Gedanken Spring

The daffodils and tulips are gone, the dogwood bloom is over and the azaleas are fading. And just when I thought the spring's floral display was complete, up jumped a mysterious flower. Delicate little white things with pale yellow/green eyes protruding from a mass of grassy leaves. They're huddled in dark shadows of the flagging tulip leaves and emerging hostas. I didn't plant it and have never seen it in the 12 years I've lived here, but there are two small masses that seem to have come from nowhere. If it keeps up like this, I'll have a glorious flower bed filled with a continual bloom from February to May without having done a lick of work. My kind of gardening.

The mystery white flowers in my beds...

Meleagris gallopavo silvestris

Spring gobbler season runs for another week in Virginia, but my season has already ended. I got what I came for and I'm ready to bring it to a close. On my first turkey hunt I somehow managed to call in a large tom, make the shot at about 20 yards and score my first ever kill.

The Eastern Wild Turkey is said to be the second hardest turkey to call in, after the Oceola or Florida Wild Turkey. I wouldn't know. All I know is ol' Tom came straight to me when I gave him a couple of clucks on my H.S. Strut Small Frame SM Double D mouth call. I think I suck at using the mouth call, but apparently my feeble, raspy attempts were sufficient to make the bird curious enough to come take a look. It probably helped that he came from behind me down a hill. I was sitting with my back to a tree and when I heard him gobbling I sort of rolled onto my left side, bracing my trusty Mossberg on my knapsack. So I was pretty well concealed behind the tree and he had to come downhill toward me zigging and zagging through the forest to get to me. When he was in range he had to step around a fairly large tree and just as his head poked out from behind it, I took the shot.

I was using a XX-Full turkey choke and Winchester's Longbeard shells. Everything went exactly to plan, the shot staying well within the pattern I had verified back in autumn when I was preparing to go out for Fall Turkey. I hit him in the head and neck and not a single pellet touched the body that I could see. One shot and he went down. 

The longest mile

I carried the bird down to the cabin whole and set him up on the shooting table (I hope my uncle doesn't get upset about that - I didn't know of a better place to work!). Thanks to YouTube, I was ready for the next part of the experience. I didn't do anything fancy. It wasn't my intention to roast the whole bird Thanksgiving style, so I just followed what is shown in the video and let the coyotes and the carrion birds have the rest. It also helped that I had completed a knife skills class at the local cooking school. After the first incision it was all just cooking. It took about 20 minutes altogether to bone out the breasts and legs. Much easier than I had anticipated. After all was said and done, the bird was cleaned and packed in the refrigerator, we had had a beer and eaten a sandwich and were back out in the woods by 1:30 pm.

Time for a Yeungling and some butchery

My hunting companion and I ate the tenderloins that night. Those are the little cutlets under the breasts. Absolutely scrumptious with just a bit of salt and pepper on the grill. Then, when I came home the next day, the Managing Partner, inspired by the return of the great white hunter, elected to prepare a celebration meal from the legs, obviously the tougher of the two cuts of meat. She very slowly braised them whole in some vegetable stock and white wine with some tomatoes, onions, garlic and mushrooms. After a couple of hours of slow cooking, she removed the meat from the bone and served it over rice. Couldn't be beat!

Braised, boned, served over rice

The breasts are still in the fridge and I'll probably throw them on the bar-b-que grill this weekend. This was a really great experience after three years of hunting without ever taking a shot. I'm a blooded hunter now, and a turkey hunter at that.

Worth a thousand words

Previously on MondoBlahBlah...
Previous to that on MondoBlahBlah...
Even more previously than that on MondoBlahBlah...

All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up. And when I say close, I mean CLOSE. I'm talkin' endorectal close. Portraiture has changed quite a lot since I worked at the Sears Portrait Studio. Nowadays you go in for a few 8x10 glossies and you come out a set of soft tissue images and a full body bone scan. Well, maybe it wasn't Sears, now that I think of it.

Does this scan make my prostate look fat?

I have never been particularly attentive to my body. In fact I spent the first third of my life doing everything possible to wreck it. I have never even been particularly interested in the external workings of the corpus delecti, but now that my physiology is being scrutinized by lab-coated disciples of a variety of medical disciplines, I am compelled to learn about some of its functions and to actually have a look under the hood. Overcoming my natural tendency to gag at images of internal anatomy, I have recently spent some time pouring over images of myself. They are really quite lovely. Not attractive, not particularly pretty, but kind of evocative and just sort of abstract way. That they were prompted by the search for malformed cells that could threaten to kill me, and that some of them actually feature said cells makes them all the more absorbing to me. Am I looking at my cause of death?

I ought to have my head examined. 

Wait! I have had my head examined. I've had everything examined. Apparently once cancer escapes the prostate, it works its way through the adjoining lymph nodes and bee lines for the bones. So periodic bone scans will be part of my life from now on. Why they're looking for prostate cancer all the way up in my skull is a bit of a mystery, but I guess they aren't willing to just take my word that I haven't had my head up my ass recently. In any case, here you can see Bartlebones' bones...

Maybe I'm confused about the location of the prostate...

I have no earthly idea what specific, useful information was gleaned from any of these photos, other than the conclusion that the cancer had not spread to either lymph nodes or bones. And for that, I am quite happy, as evidenced by this photo of my hams.

Happy, happy, joy, joy...

Curious about how it turned out..? Read on...

Ericaceae in Regalia

Crocus is long gone. Daffodils too. The tulips are played out and the dogwoods are even starting to look a bit bedraggled. Just when you think the party's over, out come the big guns. Like the final moments of Spring's fireworks display, the azaleas explode with a fury that leaves us breathlessly murmuring ooos, oohs and aahs. They hit you in the solar plexus. The drop kick you in the yarbles. In short, the just know you out.

Azaleas can make even the dullest house come to life.

Then, once they are done with their showstopping, it's time to do some pruning. And this is just about the time a homeowner needs to start the backbreaking chores associated with being a member of the landed gentry. It's a helluva lot of work for the fleeting glory of flowering shrubbery, but for some reason we do it.