www.abiequine.com
What makes you guys such dirt experts?

Jim: A little background on us, we design and build arena equipment. That has progressed into that we take care of the ground for all three of the AQHA World shows, the NCHA at Fort Worth, all the major events for the NRCHA, both events for the NSHA and the reining arena at the World Equestrian Games.

By the time it is done, I’ll see about 270 days of horse show this year. My dad, Bob Kiser, is a third generation farmer, and we still farm about 14 hundred acres in Illinois. That’s where his beginning knowledge of dirt came from. My part in this, I trained horses for about 20 years and won several major events. That’s where my biggest asset came in – I knew what I wanted to ride on. If I could give him a good enough description of what it was, he could make it.

My dad, at this point, won’t do a horse show other than the Reining Futurity and the World Equestrian Games. He does private consultation for facilities, private individuals, basically selecting and selling materials for their arenas.

What is the best base for an arena – for cutting, reining, and cow horses?

Jim: Those are basically three different animals. I go through so much different stuff that I have to use across the country – it all varies a lot. For example, the ground I use at the World’s Greatest Horseman and NRCHA World Championships down in San Angelo, Texas is a sand and clay mix, and it’s probably as high as 65% sand and 35% clay, which is a little bit heavier than what a lot of people would consider to be ideal. The downside about the ground in San Angelo – with it being a little higher clay content than probably what is normal – is that it packs a lot faster during the show when they warm up. Which means it needs more maintenance during their warm up periods.

What I like about having that high of a clay content is that it holds really well for them to circle on. The ground that I select and use in Reno, the material I use as a base there is quite a bit coarser than like what we have in San Angelo. Then I have to mix some sand with it – it makes a good base for the herd work in Reno. I pack that down and put about 4 ½” of what they call a “play fan” or “mason sand” on top of that. That seems to work really well and would be good cutting ground wherever you are. With the base being a little bit heavier and everything, a little bit coarser, it has tendency to hold them better when they get down to the bottom of it.

So at the NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity in Reno, do you change the ground for each event, the reining, herd, and fence?

Jim: The ground that we use for example for the rein work and the cow work, I pack that ground down and put the sand on top of it for the herd work. For the reined work, I’ll try to give them a little bit more of a hard pan underneath it so it’s a little easier to stop on. The cow work (fence), I’m going to go a little deeper, and I don’t want the hard pan underneath it. I’ll try to take the hard pan out from underneath it for a little more traction. It will have a higher moisture content.

What is the best mixture for the top?

Jim: If I have to generalize it – and so much of it again depends on what kind of material you are dealing with – with the ground and the base in Reno being a little bit heavier, I have to use more sand than what I would use here at the AQHA World Show this week. It wouldn’t need as much sand. It started with a higher sand content. What I’m trying to get to here is that the mixture in Reno was probably 70/30 sand/base materials and the ground here in Oklahoma City is probably 75/25.

If I wanted the perfect arena for cow horse training and I lived on the west coast, what would the best mixture be?
Jim: Just stick with the 70/30 sand/clay. I kind of generalize when I say “clay.” There are other materials being used, like the stuff I use in Reno, which is more typical to the west coast and what an actual clay might be. The base material I use in Reno is decomposed granite that I have screened extremely fine down to a 2 mil. When you mix the sand with that, it’s easy enough that they can stop on it and at the same time it’s a coarse enough material that it holds them good going down the fence.

How much should there be of that loose stuff, how deep? Should it be deeper for a cutting horse than cow horse or a reiner?

Jim: Here’s kind of what I have – the cuttings that I’ve been doing, I have anywhere from 4 ½ on top of the base. For your average cow horse class, like an open bridle class, I’m probably going to have 3 to 3 ½ if it’s the right material, and the ground at the Reining Futurity is 2 ½ to 2 ¾.

Would you recommend that for day-to-day training also and not just for showing?

Jim: Yes. One of the reasons for that is it’s a major advantage to train on ground that is similar that you are going to show on.

Is the correct depth for loose dirt more important for good footing or injury prevention?

Jim: They go hand in hand. The injury prevention is due to stable footing that has enough cushion to protect their legs from the shock. At the AQHA World show, the NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity in Reno, the Reining Futurity, almost everything that I do…the best man at my wedding is one of the leading equine lameness veterinarians in the United States. He has a mobile vet clinic that goes to all of these shows. That’s one of my barometers. I go and ask him if he’s dealing with a high number of certain lameness issues. If he’s dealing with an abnormally high number of suspensory injuries, I have to evaluate whether I’ve got an arena too deep or not -the same thing with concussion injuries. But I do stay in contact with him.

If your budget is limited, what should your dirt priorities be in building an arena?

Jim: That’s a very good question. Safety is one of the first things. In a cow horse event, it seems to be a bigger issue than in the reining or cutting – you’re just depending on your ground a lot more, especially going down the fence. Everybody asks me which events are the toughest. The cow horse events are the toughest to prepare the ground at. If you miss a reining on the ground, somebody doesn’t get stopped. If you miss it on the ground at a cow horse event, somebody could get hurt.

When you’re considering what your budget is on an arena, trying to save money and not getting it right will inevitably cost you more in vet bills than what if would have cost if you’d have done your arena right. We’ve seen million dollar arenas built with no consideration whatsoever given to the dirt. And they get to that part and all of a sudden the facility is out of money and they’re going to cheat. Really bad idea. What they’ve found is people love the facility, hated the ground, and quit coming.

When you live in a climate where there is a lot rain, do you crown or slope the arenas?

Jim: We will slope them. One of the things we don’t like about crowning them is it’s extremely hard to keep that crown. It’s easier to keep an arena flat or with a single slope to it than to keep an arena crowned right. Just over course of riding on it and working on it, most of the time there is a tendency to pull the material off the top of the crown. It just doesn’t seem to last as long or work as well as an arena does with the right degree of slope to it.

What are the most common mistakes you see people making when they make their own arenas?

Jim: The first mistake is not consulting a professional. There are not a lot of professionals out there. There are a lot of people that will tell you they are.

I met some people in California about a month or so ago. I started explaining to the guy what I do. He said, “Oh wow, I wish I would have met you a couple months ago. I just finished doing my arena.” I said, “How did you do it?” He said, “Oh we laid down four inches of road base and put sand on it.” I said, “Well, did you do this yourself.” He said, “Oh no. I hired a guy that said he built arenas, and he said that this would work really good; we just had to pack that rock down.”

We run into that all the time. And we’re particular enough about the material we select. If we see hardly any rock in it when it’s dumped, it gets sent back. If you’re going to do an arena, you need to do it right. We will not tolerate rocks.
Incorrect material selection is the next most common mistake. For any of these three events, you can’t just go out and lay a clay base. Clay varies too much due to the plasticity index, called the “PI content”. You take clays like your blues, whites, and gray clays, they have a lot higher PI content, which means they contract and swell more with water. They have a tendency to get greasy when they get wet.

Number three is improper equipment to maintain what you have built. There’s no sense in building a good arena if you don’t have good equipment to maintain it with.

When you build someone’s arena and put in the right mixture, say a few years go by and they need to have that soil added back again, do you teach them what how to get that mixture correct?

Jim: Most of the time, at that point, we either have been with them long enough on the project and educated them that if they have a question they should call us, but they know pretty much what the next step is. Arenas do have to have maintenance done to them and 90% of that maintenance is determined by how much traffic they have had on them. An individual arena, they don’t have to have very much maintenance, for example the addition of sand to them. They don’t hardly ever need that. Your professional arenas – you see horse trainers that have 10 horses in the arena all day. They basically wear that ground out. The sand breaks down and when it does, it starts to pack. They have a harder time keeping it loose; therefore, it doesn’t handle water as well. Just a lot of things like that.

For maintenance, do you only drag an arena when you notice that it’s getting pretty packed?

Jim: It’s not only when its getting packed. In a lot of cases, the moisture content plays an important part of how your material is going to feel. So it’s not just a matter of waiting for it to get packed down before you drag it. You should drag it before it gets packed down. If you have a material that doesn’t pack that much on you, you have to keep the moisture content right.

How would someone go about finding a qualified professional to work with?

Jim: I guess one of the things I would start out with is a list of references, and then I would investigate those references by trying to go look at those arenas to see if that is what I envisioned. We’ve done this long enough to know which contractors that we want to use. Dad has done so much work with the consultation that he’ll go to an area and he might have 2 to 3 different contractors lined up to talk to and have to decide on which ones to use.

If those people say they are professional at building arenas, then surely they’ve built some. If they have, they should be proud enough to show their work off and they should be able to give you the location of that arena.

When your dad is hired as an arena consultant, he checks out the ground and figures out what the best mixture of clay/sand would work best for the location, then he lines up a contractor to do the work according to his specifications?

Jim: Right, that’s exactly what he does, and possibly he’ll stay and actually supervise the installation of it. He does a lot of that too – even a good contractor is going to have a lot of questions. If they don’t have a lot of questions, we know something is wrong. When he starts talking about putting a 1% slope on an arena or something like that, you have to be extremely precise, and a lot of people go in there and say, “I’m within 2 inches” or whatever. That’s not close enough for us.

The day started out cool, wet, and misty, with the clouds touching the earth.

 I walked through those  clouds this morning, as I navigated the muddy path. No longer overflowing with water, which had drained off during the night, the path now was a mess of slippery and slimy mud.

 I decided if I walked carefully and slowly, while holding onto my ski pole and the Bog Willows that grew on the sides of the path, I wouldn’t fall and get covered in mud.

 That was the plan.

I really should have told Uriah the plan.

Halfway into the path and feeling proud I hadn’t kicked up any of the permanent staining mud, I stopped and looked back at Uriah. He stood at the edge of the mud, tongue hanging out and a big smile on his fury face. He wasn’t looking at me; I turned back and saw a grey squirrel nosing around the base of a tree. My eyes swept the ground from the squirrel, past me to Uriah. I took in all that mud.

Then watched, in slow motion as Uriah stood up, and charged at the squirrel, mud kicked up over his head, as he raced past.  

What I said could not be printed here.

 Uriah didn’t even notice. In his head, he was chasing the big bad squirrel.

On my head sat a clump of mud, with some moss mixed in…

Within the next second he took off into the trees, barking.

I ignored him while I called his name. I walked all the way around the path and he stayed where he was, in the trees barking.

The fog moved through the trees, giving everything a soft feel. Birds yelled at me, or maybe Uriah. Crows, Blackbirds, and Blue Jays flew to the tops of the trees screaming in irritation. Cardinals were on the lower branches, as they followed me around the path. They landed in the trees and bushes just ahead, or off to the side.  As I passed they flew on ahead, waiting on the next branch.

I slipped through the mud, and I headed back towards the house.

Uriah stayed in the trees and continued to bark.

Finches and dark-eyed junco, and black-capped chickadees, flittered in-between the trees as I passed by. 

I noticed this year’s over produced bird, the Sparrow. At least fifty of them were in the grass around the burn pile; they flew up into the blue spruce, and chattered away.  I startled those Sparrows as I passed by, I stopped and  watched; they took flight heading over the roof in perfect synchronization, turning to the left, then right as they maneuvered around trees, until they landed in my neighbor’s trees and bushes. 

Last year the over abundant bird was the Common Grackle. The year before, Mourning Doves flourished.

It took only a moment for me to wonder, when the birds of prey will notice all those sparrows. Suddenly, a high pitch screech echoed above and around me.  The Red-tailed hawk,  had already seen them.

Red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensi)

http://www.illinoisraptorcenter.org/Field%20Guide/redtailpictures.html

- fighter’s outfit for female.
- bloody and dirty shirts and tops.
- wounds : scars, brands, cuts and some specials requests.
- slave’s silk for female.
- tattoos ( coming soon).

fighter, outlaw, kajira and slave, silk, wounds, tattoos, dirty shirt, bloody top, cuts, sexy, oriental, brand, outfit, roleplay, grunge, gift, medieval, survival, kilt, initial, gorean.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bobtail/178/243/40

http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-9434439-new-life.phprefnum=delihayat

hand holding a fresh young plant, symbol of new life and environmental conservation

http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-9434439-new-life.phprefnum=delihayat

hands, concepts, human, care, hand, planting, unrecognizable person, growth, keeping, carrying, outdoors, conceptual symbol, new life, rural scene, humus soil, symbol, environmental conservation, giving, plant, dirt, palm, small, holding, leaf, green, finger, beginnings, gardening, protection, fragility, environment, agriculture, conservation, organic, environmental, hands, concepts, human, care, hand, planting, unrecognizable person, growth, keeping, carrying, outdoors, conceptual symbol, new life, rural scene, humus soil, symbol, environmental conservation, giving, plant, dirt, palm, small, holding, leaf, green, finger, beginnings, gardening, protection, fragility, environment, agriculture, conservation, organic, environmental

I’ve always believed that being exposed to the element’s and getting muddy is good for you and your bodily systems, it’s what our immune system has been designed to cope with over the the course of our evolution and a recent BBC article here also agrees with this.

I also believe that the reason there are so many allergy sufferer’s and a general immune system over reaction to much of the environment around us is a direct result of not being exposed to these at a young age when our body is developing it’s immune system. We know clearly for example that when we inject a small amount of a virus into the body, the immune system will respond with antibodies in sufficient amount that we can become much better at attacking the virus the next time. For this same reason I believe it is a good idea to be exposed to the environment at a young age and throughout life in order to build a good immune system and perhaps prevent the onset of allergy conditions.

Of course some of the rise in allergy’s seen across the world, especially in developed countries can be attributed to the rise in pollution, but the general more ‘pampered’ way in which people live in modern times looks like it could be a major reason for these rises.

The article goes on to say “By studying mice and human cells, they found the harmless bacteria did this by making a molecule called lipoteichoic acid or LTA, which acted on keratinocytes – the main cell types found in the outer layer of the skin.

The LTA keeps the keratinocytes in check, stopping them from mounting an aggressive inflammatory response. “

So get out in the cold, rain and dirt unless you didn’t have enough reasons to already, have a shower when you get back though because smelling of BO hasn’t yet been linked with a healthy immune system, nor helping your chances with the opposite sex!

mud devil Vacuum Cleaners have been about for a little time. They are definitely a quality vacuum that does a good job and most any surface it is used on. Most folks are satisfied with their dust devil vacuum cleaners. Known for their power and ease of use whether you are cleaning the car or the living room you’ll be glad that you chose a mud devil for the Job.

The red and black coloring of the dirt demon vacuum cleaner is instantly recognized as an indication of sturdiness, quality and reliability across the world. Dust devil manufactures many different models and types of vacuum cleaners. Each model is thoughtfully engineering to meet many various cleaning environments. Dirt demon vacuum cleaners have the ability to use a good range of tools and accessories to help you clean not matter how mucky your cleaning job is. A key advantage to using a dirt devil vacuum Cleaner is it easy of use and maintenance. Parts and bags are widely available in most home related retail outlets across the country. It seems like everyone is using a dirt demon these days.

dirt Devil vacuum cleaners models include canister, upright, hand held and vacuum brushs and in addition include carpet steam cleaners to get at deep down dust and grime. When it comes to cleaning mud devil has it covered from A thru Z. New models are featuring the newest technology and discoveries available anywhere in the world. These new features not only do a better job of cleaning but also cut back the fine dust particles and pathogens that are usually associated with using any vacuum cleaner. Dirt devil’s system of filters will help shield your family from allergies. Everyone likes being in a clean living space but no one actually the work to keep that way. Dirt Devil Broom Vac vacuum cleaners will supply you with best vacuum cleaner you can buy and use at an especially reasonable cost.

dirt devil breeze canister

That’s what my grandmother would often say when one of us was upset about something falling on the floor or hands being dirty or some such thing. Her answer was simply “don’t worry about it, you’ll eat a peck of dirt before you die”, this usually resulted in a shrug from us kids since we didn’t quite understand what she was talking about, since no one really “eats” dirt, right?

A new study from the University of California School of Medicine have found that keeping a child too clean inhibits the skin’s inability to heal itself. According to The Guardian, researchers found that the bacteria that normally live on our skin trigger a pathway that helps prevent inflammation. Staphylcocci bacteria which are nasty when they get under our skin are actually acting as good bacteria when they are on the outside of our bodies. They reduce the inflammation in cuts, scrapes and prevent rashes to the skin.

The argument was raised that given our recent craze with anti-bacterial everything, there is a correlation to increased allergies in children. Dirt and germs in normal exposure is said to give children’s a better immunological response later in life.

So, seems Nanny might have been right, dirt may just be what the doctor ordered.

Them Bones
Dam That River
Rain When I Die
Sickman
Rooster
Junkhead
Dirt
Godsmack
Hate To Feel
Angry Chair
Down In A Hole
Would

Download

Dimanche 22 Novembre 2009 avait lieu à Quelneuc une partie d’airsoft (loisir semblable au paintball).  La journée avait pour thème le post-apocalyptique.

–> (définition du post-apocalyptique dans wikipédia).

Afin de plonger les joueurs dans cet univers, j’ai réalisé divers éléments :

- Un livret leur rappelant les règles de jeu et les différents aspects de la journée.

- Divers objets utilisés pour le jeu (râtelier, stimpaks…)

- Un décors de BAR style post-apocalyptique.

- Des retouches sur les photos de la journée.

I love the feeling of vindication by research.

From the Guardian:

Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California found that being too clean could impair the skin’s ability to heal. The San Diego-based team discovered that normal bacteria that live on the skin trigger a pathway that helps prevent inflammation when we get hurt…  according to research published in the online edition of Nature Medicine.

 It not only confirms what many people have been saying for years, it gives weight to much older, more laissez-faire methods of parenting which saw cleanliness as an occasional, rather than constant, priority.  As a playworker, this is definitely something that I’ll be using when talking to parents who are deeply concerned about their little darling’s explorations of mud and dirt.

As an American, I’ll admit I’m also pleased that there are concrete suggestions on why we seem to be leading the world in complaing about allergies – I’d rather that be an inheritance of previously leading the world on dirt-based paranoia, rather just than a tendency to whine.

Every so often some group or other reports that certain things are good for you, then a few days later another group replies that the same item is bad for you.

While it’s been noted for some time that a pint or two of beer per day is medically good for you, last week it was reported…

Drinking alcohol every day cuts the risk of heart disease in men by more than a third, a major study suggests.

The Spanish research involving more than 15,500 men and 26,000 women found large quantities of alcohol could be even more beneficial for men.

Female drinkers did not benefit to the same extent, the study in Heart found.

Experts are critical, warning heavy drinking can increase the risk of other diseases, with alcohol responsible for 1.8 million deaths globally per year.

The study was conducted in Spain, a country with relatively high rates of alcohol consumption and low rates of coronary heart disease.

The research involved men and women aged between 29 and 69, who were asked to document their lifetime drinking habits and followed for 10 years.

Crucially the research team claim to have eliminated the “sick abstainers” risk by differentiating between those who had never drunk and those whom ill-health had forced to quit. This has been used in the past to explain fewer heart-related deaths among drinkers on the basis that those who are unhealthy to start with are less likely to drink.

If that comment upset you, or has left you in a bad mood. Don’t worry because according to an Australian psychology expert, being in a bad mood could also be good for you.

In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed.

While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science Magazine.

‘Eeyore days’

The University of New South Wales researcher says a grumpy person can cope with more demanding situations than a happy one because of the way the brain “promotes information processing strategies”.

He asked volunteers to watch different films and dwell on positive or negative events in their life, designed to put them in either a good or bad mood.

Next he asked them to take part in a series of tasks, including judging the truth of urban myths and providing eyewitness accounts of events.

Those in a bad mood outperformed those who were jolly – they made fewer mistakes and were better communicators.

Professor Forgas said: “Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world.”

The study also found that sad people were better at stating their case through written arguments, which Forgas said showed that a “mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style”.

His earlier work shows the weather has a similar impact on us – wet, dreary days sharpened memory, while bright sunny spells make people forgetful.

Finally something I’ve been saying for some time…

Dirt can be good for children, say scientists.Messy play should be encouraged, according to the hygiene hypothesis. Children should be allowed to get dirty, according to scientists who have found being too clean can impair the skin’s ability to heal.

Normal bacteria living on the skin trigger a pathway that helps prevent inflammation when we get hurt, the US team discovered. The bugs dampen down overactive immune responses that can cause cuts and grazes to swell, they say.

Their work is published in the online edition of Nature Medicine Experts said the findings provided an explanation for the “hygiene hypothesis”, which holds that exposure to germs during early childhood primes the body against allergies.

Many like myself believe our obsession with cleanliness is to blame for the recent boom in allergies in developed countries.

Barry

BARRY EVA (Storyheart)
Author of Young Adult Romance/Fiction book
“Across the Pond”

I am akin to clumps of dust
grown on ceramic tile from the
waste of all that lives and dies;
a friend to none, yet still I gather
that which you discard: cat hair,
toe gum, long heavy sighs, dead
flakes of skin, lashes from your
eyes (failed wishes), moist crumbs
once stuck between your teeth,
empty thoughts, regrets and old
love songs, ash from cigarettes,
resin from bongs, crusted icing
from a cake, the residue of
masking tape.  I pull each morsel
toward my static centre,
cataloguing you.

Ever present
I lie inert, no muscle or ambition;
tossed to and fro by giant gusts
from mammoth passersby: too
light to bruise, too soft to make
sound, I listen and collect while
rolling lurching on the ground.
I do not sleep, I do not dream,
yet nor am I awake: I am not
dead but Death does feed my
life of soft decay.  As long as
you still breathe be sure I will
horde up your heat.  And if
you use a Swifter I will just
grow back next week.

Beautiful day!  Skies are clear, very little wind; temperatures are mild, in the mid fifties.

 Uriah was the first to notice the farm equipment pull into the field next door. He freaked! He climbed on the deck and cowered on the north side, farthest way from the equipment. 

The corn in the southern field was finally being  harvested. I stood outside and watched as the large tractor moved slowly into place. I could see the farmer in the cab and a child.

Farmer’s children will help them with the harvesting.  They watch for problems as their parent harvests the crops.The cab they sat in was sealed, heated and air-conditioned.

The winds were blowing away from me, so as the tractor passed by most of the dust spread out to the south.

Just as I thought, “Wow,  I am lucky the wind isn’t blowing in this direction.” The wind changed!  I started coughing, and blinking rapidly as the dust settled in over my head.

I choked out Uriah’s name and we headed towards the path to take a walk. The trees in that area blocked some of the harvesting dust. Well, sort of..

I crossed my fingers that the farmer would only be working on the lower part of the field at this time. I smiled, when I saw him hit the half way point near the drainage tiles and turn around.

 Uriah and I stopped sneezing long enough to watch the harvester.

With all the bare fields, the animals have been congregating in our trees. Last night, every hour, I was yelling out the doors for the coyotes to leave. There must have been close to a dozen howling and yelping very close to the house.

Coyotes don’t understand windows.  So, I had to insure the indoor cats stayed away from the glass. I really didn’t have to worry; they hid under the bed when the howling started.

Uriah, on the other hand, was whining and barking wanting to chase them. A dog barking won’t keep coyotes away from the house. It has the opposite effect. So, between trying to calm down Uriah, petting the cats and yelling at the coyotes, it was a fun night.

Halfway through the walk, Uriah disappeared with hackles raised, into the trees. Stupidly I walked in after him, calling and getting tangled in leafless under brush. After a short time, I headed back to the house. When Uriah reappeared  his tongue was trailing on the ground.  

The farmer took a lunch break and finished the back half of the field; I stood out on the deck and enjoyed the view.

This scene has to be a little boy’s dream.  A large tractor harvesting corn slowly chopping, crunching, and roaring through a field, as an equally large dump truck waits to be filled with the corn; such an impressive, unobstructed view of a real mid-western farm life.  

I love it out here.

I don’t want to feel belittled.

I don’t want to be around anyone or anything that makes me feel less than I am.  No, I want to feel big.  I want to grow.  I want to fill the space that my shell provides, I want to press into its corners and smooth myself into its crevasses – even ooze out the sides a little.  I want to send deep roots to forge down into the past and nest themselves there among the thick dust and the rich memories. I want a strong, rough, tough base so that I can grow higher.

I don’t want to be around anyone or anything that tries to box me in.  No, I want to expand.  I want to reach.  I want to push against the glass ceiling until it shatters, and then keep shooting up and out until I’m groaning against the canvas of the sky.  I want to press against that painting ’til I tear a hole and go sailing through into beyond.  I want the ambition of a thousand helium balloons.  I want to move fast and in every direction so that I can never be caught or held down.

I don’t want to be around anyone or anything that puts me down.  No, I want to succeed.  I want to stand tall.  I want to sprint to every finish line, and stop to smell the roses in the middle.  I want to ride unicorns, not horses, eat manna, not bread, see shooting stars in the daytime as well as at night.  I want to write, love, feel, live, sing, dance, and cry until I break.  I never want to hesitate.  I never want to wait.  I want the breath of a dragon and the heart of a prince in this gypsy’s frame.  I want words to build me a fortress, an armour, a sheath for my body to crawl into when it expires.  I want to feel as invincible as I am.

No, I don’t want to feel belittled.  I don’t want to be around anyone or anything that puts me down, tries to box me in, makes me feel less than I am.  And what am I?

I am the Universe.

Kolejny remix Shazzy, czyli Disco Relax w natarciu.

Earlier today AM, my Other Half, pointed out that of the two rows of beetroot seedlings down at the western end of the main garden bed, only in the higher row were the seedlings growing well. The plants that have germinated in the other row were in general smaller and fewer in number.

I have no explanation for why this should be so, only suspicions. Pretty sure I sowed roughly the same amount of seed in each furrow. AM hypothesised that perhaps the protective pavers holding down the mulch were too close on the northern side of the lower row, meaning the seedlings weren’t getting enough sun. Whether she’s right or wrong I can’t say, but I moved the pavers back a little, just in case.

I read in the most recent issue of Warm Earth Organic Gardening that a garden bed needs to be fairly level for best results. As the various photos of my bed included on this blog show, it isn’t very level, with a low ridge down the middle of it sloping away to each of the long sides. (I had too much soil, basically.) And certainly one row of the beetroots, the better performing one, is higher than the other.

Mind you, the magazine included no explanation of exactly why gardens should be level, so I don’t know how much credence to give that as an explanation for the difference between my two rows. I’d best do some further research, I suppose.

The disparity will probably be less pronounced once I thin both rows out some time in the next few weeks, to give the remaining beetroots the space to grow properly. Until, then, I’ll keep an eye on things – I can always top up the lower row with extra soil and/or seed if it looks like it’s needed.

And I guess, in the end, the proof will lie in the quality of the beetroots harvested, from both rows.

Сытный сытный профайл от Тиграана + бесплатный урок физ-ры.

Тигран:

Не все что хотели снять, многое не сняли из за погоды, наверное этот прфоайл войдет в

большое подольское видео..

Немного крутых фоток Адама Вильямса)из Великобритании) 

Хочу видео с ним)круто катает)

место: Hampshire

дата: 2009-11-19

фото – thisisezo

Undisclosed Desires

– Muse

Follow up list:

Dance Little Liar

– Arctic Monkeys

Cedars of Lebanon

– U2

Run This Town

– Jay-Z/ Rihanna/ Kanye West

Dirt Room

– Blue October

View my top 20 Fav list here:  Fav Songs of 2009

Dirt makes your food. Dirt makes your plants. Dirt changes your weather. People mine dirt to get metals that make your iPhone. Dirt is linked to war, drought and climate change. Without dirt there’d be no life as we know it. So watch the movie, Dirt! Dirt has already won 3 awards and was featured at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival so you can’t go wrong and you’ll learn plenty too.

Watch the video and full post at FoodCycles.org.

Yard work in Georgia.