Oh my,

Its been one full year of bloggery. Time to pay the piper. For all of you who failed to read the fine print embedded in your cybercontracts, the charges are as follows: A buck and a half per laugh (up to and including guffaws), five bucks for each time you spluttered out a mouthful of food and a sawbuck for any liquid that has exited your nose. If you've forgotten the count, just go to the archives and read them again to get a rough estimate and send your remittance to the Rancho Relaxzo Retirement Home, a limited liability corporation headquartered in the Grand Cayman Islands.

With the funds taken in this year it is the intent of the R.R.R.H. to create a nest-egg/slush-fund devoted to the ideal that no old timer should go without scotch, weed, opiates, psychoactives and a semi-annual trip to the Angel Witch in Nana district, Bangkok. It may not be terribly social, but its security. Now pay up, or I will give my associate Vincent "boombatz" Cardinalli a call and instruct him to deal with yooz accordingly.

As huge breakthroughs go, we had one. Its been nigh unto five years since first noticing a leak in the pond. We let it drain down until several holes were patched. We crossed our fingers and filled it, only to find that a leak still lurked. Thoughts of new liners, transferring fish safely, refilling without killing the fish with county water parade like some hopeless drunk in that region of my mind marked "not now".

Well, a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the water hadn't gone down in days and figured it was time to send Commander Jeremiah out in the inflatable to cruise the edge and have a looksee. Sure enough, about half way around, he found a hole that had been made when first installing the liner almost twenty years ago. Apparently the patch had come loose and led to five years of the pond looking half full but feeling half empty. Visions of mounting expenses and increasing fish kill faded like a pecker in a pickle jar.

We filled it up last week and it sure looks purdy. It does appear to have gone down an inch or two in the last week which may indicate some slow seepage in addition to normal evaporation, but nothing that about six bucks worth of water won't replenish. Its as though a toothache that I'd gotten used to living with has gone away and in its place, minty fresh and pain free.

Duck world is now officially finished (almost) and our gang of muscovies have mostly settled into a life of spacious confinement punctuated by regular furloughs into the orchard to waddle the range freely,  stretch their wings and peck their way to order. Ol' Doc Bebockboc said they're the healthiest ducks he's seen in a long while. He and nurse Sally came by the other day to pick up some food and shoot the poop. They patched things up with each other with Sally promising not to freak out over the thought of the Doc with someone else and the Doc agreeing to have his eyes surgically removed. Seems fair.

Harvest time approaches. The orchard is dripping with multiple varieties of fruit, plumping up and coming ripe day by day. We'll be in the heart of it within a month with white sapote, longan, atemoya, avocado, starfruit, citrus, mango, banana and papaya looking good. The egg count is moving upward on what appears to be a very similar pattern to the dow jones industrials average.

The chooks appear to be able to send out subliminal signals to their feathered friends in the other enclosures, letting them know how many eggs they produced that day. This is a ploy to keep the farmer guessing, as they will withhold eggs from time to time creating dips in the production curve and leading to mild, but frequent anxiety attacks. I remember what E.S.P. Leibenlobe, pHd. told me about controlling the emotional surge. He said, "sink of it ass zo it vas a carrrrtoon perzon, zis liddle emojun off yuuurz. Ant zen, chust blow itup. If it comes beck, chust blow itup again. Zooner or lader, it vill go avay. Yah, you vill zee."
I use an all purpose image of Wiley Coyote whose priceless expressions upon realizing that he's a goner are beyond words really. Now, I couldn't give a hoot how many eggs we get as long as we're paying for the feed and eating as many as we want. Booyah.

Yup, harvest moon coming up. Can't help but remember the time when my old pal Augustus Marune  (a.k.a. Guth) showed up at my place with full moon lit, mostly out of his gourd. He was half covered in mud with leaves and twigs sticking to and out of him. He had the look of exasperated exhaustion you might see on a woman twenty hours into labor. He was panting and a bit more wild eyed than usual. He kept mumbling something underneath his breath that sounded like "worms and herms, worms and herms." I took him to the bathroom and drew a hot tub for him. "Get in man, have a soak and we'll talk."

I first met Guth back in the late seventies when he was a legend among growers of the good herb. He was notorious for his zeal and his love of Woody Guthrie whose tapes he played endlessly on his travels from patch to patch. That's not why we called him Guth. His name was actually Gus, but he had a serious lisp and we just couldn't help but goof on him.

As a grower he was into it, big time. He had patches everywhere from Hana to Kapalua, sea level to five thousand feet, cane fields to rose apple forest. He was on the move all the time, planting, nurturing, chasing pigs away, harvesting, drying, trimming and selling. Of course back then it was a once a year affair. None of this sea of green all year round nonsense. Where's the challenge? Back then growing was for the tough. Those willing to brave the weather, the wilderness, the copters and the slimy two legged rat ( Rattus ripoficus). Those strong enough to pack in sixty pounds of supplies and live on guava, mountain apple and urine.

He emerged from a steamy bathroom with a calm and somewhat invigorated look. He was naked with an almost empty pint bottle of vodka in his right hand. Apparently it had been in his back pocket when he entered. "Tho thorry, man. I didn't know where elth to go and I'm freaked out." "Hadn't noticed", I said. He smiled.

I pointed and said. "dick, hanging out." " Oh thorry, man. My clothes are trashed from runnin' through the jungle. You got thom thtuff I can wear?" "In the bedroom; take your pick." He came back out wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that read, "dislexic Devil worshipers sell their souls to Santa."

"So what", I asked. "Oh man, all my patcheth on the north shore have been theriously wormed and half of them are going hermaphrodyke" (thats what he called it). On top of that its like raining every night and the pigth have been total wankerth. I gotta go back out potht hathte to at leatht take down whats thalvageable. I mean, I thtood out there the other day between showerth and watched as the meretht touch made a big, beautiful bud crumble to shkeevautz (he liked that word although he didn't know what it meant). And the poop trails. Oh my god. The butterfly larvae work their way down the bud eating and pooping and itth the poop that getth you. The poop attractth mold and funguth which works its way through the bud and renderth it a math of grey worthlethneth." He was talking really fast now. "Then, on top of that this one thtrain is going hermy on me and I'm out there with the tweethers yanking male flowers for fucking hourth."

I said, " lets say you lose half the north shore. How much healthy chi-chi ya-ya stuff do you have coming in?" His eyes went skyward as the inner calculator kicked in. After a bit he looked at me and said, "dry, maybe a couple hundred poundth". I looked at him with a wistful smile and said, " shut the fuck up!" He said, "no, really, everything elthe lookth primo." I said, " here's an idea. Lets go get a pizza and another bottle of vodka and call it a wash". He smiled big and said, " you know what man, your right."

We got pasted and slept it off. The next day, sunshine flooded the north shore and Guth pulled in two thirds of the sticky sticky. Good times.

The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace out, Jp