Wow! That is a great looking melon. Be sure to save seed. How many more of those do you have in the watermelon patch? Does it taste as good as it looks?

I'm a complete failure as a farmer. I can't get anything to grow right. A girl I know built a tent with some PVC pipe, and plastic sheeting. Now she has a half dozen cannabis plants in the backyard. Each plant is growing in a 5 gallon bucket, with the free compost that you get from The City. San Francisco gives free compost to residents. You just have to go get it.

 

Yep Rob, It's as good as it looks. There are three more big ones and a couple smaller ones. I have the seeds drying already, that's the nice thing about the Heirloom stuff.

We have several compost piles here on the property. And we need it the soil here is not that great!

 

When you get there, look for this guy. Sonny Side. He moved to Vietnam from The USA.

 

I love watermelon.

Jim

 

You could make money selling the seeds. I think those seed companies make more selling seed, than the farmer who sells the melon.

I don't know if it would work for you. In my yard, I have a few 5 gallon buckets with 1/2" holes, that I put food scraps in. Worms eat it all up, and I get worm castings. In San Francisco, we sandy soil. It's mostly sand.

I just bought a bag of chickpea from Kroger. I took a handful and liberally broadcasted it out in the yard. I don't think there was more than 15 or 20 beans in the palm of my hand. I'm hoping it will grow something. I'll find out in 3 months. I did that with red beans last year. Out of a handful of dried beans from a bag at Wal*Mart, I got enough for a few meals. Tried it with pinto beans last month. Bulk pinto bean from a 50 gallon drum at a Mexican market. About a half dozen beans sprouted. So maybe I'll get enough for a meal in another month.

Not efficient for me, in my environment, to try to grow food. It cost more for me to pay for water, than what the crop is worth if I buy it from the store. A tomato takes 6 or 8 months from the time I plant a seed, to when I get a tomato off the plant. I just bought tomato for $0.59 a pound. How much water does it take to grow 1 lb of tomato? That math has never worked for me. I can only imagine the headache of trying to figure out how many pounds of tomato grow on an acre, vs the cost of growing the tomato - tractors, machinery, irrigation system, trucks, fuel, water, fertilizer, labor, & the cost to buy the acre of land. If they can sell the tomato at retail for $0.59 a pound, what are they paying the farmer? Same for chicken. Chicken sells for about as much, with each chicken weighing 3 - 5 lbs. Too bad I can't throw an egg into the yard, wait 6 months, and then check to see if a chicken is running around out there.

 

Happy Tuesday Nor Cal.

Jim

 

You have to parse that statistic a little bit. What I heard was that Moderna is better than Pfizer against the delta variant. I'm OK with that because they gave me Moderna (not like I had a choice).

My nephew's father got covid prior to tat Mexican cruise last (January?). Anyway, he got on the ship infected, and gave it to a bunch of passengers. Was deathly ill when he got home (10 days later), and suffered immensely for around 6 weeks before they put him in a box.

Since that time, we have had a handful of acquaintances who have died, and numerous who have caught it and suffered to varying degrees. We and all the friends we know have had one of the vaccines, and the worst think anyone suffered is a slightly sore arm. None of those friends has since got covid that we know of (because a break-through can infect you, but you are likely not to show it).

At this point over a billion people have gotten one of the vaccines (hundreds of millions of just Pfizer and Moderna), and 95%+ of the people in the hospital now are unvaccinated. If you can't read that hand-writing on the wall, I feel sorry for you (but not much).

Another way to look at this is to line up 100 people, and put them in front of a firing squad of 100 shooters. One of shooters has a bullet.

With the delta variant, it's now looking like 2 of the shooters have bullets.

The more people who get infected increases the odds that there will be another variant that will arm another shooter.

if you have one of the vaccines, then the number of armed shooters is more like one in 10,000 or maybe even 1 in 100,000. One way or another guys.

 

Excellent points, GlueGuy.

I asked if I could have Pfizer. The nurse laughed. It was the 1st week of February. I was one of the 1st group of people in the general public, not in a nursing home or working in ICU & ER medicine toget a vaccine. There were no choices. You were lucky to get whatever they gave you.

At that point in time, in my mind, Moderna was a 20 year old company that never successfully brought a drug to market. Pfizer was an established drug manufacturer. I had my doubts.

And to put it into global perspective, all of the world governments cannot be in conspiracy with Bill Gates. Along with Pfizer, Moderna, Novavax, AstraZeneca, Janssen, SinoVac, & Sputnik. But I'm still wearing a tinfoil hat because you never know. Anyone without a tinfoil hat, well, I don't feel sorry for you when they are using your brainwaves to mine cryptocurrency.

Back when I had long hair, and Disco was King, soft body armor was not a requirement. It was available if you wanted to wear it. Nobody was told to wear it. It was heavy, hot, made you stink, gave you a rash, awkward to move in, and in my case, made me look fat. A lot of people objected. Wearing a vest didn't mean that the bullet would miss you. It really wasn't "bulletproof". Rifles still penetrated. Shotgun pellets would bounce off and into your face. You could still get shot in the head, legs, arms, neck.... Some people threatened to quit if the bosses were going to force you to wear it. At that point in time, people of color were statistically more likely to be shot. So we had something similar to 94.5% efficacy if you were shot in the upper torso by a small handgun. I wore one anyway. It was better than having nothing at all.

Time changed the perception. As some people were shot by rifle rounds, and the vest took away a lot of the damage the bullet could have done. And other people were shot at close range by handguns, and survived. A few people wearing body armor were shot and killed. I learned to use a little baby powder under the vest to help with the accumulated perspiration. Some people who wouldn't wear a vest never got shot at all. I have worn a vest for decades, and never got shot. Some people who wouldn't wear a vest got shot & killed. Some people who wouldn't wear a vest got shot & lived. Some places of employment specify that body armor is a part of the uniform, and mandated that it must be worn during the course of employment. In today's world, I can't imagine a police officer or soldier who would protest and refuse body armor.

The Covid vaccines may follow a similar course. Vaccinated people will still become infected. 94.5% efficacy means that 5.5% will still become seriously sick and maybe die. Unvaccinated people will catch Covid in higher numbers, with some surviving. Scott Gottlieb could be right about the future of Covid being that most of the population will either be innoculated, or be Covid survivors. Which means that most of us will have antibodies in our system.

I don't want anyone to be shot in the chest, the bullet ripping into their lungs, and they have to fight for their life while intubated with a breathing ventilator apparatus. When a vest could have prevented it by 94.5%. Lessen the suffering. The same way I don't want anyone to catch Coronavirus, and be in the hospital fighting for their life while intubated with a breathing ventilator apparatus. There are vaccines which could prevent that by 94.5%. Lessen the suffering.

 

Happy Humpeth day Nor Cal.
I had the Dodge towed to my favorite mechanic on Monday, and yesterday he calls to tell me it needs two belts, and an upper radiator hose. Says the timing belt is fine. $450 instead of $780. I am picking it up this morning. Needless to say I am a happy camper.

Jim

 

Sounds like you can go and get a $330 breakfast sandwich!

 

Good for you. Now you'll get to enjoy being a member of the Dodge Club.

 

Not particularly interested in the Dodge club, but being able to drive a vehicle in this heat with working AC interests me a whole lot.

Jim

 

Rob from the City, I take it you are LEO? If so Thank You for your service! That has to be a tough job in the state of California.

I fell bad for my LEO friends in Washington. The new laws are making it really tough for them to do there jobs.

 

JIm, I'm happy for you that you get your Dodge repaired at a lower cost.

 

It's a fluid and dynamic situation. The job has evolved, and continues to change.

A lot of what makes any job difficult or easy, is the psychology of the person performing the job. We're all people. We have good days and bad. And everyone expects something different out of life.

Then there's the psychology of the community which you serve.

I was once young and impressionable. Just a poor boy from Chinatown. I didn't know anything about the ways of the world, and how different we all were. I was assigned to work in public housing. If you don't know what a public housing project is like in the inner city; it's worse than what you see in movies like "Training Day" and "Colors". Public housing projects house residents who are on public assistance. They receive some sort of government living stipend and this is the housing provided by the government for people who would otherwise not be able to afford to live anywhere. So everything that you can imagine..... open air drug dealing, prostitution, gunfire, people standing around a fire burning in a garbage can. It provokes a young mind to wonder how our society has failed an entire segment of the population.

In some communities, they throw bags of feces from open windows and rooftops as you are driving by. It makes you wonder. Who would go around collecting and saving poop? What do they do? Poop into a bag, then line it up on the kitchen table, so that it's ready the next time a patrol car comes on the block? Or do they walk around with that stuff in their pockets? In my twisted mind, they live where there's just random fecal matter everywhere on the street, and they are willing to pick it up with their hands to hurl in your direction.

Actually, anyone and everyone who has to deal with the public, has stories to tell. Grocery store clerks and bus drivers have better stories than me. I would rather spend my time eating steak, drinking beer, and picking up girls.