Day: May 6, 2023

Weekend Writing Prompt — Gophers and Moles

Fandango4 Comments

When I bought my house it needed landscaping
I went about that task and it was painstaking
Unfortunately it wasn’t cheap
Below the surface did critters creep
Filling my yard with lots of holes
Created by a bunch of gophers and moles
I contacted a company to eradicate the pests
And let them do what they do best

(Exactly 58 words)

Written for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt, where the prompt word is “eradicate” in exactly 58 words.

Before you nature lovers out there jump all over me for cruelty to God’s creatures, specifically gophers and moles, let me remind you that I live in a semi-rural suburb where there are plenty of open spaces for gophers, moles, deer, foxes, raccoons, and other critters to live, eat, and frolic.

I did try using non-lethal means, as I wrote about here last year, to repel these critters “humanely,” but it didn’t work at all.

I feel I have little choice now. In addition to having gophers feasting on our plants, and their underground tunnels, along with mole tunnels, destroying the stability of the ground in our yard, the mole holes, such as those shown in the photo below, are a hazard to our dog as she runs around the backyard. Should she get a paw stuck in one of those holes, she could break a leg. So the cost of keeping my pet safe is getting rid of the pests.

The Garden Dawdler — 05/06/23

Fandango10 Comments

Rory, the king of questions, also known as the Autistic Composter, has come up with a new series of questions that he calls “The Garden Dawdler.” Rory is posing “nine questions once a week for your leisure or pleasure.”

You have awoken to a new day after a restless night filled with strange dreams and have discovered a dead person sitting on your toilet. They are a stranger to you. What do you do?

First of all, having awoken to a new day after a restless night filled with strange dreams happens almost every morning. As to finding a dead stranger sitting on my toilet, that is a much more rare occurrence. I’d push the body off my toilet so that I could pee and then I’d call Ray Donovan, my “fixer,” to clean up the scene.

Are you a hat-wearing person, and if you are, which style do you favor?

Yes, I’m a hat-wearing person and I wear a baseball cap.

How many posts do you create and publish each week to your blog?

So far this year I’ve published 540 posts, or about 30 a week. This is down from last year, when I averaged 35 per week. But my fractured hip and busted arm have contributed to that reduced output.

How often do you talk to strangers?

As little as possible.

How many tee shirts do you own?

I wear a clean t-shirt every day (as an undershirt) and I have a few dozen of those white t-shirts. I also have about a dozen colored t-shirts that I wear during the hot summer months as “outershirts.”

Do you or have you ever ironed socks? If so, why?

What? No! Who irons socks?

Do you spend too much time online, and would you know if you were spending too much time online?

I spend a significant amount of time online, as I have my iPhone with me at all times and it is pretty much always connected to the internet via WiFi or a cellular connection. Is it too much time? Not for me.

Does your family or do any of your real-life friends read your blog, and perhaps more importantly, do you let them, or do you want them to?

My family members do know about my blog, as do a few close friends. Do they regularly read it? Probably not. Do I want them to read it? Sure, I want the whole world to read my blog. Do I care if they don’t? Nope. Whatever floats their boats.

What do you think the secret is to living a happier life?

Stay off of ladders and hire someone else to clean your gutters.

WDP — Voting

Fandango49 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Do you vote in political elections?
View all responses

As a citizen, it’s not just my right to vote, it’s my duty. So yes, I vote in every election — local, state, and federal. Every election! Including primary elections.

And here in California, I don’t even have to leave the comfort of my home to vote. I vote by mail. I use an app on my iPhone to confirm that my mail-in ballot has been received, has been processed, and has been counted. Easy peasy.

SoCS — Rock Candy

Fandango10 Comments

When I was a young kid, my father would, upon occasion, come home from work and bring me a treat: rock candy. In case you’re not familiar with rock candy, it is a hard candy made by cooling sugar syrup into large crystals. Essentially it’s large pieces of crystalline sugar, and the kind he brought home for me was strung together with a string. It was so sweet and so good and I loved it when he brought some home for me.

One day I asked him where he got rock candy. He sat me down and told me about a miner friend of his who would periodically go up north to the Big Rock Candy Mountain, and when he got there, he would climb up onto the Big Rock Candy Mountain, take out his pickaxe, and start breaking off pieces of the rock candy that the mountain was made of. He would then bring it back and give a bunch to my father because my father had told the miner how much I liked rock candy.

Even at four or five years old, I was a bit of a skeptic and I told my father that I didn’t believe him that there was a mountain made out of rock candy. “Really, Daddy, where do you get rock candy?” I asked him.

He said, “Butch,” — he always called me Butch for some reason even though that wasn’t my name — “my miner friend brings a little back with him every time he returns from visiting the Big Rock Candy Mountain. And tomorrow I’ll prove to you that there really is a Big Rock Candy Mountain.”

The next day, when he got home from work, my dad had a record with him. He pulled the large 78 RPM record from its sleeve, carefully placed it on the Victrola turntable, moved the needle arm to the beginning of the record and lowered it. And this is what I heard…

I was so excited by this song, which immediately became my very favorite song ever, and from that day forward for a few months, I played that record over and over again.

I asked my dad if, someday, he would take me to the Big Rock Candy Mountain. “Sure, Butch, someday I’ll take you there,” he said. Of course, he never did.

Written for Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, where she asks us to “think of a song from your childhood and just write.”

FOWC with Fandango — Ricochet

Fandango11 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “ricochet.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.