I am, of course, the Nervous Nellie. The vet’s office had to be glad to get me out the door.
Shu is accusing as we return without Sei, but when we do get him back, Shu will take one whiff of the disinfectant and hiss and slap at him.
Well, it was early up, and a BLT hold the L for breakfast, and now I may fold up and sleep some more. My stomach is upset.
Hopefully I can lighten your day.
Most of this is well documented, c.f. Knotts Berry Farm History, and
Wikipedia-Boysenberry.
But so’s you don’t have to go do that, in short, at the turn of the last
century there was a great boom in the technology of plant hybridizing,
e.g. Luther Burbank and the Russet-Burbank potato, etc. In 1923 Charles
Rudolph Boysen, then in Napa, California, crossed a blackberry, black
raspberry & loganberry and made what came to be known as the
Boysenberry. He couldn’t make a success of it in Napa, and left to
become the Superintendent of Parks in Anaheim. In 1935 Walter Knott got
it and made a big success of it. When I was a kid, several times my Dad
drove the family across LA county (no freeways in those days!), out to
Buena Park in Orange County and Knott’s Berry Farm, then the significant
amusement park in Orange County, as much to go to their Chicken Dinner
Restaurant as anything. I remember it was very good, over 5 decades
later. So now the Boysenberry is, so I believe, well known, and
deservedly so.
What isn’t so well known is why Boysen left Napa. I forget where I
learned of it. Mom used to live in Anaheim–maybe that’s where I heard
it. Anyway, the story I heard is that, one night in Napa a group of the
competing berry growers got together to make sure Boysen’s new berry was
not a commercial success! They turned up on Boysen’s doorstep one
night, torches in hand. Boysen came out thinking he was to receive
adulation for his new contribution, and told the crowd he would be
pleased to show them tomorrow. The leader of the group shouted out, “We
come to sieze your berry, not to praise it!”
*groans* hahahaha.
He could’ve answered, “Et tu, Blouet?” (And you, Blueberry?)
Well, it sounded good in my head, anyway.
Here’s hoping Seishi returns, teeth all shiny squeaky clean, a happy feline, and Eushu decides he’s fine. — Maybe some mint or catnip or tuna might improve internecine relations?
However, once harmony is restored, surely there will be the boustrophedon of greetings.
My cats, however, are disappointed: It’s raining, so they can’t dash out the door like they want. I too am disappointed: I had bacon on the grocery list. I forgot bacon. I shall endeavo(u)r not to devour the remaining supply.
I thought it best not to inform the cats of the bacon deficit. (They rarely like table scraps, which I can’t fathom. But bacon’s an exception they’ll make. Me too.)
Seriously, best wishes with Messrs Seishi et Eushu, esquires.
Alas, it’s truly disappointing how little I get to relate that story. I’ve tried, and usually it goes over their heads at 15,000 feet. Thank you for your appreciation. 😉
Apropos of the same guy, “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres”, (All Gaul is divided into three parts) Gallic Wars Book 1, Julius Caesar.
According to my annotated Shakespeare, Caesar did not say, “Et tu, Brute.” The patricians of Rome considered it much more elegant to speak Attic Greek. So, it would have been “kai sou, teknon?” Phonetically, I’m sorry, I don’t have Greek script here. “And you also, my son?”
Mayo is fattening, I don’t care for its taste, nor that of Miracle Whip. I can’t imagine mixing peanut butter and bacon, though I like both of them, just not together.
Had word from the vet’s. Seishi’s fine, sleeping off his hangover, and I’ll pick him up at 2.
Re the ideal bacon sandwich: quarter pound of thick-sliced crispy pepper bacon, Miracle Whip, white bread, toasting optional, but it better be fresh. 😉
Jane insists it has to have peanut butter and mayo, not Miracle Whip.
If you put peanut butter on a roofing tile, Jane would consider it…no, wait, you call those Pop Tarts.
When I was a kid, Mom made me peanut butter and bacon sandwiches a few times. I’ve also had PB/iceberg lettuce & PB/banana. Thought all were acceptable.
Is peanut butter one of Jane’s four basic food groups? In our house it’s augmented by mayo (NOT Miracle Whip), cookies (pref. Oreos or Fig Newtons), and Mac’n’Cheese.
GARLIC! (“The stinking rose.” “If your lover objects to your eating garlic, you need a better class of lover.”) Red Wine. Green Tea.
Well, Seishi is at home, on painkiller and antibiotic, and in good appetite. He’s woozy, kind of staggery and prone to wonder about—Shu pro forma hissed at him, but there were no fisticuffs, and the household is now at peace.
We’re rearranging the living room—horrid thing to pull on a kitteh coming home slightly buzzed. Getting new curtains. We’re going to do a new treatment on the two bay windows, and do it with Lowe’s printed voile panels dressing up the blackout curtains we use for the telly-viewing; and we’re doing just straight oriental-style straight hangings of stronger but compatible blue-greens instead of pleated drapes for the end panels behind which which the moving track withdraws. It’s going to look good. We’re using a double rod (Lowes) with the blackout/voile combo on the inner track, and the outer one mostly vacant except for the hanging panels.
Good to hear Seishi’s home and fine, though he may say “fine” is laughably relative in this context. Heh.
But… peanut butter and mayo? My mind’s boggled. I can’t quite imagine… but I may have to try it, just to say I did. After liking p.b. in a Thai dish, I’m thinking of trying a peanut and pumpkin soup I’ve heard of (African origin recipe). Very thankful peanuts and I get along fine.
Bacon’s always fine. I’ve been known to do a BLT Mexicanized: tortilla, toasted or not, bacon slices (2 or 3), grated cheese (whatever suits), and optionally, salsa or pico (fresh chopped from the deli dept., I’m lazy). But the classic BLT with mayo or Miracle Whip, wheat bread preferably, toasting optional, very fine stuff. Hard to beat a small amount of guacamole now and then too.
Hah, high calorie comfort foods from as many continents as possible!
Seishi will find the house has quit freefall spinning in a few hours. Poor fellow. Not even in his spacer’s blue breeches, or would he got for something a bit more flashy?
SO GLAD that Sei came through his Dental Adventures in good shape, and that Shu is being reasonably polite, and that all is well.
As for the BLT, the L is in my opinion optional, the T should be straight from the garden and the ripening sun, the B should be thick and crispy enough to crunch when you bite it,and good mayo is essential. (My husband prefers Miracle Whip, an area of disagreement.) Very fresh bread, toasted, none of the store-bought gooey stuff that sticks to teeth and the roof of the mouth.
And — sigh — our tomatoes are still green. Maybe in a couple of weeks.
And yes, peanut butter is one of the major food groups, and so is chocolate.
Well, he fell once, poor thing, trying to jump to the arm of my chair, and just lay there, confused, but he is now up and about, and jumping accurately. He really wants to cuddle right now. I think he’s glad to be home.
In ref the BLT, absolutely mayo, (Miracle Whup is anathema!) L is optional, B and T mandatory. Bacon should be in two layers — 4 strips length-wise, 4 strips width-wise. For preference, the T should be one of those big jobs where one slice per burger is sufficient. As for the peanut butter, different strokes for different folks. (Who am I to talk who dip my French fries in mayo?)
One grammatical question. I’ve notice in your writing and in that of several others the phrase “In the meanwhile” — I was always taught either “Meanwhile” (as in “Meanwhile, back at the ranch. . .”) or “In the meantime.” — but then, I am of the school which believes “extinction” is a state of being (become extinct) rather than a destination (go extinct) and I cringe whenever I hear “do” in such constructions as “I want to do science,” or “when I grow up, I want to do astronomy.”
Glad the baby is back with fresh clean teeth. Of course he wants a cuddle, those people did unspeakable things to him!
WOL – you dip your french fries in Mayo? My mom does that, too!! I thought she was the only one. She also puts sweetner in it to make a dip (sometimes with just a dash of milk, if it’s available). Myself, I grew up with Miracle Whip (dad’s preference) and have been unwillingly Turned into a Mayo lover… I’ll now eat my multi-layer BLT (with or without the LT LOL) with either MW or Mayo. But thick sliced roast beef with lettuce (and perhaps a side of chips) usually cries out for Miracle Whip. Other sandwiches, I’ll bounce back and forth. For salad without cheese, the topping of choice is Miracle Whip – or nothing. For salad with cheese… no topping, please, just lots of crushed up croutons. For some reason, I don’t like the huge chunks of crouton, I prefer crumbs.
Best wishes to you both. My Beekle will be having his beak trimmed again next week which is odd. It normally stops growing over the summer. Then again it’s been a wet summer (which we sort of needed) so perhaps that’s why. His feather cyst also seems to be bothering him a bit again. He’s not in pain but his flying is below par. Unfortunately there’s not a lot anyone can do about that really. The risks of almost any operation on a budgie are very high :-/
Sympathies for Beekie. Budgie? Is this the same as parakeet?
Perhaps it’s the anaesthetic birds don’t tolerate? One wonders about icing down the area and excising the cyst.
We had a pair of parakeets named Dickiebird and Suzie, and we got home to find our cat had knocked the cage down, it had come apart, and he had really mauled Dickie. He was shocky, wet from kitteh-spit, and we were sure he was a goner. Suzie was missing some feathers. But Dickie had a chipped beak, missing patches of fluff, most of his tail chewed, one wing missing a lot of feathers, and wounds, and there was no vet we ever heard of who dealt with birds. So we got—I think it was hydrogen peroxide—and sponged him down, clipped the broken feathers to make them neat, and kept him warm and in a dark area with Suzie. He recovered—he had had one heckuva adrenaline surge, and he was a pretty tough little bird. His beak always had a kind of scaly aspect after that, as if it had delaminated a bit, but he had all his feather-bases, so he regrew his feathers, with the next season. He was just one unhappy bird for a while. The cat never did bother him again—although we were careful not to leave the cat and the birds in the same room while we were gone.
‘Budgie’ is short for ‘Budgerigar’. They are a type of parakeet (small parrot) but they aren’t the only one. I have heard that in North America budgies are often called ‘keets’. The latin name is Melopsittacus Undulatus.
The cyst needs a proper excising. Draining then removal of the follicle(s) that caused it. It’s not an impossible operation but yes, the anaesthetic is a big concern. There could also be a problem sealing the wound and stopping him picking at it. Budgies just don’t have much blood in them so it doesn’t take much loss to cause a problem. He’s also of advancing age now (over 9 years) which doesn’t help.
It’s a tricky situation. I don’t want him to suffer but I also don’t want to put him through an unpleasant operation and I certainly don’t want to feel responsible for his early demise. It’s all part of sharing our homes with a pet I suppose. We give and receive a lot of love but they don’t last forever :-/
Oh, I understand that: I’m the world’s most anxious pet owner when I have to take one of mine in for a booster shot, let along sedation.
For me, it’s BLT, with Miracle Whip, white/wheat bread toasted, crisp lettuce, and no tomato. I can not, for reasons I don’t really get, handle raw tomatoes. I also find mayo rather bland and boring, having been raised on Miracle Whip.
For those interested in pets, I have a new pup to keep Katie company and help her be brave. Meet Pixie, a 3-4 year old rat terrier that I found roaming the streets and have adopted after the suitable “stray dog” hold period:
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh51/philospher77/IMG_0449.jpg
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh51/philospher77/IMG_0458.jpg
She’s very different from a greyhound!
As to Sei and Shu after the vet visits, have you tried putting a drop of vanilla on each of their heads? It’s the strange smells that tend to set cats off, and this will give them a group scent, so it can make it easier for them to recognize each other after things like the vet.
Vanilla! That’s amazing…
We use Feliway.
But we had a real reaction when SHu once got a whiff of menthol and went ballistic, right literally to the ceiling and the top of the window blinds. WE think what he reacts to is their disinfectant, perhaps, a volatile or the like.
I will try the vanilla. Catnip would be a possibility, but two drunk mad cats is not to be contemplated. 😉
That’s a cute pooch, Philospher! I too have a small dog, after always having big dogs! Irish Wolfhounds after which German Shepherds, sheep dogs etc. seemed small! There are benefits to small dogs; I sort of feel I should have a few more to make up to the size of one big dog! 😆
I’m glad Sei is OK. The rat terrier looks like what I’d call a Jack Russell over here (UK):
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT1V7rbOj1C3j51vyfLajbfI6WssfwaNmWE6uYuTrSv5X4NA3lZ
They are close relatives. From what I can tell, the rat terrier is a bit smaller and more finely built than the Jack Russell, which makes sense given that they were intended to control farm vermin (rats, squirrels, and, in Pixie’s case, grasshoppers, crickets, and flies!), while the Jack Russell was originally intended for fox.
Hmm…craving BLT now. I’m in Germany for a month, and finding the right kind of bacon and mayo is out of the question. Sigh….
I am also craving a BLT after reading these posts. Unfortunately, the carefully nurtured and expensively fenced tomato garden was invaded by the deer night before last and ate EVERY SINGLE TOMATO that was *just* beginning to ripen. (They ate the green ones too so there are none left.) The fence is over six feet high; the garden is not wide or long and should not have allowed them safe landing but months of hard work and anticipation are now a memory. Death to all deer in this vicinity! In this part of the country they are pure vermin, destroying livelihoods of farmers and orchardmen, and are a very dangerous, sometimes deadly, road hazard. They do not allow any flowers, not even mature roses with thick, large thorns. They got most of the apples, and are now working on the pears. I tried to chase one away this morning by yelling and clapping and had to get almost close enough to touch before it leaped away. I am sure it was back at the damson tree before I was out of sight.
It has been a very, very vexing summer here, with one household disaster after another which have nothing to do with the deer. I am VERY thankful that the family is well!! However nearly everything else around here is amiss to some degree.
Know how you feel… Our ripening tomatoes were eaten by squirrels! They are not as fast as deer — it took them a couple of days to do it, but they can get almost anywhere. Sigh.
Squirrels! The few apples that were too high for the deer were in perfect location for the squirrels. There’s also an electricity cable that goes through one apple tree and the squirrels use it as their highway. It is very common to see them run the tightrope with an apple in their mouth. I know the wild animals need to eat. I just wish they wouldn’t eat or damage EVERYTHING.
I remember watching a show on PBS with Barbara Damrosh and her husband Elliot (can’t remember his last name). They live in Maine and have a fairly extensive garden on their land. Barbara said that she used dried blood (found in the garden section of your retailer) and spread it around on the leaves of the plants. The deer would taste the blood and think they had bitten an animal, and since they are herbivores, they’d immediately stop. Of course, if it rains, you have to re-dust the plants.
Short of an 8 foot high electric fence, or if you can put up some kind of opaque material to hide the garden, deer won’t jump a fence if they can’t see what’s on the other side. The San Diego Zoo uses that theory to keep the antelope in their area.
I will keep the opaque material in mind for next year! It will look even worse than the ugly fence, but we do plant a garden to fill the freezer for winter as well as enjoying fresh food now. Practicality will win 🙂 I like the idea of the dried blood but I wonder a bit about disease. Didn’t they say to avoid bone meal around edible plants because of possible contamination by mad cow disease?
Our attitudes/laws about wild animals are totally nonsensical. I understand there are more deer in the US now than there were when the Pilgrims landed–“Bambi” sealed their fate. But I won’t get into that.
I’ve not had problems with them jumping into small fenced areas. One strategy I’ve heard of is running (stout) “guy-wires” from the tops of 8′ fence posts to “tent pegs” 8′ out, then stringing 2-3 (stout) wires at equal intervals across those “guy-wires”. The idea is to keep them from getting close enough to jump the fence unimpeded. No running starts.
Time for a combo Bambi & Brunswick stew: And at least you will know what they have been feeding on!
Mayo on french fries (“pomme frites”) is very German (although I suspect not exclusive to them), I picked up the liking for that when I was stationed there. BLT’s are nice enough, but what you really need is a juicy hamburger with the B, L, and T…and cheese…
Emptynest – I know people with some really good venison receipes.
After a deer almost came through the drivers door window (He hit one inch below) I got passionate about any dish with venison in it. Ah revenge!
Don’t mean to come the snob-but I never liked mayo until I tasted the homemade article. And discovered how easy it is to make in the blender.
My husband does hunt deer in the late fall and we often have a deer or two in the freezer. I usually ask for the meat to be ground like hamburger, and it is very delicious in chili beans, spaghetti sauce, and my husband even likes it grilled as burgers, but that’s not my favorite. The revenge is sweet, but they win by producing two and three fawns at a time the next spring. Our county has allowed a longer hunting season and allowed more deer per hunter to be killed, but the deer still overwhelm us. I’m sorry a deer got your car, and I’m glad it wasn’t worse! My husband has a long commute, and he has hit many deer over the years.
mmm I’d always associated mayo for frites with Belgium. I’m a catsup guy. Oddly, I don’t like fresh tomatoes much (but I’m working on it).