatoes.
Blackcurrants - and other berries, but blackcurrants (and raspberries) are the only ones I really care about. Major bird protection efforts with netting this year.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
First re-impressions of Estonia
+ 1. There really is a lot more public Wifi. Everyone's sick of the low-hanging "Estonia/incredibly wired/innovative/competitive" meme, so let me get it out of the way fast. Before I left, there were hints that, as in other areas, this was one where the reality might not measure up to the claims, that it might be a case of a circa 2006-2007 claim overstaying its welcome. Nah. Face it, Estonia is much more wired than any other place. You can't take the gezellig out of Amsterdam and you can't take the ease of going online out of Estonia. And none of those OingoBoingo unsecured connections that just want your credit card, either. Sicily, where we were based, was not as bad as one might think -- just like Italians are the world FB leaders, they do like their Web, and that infamous 2007 terrorism act isn't really a big deal -- but in all categories of wired, Estonia prevails easily.
- 2. Supermarket produce sucks ass, and where are the streetfront greengrocers? Ha-ha, there are none at all. That's a tough one to get re-used to after a stint abroad. There's some decent groceries with carefully vetted, attractive and comprehensive produce selections -- NOP in Tallinn, posh-ish places like Stockmann are good -- then it's pretty much a wasteland. A county-seat Selver with sometimes literally rotting piles of fruit that no one bothers to check on or remove can be particularly bad. Maybe not all Selvers, and obviously I'm pushing it if I buy a coconut from Põlva Selver and expect south seas succulence. Still..
And...on the customer side, no one wears plastic film gloves when handling fruit and veg in the store, or is expected to! But they should. Not wearing gloves when handling produce is like me not removing my shoes when entering an apartment.
+ 3. Prices. Refreshingly low, for the most part. Some establishments rounded up their prices and some dutifully left them where they are, even though it means the euro price is something like 1.695. Those are just +/-1 % concerns, anyway, though they do usually say something about the establishement. In general, it's still a -10% country in the EU, and that's a good thing for you and me. Don't court change for the worse by buying things for more than they're worth.
+ 4. The country sure looks a sight. Very neat and crisp. Even relatively unmaintained forests have a severe beauty (which I was mighty sick of when I left in October, but...).
I don't even think there should be so much preoccupation with cultural landscapes and adding value to forests by maintaining them. Just let some hectares here and there go, don't touch them for 10 years, and see what happens. It'll probably look fantastic and they'll discover a new orchid there.
- 5. Drunks are out and about. From 2003-2010, I was a big fan of universally 0.5 L beer bottles in a world of silly 0.3L cans. But now I am not sure about alcohol policies and traditions (though of course the culprit is more the 2L plastic bottle and producers are trying to be more responsible). For the most part the population looks healthy. Very healthy. More than Italians, even. But then there are the folks who are wasted in broad daylight. Not many. Maybe it's a Saturday afternoon at the Tartu bus station - not the Ritz-Carlton, in other words. But there are a few people there who are simply wasted. Not schizophrenic homeless, which I wouldn't write about here. These are two ordinary guys who have FAILED, they're sitting there and making substantial progress on a dorm-style pyramid of beer bottles in plain sight. It shocked me, and I did not try to be shocked. Then the two shitfaced guys are trying to get on a bus to Tallinn without a ticket, And the driver was very professionally explaining that they needed to BUY a ticket. See, if I were the driver, there would be no conversation. You're drunk - you can't buy a ticket OR get on the bus. You messed up this time, today, you drank too much -- it's embarrassing for us, it should be awfully embarrassing for you -- good man, now cut your losses and make yourself scarce. GO HOME.
- 2. Supermarket produce sucks ass, and where are the streetfront greengrocers? Ha-ha, there are none at all. That's a tough one to get re-used to after a stint abroad. There's some decent groceries with carefully vetted, attractive and comprehensive produce selections -- NOP in Tallinn, posh-ish places like Stockmann are good -- then it's pretty much a wasteland. A county-seat Selver with sometimes literally rotting piles of fruit that no one bothers to check on or remove can be particularly bad. Maybe not all Selvers, and obviously I'm pushing it if I buy a coconut from Põlva Selver and expect south seas succulence. Still..
And...on the customer side, no one wears plastic film gloves when handling fruit and veg in the store, or is expected to! But they should. Not wearing gloves when handling produce is like me not removing my shoes when entering an apartment.
+ 3. Prices. Refreshingly low, for the most part. Some establishments rounded up their prices and some dutifully left them where they are, even though it means the euro price is something like 1.695. Those are just +/-1 % concerns, anyway, though they do usually say something about the establishement. In general, it's still a -10% country in the EU, and that's a good thing for you and me. Don't court change for the worse by buying things for more than they're worth.
+ 4. The country sure looks a sight. Very neat and crisp. Even relatively unmaintained forests have a severe beauty (which I was mighty sick of when I left in October, but...).
I don't even think there should be so much preoccupation with cultural landscapes and adding value to forests by maintaining them. Just let some hectares here and there go, don't touch them for 10 years, and see what happens. It'll probably look fantastic and they'll discover a new orchid there.
- 5. Drunks are out and about. From 2003-2010, I was a big fan of universally 0.5 L beer bottles in a world of silly 0.3L cans. But now I am not sure about alcohol policies and traditions (though of course the culprit is more the 2L plastic bottle and producers are trying to be more responsible). For the most part the population looks healthy. Very healthy. More than Italians, even. But then there are the folks who are wasted in broad daylight. Not many. Maybe it's a Saturday afternoon at the Tartu bus station - not the Ritz-Carlton, in other words. But there are a few people there who are simply wasted. Not schizophrenic homeless, which I wouldn't write about here. These are two ordinary guys who have FAILED, they're sitting there and making substantial progress on a dorm-style pyramid of beer bottles in plain sight. It shocked me, and I did not try to be shocked. Then the two shitfaced guys are trying to get on a bus to Tallinn without a ticket, And the driver was very professionally explaining that they needed to BUY a ticket. See, if I were the driver, there would be no conversation. You're drunk - you can't buy a ticket OR get on the bus. You messed up this time, today, you drank too much -- it's embarrassing for us, it should be awfully embarrassing for you -- good man, now cut your losses and make yourself scarce. GO HOME.
Monday, May 23, 2011
TAKE TWO: Springtime for Cannes, wintertime for von Trier
Top ten other things Lars von Trier could have said at Cannes:
1. Hitler was bad, bad, bad to the bone. He was the incarnation of pure monstrous evil. Nothing in this world or the next can touch him. I'm serious. No, really.
2. I am sorry for making a movie called the Antichrist which was NOT about Hitler. More importantly, I am also sorry for making the movie Antichrist, period. It should not have been made or even considered.
3. Hitler was absolute evil. By definition, nothing can be more evil. However, this leaves the door open for another to be more absolute in one's evil. Or does it? Can we explore the options? Look, I just want to talk about it. How do you feel? Is this mic still on? Kirsten, where are you going? I really want to hear your opinion! Come back!
4. Nothing is more absolute in his evil than HItler, but I am certain that Hitler at his best was only slightly less evil than Al Qaeda at its most annoying.
5. Nigger! Nigger! Nigger!
6. I'm not Mel Gibson. Nor am I Mel Brooks. Yep, I'm definitely not Mel Brooks.
7. Nor am I the guy who directed Der Untergang/The Downfall, which portrayed Hitler in his bunker as a human, wrestling with his demons. Speaking of which, can that director still attend Cannes?
8. I apologize for, as Richard Brody of the New Yorker put it, casting Nazi and Jews "in binary opposition, as if they were two sides to an argument." Looking at the films from Cannes in the past few years, I don't know where on earth I got that idea. Let's face it, I'm a basterd.
9. I'm pleased to announce that if Melancholia wins, my award will be accepted on my behalf by Michael Richards.
10. Anyone who sees even the slightest redeeming value in black humor, irony, cynicism and deliberately bad art should probably be blacklisted, disinvited, and lined up against the wall and shot...OK, OK, I'm an anti-Nazi.
1. Hitler was bad, bad, bad to the bone. He was the incarnation of pure monstrous evil. Nothing in this world or the next can touch him. I'm serious. No, really.
2. I am sorry for making a movie called the Antichrist which was NOT about Hitler. More importantly, I am also sorry for making the movie Antichrist, period. It should not have been made or even considered.
3. Hitler was absolute evil. By definition, nothing can be more evil. However, this leaves the door open for another to be more absolute in one's evil. Or does it? Can we explore the options? Look, I just want to talk about it. How do you feel? Is this mic still on? Kirsten, where are you going? I really want to hear your opinion! Come back!
4. Nothing is more absolute in his evil than HItler, but I am certain that Hitler at his best was only slightly less evil than Al Qaeda at its most annoying.
5. Nigger! Nigger! Nigger!
6. I'm not Mel Gibson. Nor am I Mel Brooks. Yep, I'm definitely not Mel Brooks.
7. Nor am I the guy who directed Der Untergang/The Downfall, which portrayed Hitler in his bunker as a human, wrestling with his demons. Speaking of which, can that director still attend Cannes?
8. I apologize for, as Richard Brody of the New Yorker put it, casting Nazi and Jews "in binary opposition, as if they were two sides to an argument." Looking at the films from Cannes in the past few years, I don't know where on earth I got that idea. Let's face it, I'm a basterd.
9. I'm pleased to announce that if Melancholia wins, my award will be accepted on my behalf by Michael Richards.
10. Anyone who sees even the slightest redeeming value in black humor, irony, cynicism and deliberately bad art should probably be blacklisted, disinvited, and lined up against the wall and shot...OK, OK, I'm an anti-Nazi.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Osama, life, and everything in it
A week has come and gone, but I suppose I'll still have to write something about Osama, since as we know OBL is the reason for everything -- the decade known as the 2000s; the War on/of Terror; this trying-to-be-funny blog; the award-winning Laughagainistan series; the second term of Bush and now the second term of Obama; the war in/against Afghanistan and Iraq, the coalition of the willing and unwilling; thousands of (willing) American deaths and who knows how many brain damaged; a disproportionately high number of (unwilling) Estonian deaths and who knows how many brain damaged; less importantly of course, the millions of deaths of innocent people in Iraq that wouldn't have happened under Saddam, at least not in the same way, and probably not at all; the rise of the radical right; the Tea Party; Sarah Palin; Justin Bieber, the list goes on. It all started with Osama. He appeared on the scene seemingly out of nowhere and killed. Worse, he made us kill -- yes, in an equivocating, state-sponsored way, but nevertheless -- kill.
Damn him!
**
I like being able to blame the rise of Justin Bieber on Osama. Because I can. And the funniest thing is, I actually have nothing against Justin Bieber! It's just a meme I have picked up and because everybody has been shouting him down for years, I've just gone along with it. I would never admit outside the privacy of this blog that I have any warm or neutral feelings for Bieber.
Part of the magic of the War on Terror is that it's fabulously open-ended (besides probably being infinite). It's a wonderfully compact, self-supporting space, anchored on exactly one 0-dimensional real-world point in a military cantonment in Pakistan.
You can see the magic in the definitions. A terrorist is NOT an enemy combatant governed by the rules of warfare as long as he is still on the field. Aha, but once he is in custody, the evil rogue coward becomes exactly that: an enemy combatant governed by the rules of warfare -- especially the rule of warfare that says I can torture him with impunity for whatever he's got without proving that he was in fact the combatant.
You can play this game with anything, but Jekyll and Hyde Pakistan is perfect. (Jon Stewart: Pakistan, both too clueless to know where Osama was, and too clever to hide him in such an obvious place.
Al Qaeda can be a secret, centralized organization with deputies and meetings. Aha, but until it's not, and it reverts back to its other, true identity -- as one perceptive magazine put it in the understatement of the year, "more than just a centralized organization based in Pakistan" and "a network of franchised or like-minded organizations, and an ideological movement in which followers sometimes act in isolation from leaders."
Which pretty much covers the range -- Al Qaeda can be one solo underwear bomber + one pot grower in an apartment in Pakistan with no Internet....unless it is a vast secret military-style organization -- the Saracen version of the Knights Templar.
As said, elegant.
*
I don't deny anyone a moment of celebration. I was not a party-pooper!
In general, I am broadly pro-celebration, even if it is related to death. If America is happy, I'm happy. It's part of a bedrock core faith I have that Americans are still on the right track, except for the occasions they go astray and emulate 1930s Germany. Then I say so.
"They're on the wrong track," I will say at a time like that. "If it gets any worse, I think we could see the day in our lifetimes when a foreign coalition of allies is at the gates of Washington. Seriously." Stuff like that.
But I believe singing, dancing and passing out candy are healthy and help defuse emotions, and even that maybe there was far too little of it in 1930s Germany.
A head on a stick outside the White House gates can be useful for rallying public sentiment and just as edifying as any government website.
Of course, they did not do the head on the stick part, and I do not agree. After giving us the Code of Hammurabi for three quarters-plus, the US reverted to some creepy, clinical moves right before the final buzzer, dumping the body in the sea in the dead of night and being all weird and coy about it when asked.
And as far as celebrations go, this one is sure to have a metallic, nasty-tasting aftertaste, if not a full-blown hangover --we don't really believe it's so clear-cut -- but heck, I didn't say that DURING the celebrations!
**
Damn him!
**
I like being able to blame the rise of Justin Bieber on Osama. Because I can. And the funniest thing is, I actually have nothing against Justin Bieber! It's just a meme I have picked up and because everybody has been shouting him down for years, I've just gone along with it. I would never admit outside the privacy of this blog that I have any warm or neutral feelings for Bieber.
Part of the magic of the War on Terror is that it's fabulously open-ended (besides probably being infinite). It's a wonderfully compact, self-supporting space, anchored on exactly one 0-dimensional real-world point in a military cantonment in Pakistan.
You can see the magic in the definitions. A terrorist is NOT an enemy combatant governed by the rules of warfare as long as he is still on the field. Aha, but once he is in custody, the evil rogue coward becomes exactly that: an enemy combatant governed by the rules of warfare -- especially the rule of warfare that says I can torture him with impunity for whatever he's got without proving that he was in fact the combatant.
You can play this game with anything, but Jekyll and Hyde Pakistan is perfect. (Jon Stewart: Pakistan, both too clueless to know where Osama was, and too clever to hide him in such an obvious place.
Al Qaeda can be a secret, centralized organization with deputies and meetings. Aha, but until it's not, and it reverts back to its other, true identity -- as one perceptive magazine put it in the understatement of the year, "more than just a centralized organization based in Pakistan" and "a network of franchised or like-minded organizations, and an ideological movement in which followers sometimes act in isolation from leaders."
Which pretty much covers the range -- Al Qaeda can be one solo underwear bomber + one pot grower in an apartment in Pakistan with no Internet....unless it is a vast secret military-style organization -- the Saracen version of the Knights Templar.
As said, elegant.
*
I don't deny anyone a moment of celebration. I was not a party-pooper!
In general, I am broadly pro-celebration, even if it is related to death. If America is happy, I'm happy. It's part of a bedrock core faith I have that Americans are still on the right track, except for the occasions they go astray and emulate 1930s Germany. Then I say so.
"They're on the wrong track," I will say at a time like that. "If it gets any worse, I think we could see the day in our lifetimes when a foreign coalition of allies is at the gates of Washington. Seriously." Stuff like that.
But I believe singing, dancing and passing out candy are healthy and help defuse emotions, and even that maybe there was far too little of it in 1930s Germany.
A head on a stick outside the White House gates can be useful for rallying public sentiment and just as edifying as any government website.
Of course, they did not do the head on the stick part, and I do not agree. After giving us the Code of Hammurabi for three quarters-plus, the US reverted to some creepy, clinical moves right before the final buzzer, dumping the body in the sea in the dead of night and being all weird and coy about it when asked.
And as far as celebrations go, this one is sure to have a metallic, nasty-tasting aftertaste, if not a full-blown hangover --we don't really believe it's so clear-cut -- but heck, I didn't say that DURING the celebrations!
**
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