Outdoors -- the beginning of the end

Cicadas are gloomy things, almost as gloomy as crickets.
When they come out and start their whirring, you know the summer is on its downhill trend.
Actually, you already knew that because if you have been watching the clock, you know that sunrise is coming a couple minutes later now, and sunset a couple minutes sooner.
Last year was supposed to be the 17-year cicada thing, IINM, but it was relatively quiet.  I remember the last time they came out, there were great whirring waves of sound passing through the neighborhood.
Maybe they got roasted in the ground in June when we had that record heat.
Anyway, I heard the first ones last week.  Or I heard them for the first time.
I wonder if mockingbirds eat them.  Sure, a cicada can be about the size of a mockingbird's head.  But almost nothing scares a mockingbird.
Since the new chick is being raised in my front hedge, I'll keep an eye out.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Garden -- time to plan

If you've been waiting that one cycle while you figure out where your best sun is, you should be about done.

Now it's time to plan your seeds.

You know that you need an area that gets sun by 8 a.m. so your tomatoes don't develop blight.

Unfortunately almost all your summer veggies are like that.

So now you might have to choose between tomatoes and zucchini, because the zucchini will take up all the space you can give it.

What's more, you might need to soup up the soil if you want to try for cauliflower, broccoli, or cabbage.  That would mean putting manure under the compost -- but you can't  put your tomatoes in the same place because that's too rich for tomatoes.

Then you need to find a source for FULLY COMPOSTED manure, which won't have that smell your neighbors will hate, and for plain compost

NOT mulch.  Mulch prevents growth.  You want to promote the growth of your veggies.

I was talking to a guy in my town who does "landscaping" and twice he said mulch and I corrected him to compost.  I did hire him to haul my compost.  He offered to haul unpackaged compost.  I didn't want to pay him to do the spreading.  He hauled bags of our local bagged compost for me, stacked the bags where I said, and I did the spreading. 

By the way, if you do want to prevent growth somewhere, absolutely read Mike McGrath's fulminations against the pine-fragranced stuff that may actually be broken up shipping pallets and not real pine bark.  Also the scientific research.

http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/3000/3304.html

www.extension.iastate.edu\Publications\SUL12.pdf

Yes, there are good mulches.

http://whyy.org/cms/youbetyourgarden/mulches-you-should-be-using/

Also notice at the end of this article, information about a termite killer that ISN'T going to poison you, your pets, your kids, and wildlife.

http://www.whyy.org/91FM/ybyg/mulchtermite.html

And that's how you plan to have a healthy, low-cost, non-poisonous yard next year.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY -- tortilla chips

I'm just as addicted to Doritos as some of you are.
I spent $1.15 on a pack of corn tortillas to eat with carnitas (I make it with turkey, not pork).
There were leftovers.
I mixed half a cup of cooking oil with about 1 TBSP of seasoning (use chili powder and some cayenne for extra wow)  and brushed it on both sides.
Baked them in 350 degree oven 10 minutes per side.
They were good.
There were 10 ounces of tortillas in the bag -- 12 tortillas or 96 chips.
They all came out whole.
Compare that to a bag of Doritos, where half of them are broken and you have all those tiny bits in the bottom of the bat.
Now look at how much Doritos cost, even on sale.
Is that a choice?

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- civil courts

I’ve been talking about courts for damages in battery, and courts for holding mortgage documents, and courts that oversee creating bills of indebtedness and courts that bond convicted thieves who can’t pay their restitution in one go and courts that condemn some criminals to death.  Are they all the same courts?

No.  The Jewish legal system, just like the American legal system, has dual parallel legal systems, one criminal and one civil.  In American law criminal cases can send somebody to jail as a punishment; this includes thieves.  Civil cases can only require payment of damages, not send people to jail. They have different standards of guilt, and civil cases are not covered by the 5^th amendment right not to incriminate yourself.  And so on.

In Jewish law all capital cases require the minimum of 23 judges and I tend to call those criminal cases.  All cases that cannot lead to capital punishment I call civil cases, and they require payment of damages.  In Jewish law, theft falls into my classification as a civil case. 

In a civil case, Jewish law only requires three judges.  The two parties each choose one person to hear the case, and then either the two parties have to agree on the third judge, or the two judges already chosen choose the third. Either way, achieving a partial agreement on judges makes it easier to get total agreement.

The two great divisions of civil law, as I learned getting my legal studies degree, are contracts and torts. 

With contracts, the witnesses had to have been there when the contract was made and they have to identify the parties, the subject, and their own signatures and seals on the contract document.  With the development of the Hebrew writing system between 1100 and 800 BCE, Jewish law could begin to develop a new rule expressed in Mishnah.  Contracts had to be written, had to be signed by the parties in the presence of witnesses, had to have a date on them, and the signatures or seals (preferably both) of the witnesses.  Without such a writing as evidence, the creditor could not collect on the contract.  This is something I mentioned last week.

On the flip side, if somebody found a contract lying around, they had to dispose of it.  They could not give it back to the parties; they could not give it back to the court.  That might result in the creditor trying to enforce it, and that might mean the debtor would have to pay a debt that had already been paid.

And now that I have reached the subject of lost objects, let me turn to the subject of transfers of custody of property which is related, and which will later lead to another important principle in Jewish law.  For next time, read Exodus 22:6-11, 13-14. 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Bit at a time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 1:23

Genesis 1:23

 

כג וַיְהִי־עֶרֶב וַיְהִי־בֹקֶר יוֹם חֲמִישִׁי:

 

Transliteration: Va-y’hi erev va-y’hi voqer yom chamishi.

Translation:     There was evening and there was morning a fifth day.

Vocabulary in this lesson:

חֲמִישִׁי

Fifth

 

I just realized I missed a culture capsule so I’ll put it here.

 

On the Jewish calendar, a new day starts at dark.  Whether this is an old Semitic characteristic or comes from Genesis, I don’t know.  Certainly it was well established by the time of Mishnah, the laws based on Torah but not contained in it.  One law says if A buys peas, and thinks he has been charged too much, he can check it out with “the elders at the gates” who know how many pounds of peas came in from the fields that day and therefore what the price should be.  But he only has until the end of the day, which is at dark.  If he doesn’t do it until the next day, he has to live with his bargain.

 

There’s a practical aspect to this.  The gates of the city states of ancient times opened in the morning and people with fields outside of the city would bring in their produce for sale or barter.  They then left for home before dark. There were no streetlights at the time; you could only travel by night from the waxing half moon to the waning half moon.  People went home before night so they could get supper ready and unhitch their oxen and feed them without striking a light.  Lights were expensive.  People went to bed at dark and rose at dawn.

 

Anyway, if A didn’t check prices before the farmers all left for home, and tried to do it the next day, prices might have changed because a different amount of peas might be brought into town the next day.  Maybe none.  Maybe A bought his peas from the very last batch harvested.  The elders wouldn’t set prices for peas if none came into the town.  Even if farmer B did bring in the last of his harvest, how could A prove that he didn’t buy those peas from farmer B instead of from a different farmer the day before?

 

So in the interests of fairness, A has to check prices the same day he buys the peas, and if he were smart, he would check BEFORE he made the purchase. 

 

But if A checked prices on time, and found out that he was charged 1/6 more than the going rate for that day, he could collect the difference back from the seller.  Likewise if the seller realized he had charged 1/6 less than the going rate, he could collect the difference from A.  Also the seller could have A’s coins weighed.  There was a practice called “shaving.”  Coins in those days were made of precious metal, more or less, and a cheater could use a harder metal to shave off some of the coins, keep that, and still use the coins in the market.  If the seller found out that A’s coins weighed 1/6 less than they should, he could claim the difference in value from A.

 

If you look at a dime edge on, those little ribs you see there are designed to catch shaving.  Dimes once were real silver and it mattered.  Pennies and nickels don’t have this ribbing – although with the value of copper nowadays, maybe pennies should.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Knitting -- pullover/jumper

This part of the instructions are for when you finish the armholes on one side.
Now go to the underarms again, with the right side of the knitting facing you.
Add a slipknot on the righthand needle.
Knit the first stitch.
Pull the loop of the slipknot over this stitch.
Now bind off 3 stitches just like you did on the other side of the knitting, after the underarms.
Knit across and turn.
Purl off 3 stitches and purl across.
Now do the part where you knit two together for 6 knit rows. 
You did this on the other part of the armholes.
Now work 55 rows of knit and purl without decreasing.
Now, this is going to look weird because I said to do 62 rows on the other side.
The part that is wrong on that side is that I told you to purl together 2 on some rows.
Start at the underarms.
On the right side of the work, count rows up from the armholes.
You should come out to 70 on both sides.
If not, pull out rows or add rows to get up to 70.

We'll do the shoulders next time.

I apologize for the mess, when we're done I'll post the entire pattern.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Garden -- in hiding

If you planted zucchini, by now they have staked their claim to -- well, whatever they want to stake their claim to.   Zucchini will take over your garden if you let them.
You probably have blossoms, big and golden.
Some are male; they are at the end of a fairly thin stem.
Some are female; they are at the end of a miniature zucchini.
The experts say it's almost impossible for a zucchini fruit not to mature.
If you think you don't have any, gently push aside the leaves so as not to break them.
Zucchini fruit hide under those big leaves.
I missed one once that got to be 18 inches long.  It still ate well.
You may have two female flowers on a plant.  One will develop.
Don't wait forever to get two fruits on that plant.  Pick the one that has developed and then the other will develop. 
If you don't see any fruit in the next few weeks, hey, pick those flours, coat them in a thin batter, and fry them up.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved