Archive for August 21, 2011
Woofstock A Doggone Good Time
by John Weckerle
Senior Animal Events Correspondent Wilson takes a crack at lure coursing...
Yesterday’s first annual Woofstock festival – a fundraiser for a new animal shelter sponsored by the Town of Edgewood, Petco, and the Estancia Valley Friends of Animals – in Edgewood brought pets, people, and vendors together for a fun-filled outdoor experience. The weather cooperated, with partly cloudy skies and reasonable temperatures, although it was beginning to heat up just a bit by about 11 a.m. Senior Animal Events Correspondent Wilson attended with your editor, ensuring that the day’s offerings got an expert assessment. He gave the lure coursing a try, and made numerous friends as we moseyed through the booths and attractions. Your editor stopped for a very well-executed chair massage by local massage therapist Beth Dennis, with proceeds donated to the shelter’s construction fund, and then purchased some raffle tickets from Edgewood Town Councilor Chuck Ring. We did not participate in the Dunk the Dogcatcher activities, although we did spy a rather wet-looking Vicky Murphy in the vicinity of the tank.
Grow Your Own – Mutiny Among The Bounty
by John Weckerle
The garden has been giving us substantial yields pretty much every day. We’ve now dined on the green beans, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, peppers, and cauliflower. Today’s harvest was special in that we brought in the first four heads of broccoli. These may well end up as cream of broccoli soup, using a recipe from Martha Stewart, that uses a veloute instead of bechemel base. The “test carrots” are noticeably bigger, and I suspect we’ll be hauling those in before long.
However, we’ve been finding some compromised tomatoes and the occasional slightly-chewed green bean, and there are holes in the broccoli leaves – ditto for the cabbage and kale in Bed 4. We suspect that mice are behind the mangled beans and tomatoes, and caterpillars would be the prime suspects in the cabbage/kale caper. We have not yet found any on the affected plants, but we’re keeping an eye out.
Today's harvest, minus the lettuce and green beans.