Life Around Here, and a Free Speech Rant

 1.) Chicken Update

They look like chickens now, instead of weird semi fluffy teenagers 

They're fully feathered now. Their combs are still growing in, and we're not going to get eggs until the end of summer, but they look like actual chickens. 

2.) Circle of Life 

I mentioned awhile back that caterpillars have been getting into my dill. 

I've kept noticing them, and even witnessed a couple butterflies laying their eggs on them, but I still have dill. Maybe it's a little thinner than it would be otherwise, but it's still there, and still there in quantities large enough to work with. 

I wasn't sure why it hadn't been completely overrun until I was out in the garden the other day and saw a spider enjoying lunch. 

I couldn't get a good picture, but that's a little black fuzzy spider chowing down on a caterpillar. It seems like that natural predators are doing their job and keeping things in check. 

Now if I could just get the local wasps to eat the web worms off the pecan trees I'd be all set, but unfortunately they don't seem interested. I'll have to spray those. 

3.) Surprise Fruit 

I found a volunteer watermelon!! 

Still a little early to see if it makes it to harvest, but exciting to see. It's nowhere near the compost bin, so I'm not sure how it got there. Maybe someone walked through there while eating watermelon? However it got there, I'm happy it did.

We've got lots of baby cantaloupe too. I'm cautiously optimistic -- I'm having to hand water those plants, and we're starting to get into the hot, hazy months. Which, I hate to admit it, not only mean that stuff dries out faster, but that I'm less likely to go out to the garden. 

4.) New Recipe 

I made pozole, a soup traditionally made out of hogs' feet, for supper the other night. It involved putting a hog hock (so, basically the ankle) in the crockpot with hominy, water, dried chilies that had been simmered and pureed, and then letting it cook all day. Traditionally it's topped with sliced radish, cilantro, like juice, and corn chips strips. 

Well, I didn't have the lime, but the resulting dish was still very tasty. The point of it seems to be to make a little bit of meat stretch as far as it possibly can. I still have a pig tongue in the freezer: I'll probably toss that in the next batch along with a hock/foot to make it more substantial. 

I think it made it into our regular meal rotation, at least until I run out of pig feet and radishes. 

5.) Tomatoes 

There's a lot, and they're either surprisingly big for Roma's, or surprisingly small. 

There's also lots of cherry tomatoes. Chris has been taking them to work, and I've been trying to work them into my cooking...

But we're still getting a little swamped. I suggested canning them, which is what we're doing with the roma's, but that's a LOT of work when they're so small (you have to peel them). 

Ideas appreciated (also ideas for zucchini. We have an obscene amount). 

6.) Some Musings on Free Speech 

(We interrupt our regular programming to bring you this pseudo philosophical rant) 

After some deliberation, I think I've concluded that I believe (for the most part) in free speech to adults, but not to children. I think to children, you need to avoid introducing ideas that they're not ready to handle, psychologically or emotionally, until they're at a point where they can look at things objectively. There are certain things that are either completely off limits, or purely the domain of those that care for them and know best what information they can handle.  

Children copy and inform their ideas by what they're reading. I can't begin to tell you the amount of things I've heard my children say or attitudes they've adopted from books and movies. That stuff sinks in, and when it's young children, it sinks in deep. 

All this to say...I wasn't too happy when I found this picture book, a book obviously aimed at the young elementary/kindergarten audience, prominently displayed at the library today. 

Do I think people I disagree with have a right to write about this stuff?

 Yes. I believe in a free exchange of ideas, and that a public library should contain as many of these ideas as possible accessible to people who are mature enough to analyze them. 

Do I think that it's acceptable to put this kind of stuff, stuff I genuinely think would have sucked (tomboy, mildly autistic, socially awkward around other girls and women to this day, middle/high school aged) me in had it been around ten-fifteen years ago, in full view of the most impressionable age group? 

No. 

To me, this nearly as offensive as if I'd found a copy of It's Perfectly Normal (which has cartoon pictures of children masturbating on the heading of the chapter that teaches kids how to masturbate...my toddler handed a copy of it to me in Goodwill once and I leafed through it. Then I took it up front and complained) in the kids' section. Little kids shouldn't be put in a position where they're expected to define their core identity. Adults can barely handle it, what right does anyone have to saddle a six year old with it?! 

Kids shouldn't be worried about assigning themselves a label that defines their core identity.  They should be worried about learning how to interact with their peers and explore their interests. Period. If you ever suggest they should be worried about it at this point, they will be even if they weren't before. As I've said, children are pretty darn impressionable.  

So that book may have, ahem, gotten misshelved. I did not deface or destroy public property or place it in an area where that would be likely to happen, nor did I steal it, but hopefully it doesn't get found for a bit. 

I strongly believe that the library should have books in it that offend me. But I do not believe that it should have books that might endanger the psychological well-being of my children within their easy reach. 

(I also have strong opinions about shutting down libraries over stuff like this (I don't think it's been warranted in any of the cases I've heard of where it's happened) and about stealing books (it's a bad idea, even if you do it via perpetually checking them out. All keeping them checked out does is tell the library they're popular and there should be more of them)...but those are rants for another day). 

And that's what's fit to print. 

But seriously, I need suggestions for zucchini.