Friday, September 29, 2017

Fall, Fast and Furious


   Last week on September 22nd, the autumn equinox, when the length of time for day and night are equal, began. As each day passes from now until late December the nights will be getting longer and the days shorter in the northern hemisphere. Temperatures will cool, go from crisp to brisk, and towards the end of fall they can get down right cold.
   Signs of the closing season are all around us. We see machines in the fields harvesting corn and silage. I didn't know the production of silage for some farmers is an essential part of their ag business until a friend explained it to me. I assumed silage was made from left-over cornstalks after the corn was picked, as a secondary source of winter feed for their livestock.
   Fields of soybeans are turning a soft yellow as the beans ripen. Much of the tobacco crop has been cut and taken to the barns for curing. Home gardens are getting sparse and cool weather crops like tender cabbage and turnips are showing up in wayside markets.
   Autumn colors are bold and vivid giving a last hurrah before growing plants retreat before the nipping winds of winter. We drink in the sights of glowing pumpkins, mounds of mums, the sparkling yellows of weeds growing beside the roads. Our eyes feast on the deep wine-red of ironweed mixed among clumps of goldenrod.
   This year the leaves of some trees, like the maple in our side yard are dropping their leaves before they've had a chance to turn. By the time the first day of fall arrived they were ankle deep along the path to the tool shed.
   Spiders have decorated the hill sides along Highways 880 and 127 with trap cups that glow in the sun as the early morning fogs burn off. Finding a place to secure their nests to lay their eggs for the next generation.
   Wooly worms and other insects are rolling and twisting a shelter among the falling leaves to emerge next spring as an entirely different creature.
   Flocks of birds are seen overhead heading south, gleaming in the harvested fields, or resting before moving on along the power lines. The coats of wild, domestic, and pets who live indoors have begun to thicken for their protection against the coming winter.
   Fall festivals are in full swing. It's hard to pick and choose among the variety that surrounds us. In our part of the world, a small one, chiefly devoted to books, is at Knifley, KY, out 76 in Adair County. The Janice Holt Giles Festival is held each year on the first Saturday of October with lots of fun, music, and story telling for everyone in the hallow where the writer's historic log home was moved when Green River Lake was impounded. Their country ham biscuits can't be beat. The drive out there is great for a fall tour of South Central Kentucky.
   Boats with their bright covers are being removed from the lake to storage, but I'm sure we'll have many more good weather boating days.
   Maybe this year, we'll have that marvelous special season, Indian Summer, when after a hard freeze kills the mosquitos and the world turns warm again to glow with the richness of living.

Nash Black, author of Forged Blade

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Let's Hear It for the Nose


The nose has been much on our minds of late. The main charter of our new detective novel (Forged Blade) has a broken nose as his most distinctive feature. Few authors choose to write about the nose, yet it is planted in the middle of our face and never stops growing our entire lives.
   The nose has more names than any other physical feature. For example: pug nose, Roman nose, Eagle nose, pig nose, Hawk nose, sharp nose, ski jump nose, patrician nose and the list goes on an on. The lady friend who stuck by Doc Holiday is known to history as Big Nose Kate.
   The nose gets a workout this time of year as 'hay fever' season is in full force with ragweed and other fall plants in bloom. Spring sends thousands of people indoors when trees and early flowers bloom. Spring nose problems are called 'rose fever' and pollen from plants drifts on wind currents from distances as much as 300 miles. We seen our cove, on Lake Cumberland turn yellow from pollen that settles on the water.
   Of all our physical senses smell is the last to fade as we age. Smell invokes memories reaching back through our lives, both pleasant and revolting.
   Our nose twitches when we smell enticing odors coming from the kitchen. We turn up our nose when we don't want any part of a situation. The tip of our nose turns red as an early warning sign of over exposure to cold. We cover our nose when confronted with the smell of offal.
   Dogs with a keen sense of smell have long been prized for hunting, drug sniffing, tracking, rescue missions, and were used to locate the submerged body of a drowning victim near our home.
   Scientifically, what we smell are minute particles of a substance floating in the air reach the olfactory sensatory cells high inside our nose to trigger electronic signals that travel along our nerves to the brain. These human nerve paths were recorded by Bell Laboratories and presented to the public in a film, "Our Five Senses," for use in schools over fifty years-ago.
   Thus, we can disdain the odor of a burning cigar, but wax eloquently about the smell of burning leaves or an open cedar wood fire, or recognize the stink of eggs we put on to boil and forgot.
   Poets use a form of poetry called a sonnet, fourteen lines with a distinctive rhyming scheme to write lovely lines. I found this one to a nose in The Wayfaring Stranger's Notebook by Burl Ives, a folklorist, balladeer, humorist, storyteller, and actor. Since he didn't give an author, I assume he wrote it himself.


                The Importance of Having a Nose       
       'Ths very odd that poets should suppose
        There is no poetry about a nose,
        When plain as is the nose upon your face,
        A noseless face would lack poetic grace.
        Noses have sympathy: a lover knows
        Noses are always touched when lip are kissing:
        And who would care to kiss where nose is missing?
        Whether a vile or wholesome odour flows
        Around us, if we owned no sense of smelling?
        I know a nose, a nose no other knows,
        'Neath starry eyes, o'er ruby lips it grows;
        Beauty is in its form and music in its blows.



   We wish to thank Barbara Appleby, who did the illustration for us several years ago. It is too good to not recycled.
Nash Black, author of Forged Blade.




     

   


Friday, September 15, 2017

Pots to Repot

   Many people park their indoor plants outside for the summer. I don't because every time I did my treasures played host to all sorts of bugs and scale, even the one on a screened-in porch.
   I have one exception to this rule. They're two pots of mother's tongue or what my family called snake plant. The original plants sat on each side of my Grandmother Piper's front door every summer. She died, in 1952, at the age of 92. The plants have traveled many miles, been divided, repotted, and shared. Today, their offspring grace the wall by my front door; living in the same jardinières my grandmother once used.
   Houseplants faithfully serve both our physic and health by providing oxygen to the air, with the added benefit of having fresh greenery during the winter season. They too, need seasonal attention and early fall is an excellent time for this easy chore.

   Over time their soil loses its nutrients though water leaching it away and through the roots as they to continue to grow. I don't recommend putting it off like one I once had that was so root bound we had to smash the plastic pot to remove it from bondage.
   1. Use a new container, a size larger if possible that has a drainage hole. Or give the old container a good scrub with water and a bit (half a teaspoon) of bleach to kill old fertilizer and minute organisms that find homes in cracks and creases. I recycle pots from the nursery for my plants and then house them in decorative pots that are lined with aluminum foil to prevent staining.
   2. Remove the plant from the container. Gently, shake old soil from the roots. If the roots are in a tight ball take a knife and slice them in several (four) places. You can trim the ends of the roots and separate them. Wash any remaining old soil off the roots. Fill a pan with water and let the roots soak while you prepare the new pot. Don't forget to rinse the foliage to remove house dust and other pests that find a home in your plants, like tiny spiders.
   3. Use a paper coffee filter to cover the drain hole of the plant container pot. This prevents soil from falling through into the pan. Fill one-third of the post with prepared potting soil that absorbs excess water and releases it gradually to the soil.
   4. Place the plant into the new pot with the crown about an inch below the top of the pot to allow space for watering. Then fill in around the roots with fresh soil gently tamping it in as you go.
   5. Moisten soil.
   Your houseplants will last many years with a little TLC every two to three years, even when your thumb like mine tends to be more tan than green.
   Nash Black, author of Catspaw of Death.

Friday, September 8, 2017

Weird Cures

"Good for what ails you." How often have we heard that phrase?
   My nephew was convinced a Band-Aid was the prime cure for all cuts. Have you ever tried to put one on a kid's tongue? That experience ended my baby-sitting career.
   I have a collection of old cures for common ills. Some of them could cause serious harm giving birth to the adage that the 'cure is worse than the disease,' but others are fun to read.
   Warts. Who hasn't had a wart at one time or another? Rub a wart with a rock. Put the rock in a tobacco sack and throw it over you left shoulder.
   If this doesn't work try catching a frog and rub the wart with it. I've heard that catching frogs will cause warts. So that one works both ways.
   When all else fails, walk out into the road after sundown in the dark of the moon. Turn around three times and spit over you right shoulder.
   To Prevent a Cold. Eat an onion sandwich and wash you hair. I'm not sure what one has to do with the other.
   My mother believed a teaspoon of Cod Liver Oil before bed prevented winter colds. This may account for my distaste for salt-water fish.
   With colds comes the Chills. Take a new broom and brush across the patient's back.
   Asthma. If a child has asthma stand him up against a tree and drive a nail in the tree one inch above his head. If the child grows an inch in the next year, the asthma will disappear.
   Nosebleed. Every night pour a bucket of cold water over your head. Keep this up for fourteen days and you will be cured.
   This, sort of, works - had a sister who got nosebleeds when we got in a tussle. We'd stick her head under the bathtub facet and run cold water on her neck so mother wouldn't find out we'd been in a fight.
   Sore throat. When you have a sore throat take a black thread and tie nine knots in it and wear it around your neck for nine days.
   Sty on the Eye. Always tell the truth, because lies cause sties.
            Salt for all mosquito bites,
            Cobwebs on the scratches,
            The sickroom fumigated with
            Our Sulphur kitchen matches.
            Somehow there's quite a bunch of us
            That never had a shot,
            But here we are still kicking
            And enjoying it a lot.
                      Author Unknown

A footnote: The use of cobwebs to seal wounds has an ancient history. Caesar's Roman Legion's carried a supply of cobwebs in their field kits.
   Nash Black, author of the forth coming, Forged Blade.