spring comes to pa
friday, march 27th, 2009
with countless scenic, lightly snow-covered, family, commercial and the few large Agribusiness farms in both York and Lancaster Counties, most have long-ago geared-up for early Spring crop plantings. Massive equipment has been serviced & prepped all Winter-long, grain and seed stocks have been trucked-into giant co-op warehouses for sale and distribution, and fertilizers of all formulations have also been stockpiled, at-the-ready. It's all "weather-dependent", and the Mid-Atlantic Region's "Unending Drought From Hell" is in full-force. We've had 7" of snow since December 2008; our average is 31". We're 5" low on rain for February, and already 3" low in March. Yessiree-Bob: we're in a *drought*.
It's both a simple and basic life of subsistence, on the remaining "American Family Farms" and part of the "Eastern Breadbasket", which contributes to overall American Exports to feed the world's starving masses. The Midwest Breadbasket still dominates the landscape, but with recent weather anomalies of floods, the Eastern Breadbasket is playing an ever-increasing role in taking-up the "slack" in exporting extra tonnage. And yet on the massive Agribusiness operations, it's just "another day at the office". They rue the day.
These American Farming Operations — whether they be Conservative Christian Farmers, ultra-Conservative Amish or Big-Agribusiness — all have one objective: wait for the frost to come out of the ground, the soils become pliable again, and get their "cash crops" into the ground, at the earliest, optimum possible planting date. The traditional "Onion Snow" means nothing to operations of that size and scope, while to lesser Family Farm operations, it can spell minor-to-significant losses, unless the seedlings are sufficiently-hardened-off.
By early April, the landscape usually changes dramatically: soils are again quite workable, machinery opens furrows, mathematically-injecting seed and fertilizer into the freshly-opened earth, recovering those same planting pockets with Mother Earth, who germinates and nurtures her charges to fruition 60-to-90 days later, into harvestable crops. You can smell the "aroma" of freshly-plowed earthen fields as you drive by, with the windows down. I love that "smell" in the Spring. I connect to the fields. I must have been a farmer, in an earlier life, to be able to appreciate and relish the common things which 97.6452% of all people, overlook.
Once the crops — soybeans or corn — are in and flourishing, it's up to Mother Nature to take over an nourish them as the season goes by. Since both corn and beans are "scavenger crops", and can subsist on minimal moisture, a moderately-wet season is an added bonus for crop yield. Consider that for most farming operations, crops are either break-even, or a loss. Gov't subsidies help, and world market prices fluctuate to compensate the losses, if weather is destructive in other growing areas. Supply and demand.
This year, the world's demand will outstrip supply, and farmers might again make a well-deserved profit. I can only hope so.
Around The Garden Center®.
Spring "arrived" at 7:44am last Friday, as I was arriving at the GC&N Complex, and my other employees had already begun arriving. They were enthused that "Spring" was finally here, after a Winter of doldrums and disappointing snowfall. I usually stop for a coffee-to-go, 2 packs of Marlboros and sliced steak/egg/cheese on a split croissant, and that day was no exception. A cold wind was blowing, and it felt anything but Spring.
Lots of projects around the Complex were accomplished, several deliveries arrived, I worked on numerous lscp and lscp maintenance estimates, received dozens of calls for plant prices and mulch deliveries. According to Alan, my LSCP Foreman, we're in very god shape after the relatively-mild Winter, not needing any major repairs. I held the first Key Staff Mtg at 3pm in my Office — Alan, Jennifer, James, Seth — to bring everyone up-to-speed as to the weeks' coming schedules. Many topics were discussed and action agreed-upon. It was a good first meeting of 2009. I have the best team I've ever had in my 19yrs in this business.
It was an exhausting Friday — due to one employee's "ethical problem" — which, on top of a very personally-trying past 2-3 weeks, hit me when I got home around 6pm on Friday, missed "The Glenn Beck Program", didn't watch my favorite "Jericho" reruns, fed the cats, took a shower, and *crashed hard* for the night, at 9:30pm. I needed the good REM sleep and got 9 solid, uninterrupted hours. Best, most restful sleep I've had in months. 6am Saturday morning came a bit too early, but I had to be in by 8 since I had an employee coming in to help out with loading mulch etc, and there would surely be customers with the "Spring Itch" aplenty, visiting. Besides, I had more LSCP estimates to revise, and new ones to do, and get into the day's mail. Time is of the essence in getting the work estimates into prospective customers' hands, to get an "okay" and on to our rapidly-evolving work schedule.
I went to Mom & Dad's for lunch on Sunday, for pork chops, gravy mashed potatoes and peas and ice cream, also did some food shopping, which I missed from being sick last Sunday, washed the Jeep, and went down to the GC&N Complex to check on things. A-ok down there. With 8 position unfilled this season, it's going to be an uphill struggle to get it all done in time, but we'll preservere, as we've done in not-so-lean previous seasons.
The Winter's physical damage to the Complex was minimal, s compared to previous years, and the clean-up went quick, this year, so I was able to field a crew to begin LSCP Maintenance jobs, tree transplants and installs, and start scheduling LSCP Projects, ahead of The Open House. I still have enough workers to keep things moving along at the Complex, with bringing-out plant material from storage in the 7 GHs, and ready to receive the few new shipments of nursery stock which arrived this week, and the remainder which will arrive next week. Then, we're done for the year.
On Monday morning, a tractor trailer load of 3 west coast nurseries' plant material arrived, and we had it unloaded in >3hrs; then Alan and a crew went-off to a scheduled LSCP Maintenance Job, in nearby Stewartstown. Two other men stayed behind to work on unloading specimen plants from the storage GHs. Part-timer Tyler joined us early afternoon, in unloading the GHs. I had 2 LSCP site visits in Stewartstown, and completed them, and the concurrent work estimates. James had LSCP Mtgs, Jennifer & Dad worked on pricing new pottery, chemicals, etc in the Retail Bldg. I armed the buildings, locked-them-down, and left for the day at 5:20pm. I have a "huge list of things to do" this week, and I needed some sleep to refresh my batteries.
As if I, a hard-working, honest, small business owner-operator, doesn't have enough taxes, rules, regulations, laws and other assorted government bullshit to interfere with my business and ultimately, my life, the worthless lib-dem assholes & RINO morons in Harrisburg, have thrown-up another piece-of-shit law to f•ck-up my business: The Home Improvement Consumer Protection Act (HICPA). While I agree that there are far too many crooked and unscrupulous so-called businessmen and businesses preying on the elderly and unsuspecting consumers, another law isn't what's needed; rigorous and brutal enforcement of the existing laws, is what's needed. When caught, those crooks need to be summarily, publicly executed. Zero recidivism. Same thing I'd do with all child molesters: kill them. Now, all of us have to register with the PA Atty General's Office, Bureau of Consumer Protection ($50), become state-certified, purchase special work (written) contracts ($300+) for all work to be performed, effective July 1st. I went online Tuesday to fill-out lengthy forms, pay $50.00 registration fee + $1.25 credit card fee, and got a (temporary) "HIC (Home Improvement Contractor) Certificate, a web-printed page, until the actual one arrives in the mail. Here's some of the hoops I and thousands of others now have to jump through. Nice, huh? Killing the crooks and offenders is a much cleaner process, IMO.
I was in by 7am on Wednesday, and the day was a veritable madhouse, as new landscape customers descended upon the complex, wanting appointments, designs and our expert products and service. I forwarded several leads to James, my LSCP Designer. Deliveries of various products, clothing, gear etc continued throughout the day. The volume of phone calls was astounding; I was swamped and after a very quiet Winter, I quickly developed a massive headache and began eating aspirin by the handful. I spent an hour on the phone with an out-of-town attorney, working on a new contract (which he'd patented) for my company, to comply with the new HICPA Law. I had two site visits in nearby Stewartstown and Shrewsbury. My employees continued setting-up the nursery, while James & Seth did a tree transplant/ installation in West York. There were at least 15-20 people stopping-by to "look around", sub-contractors stopping by to check our inventory, and several customers dropping-off plant lists for phases they want to complete this Spring. I was glad when 5pm came around, and I could get home and away from all the activity. Too much, too quickly. Wheeeew!
I still had the headache when I got up Thursday at 6am, so I took some more aspirin and went back to sleep. I finally got into work around 8:45am, and began answering incoming calls for more lscp design/ water garden work. The much-needed rains came just after 1pm and continued through the evening. With 40°F temps, it was miserable outside, but my crews kept working on renovating the GHs' interiors, and then called it quits around 4pm. I rescheduled a customer's 2-day lscp maintenance job to mid-April, since we'd have been rained-out and not finished it. I fed the birds with 30lbs of seed and a ¼ loaf of bread, and enjoyed watching them feed in the continuing rain, until 5pm.
Things Which Make Your Head Explode™.
A proposed Georgia law would require prospective voters to prove citizenship, a practice opponents say would keep the poor, elderly and minorities away from the polls as taxes and literacy tests once did. Bullshit. The lowlife, criminal lib-dem filth want illegals to vote their corrupt candidates into office, to maintain power. Voting is the most right of the US Constitution, and proving that you're a US Citizen, should be mandatory in all 50 states. (No, dumbfuck Obama, there isn't 57 states, you shit-for-brains sambo!)
The commies & socialists at the Department of In-Justice (DOJ) have launched an investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona following requests by congressional Democrats and allegations by liberal activists that the department has violated the civil rights of illegal aliens. These traitors, communists and socialists — Reps. John Conyers (COMMIE-MI), Jerrold Nadler (PIG-NY), Zoe Lofgren (SLUT-CA), and Robert Scott (SCUM-VA) — requested the investigation, and radical left-wing hate-monger/activist groups such as National Day Laborer Organizer Network and ACORN launched petition drives and rallies in support of the hate-Whitey probe.
Sooooooo, the UN (Useless Nations) wants to "criminalize all defamation of islam"? It's not a religion. It's pure stinking garbage.
America's Game Hunting Laws are stricter than its Immigration Laws. I need some duct tape; my head is about to explode! Un-fricking-believable!
More than one out of every five dollars of the $126 million Massachusetts is receiving in "earmarks" (9,000+ in the bill!) from a pork-laden $410 billion federal bill federal "spending package", is going to help preserve the legacy of the criminal, corrupt, murderous, alcoholic, drug-addicted, lib-dem, lowlife dirtbag Kennedy filth? Did anyone find the duct tape, yet? My cranium is about to fricking explode!
The worthless USPS, which lost $3 BILLION last year and required another 1¢ increase in stamp cost, is buying $1.2 MILLION homes for its employees? Where's the duct tape!
If a "bad economy" is all that it takes to get criminal, illegal aliens to "reconsider coming to/staying in the US", I'm for it 50% of the time. If that's what it takes to get those murderous, criminal subhuman filth outta here! I can handle it, as long as it's "scheduled", and I know what years it's going to happen in. Okay. Whatever it takes, dammit!
Commie, socialist shitholes like Costco, Starbucks and Whole Foods Market Inc, have decided to endorse the corrupt, criminal unions' "Card Check" (Employee Fair Choice Act), which will destroy small businesses, just as unions have destroyed GM, Chrysler, Ford, CAT, Harley etc.
Lowlife, Subhuman, Garbage Filth.
Now the murderous Chi-Comms have filled once-reputable and safe Johnson & Johnson products, specifically Baby Shampoo, with deadly cancer-causing carcinogens, as fillers — formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane — to import back to the US and other unsuspecting markets. I will never touch another J&J product, ever again! I've thrown all my remaining items into the garbage, where J&J Chick-Shit belongs! Fuck China! If it comes from China, I don't buy it. Period.
Fonts For You™.
Many Journal entries are best viewed in the Charrington Roughened and the Orlando typefaces. You may already have Century Gothic on your Windows-XP machine, and that's almost always used for the body copy or subheads, so grab it, if you don't already have it; you're reading it now. They're free from my website. Grab 'em! Save them to your HD, and install to C:/Windows/Fonts (folder), thru your WIN XP Control Panel > Fonts > File > Install New Font. Simple stuff; just takes a few minutes.
Here are a few others, which have been used in my Journal: Papyrus and Acoustic Bass, and Caesar Regular and Carleton and Charrington Strewn and Catherine. If you get and install them, you'll see how much nicer these pages are to view and read. Plus, they add to your repertoire of available fonts in MS-Word, as WIN-XP System Fonts, so you can use them for your daily documents.
Here's a new one, for your Windows/Fonts folder: Sketchy.
The Global Warming Money Pit™.
Have you seen this video: "BBC: The Great Global Warming Swindle"? It was outright-banned from leftist, hate-filled, dirtbag lowlife scumbags, Google.com's and YouTube.com's websites, by the mentally-ill, left-wing, global warming idiot wackos, but I've preserved it, for posterity, aka you, me and *ours*. Watch, be informed and download it for others to see. It's on my corporate server, and will stay there, BTW.
Here's what the Global Warming Scam is all about. Sweet, huh? They're so transparent, aren't they?
Here's everything you need to know about the Global Warming Fraud, and why it's a good thing. It's a l-o-n-g article, so get a sandwich, iced tea and settle-in, for a very informative read. I'm right there with you, BTW.
The "Greenhouse Effect" is a natural and valuable phenomenon, without which, the planet would be uninhabitable. Global Warming, at least in recent times, is real. CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas; 95% of the contribution is due to Water Vapor. Man's contribution to Greenhouse Gasses is relatively insignificant. We didn't cause the recent Global Warming and we cannot stop it. Solar Activity appears to be the principal driver for Climate Change. O2 is a useful trace gas in the atmosphere, and the planet would actually benefit by having more, not less of it, because it is not a driver for Global Warming and would enrich our vegetation, yielding better crops to feed the expanding population. CO2 is not causing global warming, in fact, CO2 is lagging temperature change in all reliable datasets. The cart is not pulling the donkey. Wake-up, folks.
Here's a listing of The Best Global Warming Videos on the Internet.
Hey, fat, shit-for-brains, bloated, liar, huckster, fraud, criminal, charlatan, scumbag, loser, disgraced ex-VP AlGoreBore (LIAR-TN), is back using $300 million of OPM (Other Peoples' Money) to promote his Global Warming Bullshit, after the worst Winter in over 100 years. Welcome back, fatso huckster asswipe, AlGoreBore!
CO2 bad? No; CO2 is good, and we need more of it, or we're in for a very cold period, very soon. Here are the facts about CO2.
Roger Revelle of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Harvard University and University of California San Diego, spits on the lying scumbag, AlGoreBore. My, my, oh my. (((snicker))) No, there's no consensus on Glo-bullshit Warming, other than it's a LIE! Just ask Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, Richard S. Lindzen; he's eminently-qualified to call AlGoreBoreAsshole, a LIAR! As I am.
There's another "ice age" coming, not the AlGoreBoreLiar 'Glo-bull warming' crap.
Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica collapses in 2002 = Glo-bullshit Warming? Doubt it.
Read this Glo-bullshit Warming idiocy. Go ahead; I'll wait.
AlGoreBore's "hypocrisy"? See it right here!
You need to watch this 30 minute film; it's an eye-opener if you think that we're running out of crude oil, and that America has no reserves. We have more oil and natural gas in Alaska alone, than all the rest of the world's known reserves, COMBINED! Grab an adult beverage, and watch it.
Better get out your Winter coats, 'snuggies', wool socks and snow shovels, as it seems we've got an 80-year "Little Ice Age", on the way. Yawn; no biggie.
AlGoreBore's "Glo-bull Warming Bullshit" has spawned so-called 'cottage industries' around the world, worth hundreds of millions and probably billions of dollars, for green corporation validation, carbon credits, foundation & university climate studies, grants and a host of other BS-related crap to his lies and garbage. Global warming competes with cancer and competes with AIDS for a finite amount of money. This year's natural resurgence will surely see the global warmists, led by celebrity warmist, Gore, compete viscously for those US Taxpayers' hard-earned dollars. And I'm betting that the really important disease, cancer, loses to Glo-bullshit Warming and AIDS. Dammit.
F*ck all the "Glo-bullshit Warming Alarmists"! I say, FUCK-THEM-UP, and cleanse the planet, if they try to physically-intimidate and hurt anyone! I will; count on it! "Get in my face", assholes, and that'll be your last day on this Earth! If there are any "dissenting scientists" out there, who need protection, just get in-touch with me, and I'll guard you & yours. You can count upon that, folks!
Have you taken "The Global Warming Test"? If you have a sentient, functioning brain, and a simple knowledge of "the facts", you'll easily get a 10-of-10, as I did. Go ahead, and give it a try!
Read this article and pick-out "The WWF's Big Lie". If you chose this paragraph — "Summer sea ice is now forecasted to completely disappear in the summer months sometime between 2013 and 2040 — something which hasn't happened for over a million years." — you'd be right. There isn't, and never has been and ice on the earth dated at a million years old, and who the hell was around back then to begin recording it? The lying sacks-of-shit at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) are typical lowlife, left-wing wacko scumbags, in-bed with the "Glo-Bull Warming" Crap, of asshole AlGoreBore and his phony, money-making scam. The oldest, and not reliably-dated ice cores are >160,000 years, and those are shaky in fact, at best. So where did the lying WWF pull the million year crap from? Their asses, of course!
Shit-for-brains, mentally-ill, fat, bloated liar, AlGoreBore's (LOWLIFE-TN) "ally", in NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by AlGoreBore's chief scientific ally/"asshole/butt-buddy"— Dr James "Moron-Cretin-Asshole" Hansen (DIRTBAG-NASA) — and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that "last month was the hottest October on record". Total, factual bullshit and lies. This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years. So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerized temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-skeptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running. Read this article, and find out why both lying, corrupt, criminal, subhuman idiots, GoreBore & Hansen, should be stood against a wall, and shot, IMO. In fact, the pathetically-socialist, left-wing UK, has just begun to awaken to what the "Climate Change Bill" will do to destroy their nation, or what's left of it. IMO, it's probably too late now to save the UK, but at least some of the more Conservative people over there, will at least get the chance to flee to America (or elsewhere), before we also "go down the proverbial dumper", as they've done. Heh.
On Friday, January 2nd, I ran a fully-attributed story in my weekly "Journal", which had links to other stories and facts, thoroughly-debunking AlGoreBore's trillion dollar scam and fraud, Global Warming". The Daily Telegraph UK's columnist, Christopher Booker, was the erudite author, and here is the link to that story. Nice job, Mr Booker!
Now, lowlife shit-for-brains dirtbag, Arkansas Gov Mike "DumbAss Turd-Boy" Beebe (ASSHOLE-AR), said that global warming is serious problem, not a "hoax," and requires more than a state response. "I think it's a threat, and I think global warming is occurring," Beebe-The-Shithead said in response to a caller to his statewide radio program who said he believed the climate change crisis was a "hoax." Idiot. Stupid idiot. Global warming is bullshit, you two-bit asshole! Crawl back inside of AlGoreBore's rectum, dumbfuck!
And global cooling goes merrily along, without any help from us mere humans, as it has for millions and millions of years.
Another "lie/error" in the favor of Glo-BULL Warming's false bullshit and lies? Got duct tape?
Some People Just Need Killing™.
It's not my intention to be the judge here — that's God's "job" — but rather to "hasten the meeting" so that He can send the following subhuman filth to the "Fires of Hell", "River or Lake of Sulphur", or whatever He deems appropriate. I'd gladly/happily volunteer, at no cost to any of my Hard-Working, Fellow US Taxpayers, to gladly/gleefully/happily headshoot these murderous, lowlife dirtbags of all stripes — their skin-color doesn't matter to me, at all — and rid American Society's innocents (especially our precious children and the frail, defenseless elderly) of them, once-and-for-all. And yes, I'd rather see one innocent man convicted and executed, than 10 murderers/robbers/child rapists-murderers freed, to rob, rape and murder again. Hey; call me an "Old Fashioned Conservative"! Too harsh? Nah.
I'll pitch-in $10 for the assassination of Georgie Sore-ass!
A Canadian judge ruled Thursday that a man accused of beheading and cannibalizing a fellow Greyhound bus passenger is not criminally responsible due to mental illness. The decision means Chinese immigrant Vince Li will be treated in a mental institution instead of going to prison. WHAT? KILL THE FUCKING GOOK!
Coca-Cola Television Advertisements.
Marking yet another triumph for those savvy team players capitalism and media, The Coca Cola Company has graciously donated its archive of television commercials to the Library of Congress. Nope, this isn't an "Onion" headline, but rather a "variety of television advertisements, never-broadcast outtakes, and experimental footage reflecting the historical development of television advertising for a major commercial product." All your favorites are here: the Hilltop, Mean Joe Greene, and the Polar Bears.
