And then, there were none.

The gardens are gone.  We made our final harvest this weekend.

Lots of peppers and tomatillos...

mean salsa verde and maybe we'll try our hand at a hot pepper relish or chow chow.

And one tiny gourd.

The gourd was a bit of unexpected fun.  We put the seeds in the ground as a last minute, late decision so I thought the only thing we'd see was vines.  I was pulling vine off the fencing to get rid of it and found the little guy.  I need to figure out how to dry it out and make it into a little GrowDammit bird feeder.

The idea for hot relish comes from our friend Bo out at Brookberry Farm.  We featured Brookberry as a celebrity guest garden because he is an amazing photographer and everyone should buy his book.  Well, As a Man Thinketh isn't his but they did a reissue of a classic using his wonderful pictures.  If you fan the page, you'll get a lovely inspirational quote every day.  They put me in a good mood, and help remind me that if I work to make myself a more spiritual, better person then I improve my situation and the world around me.  Whoa, that got deep for me.  And no, it's not just a bunch of religious quotes from the Bible.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's really not for me.  Don't judge.  The Bible is against that.  Even if you friend the page, seriously buy the book.  It's beautiful.  And feel free NOT to buy it from Borders, because they stiffed him on some royalties.

We had fun heckling our friends at Brookberry a little this year by taunting them with our clearly superior gardening skills.  They handled it pretty well, by mostly putting us on polite ignore.  All in good fun, and we look forward to being ignored again next year.  Haters.

I Swear to God Y'all...The Ghost of Steve Jobs is in my MacBook Pro.

I am seriously not trying to disrespect the dead.  The man was a goddamn genius.  He was my generation's Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Edison.

I did feel bad for making him retire. Okay, so I didn't make him retire; however, I sure looked like an asshole after I proclaimed that I did when I issued my open letter voicing my dissatisfaction with every Apple product I have ever owned.  Disclaimer - I acknowledged that at least part of my complaints most likely involve User Error.  Or most of them even.

Then a great man with a great mind who gave us the impossible passed away.

I swear to God he took up residence in my laptop.  Again, I mean no disrespect. Here's the thing.  The day after he died, the Safari browser on my Macbook just  up and disappeared. I whined at Ted, and he reinstalled it.  Things got weird.  Google Chrome disappeared.  Later that day, my laptop started talking to us.  Like it was narrating every move we made, which might be kind of cool in real life but is creepy on the interwebs.  "iTunes open. Table 1. Started.  Adele file accessed."  It was like I had the Howard Cosell of Apple, or a cheesy color commentator.

And, now the Apple homepage with Steve's obit picture keeps randomly opening.

Right hand to God, ask the spawn.  Randomly opening.

Dear Steve Jobs,

You win.  Rest in Peace.

Regards,
  iAmClearlyNotWorthy

Dear Mark Zuckerberg,

I know you are a very busy man, but do you think you could take a minute of your time and rein in your Developers?  They've lost their damn minds.  This was my Facebook wall last night...

Seriously?

I know, I know.  This is a free service that I take advantage of, so you are probably thinking Quitcherbitching.  However, this might induce seizures.  Just because you dodged a bullet with the last lawsuit, doesn't mean you will the next.  Hey, I'm just trying to be helpful.

I'm sorry my last status update was "I hate you Facebook."  I don't really hate you.  I love you, or Facebook that is.  If it weren't for FB, Farmer Ted and I wouldn't be together.  Can you imagine?  I mean our blog entertains at least a few dozen people every day.

So, if you can't control your own employees can you please, please at least give us the option of having the old Facebook?  Or, can you make it so people's comments to their friends that I don't even know don't consume my wall.  And while I'm sharing my wish list, can you fix the glitch that doesn't hide all games even though I've asked it to hide all games.  Also, can you explain why stuff my friends do and say will show up on my phone and not on my laptop and vice versa?

Sincerely,
Love/Hate Relationship with Facebook

Mystery Solved

Sort of.  Apparently Blogger hasn't been playing nice, and people can't comment.  They've been leaving them on my FB page.

Who knew?

Christopher Columbus was "himself an eyebrow threader..."  Bwahaaahaaaa

And, turn people into cows?  What horribly misguided B movies have you been watching Maintzie?

A new poll is up. Vote y'all.

Next...The Mystery of the Manjinder remains.

Fool me once

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  This is the proverb I have come to live by when Googling.  The first one to get me was the Cleveland Steamer.  After the Dirty Sanchez, I became really particular about what I Google.  My point is that after falling victim to malicious Google suggestions, I wouldn't steer you wrong.  And I don't Google without caution, which is why I didn't fall prey to the Two Girls, One Cup nastiness.  Thank God.

Don't Google Cleveland Steamer, Dirty Sanchez or Two Girls unless you are a glutton for punishment and happen to have a barf bag handy, or you have a fetish for Number 2...not that there is anything wrong with that?

It is okay, but uncomfortable to Google Eyebrow Threading.  The only pain involved is sympathetic.  You know, like when someone describes in detail having a long needle stuck in their fluid filled knee to drain it and then likens what comes out to grape jelly...Thanks for that cringeworthy image TED.

So, here is how we decided the poll tie.  Ted was Chives, and I was Rosemary.

I can't BELIEVE I didn't put two and two together and recognize Ted as a creature of habit who would go with Rock every time.  Fool me once...Now I've got your number pal.

I still haven't worked up the courage to Google Manjinder.

Next...Chives win.  New poll tomorrow b/c the napkin is downstairs, and I'm too busy watching Pawn Stars to trot my ass down there to get it.

The Twilight Zone

We found it today.  Right here in Pennsylvania.  We woke up this morning to yet another rainy, overcast dreary day.  I don't think we've had a nice weekend up here since July, and it put me in a bad mood.  The only way to cure that is Road Trip.  Where to go?  Where to go?

My first thought was the beach.  Let's try Cape May, NJ.  What do you know?  They are having shitty weather there too.  Same for St. Michaels, MD and Jim Thorpe, PA, two places we really want to visit again.  I remembered hearing a blurb on the news Friday morning about a Garlic Festival in Easton, PA.  A  quick look at their weather revealed that the afternoon was supposed to clear up and only be partly cloudy, so we hopped in the car and headed out to see what we could see about some garlic.

We set Sybil for no tolls, and she did us right today.  We started to get nervous as we neared our destination, and it was pouring down rain.  It all worked out for us once we actually got to Easton.  Weatherwise that is.  We parked, and tried to find the festival.  There was no signage, so we walked toward the river as the festival was at the Riverfront Park.  We turned around when we got to the river and all we found was some

trash.

 Turns out, we were at the wrong river.  Easton, you see, is situated at the fork of the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers.  We finally got to the festival, and started to remark to each other what a weird town Easton is.  Weird weird, not good weird.  The Garlic Festival was small, and that's okay, but very few booths actually had to do anything with garlic?  Apparently, the fact that garlic repels vampires is a myth because most everyone there looked like a vampire.  We hotfooted it out of the festival area and walked back to the city center to see if there were any interesting little shops and whatnot.

And Easton just got weird weirder.  Maybe it's just us, but I'm not sure what it says about a town when the historic district and center of town has a Pawn Shop and Check Cashing place as a storefront.  Not one to be judgmental, we let other things convince us we had indeed landed in the twilight zone.  In addition to at least 15 salons, spas and nail places we found...

This kind of signage must not be good for business because the business was out of business.

A statue commemorating...

Huh?

Not a vintage shop...

...even though the decor transports you back to the 50's.

Ted can't help himself.

What the?  What is eyebrow threading?!?

And who or what is Manjinder?

When we got home tonight, we looked up the history of Easton and found out they also do weird things like covering up a statue of a civil war soldier every Christmas with this.

To each his own, I guess.  Maybe we only found the whole thing weird weird because of the crappy weather, and we still have no idea what the Christopher Columbus connection is.

Next...It's supposed to rain again tomorrow.  Sigh.  We decided the poll tiebreaker tonight.  The winner will be announced tomorrow.  We know y'all are on the edges of your seats.

Living with a retired chef...

Does not totally suck.  What can possibly suck about it you ask?  I never get to cook anything.  And I love to cook.  Okay, so suck is a strong word.

I got home last night from work and was in one of those whiny "I want something and don't know what I want and even if I knew what it is I want we don't have it in the house anyways" kind of moods.  So, I pulled out some shrimp, peppers, pasta and artichokes.  I was going to make Shrimp Fra Diavalo, but when I went for diced tomatoes all we had was tomato sauce.  And I was bummed because I don't like it made with sauce.  I prefer diced.  I whined at Ted while I started to chop some onion. Ted, being Ted, did what he does and started to help and the next thing I knew I was just standing there because he had completely taken over.

This totally did not suck.

Spicy shrimp in a tomato white wine sauce with peppers and artichoke hearts.  Now, I would have eaten the artichoke as a side.  However, after we took the picture he broke up the artichoke and mixed it in with the pasta.  Eating the dish all together, instead of making them separate bites, made the sweetness of the heart completely tame the spice.  That man is a genius.  He really should be on Chopped.

My only complaint is that we couldn't use GrowDammit artichokes.  We have plants, but they never flourished.  I think our growing season was just too rainy and wet for a lot of things.

Next...A GrowDammit 2011 retrospective b/c we'll probably be harvesting and pulling up whatever is left.  I think the season is pretty much over.  THAT totally sucks.

Google Rufus Dragon

and our blog post introducing him is #1 on Google.  How cool is that?  If you Google GrowDammit, our blog doesn't even show up.  How uncool is that?  A different blog called Grow Damnit, which is also not on topic, does. We have blog Google ranking envy.  The author of that inferior blog doesn't even spell Dammit right.  How much does that suck?

Anyway, Rufus Dragon is a goddamn Rock Star.  Sweet.

If you are old and didn't understand yesterday's post, then click on the red link in the post "Through John Mellencamp's Hair" to take you to the SNL skit.  If you aren't old and have no idea who John Cougar Mellencamp is like my spawn, then click here before you go back and click on the link in yesterday's post.

If you are or aren't old and read our blog from your smartphone that doesn't support whatever it is that helps you view the videos, so you don't get the John Cougar Mellencamp references...go to a damned PC or laptop and read the blog again.  Clicking on the video links to enjoy the entire experience.

If I'm missing a user experience category, let me know.

Next...No Bondage Barbie photos have been found.  I'm not sure where this can go from here.

Ted's Looking At America

Through John Cougar Mellencamp's Hair no less.  Bwahaahaahaa.  He is seriously rockin' the bangs.  Time for a haircut.  SNL was the best, now not so much.

 Bolognese Sauce as requested by Mare

I follow the Goddess of Italian cooking's recipe, except I mix up the meat and use a beef/pork/veal mix.  I also put the meat in a food processor and pulse it with a couple of slices of fresh white bread and some milk.  This supposedly coats the proteins in the meat, so when you cook it it doesn't get that chewy, stringy texture.  Whether it is a wive's tale or not, the meat in this sauce is melt in your mouth tender and doesn't have that elastic quality.  It's the spawn's favorite.  They turn their noses up at other sauce.

Next...I'm looking for pictures of bondage barbie, and whatever the hell else we hung from the rear view mirror of my car when I was in high school.

Bolognese

Is what was going on in the GrowDammit kitchens today.  And it was made mostly w/ roasted tomatoes from our final harvest.  Sweet!

Otherwise it was a pretty boring weekend here.  Today was clean out the closets, bag up old clothes for the Goodwill, decide what kind of clothes the eldest spawn will be needing to survive the winter Day.  And if anyone has seen a bin of my stuff containing mostly yoga pants and sweatshirts and my favorite fleece pajama bottoms that are pink and covered in cute reindeer wearing pajamas that I don't wear out in public while running errands, please let me know.

The Dragon was a source of amusement for us today.

Rufus vs. the Ping Pong Ball...the eldest spawn was showing us his juggling skills in the kitchen when a ping pong ball went a little too high, hit the ceiling fan and rocketed toward the floor.  *Thwack*  It hit the poor dog square on his noggin.  He looked at us like "What?   What did I do?"  The spawn promptly made amends with some good quality belly scratching time.

Rufus vs. the Sofa...whenever someone is sitting on the sofa, the Dragon loves to hop up on the cushions behind your head and sit there.  Today, in mid-hop he got stuck.  Limbs were flailing.  I wish we had video.  Poor dog.  Instead of helping him up, we all sat around and laughed.  Relax.  He made it up on his own after a few lunges.  And the eldest spawn promptly made amends with a belly rub.  Farmer Ted may have given him some extra steak with his supper.

Next...Where in the hell did the weekend go?

In the interest of being habitual line crossers...

I got home from work today to find Ted reminiscing about the good ol' days when he and his cousin wanted to have their own punk band.  Named the Motherfuckers.  I realize that for some reason that word has come out of my keyboard a lot lately.  Because it is Awesome.

Anyway, Ted has regaled the spawn and I many times with their song "Assface."  I'll let him fill you in on the lyrics.  So, he apparently spent the afternoon sharing GG Allin YouTube videos with one of his buddies.  Click this link if you want to see a strung out punk rocker walk out on the stage naked, punch someone in the face, take a crap, throw it at the crowd, eat some and then bludgeon himself in the head with a whiskey bottle.  If you get the picture and don't want to see that, I understand.  If you liked it and want to see more classics like  "Suck My Ass It Smells," "Fuck Authority" and "Guns, Bitches, Brawls and Bottles," they are all on YouTube.  Sickos.

In other news a friend of Ted's commented on his FB page regarding yesterday's late night ramblings about bathrobes and Pluto.  Her conclusion was that Pluto is the Tranny of Planets.  This must be what keeps me up at night.

There is a new poll.  Basil just barely edged out Thyme, so if feel strongly about Rosemary or Chives Vote.

Next...You never know.

P.S.  My opinion is that there are no bad words, only inappropriate times to use them.  I've never censored their (the spawn's) music or media for language or violence.  Only for sexual content when it was/is inappropriate for their age.  My rule is that listening to the music or watching R rated movies is a privilege, and the minute I get that phone call from the school or another parent about their poor behavior the privilege is gone.  I have never gotten that phone call.  It works for us.  My theory is that this is my rebellion for the fact that I wasn't allowed to have Prince's album 1999 back in the day.  Stop judging me and blame Bob Smith.

Insomnia wins, or why you should never wear your bathrobe outside of your house unless...

you are collecting your newspaper.  It is never acceptable. Never.

Not even if you are in your car going through a drive-thru.

I had to go to Dunkin Donuts this morning to get muffins and coffee (notice no part of a donut was purchased) for a Board Meeting. Yes, I am a jack-of-all trades at my office, and no they don't like donuts. Take Note Y’all for Job Security: Always make yourself Necessary, so when the Owner of the company accosts you when you walk in about nosh for the Board Meeting you have it covered and he says, “What did we ever do without you?” This makes me AND my VP boss look awesome. Hey, we are a startup. I’d clean toilets if I had to.  She calls me her Gatekeeper.  I figure that translates into Necessary.

Anyway, I was in line at the DD. And this chick in front of me was in her purple terrycloth bathrobe. Her BATHROBE. With brownish leggings and black flats underneath. Her hair was thrown together in a careless bun, and she was youngerish bordering on college student aged. But she was still wearing her bathrobe like it was a coat. I thought, maybe she's a model going on a shoot AND THEN I saw her profile.  So, I figured, Hey she’s homeless and I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. And then she climbed into her Escalade. And my heart sank for the future of our country.

Don’t get me started about the grown man we saw in town the other day. In his black flannel pajama pants with huge neon planets all over them. I can only pray that Pluto was included because I don’t care what the so-called scientists say, Pluto is a motherfucking planet. If it isn’t, my whole education is null and void.  Unacceptable.

Next...Why can't I sleep?  Why?

Thong Mom

I have an "ass dress."  It's a cute little black knit dress from Ann Taylor Loft.  The first time Ted saw me in it, he referred to it as my ass dress.  I thought he meant it made my ass look fantastic.  Wrong.

The next time I wore it, he said "Nice pink thong."  So, I figured he called it my ass dress because you could see colored underthings through it.  Wrong.

The other day I had it on, and it turns out that when I'm outside in the sunlight you can actually see my ass through the damn dress.  Even when what's underneath is black.  At least I can only hope it's when I'm out in the sun, and not at the office.  You'd think if I'm showing my ass in the office SOMEONE would have pulled me aside and said, "Hey, I can see your ass through your dress."

Y'all.  Always, Always tell someone when they have shit in their teeth, their zipper is down or their ass is  visible through their dress.  It only makes you look like an asshole if I've been speaking to you, get home and realize I have a piece of spinach the size of China covering an incisor.

The only time my advice about a tag hanging out wasn't well received was when I gave a heads up to Thong Mom.  Thong Mom was a mom of a kid in the youngest spawn's preschool class.  She had a penchant for wearing low riding pants that showed off her panties and their witty saying everytime she bent over to hug her bundle of joy.  Which was often.  We were at preschool graduation, and Thong Mom bent to hug the spawn but instead of seeing "Sexy" I saw a tag.  Her thong was inside out.  Not being one to not tell someone if spinach is in their teeth, I tapped her on the shoulder and said, "Your tag's showing."  She reached up to the back of her neck, and I said "Not that one."  She did not thank me.

Next...I dunno.  What I do know is that I need a slip.  Do they still make those?

Wrong on so many levels...

So, on our day trip yesterday Ted and I were walking down the street and passed a toy store with sock monkeys in the window.  And we proceeded to have a conversation that I would have never imagined I would ever possibly have in a million years.

Ted: Hey, do you remember when we were kids and the boy sock monkeys had a dick?

Me:  Nuh-Uh.  You are lying.

Ted:  Yeah man.  They came with a little pair of shorts, and when you pulled them down his dick popped up.

Me:  I have never heard of such a thing.  You are trying to pull one over on me.

Ted:  I swear to God.  I had one.

Me:  You had a boy sock monkey...with a penis?

Ted:  I sure did.

Me:  Right.  I wasn't born yesterday Ted.

Ted:  The girl monkeys had vaginas.  I didn't have one of those.

Apparently, I WAS born yesterday.

Not only a vagina, but boobs too.

As if these aren't bad enough. Googling this subject found...

Buddha Monkey

I pity the FOOL.

Why?

I have a feeling this might keep me up at night.

Or this.

Next...My ass dress.  Boy, this blog has gone WAY off topic.

Wanderlust

After all of the crappy weather lately, we had it bad. We decided a day trip was in order. Our Plan A strategy was to head toward a coastline and just see what we could see. We got in the truck, told Sybil we wanted no highways or toll roads or U-Turns (b/c THAT gets old) and picked a random Maryland shore town (Easton b/c it is rumored as somewhat historic) with a random address and set off. After Sybil navigated us around and got me to a place I recognized that I could have gotten to an hour sooner, we switched to Plan B.
I have a friend who has a farm on a river in a town in Maryland, and since we were starving for lunch we set course to that town. We stopped for a Bloody Mary and a bite to eat, but since we will more than likely be touring that town in the future while visiting said friend we moved on. Easton wasn't too far down the road.

When we got to Easton, we discovered its historical importance has something to do with Frederick Douglass...which is cool and something we have to research. There was a statue of him in the main square, and a picture of him at the historical society window and a highway and playground named after him; but, we never found out why? I assume he was born there. But, I've learned to never just assume.

Anyway, the only other thing of interest we found about Easton is that apparently the citizens and visitors are notorious rule breakers. We first witnessed evidence of this in the Bank of America parking lot, where...

You would think one sign would be enough.

Apparently, it's not.

And then we started to notice a parking lot trend...

And then we got to the historic courthouse, where they post all pending civil and criminal complaints including towed cars and people who don't pay their child support *pics currently being held hostage by my piece of shit iPhone which is supposed to be less of a piece of shit.*

And in the interest of keeping this short, here are some other fun pics from today...

The Venus de Milo in lockup.

Adds an interesting twist to getting around town.

We both did a double take because this looks EXACTLY like my neiceling spawn.

Found in Maryland.

It's good to be the King.

We saw many expected Ravens, Eagles, Steelers fans & then the Cheesehead showed up.

I peed with two nuns in a WaWa...right after they were talking to a biker gang.  One nun was using the ultra-tornado like hand dryer and I swear she said "It will take your sin off."  Awesome.

The last few shots were from St. Michaels, MD.  Where we eventually ended up.  We will definitely be going back to spend some more time there.  It's the town that Fooled the British after all, and you never know when that kind of knowledge might come in handy.