Early Fall Colors
Everyone longs to see the wonderfully vibrant colors of autumn appear and turn an otherwise unremarkable landscape into something really special. While we are enjoying them, there are a few things to consider to help evaluate the health of our trees.
Almost always, when these colors appear earlier than other trees of the same species, it means trouble. It can mean that the root system has root rot, girdling roots or other issues. The trunk can have cankers, girdling wire, borers, sapsucker or animal damage, or anything that restricts sap flow up or down the trunk. It can mean that health has deteriorated badly, drought stress is catching up with it, or that physical trauma to roots or trunk is significant.
Thelma and Louise, the Road to Greece and the Titanic - Part 1
I bet you’re scratching your head and wondering if I’ve gone plum crazy.
Maybe loco?
Public hearing set for Mayfair Collection financing plan
The first public hearing for a city proposal to help finance The Mayfair Collection shopping center has been scheduled for Nov. 1, before the Wauwatosa Community Development Authority.
That's according to a new timeline from Paulette Enders, city economic development director. Under that timeline, the Common Council's Budget and Finance Committee will review the proposal on Nov. 13, with the full council to consider it on Nov. 20.
"What Do I Do With All These Potted Mums?" Your fall gardening questions, answered
For this week's blog post, I turned to my friends to ask if they had any fall gardening questions. They did not disappoint! Here are several of their questions, along with my responses.
Why can't the chicken cross the road on a bike?
In the past, it was just, ‘We're going to rebuild this road.' Now we're trying to pull in the ideas of, while we're doing this, can we lessen the stormwater impact? Can we improve bicycle, pedestrian, physically disabled accommodations? LaCrosse city planner Larry Kirsch
If the road we are talking about is Mayfair Road, and especially its juncture with Bluemound, the chicken can't cross the road because the chicken is too smart to take his life into his hands.
Thelma and Louise, the Road to Greece and the Titanic - Part 2
My pal Paul Ryan is fond of explaining our country’s economic prospects as nothing more than another road to Greece.
And I’m going to call him out on that.
Things to Think About Now
The growing season is winding down and another summer has passed. Our trees and landscape plants are going dormant – dormant but very much alive. Fall is the time to think about protecting your plants for the winter and preparing for next year.
· Protect young trees and shrubs from deer feeding and antler rubbing. Install wire mesh fencing supported by stakes to create a physical barrier. The fence needs to be 4’ tall at a minimum.
Thelma and Louise, the Road to Greece and the Titanic - Part 3
You know Gas you are a real philistine. A cultural low-life. Everyone should watch that movie. It should be required watching in school!
Tosa's Finest Indoor Concert Hall
There are a million different outdoor concerts one can find in, well, warm Wisconsin weather. As our temps drop, we head indoors for our entertainment. Milwaukee of course has some great indoor concert halls. But what about Wauwatosa?
Have you heard about Schwan Hall in Tosa, a part of Wisconsin Lutheran College? It is still a relatively-new facility and extremely nice performance experience - for artists and audiences alike. Besides hosting school performances and other community groups, they have their own artist series. They bring in some excellent entertainment options!
How not to succeed in business (or governance, love, or just about anything)
Last night I had the pleasure of being kicked out of a bar for the first time. I guess at 62, it’s about time. But then, I’ve never much enjoyed bars or confrontation. It’s no surprise it took this long.
The bar in question was Serb Hall’s, one of the biggest bars around. I’d gone to meet a friend for a fish fry. If you’re not a local reader, fish fries are a pragmatic Milwaukee sacrament started during Prohibition, when all the bars needed to find new ways to make money. The tradition is honored to this day, only with large quantities of beer and other adult beverages.
(Serb Hall is another Milwaukee institution, the site of weddings and union gatherings, presidential visits, and more. A vast building, it also holds a bowling alley and promises “extraordinary hospitality.”)
I didn’t know at the time that this wasn’t any random gathering. Most of the others in the group of ten, people I didn’t know, were union supporters and activists, and they were there to show support for the handful of union staff left in the organization. The idea was to go, ask to be seated at the server’s tables, enjoy dinner, and leave a generous tip. You can read the backstory here.
But it was not to be. The host announced that we couldn’t be seated, as the waitress already had a table of 15 (people I later learned were doing the same thing we were, supporting union employees). That made sense to me, although my daughter, a waitress, informs me that she’d be delighted to be given two big parties. We were offered other waitstaff’s tables in the largely empty room but declined.
At which point the bartender, also a union employee, came up with a quick-minded pragmatic solution. “If you eat at the bar, I can write your tickets. You’d have to do the buffet: I can’t serve tables while bartending.” So we all said yes--good idea, paid our money, and started heading toward the buffet.
One or two of us actually made it. The food looked lackluster and smelled worse, but that seemed beside the point.
The rest of us were stopped before we made it to the dining room. The manager, sitting bulldoggedly at the bar between us and the buffet line, started yelling at the bartender and the one union waitress serving in the adjacent room, who, although we'd requested her, had just been "cut" (sent home early for lack of work in restaurant parlance).
“Come here when I call your name! Do you want me to write you up?!” the manager growled.
He told us it was against policy to serve food at the bar. Which seemed odd, one of the group mentioned, as the last time she was there she was told the only place she could order food was at the bar.
Heated discussion but no fisticuffs ensued. “Customers don’t tell us how to do our business,” the manager kept saying.
I was an interested but not involved party to the flurry of tweeting, recording, and filming going on throughout this encounter. Meanwhile, customers in the dining room watched or tried to avoid watching, looking miserable and uncomfortable.
Friday Morning Music - The French Connection
Barely a couple of weeks ago Jill and I hopped on the Paris #69 bus (just down the block from our hotel outside of the Place des Vosges) and traveled to the end of the line – to Père Lachaise Cemetery – the largest graveyard in Paris.
My regular readers already know I like nothing better than a good graveyard.
Take Me Hunting
I cannot recall if it was an email or a regular mailing that featured a blonde Lab that I noticed last week. It had a nifty catchphrase along with a good-looking dog so it caught my attention. Not that I needed much encouragement as I had already gone online to purchase my small game license in anticipation of the fall ritual of chasing roosters in Spink County, SD. Nevertheless, following a photo contest and everything on Facebook, South Dakota Tourism rightly nailed it with their Take Me Hunting campaign.
Sunday morning my two Labs were giving me the hairy eyeball. To be fair - on Saturday we'd been out hunting and bagged a ringneck before I retired to a deer stand with my bow. Complicating the situation the shotgun had been left conspicuously propped on the bench at the back door. A handful of shells along with some dog kibble were in the pockets of my field jacket on the hook. And now the pooches were giving me the look. The 'take me hunting' look.
Community Theater in Wauwatosa
My husband and I have seen some good local community theater over the last few years - mostly due to knowing an actor or two in the shows. Waukesha Civic Theatre, Menomonee Falls Players, and just this past weekend the Hartford Players.
As we were driving back home from a delightful performance of To Kill a Mockingbird in Hartford, we got into a discussion about Wauwatosa community theater. Is there a local theater group in Tosa? Is there a playhouse that we don't know about? Could we have both lived in Wauwatosa for decades and not known the answers to these questions?
How to Dry Herbs
I admit I'm much better at growing food than I am at preserving it. My small urban lot only produces so much in the way of tomatoes, zucchini, and carrots. Most years, I manage to cook everything I've grown for our family of five before it goes bad. So I have yet to figure out canning.
That said, I do preserve some of the herbs that grow on my tiny "farm." I grow a lot of them – everything from basil to tarragon and lovage – and while I don't save all my herbs when the cold winds blow in, I do like to preserve the things I may use in the winter.
Friday Morning Music
Start your weekend with a very awesome a capella version of this classic.
Stay for the ending.
Babies, buildings, and government size: Confused in the pursuit of happiness
The other day my daughter, her dear friend, and the dear friend’s adorable baby, my pretend grandbaby, were in the kitchen talking and laughing. Buddha Baby grew restless so I handed him a whisk and metal bowl. Happy beyond expectation, he played for a very long time. No colorful expensive plastic products were involved, and I thought about all the time, energy, and money I had spent as a young mother obtaining stuff I believed would make my babies smarter and happier.
Do you know what makes you happy? Chances are you think you do, but you don’t. The same is true of most of us, according to a growing body of fascinating research that says what we think we know about our own happiness is usually wrong. Researchers from the University of Chicago Center for Decision Research say we get stuck because we exaggerate the good features of what we prefer (or are being sold) and exaggerate the bad features of what we don’t prefer (or have already decided not to buy). We remember the worst of an event disproportionately. And we rely on beliefs that just aren’t true. You can read more about it here: http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/christopher.hsee/vita/Papers/DecisionAndExperience.pdf
AVIS DE CONTRAVENTION AU CODE DE LA ROUTE
An official-looking envelope from the République Française arrived in the post the other day. The return address even emphasized that famous part about - Liberté, égalité, fraternité.
