Coldplay awesome concert

We went to see Coldplay at Oak Mountain, Pelham last night - what a gig! They ran through the crowd launched huge yellow balloons and handed out their free CD at the end of the night.
Who eles would release a free CD? And really it was just live concert footage of old gigs - both great marketing and a 101 in crowd interaction and appreciation.

The 3 hour gardener

As a novice gardener anyway, gardening in Alabama is very different to the UK. The first point that I realised is that you can only enjoy gardening before 12 noon in the summer months otherwise one is transformed into a sweaty red skinned dehydrated mess. This of course is very different from the casual pottering about for an afternoon in the UK.

Secondly the plants are slightly different here and need looking after in a different way. watering, sun, shade are all handled slightly differently for the same plants requirements. While in the UK we might try and create nuclear temperature glass houses to make our Tomatoes grow, here they pretty much can sit in a pot in direct sunlight and receive good rain water whenever it rains. Which is greatly more simple than having to water them each evening in a greenhouse - usually when it is raining outside.

Treading carefully

As a feeble Brit who isn't used to having to deal with any dangerous predators in the UK any larger than a dying bee lying in the grass, I had my first face to face encounter with a snake in my back garden.
Having cut my overgrown lawn back to look super I diligently went around the edge of the garden hacking a weeds that had been mowed down rather than cut.
This of course was terrifying and I made a noise that my wife still laughs about today. Jumping around the grass with my sythe I had to take him out. I don't know if he was coming towards me or trying to run away but it was a long and terrifying battle for both of us.

I haven't really identified the snake as I left it over night and something came and took it (I can only imagine ate it). This means there is also something living in my garden that likes to eat snakes. Fantastic so long as it isn't another larger snake!
So as far as my research took me - I was a little ashamed to say it was probably a garden snake that, quote - 'is easily handled by children'

I now have an exacerbated innate fear of my garden and animals that children can easily handle. This of course isn't good. Each twig has to be carefully kicked before picking it up and barefoot strolls are a thing of the past. The 3 hour gardening time frame is now very unproductive!

Talledega

Good morning ladies :)

Doing the Dega. Wow! - we had a blast a Talladega 09. I guess if you are born here you know where the race track is. Having been to Silverstone and Brands Hatch, Donnington, et al - one is fairly used to being guided in to the track with signs starting about 100 miles before final turn in.
Not here... Alabama intends to keep its race, as so many other things, a private state affair... all others have to continue on to the Talledega Forest. (For anyone going to the track - take the first right after you miss the track - where it says race day beer $3 and a mile long row of t-shirt stalls)

Following our noses (and dusty, hot, shouting, red faced fans and ticket touts) down an empty four lane road, we arrived. Hearing stories about people having to trek 3 miles from their cars made us feel lucky to park right next to the front gate. Most of the fans had apparently had a 3 day nonstop party prior to our arrival and most looked like it. Walking up to the track you are surrounded by various shouting and 'hollering' - the strangest of which was hearing someone shout 'Married yesterday and going to the race'. How romantic. Talledega or Dega or the Big D is the largest RV parking lot you have ever seen. Million dollar monsters of vehicles stretch for as far as the eye can see - the whole thing is literally quite a sight.

It's called the 'Superspeedway' which, I deduced, must mean it is like a normal speedway - but more 'Super'. This isnt untrue.

We jumped on our hosts cart (thanks Adam and Miller Coors!) and were whisked through the crowd to our destination - the party deck. The noise is spectacular. The race is not so much like the ear piercing scream of a highly strung 3 litre Indy or F1 car, but rather the rumble of thirty 7 Litre muscle cars trundling around the track in the form of one long metal snake held together by tape and bolts. It amazing. Its probably how racing was intended to be before space aged technology, systems and regulations on things like tire valve length or maximum number of wheels strangled any competitiveness in most other motor sports. You can't help but grin as the parade of cars passes by. I tried not smiling but its impossible.

The race was great. The 'big one' happened only a few laps in - which kind of knackered the race up a bit in my view. It was tough to get any alcoholic buzz with the heat bearing down on us but the buzz from being just 20 meters from the cars in the infield track with only a metal fence between us and them made up for this. Passion runs high among the Alabamian fans. Every car window, hat, aerial, flag pole, beer cooler and koozie and where applicable shirt has the number 24 on it (Jeff Gordon) and 44 (Dale Earnhardt, Jr). No one else really gets a look in. An out-of-towner isn't likely to get much love for cheering on Montoya. So I kept my mouth closed.

The only way to describe the experience is in the words of my father-in-law - 'All I'll say is be prepared.'

To an outsider - the whole experience is beyond preparation. Its mental.

Chipmunks

I love chipmunks. They are very cool animals. Indeed my favourite Disney characters are probably Chip and Dale. However I have come to realise that the holes in my garden that are multiplying faster each night are probably Chip and Dale's long lost relatives.

Each day/night/whenever Im not looking, they make a new hole. Recently they are burrowing right under a downspout/drainpipe and although I'm sure millions of years of evolution has taught them to design their burrows for good drainage they are unhappy at the recent rainfall and digging a literal perforation around my house that I'm worried will one day simply collapse in to. Ive tried different methods to move them on. Someone suggested pepper to me - this may work well in a Disney cartoon but not so well outside of this. After turning the leaf blower on the holes to see if I could pop them out like circus human cannon balls and realised the echo I heard meant the burrow was as large a Welsh coal mine - I prefer to fill up the holes behind them and let them migrate to a suitable location further along the garden.

Unfortunately a Chipmunks mind doesnt work like that of my own as they have either short term memory loss or just dont give a toot. A less laid back person may think they are conspiring against him ;) They re-burrow, scatter unlogically or simply as one did, break in to my well sealed crawl space to start a family. Brilliant. I have had a brief glimpse now of what the UK govenment is up against with the travelling gypsy population.

Now I have the unenviable job of ensuring that all the Chipmunk family under my house is outside the house when I reseal the airvents with reinforced Chipmunk gates. Watch this space!