The Ballad of the Chestnut Mare

and we'll be friends for life, she'll be just like a wife..I'm going to catch that horse if I can

Fiesta is coming up and I have to look at yet another white guy as El Presidente riding a horse like a businessman instead of a gaucho! Old Spanish Days..how about a nice senorita as El Presidente..or a John Wayne type..he was married to a few Mexican gals, was fluent in Spanish and his films had the cool old Fiesta spirit! and he could make a horse go backwards!!

horses are symbols of freedom and the west...but do horses dream? I don't know I'm not a horse..but if I was a horse, I'd dream of wide open spaces to run with my friends..or maybe live on a ranch and give kids rides all day...I'd be a do-gooder kinda horse

or maybe live out on the Channel Islands and be free...oh that used to be a reality not a dream...but the NPS and Nature Con fixed that..they confiscated the islands



and now that all my admonitions to the National Parks Service and Nature CONservancy about ill-conceived restorations have gone unheeded, Mother Nature has stepped in to do the talking..

so the Channel Islands biologists have really messed things up and now we got too many foxes ..but we also have some interesting plants moving in...remember the push to get rid of ice plant on the islands using child labor, well it looks like another species of ice plant has filled the niche..I read about this in the News-Press/ Peter Howorth's column..it was pretty good and when Peter is not busy screaming "SHARK", he can write a pretty good story...


according to Howorth, the islands are being hit by crystalline ice plant and it's spreading rapidly...it's not a big deal although Peter says it "chokes out" Coreopsis, it's not true...the nativists always say that

Coreopsis grows and dies out very quickly and does not thrive in a drought..ice plant survives because it can adapt..and hold water...it is tight

I know many people hate ice plant and will either poison it or get huge plastic sheets and suffocate it like they did at the Carp State Beach... sounds crazy but we're dealing with nativists and they are kooky

Howorth goes on to list the benefits of the crystalline ice plant from food to medicinal...don't kill it, harvest it!

the notion that the NPA and Nature Con are going to turn the Channel Islands into a pre-Columbian native garden is idiotic..they have built little post-Columbian cabins so the tourists can watch the foxes..but now there's too many foxes and they are stealing food and creating a nuisance...

the islands were the best when the ranchers lived there with the sheep, horses and all the other animals... some that came over on giant pieces of driftwood!

the story of the NPS/Nature Con mismanagement will come to light if the media gets hold of it and is motivated to report

but that's a mighty big if