Upon cracking the persimmon seeds open, you will find one of the three pieces of "silverware" shapes.
KNIFE: means you'll have a cold icy winter (where wind will slice through you like a knife winter).
SPOON: means you'll need to shovel out of snow.
FORK: means you'll have mild winter.
Here's an example of a spoon and knife seed:
Pic from http://www.lauderdaleschools.net
So whatever you find the most shape of in the seeds, is the winter prediction. Most say you have to sample 10 seeds to get an accurate reading on how harsh the coming winter will be.
What's your winter prediction in your neck of the woods? My friends in MO say it's a "spoon" winter coming. They've already had one blizzard last week. We don't have persimmon trees here in SoCal so I can't do any predicting. Next year I'll be sure and grab some persimmon seeds in MO to check.
Every once in a great while you stumble upon an awesome treat and wonder why it took so long to find out. Thanks to my friend Kellie in St. Louis for turning me on to Bionic Apples. Bionic Apples are a green caramel apple rolled in walnuts. The first store to sell Bionic Apples is Merb's Candies in St. Louis way back in 1945. Everyone has tasted a caramel apple rolled in peanuts but woo wee them walnuts are even better.
Thanks to Mom at Mom's Country Orchard for taking the request. Om, nom, nom. My apple didn't survive the drive down from the mountains.
I lit the first fire of the season tonight after scoring some seasoned oak from a friend. Feels good on these old bones after 10 days of rain and cold here on SoCal. I'm tempted to curl up on the hearth like a good dog and enjoy the new found warmth. I missed the loud wood crackling and burning wood smell from the chimney when outside. The fireplace smell takes me back to the Ozark hills where I deer hunt, every cabin has a fire lit 24 hours. It's their source of heat and cooking and where everyone gathers each night to share their tales from the day. Some whittle, others chew and spit their tabaccky.
The seasoned oak below in the pic was even split when I picked it up. Can't beat that with a stick. Chopping and splitting wood is one chore I do enjoy. Nothing more manly than that and it's great exercise. There was a time when I was younger and helped a friend run his wood for sale business and I'd knock out 20 to 30 cords of wood a year. Now I'm lucky to cut 1 to 2 cords a year. The wood usage here in the warmer valley of Redlands isn't nothing compared to the mountains above me or back home in Missouri where temps dip down to 0F almost every year.
I don't know if it's me getting old or it was the move to sunny southern California but I used to be able to tolerate the cold better. I'd even take out the trash in the snow in my bare feet in Missouri with my mom hollering at me that I would catch my death of cold the whole time. Now I'm like the rest of of the native Kali-Fornyans, I'm lighting a fire when it hits 60F.
At 50F the rabbit fur muff is coming out of the back of the closet.
At 40F I'm stove up.
At 30F I think we die out here.
Trying to find a windshield ice scraper in SoCal is like looking for Bigfoot, the trusty old credit card is what I usually end up using when heading into the higher elevations.
The coming of fall also means a wardrobe change around the house when lounging. Gone are the flip flops, t-shirt and fishing shorts worn during the hot summer here. Now it's the fleece lined shoes from Weber's Camo Leather Goods and camo sweatpants from Mossy Oak. When it gets real cold I break out an old Woolrich wool long sleeve shirt I've had forever. I've worn that wool shirt in some nasty weather and never been cold in it. It's my blankie.
Now to finish the mood I need some bourbon or hot hard apple cider with a cinnamon stick in it. Here's Mom from Mom's Country Orchards stand in Oak Glen CA showing how to swig the hard stuff. Mom reminds me of Granny Clampett, they both are firecrackers and fun to talk to.
Who's burning wood already? Who'd doing the bonfires out back in the yard? Who's got their cider and is sitting by a glowing fire tonight?
P.S. Chimney Safety. Make sure you or a hired Chimney Sweep check and clean your chimney every fall before you light your first fire. Climb up in your attic and roof to look for signs of vapor leakage where chimney sections join, signs of heat damage to the chimney itself, and signs of heat damage to any trusses, sheeting, or other wood anywhere near the chimney. If you're pretty handy you can buy a chimney brush at the hardware store and make a pole for it out of two10 foot pieces of 3 quarter inch schedule 40 PVC. Put it together to do the job, take it apart to store it. Takes about 30 minutes start to finish to clean out a 20 foot chimney.
I'd like to wish everyone a safe and Merry Christmas. No snow here this year in Redlands. I hope everyone has a warm fire going and some eggnog to enjoy.
Please don't drink and drive or let anyone else, I want to see you back here in 2010.
As adventurous kids we were always dragging home garter snakes, box turtles, lightning bugs and leopard frogs to mom's despair. Springtime was when we found many pets as the little ones tumbled out of their nests and got lost. One of the best finds in the woods behind our house was a flying squirrel. There's something magical about animals that soar and these little guys are fearless. They can sail like Superman from tall oak tree to maple tree.
I first saw a flying squirrel along Coldwater Creek behind our home in MO. At first glance it looked like many of the tree squirrels that sailed limb to limb along the lush park that bounded the creek. Something was different about this little guy though so I moved closer to watch it fly. My friend Randy later caught a baby flying squirrel and we made it our pet.
The first thing we noticed was they should come with a butt plug because they pooped everywhere. Even when you made sure it had taken care of business before you took it out of it's cage it would proceed to crap all over mom's new couch. We took the squirrel to school for show and tell and he was the hit of the day.
The longest I can remember one sailing was about 70 feet in a tree to tree jump. I thought he was going to break his little neck in the descent and hard landing.
Nope.
He got up, dusted himself off and started scoping out his next DZ.
Nowadays I see sugar gliders from Austrailia as pets in MO, they're illegal to own here in CA and a couple other states. A bit cuter than the flying squirrels we knew but the same poop warning applies.
A video of some of the fun you can have with the high wire acrobats of the forest.
"Find the food, find the game", my dad and uncles used to always tell me. During September in Missouri the fox squirrels and gray squirrels are already cutting hickory nuts, it sounds like rain when the shells hit the leaves on the way down.
In early bowhunting season in Missouri the preferred deer food is persimmons. Deer flock to eat the tasty fruit when it hits the ground, the same for ripe apples. I've seen deer about break their necks standing on their hind legs trying to reach the highest apples on a tree.
Come rifle season in November white oak acorns are the tasty morsels the deer want. Many times I watched does feed all day long near my stand in Rothville MO. One small buck I shot one year was so engrossed in eating white oak acorns we walked right up on him as we tracked another deer my uncle Larry had shot just minutes earlier.
Last week my hunting partner Rick (Westy) and I were checking on a local spot for some varmint calling. As we turned to leave we spotted these band-tail pidgeons dive bombing some scraggly looking trees along an old abandoned orange orchard.
"Hmmmm", we wondered, they can't be loafing in those trees in the 102F heat. What are they doing?
A closer look with the binos gave up their secret, fresh fruit was hanging on some Blue Elderberry trees.
Spring has sprung as they say but along with the fresh green growth and new babies we have our first casualty around the homestead here.
I've been doing some garden work in the backyard lately so I already knew there was a bird nest nearby. What kind of bird nest? I'm still working on that part, my best guess right now is a California Towhee (Pipilo crissalis). The colors, size and beak are close.
Anyhoo, every time I went near the ivy covered fence by the pool filter momma bird would scold me relentlessly. I figured something was wrong this time when momma and poppa's frantic chirps caught my attention since I wasn't even near the nest. A predator maybe? The neighbor's cat out for a tweety sammich?
Nope.
It turned out to be a baby bird floating in the pool. It must have fallen in while eagerly trying to learn to fly. Mom and dad were hopping wire to limb encouraging the dead bird to get back up and out of danger with no luck.
I fished the baby bird out of the pool and gently laid it in the high garden grass. The parents seemed to lose sight of the bird when it was in the pool net and they went crazy trying to get sight of their lost kin again. Both birds flitted around the pool, landing on the mower handle, then the electric wires above for a better view.
Every spring us kids found baby birds dead or flopping around the yard after getting the heave ho out of their nest. What an introduction to the world, fly or get eaten. Wood ducks have it the worst I think, they get pushed out and fall several long feet into the wet water.
Gee, thanks Ma.
What a wake up call that must be.
The big lizard under the pool filter slab was the next one to turn up toes up, not sure what enticed him into the pool. He's the first one to commit Hari Kari in the water like that.
Hopefully, that's the end of the spring deaths, it's not fun to find baby anythings laying silent.
P.S. If you recognize that bird please post up in the comments here or drop me a line.
Some of you may remember my battle with a pocket gopher a couple months back. I've got another squatter moved in next to the patio by the garden in the backyard. Game on sucker. Fire Mission coming up. Going to Defcon 2.
Video of one of these cheeky fellers in action
Video of my last victorious engagement in June 2008
I set one trap last night and he sprung it pushing up dirt. This one's a smart one. Then he plugged up both ends of the tunnel where the trap was so good I couldn't reset the trap there.
Never had pocket gophers around here in 30 years and can't find any gopher mounds within several blocks. I'd rather go with the propane like the Rodenator uses to collapse the tunnels instead of having to trap these dang dudes every month and have to fix the damage to the lawn and garden.
Dubya D from our JHO Forum posted this pic on how he solved his gopher problem using his bow. I've been creeping out with my longbow hoping to catch the little turd out but no joy so far. Pocket gophers don't seem to come out as much as a ground squirrel it seems. Gonna set the game cam on his hole to pattern his sorry butt.
BDB (Steve) from the forum suggested I "make him a little friend", go to the HE (High Explosives). My first reaction was to blow him in place but he's under the foundation I think. Right next to it for sure and I'd take off half the patio if I went to the big bang.
The other problem is the Sweeney gopher traps I have don't fit in the tunnels very well, I have to dig the tunnels out a bit to fit the trap jaws. Does Sweeneys make a smaller version? I got these at Lowe's and they were marked gopher traps. Maybe one inch narrower would work.
I flooded the boy out tonight, hope he had his john boot handy. Then I collapsed all the tunnels I could find. Frustration has set in. I don't wanna go to the nuclear card but I'm not going to have the house collapse because the foundation was undermined.
The students at Redlands University near my home set up a memorial to the folks who lost their lives on 9-11 by placing 3,000 flags in the lawn near their dorms.
I stopped by to have a quiet moment at the memorial and reflect back on that fateful day.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.
I had a Valley Pocket Gopher move in and start tearing up the front yard. At first I thought I was up against a ground squirrel having never dealt with pocket gophers before. We had moles in our yard back in Missouri and we just flipped them out with a shovel when we saw them pushing up a tunnel. This gopher was a whole new prey for me. Gassing and waterboarding didn't work at first so we had to escalate the applied physics.
Watch my travails in the video to see who wins out and if the house survived.
Ain't much to speak of for a pelt to count coup, his hide didn't even cover my spear tip.
I do honest reviews on gear, services and trips that are sometimes given free to JHO in compensation. I report the good AND bad from my perspective. Your mileage may vary.
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