Today is Sunday, April 29 and there are only 240 days until Christmas.  Time to start getting those cards written out and addressed.  Today we remember the birthdays of Oliver Ellsworth, William Randolph Hearst and Dale Earnhardt.  On this day in 1429 Joan of Arc led Orleans, France to victory over the English, in 1852 the first edition of Peter Roget’s Thesaurus was published and in 1975 US Forces pulled out of Vietnam. In Japan it is Hirohito’s Birthday and in the US it is National Peace Rose Day, National Shrimp Scampi Day and National Zipper Day.

Some time ago I heard someone mention the fact that the poem Humpty Dumpty does not say that Humpty was an egg, yet he is always depicted as such.  I have let this run around in my head for some time and recently mentioned it to Barbara.  She immediately went to her best friend, Siri, to get the lowdown.  Here is what we discovered.

As a character and literary allusion, he has appeared or been referred to in a large number of works of literature and popular culture, particularly Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass in which he is described as an egg.  In 1996, the website of the Colchester tourist board attributed the origin of the rhyme to a cannon recorded as used from the church of St Mary-at-the-Wall by the Royalist defenders in the siege of 1648.  In 1648, Colchester was a walled town with a castle and several churches and was protected by the city wall. The story given was that a large cannon, which the website claimed was colloquially called Humpty Dumpty, was strategically placed on the wall. A shot from a Parliamentary cannon succeeded in damaging the wall beneath Humpty Dumpty which caused the cannon to tumble to the ground. The Royalists (or Cavaliers, "all the King's men") attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall, but the cannon was so heavy that "All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again".

Humpty Dumpty has become a popular nursery rhyme and has been used as a literary allusion many times, including Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men and Paul Auster’s novel City of Glass.  It has also been used as a common motif in popular music, including Hank Thompson’s “Humpty Dumpty Heart”, Aretha Franklin’s “All the King’s Horses” and Tori Amos’s “Humpty Dumpty”.  However, to go back to the original premise there is nothing in the rhyme which indicated that it was an egg.  Make of all that what you will.  Enough about Humpty.

I have been trying to work on some outdoor projects to make the gardens around the house look nicer, but am having some issues.  First, I have found that certain evergreens are a favorite food for deer.  I have one bush that has been completely destroyed up to the top foot or so of the bush.  Apparently the deer can’t get up that high.  I have noticed that this bush is a favorite of the deer and that a number of houses have the same problem.  All of the bushes have been eaten as far up as the deer can get, leaving some very interesting looking evergreens in their wake.  I am having mine removed and replaced with something else.

Last fall we planted a number of daffodil bulbs.  Most of them have come up, but some critter dug some of them up and just left them lying on the ground.  You could almost hear the animal thinking, “Hmm, what do we have here?  Oh, daffodils.  I don’t like them” and then spitting them out.  There have also been a couple nice ground cover plants I got that some animal decided to shred apart and leave lying in the beds as a warning that they were around.  I have done some research and have been unable to find anything about juvenile delinquent animals that simply destroy plants for the sake of it.  I will let you know if I come up with anything.

I have several perennials that I planted only to discover that they decided to be annuals and not come back.  I had four lavender plants that have been around for a couple years that decided to go away this year, too.  I am beginning to think I am developing a black thumb.  When I put it in the ground it thinks it is being buried, not planted.  I keep hoping, but I think that there is some kind of Machiavellian plot designed by the stores selling these plants to convince me that I am doing something wrong so that I will keep going back to buy more plants.  Does that sound paranoid?  Maybe I should just cover the beds in sand and seashells and go with a beach theme.

This week our fact tells us that in Alaska it is against the law to look at a moose from an airplane.  So many questions.  How would someone know that you are looking at a moose?  How do you know it is a moose and not an elk?  What if the moose is under some trees and you just happen to look down and don’t even know it is there?  Why is this a problem in the first place?  I really think there needs to be a place where I can go to find out the reasoning behind these crazy laws.  I have tried to find explanations, but so far I have not been successful.  I will let you know if and when I do.

Once again, I see each week that people in foreign countries have accessed this blog.  I would love to hear how you came across it and what you think.  Please comment and let me know.  For all the rest of you, share this link with your friends.  You should not have to suffer these inanities alone.  Thank you!