Happy New Year! And a new use for Hwy 61

2009 has already struck in some parts of the world. In Minnesota they are still counting and re-counting votes. Al Franken is leading by 50 votes. We like our media celebrities in Minnesota--remember Jesse Ventura? California has a thing for celebrities too, apparently.

Update: The famous Highway 61--now a runway. An airplane made an emergency landing on the Highway 61 expressway. “The engine ate itself for breakfast. That doesn’t happen often.” said the vice president of business admin for Cirrus. The engine apparently threw a rod shortly after takeoff, causing the aircraft to lose power and need to make an emergency landing.

And if that wasn't odd enough, after the plane landed on the highway--the passing traffic started honking at them! Ha ha, wish I had been there to see (and hear) that!

Oh well. 2009 is going to be a super-duper, fantastic, fabulous, wonderful and GREAT year! Happy New Year to you!

I didn't do it

Yesterday I was weeding and hoeing my garden. The neighbor cats (there were at least two who visited my cat box--I mean, my garden!) seem to be leaving it alone after the excellent suggestion of putting coffee grounds around the perimeter of the garden. Like I have a shortage of coffee grounds, ha ha. I was putting them into the compost pile but now they go directly into the garden. And no new cat diggings and smelly little piles, yay! Thanks for the great, and effective suggestions.

Here's a neighborhood who takes their pet ordinance a bit too seriously:

Family’s cat beheaded, then another one goes missing
Minneapolis Star Tribune Published Sunday, July 08, 2007
Shortly after moving into their home in the town of Carver, Minn., last year, Tammy and Barry Erickson were given a friendly warning: Their new neighborhood wasn’t very cat-friendly.
The couple found out just how unfriendly last week when one of their five cats, Soon-Yi, was killed and its severed head tossed into the family’s front yard, where it was found by Tammy Erickson while she was watering her plants on June 28. The next day another pet cat, Louis, went missing and hasn’t been seen since. “We think the same person did the same thing to him,” Tammy Erickson said Friday, wiping tears from her cheeks as she looked at pictures of her dead and missing cats.

The decapitation is being investigated by the Carver County Sheriff’s Office, which reports no similar cases in and around the town. “It’s a terrible thing to do to a pet,” Chief Deputy Bob VanDerBroeke said Friday. “We’ve been canvassing the neighborhood but have not come up with anything yet. We’re taking it quite seriously.” The incident has become the talk of the town of about 1,850 residents. An e-mail was circulated to City Hall workers telling them about the situation.

Though the Ericksons say a resident warned them about the neighborhood’s bias against cats after the family moved in last September, they said that none of the neighbors have complained to them about the cats. The Ericksons said the decapitation, while shocking, was not a complete surprise in retrospect, considering some of the incidents that happened since the family moved into the home last September. Weeks after the neighbor’s warning, someone stuffed a copy of the city’s pet ordinance in their mailbox. The sections on cats were highlighted, but city officials say the family was not in violation.

“I didn’t think anything of it,” Tammy Erickson said Friday. “There are other cats in the neighborhood.” Tammy Erickson said her children are taking the death and the disappearance very hard, especially Chloe Hetland, her 13-year-old daughter, who she said went into shock when she found out about Soon-Yi’s death. “She was the baby of the family,” the teen said of her pet. “I remember I was crying and in such deep pain.” Carver is just southwest of the western Minneapolis suburbs.

OK, this is a terrible thing to do to a beloved pet, or any animal. Not my idea of how to keep cats out of my garden. But are these people stupid, or what? Wouldn't YOU keep your cat safe inside your house after that very first warning? And I can't figure out what exactly the pet ordinance for that city would be, if the family wasn't in violation. Most leash laws mean exactly that--people are prohibited from letting their pets run loose in the neighborhood.

Anyway, no cats in my garden and I saw them both today, too, so nothing bad has happened to them. But the real news is that after the weeding and the hoeing I decided to thin out the radish rows. I had barely started doing this when I noticed that some of the radishes felt, rather, well--fat. I pulled up a chubby one and it was ready to eat already! So I thinned the radish rows by feeling around and pulling up the ones that were ready to eat, ten radishes in all. Then I took them in and washed up two of them and ate them. The first fruits of my garden, even if radishes aren't actually a fruit. It seemed like a miracle and I was positively glowing about it all the rest of the weekend. You'd think I'd never grown anything before, rather than having been raised on a farm as a child. It's a wonderful, spectacular miracle! And an edible one, best of all. And it has been two years since I had a garden. The one before this was at my little studio house in the country. Do you have a garden this year?

Violence here, too: not a happy 4th for all

Well, happy 4th of July Holiday to you! But it isn't a happy 4th for everyone. Here are some clippings from our local news:

Soldier murdered one week after returning from Iraq
Staff Sgt. Adam Sheda made it home a little over a week ago after an 18-month tour of duty with the Army National Guard in Iraq. His family could breathe a sigh of relief that a military death notification team never appeared at their door bearing bad news from the Middle East.

It was a team of local law officers who notified Sheda’s family that he lost his life about 3:40 a.m. Saturday when he was shot to death during a dispute.

He said witnesses said two to three shots were fired. Police believe two shots were fired. Sgt. Bob Shene, who leads the Police Department’s Violent Crimes Unit and who served 14 years as an officer in the Coast Guard hinted that alcohol fueled both men’s actions in Saturday’s incident, but he wouldn’t elaborate.

Staff Sgt. Adam Sheda had a myspace.com account:
http://www.myspace.com/CavSgtAdam
Be sure to look at his photos.

And the violence has continued. Here is the newspaper article of what I heard unfolding on the police radio last night:

Jul 04, 2007 - Police continue their search this morning for the person or people involved in a Tuesday evening drive-by shooting. Police say one woman suffered non life–threatening injuries. A neighboring child told the police: "I saw bullet cases everywhere." "It makes me feel weird because I might get stabbed or shot." Some witnesses indicated that a vehicle had driven by an address up here and fired some shots at some people on the deck and towards the residence." This wasn't the only report of shootings in that area on Tuesday. "There have been some ongoing disputes over the day, during the day, that might be related to this final incident here tonight." Police will continue their investigation today.

Violence and war are not just "over there" in Iraq and other countries, they're here, too.