A lot of pent up words!

Goal for March - pass the 475,000 hit mark

Man I hate this time of year.  I open the Sunday paper to my favorite section, the sports, and this is what I see.

Oh man!  WHY WHY WHY!!!

With the Olympics over there is almost nothing left for me.  Don't get me started on NBC  - WTF - they pull me away from the Olympic Closing Ceremonials for THE MARRIAGE REF?  It was like watching back to back Closing Ceremonies in a row (pardon my redundantness).  Who is in charge of NBC anyway.  In "Minute to Win it?" you get a food Network guy hosting a show where of you find a weight enhanced dude and tie a Kleenex box to his butt and put a ping pong ball in it (the box) and then he has a minute to get the ball out??   . . . . . . . and  The Marriage Ref .   I'm pretty sure five guys and a bong could come up with better shows then these stuffed shirts can think of.

True - NBC has five hours of Jay-hole to fill so I guess they really did not plan on having to create quality shows. "Parenthood" might be OK - sort of a Modern Family dramady take-off (I can't believe dramady is not a word).

STOP - the more I think about NBC the more frustrated I get.  Celebrity Apprentice? with Rod Blagojevich???   NO! NO! Don't go there.  Step away from the keyboard.

I was so waiting for some NBC sports guy to walk up to a 4th place finisher in the Olympics who is now  4th best in the entire world and have him say .

"So - your whole life was spent working for THIS moment and it just went down the tubes. How badly do you want to kill yourself now?

The WORLD ACCORDING TO NBC

I did not make this - don't get mad at me for politically incorrectness

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Full Contact Gardening

So spring is JUST around the corner and up over the next hill go two miles and take a right.

My buddy was up in Columbus this weekend and we were discussing this years plans for my yard.   If you have been following along in the last 532 blogs you know I was never a gardener until we built our house and I had a clean slate of dead soil to work with.  I started a garden by the mail box which actually grew and I did some reading and my Madison buddy got interested and we were going to make a larger garden (#3 garden at that time) in the backyard.

Being real men but still being gardeners was becoming problematic because sitting back, drinking homebrew and talking smack about Lemon Fluff and Belladonna Delphinium's did not really man us up a whole lot.

We wanted to have a Sweet Autumn Clematis climb the porch. This is a very aggressive clematis which needs shade for it's roots.  So looking around we spotted a cool looking plant, a Globe Thistle. WOW what a cool looking death star plant and it would give a lot of shade to the clematis.  But, it was ALSO aggressive.

We lifted our beers and kackled with glee - who would win.  Clematis?  Globe Thistle?  The contest of the ages!  GAME ON!! 

Year one the Clematis was an easy winner, it grew a triple vine 15 feet and flowered while the Globe Thistle grew 3 feet and had little tiny death stars.  YEAR 1 - Clematis!!

However - Clematis died over the winter.

We planted another and in year two it grew but it was not as wonderful as we were hoping, however the Globe Thistle REALLY took off and was almost 4 feet high.  Yet . . . . it looked like a huge . . . thistle.  The fist size death stars did not make up for the fact that it looks like a big freaking weed.

So now we have two plants. The Sweet Autumn Clematis who is struggling is certainly not the winner and the Globe Thistle which, well  .. . .we want to KILL!!   Who is the real winner here.  Stay tuned.   

We did decided to move Little Brian.  My buddy is a perfectionist and can not stand losing (sort sort of chemical imbalance in his brain) so the first plant he EVER planted was about the size of my thumb and it took him like over 2 hours to plant. He would mix sand and dirt to the exact proportions without touching any leaves (oil on your hands will KILL a plant you know . . .LOL).

It was so funny that we decided to call it Little Brian. I'll be documenting Little Brians life this summer. It will be edge of your seat exciting.    

And one last thing.

This is Treo a black lab and he was just awarded the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross - called the Dickin medal. The Dickin medal has been awarded 63 times and is given to animals "displaying conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty whilst serving with British Commonwealth armed forces or civil emergency services".

Treo was with the 104th Military Working Dog Support Unit and was a bomb sniffer. The military nominated Treo for the prize in recognition of his help uncovering a series of Taliban bombs during his time serving in Helmand Province, an insurgency hot spot. (Don't get me started on the so called Taliban).

He was about to be put down as a puppy as he was a badly behaved rebel but the Army rescued him.  He is now retired and living a fine life.

There have been 32 pigeons, 25 dogs, 3 horses and 1 cat givin the medal.

Simon the cat  received the medal after surviving injuries from a cannon shell, raising morale, and killing off a rat infestation during the incident on the Royal Navy sloop HMS Amethyst.

The story is that the badly wounded cat crawled on deck, and was rushed to the medical bay, where the ship's surviving medical staff cleaned his burns and removed four pieces of shrapnel, but he was not expected to last the night. He did manage to survive however, and after a period of recovery, he returned to his former duties in spite of the indifference he faced from the new captain. Whilst anchored in the river, the ship had become overrun with rats, and Simon took on the task of removing them with vigour, as well as raising the morale of the sailors.

After the war he was a celebrity but he died from complications of the viral infection caused by his war wounds. Hundreds, including the entire crew of HMS Amethyst attended his funeral.

His gravestone reads:

IN

MEMORY OF

"SIMON"

SERVED IN

H.M.S. AMETHYST

MAY 1948 — SEPTEMBER 1949

AWARDED DICKIN MEDAL

AUGUST 1949

DIED 28TH NOVEMBER 1949.

THROUGHOUT THE YANGTZE INCIDENT

HIS BEHAVIOUR WAS OF THE HIGHEST ORDER

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Have a great Monday

Rod