reach out, reach out and touch someone posted 11/23/04

military humor

yeah, i know. i didn' take this picture, but i like it, and it's my blog.

the horrors of aging posted 11/17/04

i was doing some minor packing in the garage. we're getting ready to pull up tentpegs here in napa, and are moving to vacaville in a couple of weeks. hence the packing. i came across some old photos from my young sailor days. i scanned one in, and thought i'd share what 27 years, a couple of kids, 50% overtime, and a hell of a lot of fun will get you. for those squeamish viewers, please avert your eyes.
young bo the nook, (5'10", 180 pounds, 4% bodyweight measured by the doctor) attending school in hawaii, 1977. we used to joke that you could always tell if a fast attack submariner had been to school, because he was the only one on board that didn't look like he'd seen a ghost, what with a great tan and all. what's really scary is my kids are older than i was when this picture was taken. edit: just looked at this picture, and the bigger version hidden underneath it, and it really looks orange. doesn't look that way on my monitor at home. oh well.


bo the nook (5'something, 270 pounds, and the body weight percentage meter pegged), 27 years and countless pizzas, ribs, and other goodies later. taken this summer while working on my rental. scary. really scary

remember the story about the young girl posted 11/10/04

and the mud puddle?

well, here is a picture of her landing. sorry, the res sux, but it was with a cheapy disposable camera. she's the yellow thing inside the oval.

and here she is post splash. note mom's rather critical look regarding her daughter's current state of cleanliness. i would like to point out that this young lady landed in a big assed mud puddle, and yet she was relatively clean. comes from years of softball, sliding into second base, according to her dad!

and one last shot of me and some of my many many kid visitors during field trips. "Hey kids, when we get back, you get to go out in the field and pick a pumpkin the size of your head."

and here's what a traffic jam on the farm looks like. that's my brother-in-law Doug behind the wheel. some days we had as many as 1200 kids, and an indeterminate number of parents/teachers/aunties/etc that came along for the ride. we had 4 tractors and trailers running non-stop from 0900 until around 1300 on the busy days

drivin' the deere posted 11/4/04

click on pix to see a larger view.

ever notice now some cameras seem to put on a wheelbarrow of middle when you get your picture taken? me too. i don't know what it is about these modern cameras, but they all have a screwy lens on them

adding this just because i liked it. the kids love exploring and playing at the patch

latest photos from the patch posted 11/2/04

ok, i know there is only a limited sized pipe for some folks, so i've thumbnailed all the images and made them clickable to go to the full sized 600x450 pixel images. actually, even those are "shrunk" due to constraints imposed by photobucket. i am not complaining, because the service is free. just letting you know if you want a higher res/bigger image shot, email me and i'll see what i can do for ya.

so here goes:

how cool is it that we had a total lunar eclipse just days before halloween?

the evening colors were often spectacular. i don't know how to describe the sense of peace i feel out there in the evening, so i'll just let the pictures tell my story.

a couple of samples for the imagination challenged

a couple of varieties of pumpkins pops grew this year

uncle john, pops, and yours truly

a couple of pictures from pop's fruit stand: Perry's Organics Fresh Farm Produce

man, i can hardly wait for next year. this year was a mud filled, crappy weather affair, and i still had a blast.

sky and sun pictures posted 10/14/04

i don't know if the fires burning around the napa valley and the sierra foothills are in the national news, but so far there are something like 60000 acres that have burned in the last couple of days. as you can imagine, the air quality and color is just a tad bit off. the following pictures are not manipulated at all, except to resize for use in the blog. way ugly out there

this is what the sun and sky looked like, towards the east at about 1000 this morning. this was taken in front of my workplace in sacramento.


this is looking east at noon. see the gradations of smoke? the whole place smelled like a campfire gone horribly wrong


this is the evening sky in napa, looking west. it's about 1700 in this picture, and it should be bright out. the sun is so occluded that you can look directly at it. actually the sun has the appearance of a total eclipse. very muted and red/pink. it's quite eerie to tell the truth.

it was another fun weekend at the pumpkin patch posted 10/12/04

finished downloading and editing a couple of pictures from this weekend. sorry alan, no pix of me on the tractor yet. but i do have some good shots.

click for larger imagehere's a view of the front 40 from behind the melons towards the pumpkin patch, with the corn maze to the left.


click for larger imagehere are three of the tractors we're using for the rides. the little guy in the front is a 50+ year old john deere model A. i smashed my fingers one year installing a power steering unit on this dude, and it works like a champ. leaks oil around the power steering seals, but hell, it is OLD after all. all of the tractors are used on the farm. no barn queens (except for the other two old deeres. haven't got the bugs worked out enough to make them reliable to give rides this year. too bad)


click for larger imageanother view of the tractors and the trailers.


well, here i am, bothenook in my sunburned glory.


my lady love, the nook's long suffering wife Diane. yup, i married the farmer's daughter


a couple of wagon loads of hardy explorers. pretty funny, i told them that i've had my picture taken about 50000 times by folks on rides, and now it was fair turnabout. i warned everyone that if they had a criminal past, or needed to remain incognito, they should turn their heads!

that's a bummer posted 10/9/04

went to get in my car this morning, and found the driver's side front window laying in about a bazillion pieces in my front seat. looks like a bunch of high school kids pumped up on "spirit week" were roaming the streets by my in-laws home in fremont. called the cops. guess what? they don't even respond anymore. sent me to a website, where i entered the info. that's it. cost me $249.52 to replace the window, since there was only one place open that did on site repairs. one frickin' window, $249.52. i'm in the wrong business. i'll post pictures once i'm back in napa, and download them. it would have been better money-wise if they just slashed a couple of tires. i'm so bummed.

edit: here's a picture of what i found

fuzzy tailed rats posted 10/7/04

so we have this walnut tree in the back yard. and a pear tree too, but that's another story. because we are a veritable smorgasborg for rodenta, i get to listen to the little buggers squawking and husking and cracking walnuts from the time the walnuts ripen until the next year, when the walnuts ripen. in otherwords, these little buggers are noisy. and destructive. i've had the phone lines (that means my DSL line, most importantly) replaced because these critters ate the insulation off the wires. i was internet free for 6 agonizing days until the phone company figured out what the problem was, and then another 5 days until someone actually came out to fix the problem. i don't like these little dudes. but i do have to admit they have a certain "cute" factor in their favor. much cuter than the 'possums that raid the cat's food. about even on cuteness with the raccoons. but at least the squirrels don't rear up and challenge me when i catch them in the garage like the 30 pounder i interrupted breaking into the cat food storage container. that was interesting. anyway, here's a shot of one of the fuzzy tailed rats in my back yard, chowing down on a walnut.


click on picture for the whole shot, critter in situ in the yard.
damn squirrels. only thing they are good for is target practice with the bb gun, and my neighbor calls the cops every time she hears me cock the old red ryder daisy.

more pictures from the farm posted 10/5/04

please pardon the big space. blogspot has some weird defaults that i can't figure my way around












click on thumbnail for larger image

pumpkins 2004 first photos posted 10/5/04

so, here are a couple of pix. as always, click on the picture for a larger (about 250kbyte) version.


the sign says it all. all are welcome, and the patch is a place to wander around, look at pumpkins, and let the kids run their backsides off. i love playing farmer's helper for a month.



well, there he is, the man himself. my father-in-law has been farming his whole life. and now that he's in his 70's, he only puts in 15 hour days, instead of 20 hour days, like he did for the first 50 or so years he worked the farm. this is Farmer Joe, and he is an icon in the Fremont area. we get 4 or 5 generations that come out the pumpkin patch, and they all have memories of Perry Farms pumpkins from their youth. it is just amazing. i've been a gypsy most of my life. i can hardly believe listening to pop and his cronies talking about what happened to such and such one day when they were all in the first grade together, some 66 years ago.



we seperated out some of the bigger pumpkins to make it easier for the customers/us to load. these guys run the gamut from about 30 pounds up to 120 or 130 pounds. i carried one out sunday that had to weigh at least 150 pounds. guess i'm getting a tad older, because i had a little difficulty getting my arms around that darned pumpkin, pick it up, and chuck it onto my shoulder. getting it the 150 yards or so out the the truck was a little easier. i would have loved to be at her house when hubby came home and found out he had a HUGE pumpkin to get out of the back of momma's SUV. hehe.



and i couldn't finish this photo essay without at least one picture of the flower bouquets we make up from statice and straw flowers, grown and harvested right there on the farm. hell, even the flowers are certified as organic produce, with their own organic labels and everything. dried properly, these flowers last until you get tired of looking at them