Mar 5th 2013 08:34 am Pairs Well with Meaty Bits


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I remember this time last year. Springlike weather arrived with February and simply never departed. The azaleas bloomed so early down south that there were no blossoms left in Augusta, Georgia, when the Masters golf tournament was played there the second week in April. It was a rare thing, if not a first. This year has been different. It’s been damp in the southeast, and it’s been cold. It hasn’t been arctic cold. Temperatures haven’t fallen into the teens in the deep south, but they’ve regularly dipped into the upper 20s. In other words, it’s been a regular winter, and not an azalea blossom in sight. It seems so long since we’ve had one, everyone has forgotten what it is like.

Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J

42 Responses to “Pairs Well with Meaty Bits”

  1. Ginger on 05 Mar 2013 at 8:45 am #

    And it’s been a relatively mild (Knock on wood! Beat on Mindy’s head!) winter in southwestern Virginia so far. The last spell like this was back in the early to mid 90s according to a couple of people we know who keep their own weather records for no reason other than they want to. I’m beginning to think that’s a really good reason for doing a lot of things and I’m sorting through the options to find one that I like.

  2. Ghost Rider 6 on 05 Mar 2013 at 9:02 am #

    But the ornamental pear trees around here are in full, snowy bloom, and have been for over a week.

    The tree has another name, because of the smell of its blossoms, but I shan’t mention it here, lest any gentle readers become offended. Anyone wishing to do so may Google™ it.

  3. mike in 96 on 05 Mar 2013 at 9:09 am #

    Ginger, Davis instruments makes a decent weather station for home use. I have been tracking local weather for a few years now just cause I want to! It allows you to upload local data to the CWOP and you can set up a page for your own use. I can monitor on my phone what its doing in my backyard at anytime. No reason, just cause I want to.

    http://www.weatherlink.com/user/starfortpond/index.php?view=main&headers=1

  4. Mindy on 05 Mar 2013 at 9:11 am #

    Okay, I’ll bite…I tried Google, Yahell and Bing and I can’t find anything that would offend even Ms. Collins or enrage Virgin Mindless…I mean Virgin Mindy! Sorry! So, cough it up, Ghost. I finally decided to Google, Yahell and Bing a color of clam after yesterday’s [or whenever it was] clambake discussion, since John has been snickering and giggling about the subject. What a dirty minded person he is!

  5. Symply Fargone on 05 Mar 2013 at 9:48 am #

    JJ,

    Here it is low 40s and some snow this AM, nothing heavy, typical March weather for now…..starting to think about giving the bikes their annual bath….

    @Mindy,

    Am I falling into disfavor due to being a season tickey holder to the Celtic’s basketball team? It was a compromise; baseball, football and hockey were out so Larry Bird was all that was left…..and he was Symply Fargone too!

  6. Nancy in Bucks County on 05 Mar 2013 at 10:06 am #

    Calling for 3-5 inches of snow here tomorrow. Old man winter has not given up around here.

  7. Ghost Rider 6 on 05 Mar 2013 at 10:27 am #

    Mindy, I’m not sure what search parameters you’re using, but if you try “smell of ornamental pear tree blossoms” on Google™, the information will be forthcoming. So to speak.

    Note: Ghost Rider 6 disavows any responsibility for possibly offensive search engine returns to non-offensive search terms.

  8. carl on 05 Mar 2013 at 10:29 am #

    pensacola has had a mild and rainy winter. no below freezing temps. lots of azaleas blooming. i’m stocking up on bug spray.

  9. John in Richmond Texas on 05 Mar 2013 at 11:18 am #

    A tree that smells like Popeye?

  10. Blinky the Wonder Wombat on 05 Mar 2013 at 11:35 am #

    Even though the local newspaper reports we have had the 8th warmest winter on record, the snow drops are just started to bloom, so things are more normal.

    I certainly hope the azaleas bloom on schedule for the Masters. I have never seen such a beautiful city as Augusta during Masters week.

  11. Redman in the "Big O" on 05 Mar 2013 at 11:43 am #

    You cannot realize how beautiful Augusta National Country Club is without seeing it in person. I was lucky enough to get tickets in 2006 and was amazed at how beautiful it really is. Maybe one day I will be able to go again.

    Got any extra passes JJ?

  12. Mindy on 05 Mar 2013 at 11:56 am #

    Okay I Googled “smell of ornamental pear tree blossoms on Google™” which seemed confusing but it didn’t tell me what the smell was like other than in was unpleasant. Too much aftershave is unpleasant…skunk scent is unpleasant…Ginger’s feet…oh, never mind.

    I may try Davis, Mike. Right now relying on WeatherBug and my own indoors/outdoors thermometer. The thermometer if far more reliable. For instance, the weather update was at 0341 this morning; it wasn’t posted until sometime AFTER 0532, which I call something less than reliable. We had wind gusts around 55mph in the last storm; the posting was something like 25 minutes after the fact. John calls me impatient. I’m not. If I were impatient I’d have taken his riot gun and gone to the WxBug site and blown it away. I didn’t, so I’m not. John likes to make fun of me.

    Symply, I gave up on basketball when the New Orleans Jazz took Pistol Pete and became the Utah Jazz. And besides, everyone pronounces “Celtics” incorrectly.

  13. Lost in A**2 on 05 Mar 2013 at 12:01 pm #

    Not everyone, Mindy. My long-haired bunkie thinks I mispronounce it, and I think she mispronounces it. She was born in Boston, raised no further away than North Andover, (mostly in Weymouth and Canton, though) and pronounces the name like many others from that area, but she is still wrong! :)

  14. Mindy on 05 Mar 2013 at 12:04 pm #

    With a K, Lost, with a K.

  15. Lost in A**2 on 05 Mar 2013 at 12:04 pm #

    Yup; that’s the way I pronounce it.

  16. Lost in A**2 on 05 Mar 2013 at 12:04 pm #

    One of us had to agree with you, though. :)

  17. Ghost Rider 6 on 05 Mar 2013 at 12:20 pm #

    OK, Mindy, on the off chance you aren’t just playing dumb, go to that web site that now has a definition for “Plead a Mindy” and search for “ornamental pear”.

  18. Tom from the Front Range on 05 Mar 2013 at 12:22 pm #

    Speaking as a Davis Weather Station owner for the past 5 or so years I can say that the Vantage II is an excellent product.

    Having gone through basic training at Ft. Gordon, GA in 1965 (September-November) I tend to see Augusta in a different light. September, hotter than …., November, colder than ….

    LBJ, thanks for inviting me to join your army although your letter didn’t give me the option to decline.

  19. Bob in Central FL on 05 Mar 2013 at 2:44 pm #

    My azaleas are done for the year, but had the best show in many years

  20. Mindy on 05 Mar 2013 at 3:18 pm #

    Ghost, do you realize exactly what you said? “On the off chance you aren’t just playing dumb…” That was the most subtle way anyone has ever called me dumb! Marvelous! There’s an “off chance” that you aren’t playing dumb which means that the odds are that you really are dumb…Being a collector of fine insults, I have to admit that you have scored a Golden Booger with that one! :D [No, I'm not mad. Just a little psychotic.]

  21. Symply Fargone on 05 Mar 2013 at 4:28 pm #

    @Mindy,

    When it is the basketball team it is the “Sell tix” When it is the wilds of ancient England it is the Kelts. I know I am right about the first ’cause they always call me to see if they can Sell Tix to me, my friends, my nonexistent business assoc and anyone else they think I am connected with.

    @GR6,

    That truly does deserve the golden booger(comment edited; nay deleted so I can make more comments in the future)…..Glad I never called the cops on the neighbors in Kennebunkport, turns out they had an ornamental pear tree jk.

    This winter isn’t, again, at least not for New England. One or two big blows does not equal a month or two of constant snow like when I was a kid, or is it just that I was shorter then…we’ll soon find out, my trainer told me this AM she is an inch shorter than when she was a teen….old age; its comin’! Then I really will be Symply Fargone!

  22. Bryan on 05 Mar 2013 at 5:42 pm #

    Winter missed the mountains of northern New Mexico again. We still had plenty of cold, including a few sub-zeros, and lots of wind. Just no snow. Okay, not “no snow”. I think I saw a total of 6″ at my house all winter, almost all in one fall in December. Should have had two feet minimum in several storms. This makes three dry winters in past four years. I’m tired of droughts!

  23. Ghost Rider 6 on 05 Mar 2013 at 6:28 pm #

    Mindy, that was test, which you passed, which ironically means you are not dumb.

  24. Mark in TTown on 05 Mar 2013 at 7:12 pm #

    Ghost Rider 6, check this out: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/07/the-funniest-unintentiona_n_602700.html#s90427&title=Yes_Understanding

  25. Ghost Rider 6 on 05 Mar 2013 at 9:14 pm #

    How did you know I live in that community?

  26. Mark in TTown on 05 Mar 2013 at 10:21 pm #

    Educated guess?

  27. Ghost Rider 6 on 05 Mar 2013 at 11:43 pm #

    “Friends” reruns on nick@nite = Pokies Central

    I’m pretty sure those ladies never heard of “Concealing Petals”.

  28. TruckerRon on 05 Mar 2013 at 11:50 pm #

    Then there’s the way folks pronounce Notre Dame differently for the cathedral than the American university…

  29. Jerry in Fl on 06 Mar 2013 at 12:06 am #

    Hello Carl, it may be because we are slightly NE of you but we had a couple of very frosty mornings recently. We had pretty much a typical winter, cool today, warm tamale. Were you around 3/15/93, aka the blizzard of 93. The end of probably the warmest winter in local history and we woke up on 3/15 to find everything covered with the most snow that I”ve ever seen in 63 years in Florida. There was still snow at the end of that day, which also does not happen around here. The coldest temp that I’ve seen in the panhandle-3 degrees Christmas morning 1983.

  30. Jerry in Fl on 06 Mar 2013 at 12:08 am #

    Oh yeah, that was east of here but still on the panhandle coast.

  31. Debbe59 on 06 Mar 2013 at 4:26 am #

    Good morning all Villagers….

    And a FOOD morning to Mindy, John and Ginger….

    Snowed again last night, not much….still no heat and the high will be 33 degree with winds out of the north at 20 mph….I thought I was going to lose my mind yesterday in the packing room. Even with gloves I thought my fingers were frozen. Had to go out into the hen house several times to warm up…it was 77 degrees in there. Lucky for me one of the canvas belts that carry eggs broke. So I took my time in mending it. Kept my fingers warm tho.

    Mark…thanks for the additional advice. I’m going to dump one of the liter boxes outside. I have 3 boxes. It’s supposed to get up to 57 degrees on Friday….thanks for the memories….great Who song…had the album…come and join the party dressed to kill……

    GR….no cat fight, Lady Mindy and I are above that….besides your drooling would wreck your smartphone :) Now, in today’s real time strip, one of your fantasies comes to light…another old expression….

    Ya’ll have a warmfully blessed day….

    =^..^=

  32. Mindy on 06 Mar 2013 at 5:19 am #

    Food morning, Debbe, from the Three Inmates. You really do know how to read Ghostie, don’t you? Drooling, indeed, except you left off dribbling, slobbering and panting. How can you tell when a male is “in the mood?” He’s breathing…

    Got a query, which is a fancy question, for The Village. For darn near three weeks now I’ve had a song stuck in my mind, Simon & Garfunkle’s “El Condor Pasa,” particularly the lines, “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail/yes, I would, I truly would…” Except for substituting “snail” for “nail,” which is phonetically close, after all. [If it's not El Condor, don't correct me, I'm not in the mood for corrections! I at least know it's S&G -- not S&M, Ghost! -- and that's close enough.] Last year it was “I was so much older then/I’m younger than that now.” I forgot what the query was but it doesn’t matter because that was just a little trick to draw Ghost and a couple of others in close enough that I could do a data dump and give both mobius tunes to unsuspecting victims. Thanks. For the memories. Darn, it started all over again! No, Ghost, not mammaries…but come a little bit closer [you're my kind of...of, forget it, I'm not going that route with apologies to Marty Robbins!].

  33. Terry on 06 Mar 2013 at 5:24 am #

    Regarding the Bradford pear tree – what the Boy Scout Handbook used to refer to as “nocturnal emission.”

  34. Debbe59 on 06 Mar 2013 at 5:51 am #

    MINDY>>>>

    Googled…..Bob Dylan’s Back Pages…gonna have to U tube it….can’t recall the song right now…

    S&G were good together….love “the only living boy in new york”

  35. Mindy from Indy on 06 Mar 2013 at 6:30 am #

    Oh goodie, if we are trading earworms (songs stuck in one’s head), someone please, PLEASE take mine – “Landslide” by Stevie Nicks. Three days now. Stupid Budweiser commercial.

  36. Mindy on 06 Mar 2013 at 6:38 am #

    But Stevie Nicks is just so awesome! Another “whiskey voice” according to John.

  37. Ghost Rider 6 on 06 Mar 2013 at 6:41 am #

    Debbe, what makes you think that’s a “fantasy” for me? ;)

    Did Parsley save Rosemary in time?

    Lady Mindy, sufficient quantities of Budweiser have been known to kill earworms. As has whiskey. I’ll bet rum would work, also. I’m just sayin’…

    I do have a colorization question for Jimmy. Is Janis really supposed to be wearing slacks or whatever lower garment she seems to be wearing ? Arlo’s lack of an upper garment makes fevered imaginations wonder.

  38. mike in 96 on 06 Mar 2013 at 6:49 am #

    Ginger… and Mindy also, you can go to this site and expand the map out for your area and then find the closest reporting station to NOAA for your area. It should give you recent data unless the station is reporting via radio just a few times a day. Most are internet based now but may experence an occasional outage.

    https://madis-data.noaa.gov/sfc_display/

  39. Mindy on 06 Mar 2013 at 7:04 am #

    mike in 96, will try the link but don’t expect too much. Oddly enough, NOAA and other weather service forecasts all seem to be for the OTHER side of the mountain, just like the newspaper’s WX FCST is for the Tennessee Valley of which we ain’t even though we are in the reading area…a fact the birdcage liner consistently forgets. I guess it really is location, location, location…

  40. mike in 96 on 06 Mar 2013 at 7:15 am #

    The weather can vary a lot there. I lived in the mountains of VA and NC for many years and the temp could vary as much as 10 degrees in the length of a football field. But you might get lucky and find some nut like me with nothing better to do but watch weather just down the road from ya!

  41. Mindy on 06 Mar 2013 at 7:52 am #

    mike, I’ve seen many times when I could be working in the front yard in the hot sun and three highway lanes and two sidewalks away it was pouring rain. I think it was the old preacher put a hex on me.

  42. Jean in Dahlonega Ga aka Trapper Jean on 06 Mar 2013 at 8:44 am #

    Tom from the Front Range, I don’t know how lucky you were, but if you were at Ft Gordon in ’65 you just missed my Dad. He retired in ’64 and had spent the last year or so as a drill sergeant there. I have fond memories of Augusta, but then I was still in grade school when we moved.

    There was barely enough snow to be seen this morning but the wind has been howling since 4am or so. Even my heavy bass wind chimes have been sounding and that takes a strong wind.

    If I may go back to the subject of NASCAR, I had a conversation with author Sharyn McCrumb about that one day. She loves the races, and I asked her why, as it’s just a bunch of guys driving in circles really fast. No sport there, in my opinion. She said I might have more interest in it if I knew more about the racers involved. That was how she had gotten interested. Even so, I did enjoy the book she wrote about the racing world-Saint Dale. Imagine a group of tourists making a bus tour pilgrimage to all the race tracks Dale Earnhart had raced at.