many moons ago. . .

Many moons ago - like over twenty years' worth - I came across a woman singer named Marti Jones. As I recall, I was more interested in her musician husband, Don Dixon, whose voice I liked. I have no recollection of any of Dixon's songs anymore, but I still have a cassette of Marti's album "Match Game" - which doesn't seem to be in release anymore.

I popped it into my car cassette player to see if the sun hadn't baked the songs out of it and heard Marti's cover of David Bowie's song Soul Love [from the Ziggy Stardust/Spiders from Mars album]. Amazing! Mega years in the glove compartment of my little-used car and it still plays.

I haven't been able to get the song out of my mind, since! Count yourselves lucky I can't find an online recording of it. You, too, could be hearing the start of the guitar and the rather strange lyrics:

Stone love, she kneels before the grave
a brave son who gave his life to save the slogan
that hovers 'tween the headstone and her eyes
for they penetrate her grieving.

New love, a boy and girl are talking
new words, that only they can share in
new words, a love so strong it tears their hearts
to sleep, through the fleeting hours of morning.

Love is careless in its choosing, sweeping over cross a baby
love descends on those defenseless
Idiot love will spark the fusion
Inspirations have I none, just to touch the flaming dove
All I have is my love of love - and love is not loving.

Soul love, the priest that tastes the word and
told of love, and how my God on high is
all love, though reaching up my loneliness evolves
by the blindness that surrounds him.

Love is careless in its choosing, sweeping over cross a baby
love descends on those defenseless
Idiot love will spark the fusion
Inspirations have I none, just to touch the flaming dove
All I have is my love of love - and love is not loving.

I wonder what it all means?

Marti Jones does a great job with it. Better than Bowie. I think. . . .
Heresy. [but all I can find on You-Tube is the Bowie version. Sorry!]

paradigm shift

What if I approached mixing a cocktail just like I approach making a sauce - let's say - or a dish of pasta?

What if I mixed up the ingredients myself, rather than buying a green - or red - or chartreuse-coloured bottle of something?

I think this guy Mark Bittman is on to something. Read about it in the NY Times, here.


Maybe I can mix me a mean margarita without opening one of these bottles. (Which I never want to open because I never end up using it all which means I have to throw it out in a month or so and then buy another bottle for the next time I might want one of these cocktails, but which I won't want to open because I never end up using it all which means. . . . you get the idea.)

It's nice to think I could try, anyway. Like Bittman says: "It's empowering."

All-righty then!

But maybe I'll wait until after noon. . . .

[do I have limes?]

my hero. . . .

I really like this lady! Go read what Kate DiCamillo has to say about writing.

"God bless you, baby."

photo is of Kate - linked from her website, which I trust is ok. . . . .

time flights

The days have been flying past me. We're moving - supposedly - in something like 6 weeks.

I'm in a serious state of denial.

It all feels like make-believe that we might finally - finally! - be in our own home. The home we can expect to stay in, indefinitely. No more moves.

No more moves?

Ha! No more moves.

At least I don't think so!

I don't know how that will feel. I went to 12 different schools before I graduated high school. I was born overseas. I've never counted up all the states I've been to, but it's been a lot. (The 'missing' ones tend to be in the upper northwest part. . . . The 'missing' countries tend to be the more 'eastern' ones. . . .) Could it really be time for me to settle down?

It does feel like it.

I'm looking forward to planning and planting my garden. To going through all the boxes I've stored in my parents' attic and basement over the years, and finally either using all that 'good stuff', or else heaving it. To working in a kitchen I designed for me to work in. (If only I could find a decent countertop that didn't cost a fortune!) To maybe really getting a piano, and not just thinking: "One day. . . . ."

Other developments: Luther is now about twice the size he was when he arrived, and house-trained. He still is not to be trusted on his own, however. Squirrels have started a nest only 20 feet up in the tree right in front of our rented-house-porch, and the front yard has been transformed into a sort of flying squirrel circus tent. Almost all the plants I bought at the beginning of the planting season never made it into pots and are beginning to die. I have managed to control myself and not start taking plants to our new house - where the final grading could be expected to kill them all, or the workers to trample them to death, no matter where I put them. . . . I figured out that the chatty little gray birds we call "Ardy Doody" birds (they sound like Star Wars' R2D2) are actually Cat Birds - but I don't think they sound like cats atall. I'm reading children's books. Kate DiCamillo's Tale of Despereaux was very entertaining - and beautifully written. Imagine: a book for 9 - 12 year olds that includes the word "perfidy"! Interesting. And, I cut my hair.

I have to start packing soon. But for today, it's vacuum the sofa we're getting rid of, lunch with my mother and a 'churchlady' friend - hope she doesn't start lecturing me on why I should go to church - and resume the quest to find a reasonably-priced kitchen countertop and bathroom tile. Preferably in a natural substance.

Oh: and to stay cool. They're calling for 95 degrees. . . . . I guess I'll have to turn the AC on again. Bummer!

thought: the heart of crying

Tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it.

Albert Richard Smith, author and entertainer (1816-1860)

the "ethics" of lying

In Oceanside, CA, the school district has attempted to scare their students straight by lying to them, telling them that several classmates were killed in an alcohol-related car accident.

I don't know who came up with this - ah - idea, which was embraced by the school board, and carried out by the highway patrol, if you can imagine that. The plan was to get the emotional reaction - shock, grief, loss, etc. - and then clear it all up in an assembly later in the day.

Here's what guidance counselor Lori Tauber was quoted as saying: ""They were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized. That's how they get the message."

Well, they got an emotional reaction, thanks to the lie. Perhaps you can imagine the reaction thereafter, however, when the students found out that it was a hoax?

No one likes to be manipulated. Even in the pursuit of a "greater good."

I think the "adults" mixed up their ends and means, and they weren't even forced to do so. There's an ethical dilemma when the S.S. asks whether you're helping to hide Jews - and you struggle with whether or not it's ok to lie in that instance. That's the Kantian extreme of not lying - no matter WHAT - which so many people reject. This wasn't even close. This is lying for expediency, for effect, to "make a point." This is lying as an acceptable tool in argumentation - so long as it "works".

How will the school officials react when the students lie - and cheat on their next exam, say - for expediency? For effect? To make a point? Surely a good grade - even a passing grade - is worth a little lie. . . in the eyes of a high school student who has just learned that all the school officials, the PTA, and even the State police will lie if the stakes are supposedly high enough. I imagine that this graduating class could also come up with any number of other "good ends" to which lying would ease the path, now that they've seen how this works.

Way to go.

Class dismissed.

seeing lessons

Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.

Louis L'Amour, novelist (1908-1988)

leaving on a jet plane

We haven't done any music in a while. Here's the original recording of Peter, Paul and Mary's Leaving on a Jet Plane. It's a bit of a cheesey slideshow that goes with it, but the only live version I could find of them doing it (that John Denver wasn't involved in) was one where they are all well into their middle years and Mary seems incapable of just singing the melody line.

She has to "interpret" it.

It's pretty dreadful.

Now this is a song that became a cliche. I got to the point where I couldn't bear to listen to it. Sort of like "Feelings", or "Tie a Yellow Ribbon".

Listening to the words again though, after so many years, I realize that it's come to mean something else, something we need to pay attention to. If you don't believe me, listen to Justin Timberlake's reggae version. He sings the same words, but they have a very different connotation. He's bored with the whole travel and departure thing - it's no big deal except that it momentarily separates him from the one that he thinks he now wants to be with. At the end of the song, he sings that his lover should "dream about the days to come when I won't have to leave alone" - and somehow the implication is that they'll travel together - whereas the implication in Peter, Paul and Mary's version is that the traveling will stop.

They will settle down - "I'll wear your wedding ring."

This brings us right back to what I wrote about a week or two ago in marriage or liberty, looking at the problems that can develop when we try and base so-called rights on freedom, without also taking into account the obligations that go along with it.

Onora O'Neill also speaks about this.

Check out Deneen's Fear of Not Flying. Meanwhile, here are the lyrics to the chorus - written in 1967 by John Denver (news to me):

So kiss me and smile for me,
tell me that you'll wait for me,
hold me like you'll never let me go.

I'm leaving on a jet plane.
I don't know when I'll be back again.
Oh babe, I hate to go.

no time

It's amazing how much trouble a young sight hound can get into, left on his own for just 5 minutes.

We're not even talking potty mishaps here. We're talking shredded pillows, ingested concrete and crashed wine glasses which, a mere minute before, had been filled with a rather nice cabernet.

Luther likes wine.

He likes beer, too.

He hasn't been tested yet with some of our favorite foods, as we've been trying to keep him under the impression that we all eat the same thing here - just at different times - for as long as possible.

I think he suspects a rat.

What all this means is that I haven't had much time to do much of anything that takes much time. Thoughts have to come in snippets. Visits are punctuated by LUTHER - Leave. It. Pens are stolen, as is anything that has come into contact with my body: clothing, shoes, paper, pillows. The one thing he has not attacked is The Book - whatever book I happen to be reading. I think he knows there are limits.That's him - asleep for the moment. If I get up? My coffee cup is history. I don't leave him with my computer for an instant. I know better.

It's been fun, but it's been all-consuming. Life as I knew it has changed. I expect it won't stay like this forever, but it will never be completely the same. Still, I think that's good.

For one thing, I'm meeting a whole lot more people! I finally met the couple that lives at the end of the cul de sac, who never say much of anything to anyone. We've lived here three years. . . . We're also seeing more of our neighbors than we ever have before. Funny how being out with a dog turns into such a social occasion.

Who knew?

After a lifetime of using Reynolds wrap - and wrestling with the roll that inevitably falls out of the box as you're pulling out a length, I got a very interesting email from my mother, who had also spent a life time wresting with the roll and the box and etc.It turns out that there's a little tab on the ends of the box that you can push in, to prevent just such a happening. Check it out.
Ditto on the plastic wrap. They even have instructions: PRESS TAB TO HOLD ROLL.

Right.
NOT so on the wax paper, but this wax paper box is SO OLD (I never use the stuff) that maybe it was PRE-tab days. . . . And just when were those, pray tell? I had no idea they had these little tab-ey thingees. . . . Like I said: Who knew?

Well, now we do.

It's so embarrassing not to see what's right in front of you. I wonder what else I've been missing?

bad news. . . good news?

Everywhere I look, I see articles about the "destruction" of the American dream, "destruction" of wealth, "evaporation" of wealth, and now articles also about raging tidewaters washing houses away, describing the destruction of large second homes on lakes. "That house had everything," the crying owner was reported as saying. "Now it's all gone."

Besides the "destruction" of wealth, people are beginning to think twice before hopping on a plane, prices being what they are. We won't be able to travel like we used to.

I wonder if this is maybe not such bad news as we may have thought. Maybe we'll start living where we really live, and not endlessly driving around in circles, looking for life.

I remember my official best friend, in the days when we still did things together, had a tendency to want to hit every hot spot, looking for the best scene in town. She spent more time looking than she ever did enjoying. After two or three places, being encouraged to down yet another drink so we could go check out yet another club - "So-and-so said he'd be there, for sure. . . ." I'd finally tell her to go on without me.

In many ways, she's still looking.

Meanwhile, an old friend of mine finds himself getting pushed out of Manhattan. His Brooklyn Heights apartment is going condo and his Manhattan office rental overhead is tripling. He's worried, but I think he's seeing the possibility of reducing his overhead by living where he really wants to live (way out on Long Island) and maybe even working out there. With less overhead, it might just work. For years, he's felt imprisoned by his monthly overhead, which then demanded a certain income. Now, with an overhead that continues to increase well beyond any possible income stream he can generate, he's stepping off the merry-go-round.

I think that's good news. No - wait a minute - great news!

I think we're all about to get off the merry-go-round, one way or another. The sky's the limit, though. I really see this as good news. We couldn't have kept going the way we were going. We were killing ourselves.

Now what, I wonder?

Maybe we'll live where we work and eat what grows in the same area and hang out with our neighbors. Maybe. Is it really necessary to have mangetout* from South Africa in the local Giant foodstore? Probably not. Especially when fresh, sweet, corn is coming into season!

_______________________________________
*otherwise known as snow peas. . . .

failure and imagination

J.K. Rowling gave the commencement speech at Harvard this year. (text available here if you scroll down past the NPR article about how not everyone thought she was "A-List" enough for Harvard) .

Her topic? Failure and imagination.

On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

I think she made some good points. Certainly, she is a good and interesting writer/communicator! I think she left the most important thing out, though. She assumed the existence of overarching and archetypical values that ultimately will direct our paths, if only we can get out of the way.

Thus, she extolls the benefits of failure in her own life, because it "cleared the way" for her to focus on what was really important. She recommends imagination, because we might thereby imagine a better life, and - having otherwise 'cleared the way' to focus on what's most important - we might achieve it.

All that is well and good. But the question of good and evil - a question she grapples with certainly through her Harry Potter character - remains. How do we reconcile conflicting notions of what's most important? What if what I imagine as a better life involves my neighbor moving out of town or at least shutting up his incessantly yapping lap dogs and banning the inexorable dribbling of his 8-year old's basketball?

More to come. . . .

mental edit

Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts.

Madame de Stael, writer (1766-1817)

marriage or liberty

Is it fuzzy thinking, or is there really no substantive difference between homosexual "marriage" and polygamous "marriage" when it comes to what our society will allow as marriage?

In a recent post - Til Death - Georgetown Professor Patrick Deneen points out the questionable foundation of the recent California Supreme Court's In re Marriage Cases decision which presumes to establish a "right" to homosexual marriage. The basis for their decision is individual liberty and personal autonomy.

. . . the constitutionally based right to marry . . . must be understood to encompass the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage that are so integral to an individual's liberty and personal autonomy that they may not be eliminated or abrogated by the Legislature or by the electorate . . . . These core substantive rights include, most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish - the the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life - an officially recognized and protected family . . . [opinion at p. 6]

Deneen aptly notes, however, that marriage is really more based on the voluntary abrogation of individual liberty and autonomy, in self-sacrifice.*

When we base a "right" of marriage on liberty - and a so-called liberty to choose whatever I like - on what basis do we prohibit any choice, so long as it is freely made? Why not polygamy? Why not child marriage? Yes, child marriage brings up the additional element of competency to choose but with the increasing panoply of rights and freedoms being given children, is it not just a matter of time before they - too - will be seen as at liberty to choose as they will?

Having chosen in "liberty", it is not a great distance to unchoose in "liberty."

Maybe the bigger question is the proper basis for marriage. Is it based in liberty? Or is based on a voluntary servitude - a sacrifice - for the good of the other and the community?

Having been persuaded to discuss the question of homosexual marriage in terms of liberty, I perceive we have greater "liberties" looming. Just waiting in the wings. . . .

Maybe somewhere in Texas, for example.
____________________________________
*He also makes a really interesting point about a Hegelian recognition as legitimacy instead of individual justification, but I will leave that as an aside. . . . Another aside I'd like to point out is the California Court's apparent assumption that marriage - and "right" to marry - is constitutionally based.

OK then.

old words

Word-a-day has featured archaic words this week. For example:

sweven (SWEV-uhn) noun
Dream; vision.

[From Old English swefn (sleep, dream, vision).]

-Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)

"[The queen] went in to the Sultan and assured him that their daughter had suffered during all her wedding-night from swevens and nightmare."

The Arabian Nights (translated by Richard Francis Burton); 1885.

Sweven. What a great word!

Others were scrannel, point-device, and garboil. "Thin, or unmelodious" - "completely/perfectly" - and "confusion/turmoil", respectively.

I like words. Scrannel. Now that's a word you can sink your teeth into.

I'm going to shake you by your scrannel little neck!

Although that's rather violent as a first thought. . . . Sorry. Let me try again.

The worst thing about running a fever was having to endure the scrannel broth my grandmother was convinced was called for as its cure.

Better? Maybe not.

The first tones of the young mockingbird are apt to be a bit scrannel, but they improve rapidly.

Thank God.

OK - so maybe it's a tough-ish word to start the day with. 'Sweven' is much better!

Away with your swevens of grandeur! They are naught but garboil. The dulcet tones of the mockingbird high over the forest meadow are heaven, point-device.

I'm sure an ancient would be just as puzzled by my use of his words as I was, just seeing them for the first time. But perhaps I'll improve my use of them, with practice.

Our vocabulary has become ever more scrannel. And yet? Our thoughts ever more a garboil. . . . Point-device plain.

in which we find a picture and other musings

It's a bird! It's a plane!! It's a . . . crocodile!!?

He looks like a crocodile. He likes his new bed, that's for sure!

OK - here is our new creature, looking a bit more regal. His name is Luther.

I'm in for it, I can tell. He's slowly becoming more comfortable with his surroundings, which has translated into being a whole lot more demanding of constant attention. He is no longer content to lie in his crate for an hour or so, in quiet safety, for a snooze. Now, he's quite happy to snooze wherever he finds himself, in the middle of selective mayhem. Just a quick shut-eye, to renew his energies prior to renewed attach on the peony bushes, the concrete bench, the metal bracket that's supposed to hold the porch together, or a convenient foot or hand.

He's been seen making off with shoes.

He likes peanut butter.

The vet has told me that it is my job to make sure that his teething toys are "more attractive" than anything else he might find. Like dried magnolia leaves, mulch, brick, concrete, human flesh, clothing, rugs, dish towels, furniture, etc.

I don't know how to compete!

I do have hopes for the peanut butter. . . .

At present, he is blissfully asleep in his crate with his puppy-Kong chew toy on top of his nose. I shamelessly bribed him back into the crate by smearing peanut butter on the toy. I'd take a picture of him, but I don't want to wake him. (waaaaaahhhh! more peanut butter!!!!!!)

The funny thing is that I feel ridiculously like the worst new mother stereotypes! All fluttery and obsessed and focusing on bowel and potty events, food, teething, etc. . . . but I also have to worry about leash training and whether or not he'll run off. Let's face it, infants don't find the one hole in the fence large enough to wriggle through. Nor do you have to watch them every second for fear that if you turn your back for just a moment, a turd will appear on the rug.

Which is exactly what happened this morning, even though Luther had JUST been outside, to very good effect ["good business, Luther, gooooood business!"] and I figured we were safe for at least a half hour. He was practicing going up and down stairs, though, and I figure that the effort must have surprised another turd out of him, as when I checked [any sudden silence is alarming], there he was at the top of the stairs, looking at the turd as if it had fallen from the sky.

It is the first 'accident' he's had. . . . so I can't complain too much. He really has been splendid about it. I take him out every couple of hours to "do the business" - and he does! I figured we wouldn't get off scott-free, but I was rather hoping. . . .

It's hard to concentrate on much else. Laundry has piled up, as has clutter. I keep putting things up and 'out of his way', so there are stacks of papers, my purse, the mail - you name it - all kind of lumped in one pile in the middle of every table, as I try and use the other hand to take him off of whatever else he's already gotten into.

But I do get some time to think about other things, like how is it that we now look at political acceptances or rejections of "endorsements" by various people or groups? What's the deal with that?! If I'm a candidate for public office, and someone "endorses" me, do I have to take the action to accept or reject it? And do I have to look into their background, beliefs and opinions - including all past public statements - and decide accordingly? Think a minute about what that looks like.

No. I don't want that person - or any of his friends - to vote for me, because he's a narrow-minded bigot. [or said something "offensive" 10 years ago, or otherwise has the "wrong" set of beliefs. . .]

Right. That makes sense!

Now, while I may not be able to control the thoughts and opinions of someone who wants to "endorse" me for political office, I do have some "control" over the the thoughts and opinions of my spiritual leader (whether or not he "endorses" me for political office), insofar as I have chosen the spiritual leader I attend to. Pretty much gone are the days of the parish or diocese system, where you were expected to attend your local church, no matter who was in the pulpit. The control is still not the power to control another's thoughts, of course, it's the power to control the influence that a person who has those thoughts has over you.

Yet, I expect to hear comparisons between Obama's Rev. Wright and McCain's Rev's Hagee and Parsley, from Texas and Ohio, respectively. Hagee has apparently said that he can see in Hitler, the hand of God moving to bring the Jews back to Israel. (wow. with "friends" like that. . . . ) Parsley has apparently sounded off about Islam, opining that it is anti-Christ and inherently violent. Still, McCain attends neither of those two churches. Never has.

On the other hand, Wright. . . . ah, but we know about Obama's 20 years attending Rev. Wright's weekly vision of a black liberation theology in which America and whites are apparently cast as the power-mongering masters, will they, nil they. Somebody's got to play the bad guy, eh?

Anyway. . . . I see a difference. But I'll just bet we get treated to a whole lot of "There's NO difference!" sermons. Then maybe we can rant a little about intolerance. . . .

But I've got to go. Luther is pacing, and that either means that he's got to go 'do the business' or that he's bored - or both. My job: figure out which. My hope? To try and not be cast as the bad guy in the human-canine coexistence negotiations.

puppy patrol & interspecies peace negotiations

OK, so I knew it was going to be a lot of work and a lot of attention. . . . But I had NO IDEA of what this boy-pup would eat if I wasn't watching him all the time!

Leaves, sticks, stones, mulch, bugs - and his favorite - concrete. His favorite chew toy is our concrete bench, currently serving as a coffee table on the front porch. Oh. He also favors brick.

Is this normal?

He goes to the vet today for his 12-week shots; I'll ask the vet.

My days - for the last 2 days - have entailed walking around with him, saying "tsst!" and "leave it!" and offering him the accepted chew toy. He eventually 'gets it', but his memory is short. Half hour later? Same thing. "Tsst! Leave it!"

Inside, the cat hid for almost two days, coming out only when Luther was in his crate. Last night, she sprung her new strategy. She waited until Luther was outside for his 'business' walk and then set up an ambush at the door. I could just imagine her thoughts: "If we can just keep him OUTSIDE, this will be a whole lot easier. . . ."

How would Cesar handle that one, I wonder?

After initially avoiding the confrontation (cat stays in kitchen; dog goes onto porch), we considered leaving them to 'fight it out' - in effect - on their own, namely to settle it between themselves. On further thought, though, it seemed to me that that is not what the pack leader would do - not this pack leader, anyway! So back on went the leash, and we marched out the porch door and back in through the kitchen door, where I sent the cat scurrying.

"Is that what Cesar would say to do?" asked the king, "Kick the cat?"

"I didn't kick the cat!"

"No. I know you didn't. Not really. I meant shoo her off. . . . Is that what we're supposed to do?"

I had to confess I really wasn't sure what I was supposed to do, but I felt it was important that Luther see that I was 'in charge' (even if I was wrong) and that a little cat wasn't holding me at bay, as I hunkered down out on the porch, leaving the cat to rule the entry door. . . .

The cat does not appear to have held a grudge. Luther does not appear to think I'm his hired gun, though, either. He gives the cat a healthy respect, but she needs to give him a little room, as well.

Harmonious life appears to be on the upswing again, though. Last night, the cat slept in her own bed again in our room, with Luther on the other side of our bed, in his bed.

blue-boy

It's going to be the blueboy, and he arrives tomorrow.

We still don't know about a name. There are two names still currently in the running, I think it'll be a matter of seeing which one sticks. . .

fugue for broccoli

Oh. My.

Must be seen and heard to be believed!

The broccoli has a better sound - amazingly - than does the carrot. More links to be found at Garden Rant's Playing With Your Food, including (in the comments) a whole vegetable orchestra. . . .

life goes on

Life goes on - but it's a bit boring these days.

I have packing to do and old accumulated possessions to go through and discard, give away, consider posting on ebay or craig's list. No, we don't move for at least another 3 months, but this will creep up on me, and I'm only good for about an hour's worth of going through old stuff before it overwhelms me and depression beckons!

So I'll work in just hour increments, and that should keep me sane.

The garden is a wreck - altho some silly lady stopped the other day and complimented me on it. I was sitting on the porch, not working on the garden - which is why it's a wreck - but the "gardeners" hired by the rental agent had showed up the day before and smothered the whole thing in mulch, which smells like sewage. I can only assume this woman is a fan of mulch. She took a picture.

The "gardeners" carefully left most of the weeds in place - carefully mulched - but managed to bury or uproot the perennial geranium I had just as carefully carried back from Ireland with me 3 years ago when I moved back to the States to get married.

Well, it survived their depredations - twice yearly - for 3 years, I guess that's as much as I can expect. . . . sigh.

Who knows? Maybe they just ripped the leaves off, and the tuber is buried underneath a mound of brown shit-smelling mulch. Maybe I'll see the geranium leaves burrowing their way out from under the shit before we leave here!

One can only hope.