shade structure

After some marvelous experiments in overfilling my watering can (i.e., spilling it everywhere for minutes on end), I drained my rain barrel this morning. I hadn't realized how low I was; all at once, the water coming from the hose turned murky, clouding up everything in the can. I peeked under the mosquito shield and looked inside the barrel: only a bit of sludge in the bottom and also a roach. I drained the can into a flower bed, then pulled the house water hose around and sprayed into the gunk in the bottom of the barrel. I started to drain it into the can, but it quickly stopped flowing. The hose end was stuffed up. I removed the barrel's hose and poked at the hole with a screwdriver. Gunky water started going again. I repeated this a few times, sometimes tipping the barrel over to keep the water going, then refilling it. Eventually I realized that the sludge was settling too quickly: I'd spray, the water would run dirty for a moment, and then clear. I started spraying more often, hoping to keep the gunk well-mixed, but it was no use. I'd hoped to get the rain barrel clean, but I gave up. Some amount of gunk was going to stay.

"Get better advice by taking notes." 

In the pantheon of awful 80s shows that I remember, but don't remember watching (Misfits of Science, Manimal, AirWolf, and that one with the motorcycle), probably the pinnacle was Cover Up. Only, I didn't know it was Cover Up. All I knew was, the opening song was that "I need a hero..." song (apparently from Footloose). Well, after years of wondering, I finally turned to the internet to find out who used "Holding Out for a Hero" as theme. I am so embarrassed.

So, this weekend: lots of reading, lots of housework. Saturday, T & I went to the farmer's market, a cafe downtown, and the library. We both walked out with peculiarly amibitious stacks. That day, I read Richard Stark's (latest?) Parker book, "Nobody Runs Forever," and started Elmore Leonard's "The Hot Kid." We replaced the garage door opener, which has been broken for a few months now. T swept out spiderwebs as I built a screen for sifting compost. We watched Veronica Mars, and painted the windows and screens on the front of the house.

The screens are these big, old-fashioned storm windows that sit on hangers at the top of the window and latch onto the bottom with hooks. We had both screens drying on the porch, amidst a bunch of other junk--bunched up rugs, potted plants, some other tools. T was putting a second coat on one of them, and I'd just finished putting the first coat on one of the windows, heading inside to wash the brush--I turned to say something to T, then turned again to head in--and stepped on a goddam rake leaning next to the door, and the goddam rake hit my goddam forehead. I've got a lump.

The past couple of weeks, I've been reading mass-market paperback thrillers--legal and serial killer stuff. Right now, I've got "Prime Witness," by Steve Martini. I'm sure I read a couple of his books maybe ten or eleven years ago--the main character in this one, as well as the place names, seem familiar. Anyway, one crutch of Martini's that's really starting to tick me off is,"So-and-so makes a face." As in, "I make a face, like this Greek to me." He's up to nearly once every page. I find it face-gougingly awful.

First harvest of cucumbers today. I looked at them for a while on the vine this morning, and wondering if these weren't the real first cucumbers or if there was something stunting them, since they seemed to be getting plump, but not long.  It occurred to me that I should check the variety, whose description is as follows:

Richmond Green Apple

A unique heirloom from Australia and is still popular there. The fruit are the size of a lemon but are of a beautiful light green color. For eating these are excellent, very mild, sweet and juicy. Hard to find and really fun to grow.

They're a little small for a lemon, but I went ahead and cut four down and sliced one up. Tasty! Clearly cucumbers, but also a little melon-like. Entirely edible, and I look forward to experimenting with them.

Looking for a new travel destination? How about ... North Korea.

And later: we go to Lake Michigan for a rock-skipping competition.

Last night, in celebration of the first little pumpkin to appear, I made pumpkin bread with pumpkin we froze last October.

When Target Corp. reported its first-quarter earnings in mid-May, analysts were annoyed that the retailer missed their consensus forecast by a penny per share. But few seemed to notice that three-quarters of the company's 15% earnings gain came from its credit-card operations, not its retail business.

...

When the company added Target Visa to its regular department-store card in 2001, the idea was to attract high-credit-quality borrowers and expand the lending business. But only one of those things has happened. A close look at Target's $5.8 billion credit-card operation reveals a portfolio growing at four times the rate of other lenders and brimming with riskier borrowers -- a dangerous combination.

The article goes on the say thatI don't quite know what to make of this. According to Elizabeth Warren, this is Target preying on the vulnerable, but the BusinessWeek article makes it sound like they turn to the sub-prime market was an accident, or at least because they got hooked on the returns (so, a trap in which both lender and lendee are getting caught). Moreover, I'm not sure what "3/4 of their earnings gain" means -- that's not saying, as Warren translates it, 3/4 of their profit, is it? It seems more like it's 3/4 of their growth in profit. It's hard to tell how much of their business lending really amounts to.