A dud ramble

I have a suspicion that when Garrison Keillor does his monologue on "A Prairie Home Companion," he often just starts talking and sees what comes out.  Sometimes he is hilarious, and sometimes it's a dud.  (Yes, I said that.)

Trying to get up to a hundred (100!) 2014 posts by the end of the year is giving me writer's block.  I have all sorts of ideas of what to write when I can't write, when I am up the street in my neighborhood, dodging puddles in the road and mud amongst the grass blades, trying to manage my fingers between two straining dog leashes and a crinkly recycled grocery bag full of dog poo.  Or, when I am measuring out the ingredients for gluten free muffins into my blender, and I drop an egg, and the blender is too full and won't form a vortex, right then I have an inspiration (perhaps that's why the egg fell), but by the time the muffins are in the oven and the timer set, the inspiration has vaporized.  Driving, also, has a way of both bringing and stealing away ideas that I could write about, a fully developed idea crashing and burning to oblivion when an orange car from Indiana rudely forces his way in front of me at a congested intersection (and I wish like crazy I were driving an old, rusty beater car so he'd think twice about who had more to lose).

To tie two thoughts together now. . .

Since I rarely remember what I was going to say by the time I have a chance to say it, and since the end of the year is coming on us like a night train (only 80 shopping days left until Christmas, people, and I still have 23 posts to write after this one), since I'm getting desperate, I'm going to do what I call, "pull a Garrison."

To "pull a Garrison" is to ramble and see what comes out.

I haven't pulled out the annuals and planted daffodils yet.  That's a confession.  It was a rainy weekend and a rainy week.

Rain can keep you from what you need to do.  The farmers are feeling that, this year.  I don't know how those poor guys are going to get the corn harvested, let alone the soybeans.

Rain can be a good thing, at the right time and in the right amount.  The sun is the same: a lot of sun is good sometimes, but too much sun withers the earth.

Generally speaking, I think you want rain in the spring and sunshine in the autumn, but you don't get to pick, so what is the point?

I cannot imagine being a farmer, working that hard, expending all those resources for each spring planting, while being completely at the mercy of forces that you have absolutely no control over.  And yet, what would happen to us if all the farmers gave up farming because it is too risky?  What then?

I need farmers because I'm not much good at gardening.  Somebody told me today that I should have a garden and grow my own greens so I could avoid herbicides and pesticides and GMOs.  Even if I could successfully grow a bunch of greens, could I get full off them?  I have never found greens to be satisfactorily filling, and even if I were to get full, they don't hold a person very long.  They don't stick to your ribs.

I like growing flowers.  You can eat nasturtiums.  They are very spicy, but they aren't filling either.

Daffodils are poisonous, which is why I plant them instead of tulips.  Tunneling rodents love to eat tulip bulbs.  I figure with daffodil bulbs, either the little critters will leave them alone, or else, if they eat them, I'll have poisoned some tunneling rodents, so that's a win-win.

This writing exercise did not work, but I'm leaving it anyway.  If I erase it and write something else now, it will be dishonest, not a true (albeit failed) ramble.

I wonder if this is a dumb goal, trying to write 100 posts by year end?  Maybe it's just a waste of time.