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Showing posts from March, 2012

Cooked and frozen - the looming disaster for our tree fruit

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A little more than 5 years ago, I wrote a blog piece called Global Cooking . Maybe not so much for other readers at the time, but for myself. To document a winter that essentially wasn't happening, with early January temperatures in the 40s and 50s. Using a chart from the Weather Underground website , I wrote, "Today is the 26th consecutive day of above normal temperatures here. Every day during these past 26 has had a high temperature at least 7 degrees above normal." I also noted, among that year's oddities, that I had harvested broccoli in the garden on New Year's day. 5 years before that, in 2002, when 4 consecutive mid-April days in the 80s caused the fruit trees to bloom prematurely. But a frost nearly immediately thereafter completely wiped out that year's cherry crop, and reduced the apple crop by almost 90%. None of this prepared us for 2012. Here is the weather chart for March, 2012 from the Weather Underground site. The average high temp

Southside comes to Michigan

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I have a t-shirt I've never worn. It announces "Peace, Love and Jukes," and the dates: March 2-4, 2001. The event was Jukestock, a weekend festival of all things related to Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, held at a Holiday Inn in Tinton Falls, New Jersey. Lori -- 7 months pregnant with Elianna at the time -- needed a doctor's approval to go with me. We took Aaron, just past his 4th birthday, to some of the events. I remember that, during a concert by Mark Pender's band, it was too loud for Aaron so I took him out of the concert room to the hallway... only to realize about a minute later that Pender was doing a Louis Prima routine and leading the band through the hallways -- right to where we had escaped! The highlight, of course, was Southside's concert at the hotel that Saturday night for the 300 loyal attendees. A stunning 35-song set, highlighted by "This Time Baby's Gone for Good," and a monumental version of the Springste