Earlier in the year I was talking with someone, and managed to totally revolt them in seconds. Yes, thank you, it’s something of a gift. Anyway, it all went wrong the moment I mentioned that the local parrots eat the dogs poop here, all of it. Can’t in all honesty say that I’ve picked up any dog poop during the past sixteen years. In the city, the stuff is viewed as a waste product to be sent to landfill, but up here in the bush, the local forest critters instead say: ‘Yummo’!
Of course, it probably helps matters the dogs eat home made breakfast mix, and also their afternoon biscuits, and that’s gone on for so long, that I now can’t recall when we started that process. What’s not to like about feed consisting of oats, pepitas, sunflower kernels, coconut, seasonal mixed fruit and vegetables, plus honey? The dogs aren’t complaining, that’s for sure. And neither are the birds if their behaviour is anything to go by.
The first I noticed the local birds inclinations in this regard was when we rented a house in a nearby town. The house was nothing fancy, but it kept the rain off our heads whilst we constructed this small off grid house way up in the hills. When we moved into that rental property, there was no grass out the front, or in the extensive backyard. At the front, the previous tenants had clearly parked their car, and the leaking emanations, not to mention the compaction from their noble steeds tyres, had combined to wiped out any signs of life. The backyard was a wasteland of dead flattened grass. Not sure what happened there, but perhaps herbicides had been applied. Visually and spiritually, it wasn’t pleasant.
The dogs share the house with us, but go outside to do their business. Early on in our tenancy, presumably the birds missed out, but it wasn’t long before word got around the avian world. Three dogs can produce a lot of excrement. After a while, the birds would line up on the fence watching the dogs activities. The dogs would head outside, do what they had to do, then come back inside. Surely at that moment, the birds would cry: “Thank you Lord!”, as they swooped down and fought off contenders for the steaming pile of warm err, stuff.
Over the course of two years with the dogs and our residency, the change was remarkable. Sure, not parking a vehicle on the front lawn helped a lot, as did the lack of emanations from the machine, mostly because I prefer to keep mechanical items in good working condition. But the backyard was something else altogether. The combination of dog manure being converted into guano was a potent force for soil fertility goodness. The grass eventually grew thick and luscious out there. It was a beautiful sight to behold, and from time to time, a dog sure could get lost in that grass jungle.
And that was when the problems began. The grass grew faster than the rate at which I could be bothered repeatedly cutting it. Of course the problem was compounded because any grass clippings were left where they fell as food for the soil critters. Local sensibilities were outraged! This was a project housing estate, such things don’t happen here, and how dare you let the grass grow beyond one inch in height? I did dare and I just hadn’t really considered that side of the story. Building an off grid house takes a lot of work, and um, I didn’t give a damn for local sensibilities. However, complaints were made via official channels, and the real estate agent sent me a nasty letter requesting that I immediately cut the grass or else I’d pay to have someone else to do the job. Nice. You know you’re kind of not aligned with prevailing sentiment when such letters hit the mail box.
The whole situation was absurd. Clearly the locals were OK with a front lawn which resembled a particularly nasty industrial accident (which the previous tenants left), but healthy rich growth was somehow just not the done thing! So we cut the Gordian knot and told them we’re moving out. Of course in order to get the rental bond back in full, the grass had to be cut to specifications, so they won in the end.
Sadly for the local birds in that housing estate, they lost out on a source of feed. As the old timers say, one’s loss, can be another’s gain, and such was the case here. Way up in the hills, we moved into an unfinished house which wasn’t even fully sealed against the mountainous weather. And the local bird life began benefiting from the dogs regular activities. The soils here improved, and continues to do so. The only down side is that people get weirded out when I tell them that the local parrots eat the dog poop, but they really do:
Sandra rarely allows me to talk about soil, so this week has been something of a special treat for me. All of the farm systems here are arranged so as to increase the lands fertility. That’s a goal which we’ve been working continually towards for eighteen years now. Even our own poop works it’s way back into the soil via a worm farm sewage system. Nothing goes to waste.
In a world where the nutrients, proteins and minerals in food is declining, and has been doing so for many decades, recycling what is now considered our wastes is one way to slow and/or reverse that situation. How good do these vegetables look? And they taste even better!
Even the layer of crushed rock with lime we use to line the many paths here, have proven to be beneficial to the plants. A few years ago, it became hard to ignore that the plants growing adjacent to the paths grew faster and healthier, than those further away. We now regularly bring in lime plus blood and bone meal to add to the soils. But soil minerals are available in all sorts of ways.
When tree stumps are ground up into sawdust, we don’t just leave it like that. The sawdust gets thoroughly mixed in with the surrounding soil, and in no time at all weeds begin to recolonise and repair the land.
Even the fruit tree prunings get chipped up and used as soil feed for the garden beds where the ornamental flowering plants provide feed and housing for the insects and small birds like the local honeyeaters. It’s all a big cycle of life. A few weeks ago we did a big pruning and chipping job in the orchard. That produced a lot of wood chips and a small amount of those were left in the grassy orchard areas. It was hard not to notice that the clover plants suddenly exploded in growth with the feed, as they also grabbed nitrogen from the atmosphere and brought it back into the soil. Nature is amazing.
And if all those ways aren’t fast enough for you, a person can always bring in trailer loads of compost. It’s an option, and I have no doubts at all that it is another way in which the local forest critters are benefiting.
The weather has been difficult in this first official week of spring. Wind, and lot’s of it. The farm sits on a mountain saddle which is part of a super massive volcanic amphitheatre, so it’s usually mostly protected from the wind. But not this week, or last week, or the one before that. I’ve never seen so much consistent gusty wind here before. It’s a bit of a worry.
There are a lot of fallen large branches from the winds, but it’s unsafe working in the forest during very windy weather. People can get killed by fallen branches. We did some rock work this week instead. With the forest clean up work a few months ago, we were left with piles of rocks. One of the garden terraces had it’s rock walls lining the central path upgraded with larger rocks.
No rocks go to waste here, as the smaller rocks all ended up in a rapidly filling steel rock gabion cage. The bigger project this week was the commencement of a new rock wall which retains the soil on an embankment below the machinery shed. An afternoon of work produced this:
The flat soil there supports seven large water tanks. Unfortunately the very largest of the water tanks has tilted slightly off vertical. I’d like to blame the occasional earthquake over the past few years, but no, the soil just compacted and gave way. The large rocks will provide much needed stability on that corner, but will also do the same trick along the entire soil embankment.
As everyone intelligent person knows, there are only so many large usefully sized rocks to go around. In order to improve the supply of these precious commodities, I spent several hours with the electric jackhammer (solar powered, but of course) breaking apart granite boulders into more easily relocated large rocks.
Another day of then hauling and placing rocks, extended the new rock wall quite a bit.
Observant readers will note the alarming angle in the above photo which the water tank is on. It’s actually quite stable, although it doesn’t look good. We’ll correct the lean in the summer months once the tank is emptied. No point wasting water.
Another cement stair tread was poured on the new concrete staircase leading up from the sunny orchard into the courtyard behind the house.
The ground and nights are still cold, so the cement cures into concrete very slowly at this time of year. The green plastic in the above photo is to protect the curing surface from rain, not to mention birds and dogs. Many years ago one of the dogs signed a cement stair tread with about thirty paw impressions. Yeah, nice one.
An access path was made so that we can get machines more easily onto the swale. A few weeks ago the vegetation growing there was completely mulched up (it’ll regrow just fine) and getting the machines into the area was not easy.
As a bit of an update, there is an enormous, but still young tree which is leaning over at an alarming angle. When it finally reaches the ground – as it will – the plan is to mill the wood up for use in a new firewood shed project. It’s got a bit of a ways to go yet though!
Sandra has recently begun an experimental batch of banana wine. All of the descriptions on the internet recipes mentioned that the mixture was unsettling to look at, but to me it looks just like what over ripened boiled diced bananas would look like. It smells really good.
We also made a batch of apple cider vinegar. A lovely local lady gifted us some more very healthy looking SCOBY’s (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast). They look potent, and candidly I’m reluctant to leave them in an area in the kitchen where they may escape.
Radishes and beetroot seeds planted out a week or so ago have mostly germinated. The thought of salads with fresh radish and beetroot is very much upon my mind. Tasty stuff!
The next seed crop we’ll get in are the sugar beets and peas. The asparagus spears have only just begun to wake up from their winter slumber, and we’ve already eaten two of the earliest. Yum!
Ordinarily, I’d just conclude with and ‘here are this weeks flowers’. This week however, I must make an exception. We produced the first outdoor camellia flower since we’ve been here. The garden bed was the recent one which received all of the wood chips produced from the fruit tree prunings. This flower is a stunner!
Onto the rest of ’em!
The temperature outside now at about 11am is 10’C (50’F). So far for last year there has been 662.0mm (26.1 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 654.0mm (25.7 inches)
Yo, Chris – Pity the delicate soul, who can’t handle poop. 🙂 Maybe not show them the worm farm. Or, maybe you should. 🙂 Desensitization. Just part of the Vast Panorama of Nature. Some people have more of an “ick factor,” than others. I think Mr. Greer came up with that term. But, as the title of the children’s book states, “Everybody Poops.” Deal.
I’m always interested in what you do, to improve your soil and keep nutrients coursing through your patch. A lot of thought, experimentation, and hard work.
Couldn’t you have just fed the smaller rocks, to grow them into bigger rocks? 🙂 Your nutrient regime seems to work on everything else, around the place.
That’s quit a list, to the water tank. And the tree. Similar to the list, right before the Titanic went down!
Oh, I don’t know. Paw prints would provide traction, on wet and icy mornings. Years from now, archaeologists will take those prints as a sign that, “Look! Those ancient people kept dogs!” It’s amazing what turns up on Roman clay tiles. Prints from kids, adults, dogs, cats, deer, rabbits, etc. etc..
The camellia is beautiful. Worthy of a 1930s torch singer, to wear in her hair.
Oh! The Echiums are such a pretty blue! We have a couple Hydrangea bushes, that exact color. They’re my favorite. Lew
[content warning: poo]
I’ve been immunised against poo-phobia since one of my kids’ nappies got neglected for a day and when I got to it the poo was writhing with maggots. That was a bit horrific.
But it sure makes emptying the poo bucket from the composting loo seem like nothing! I empty it into a compost bin and delight at the worms ploughing it and turning it into beautiful odourless soil, which takes about 12 months.
Our macadamia is laden with flowers – I have high hopes for this season. The citrus this year has been exceptional. Banana wine sounds interesting – is that a South East Asian thing?
Cheers Gus
PS. I had a 1 kL tank (~890mm diameter, 2m tall) on an alarming lean, but it was surprisingly stable, even when full. Straightened it in April though, to be safe – don’t want to lose that nice water! 😉
Hi Lewis,
Once a person gets into gardening, any ‘ick’ factor in relation to poop gets dropped promptly. Plants need poop, and us humans eat plants, and produce poop. There’s a natural cycle in there somewhere or other, but it’s there alright. 🙂 Hehe! I like your suggestion, but the shocking thing for visitors when faced with the contents of the worm farm sewage system, is that it isn’t shocking at all, and there’s only the merest hint of an earthy composty smell. A septic tank would have been cheaper by a significant margin, but would it have been better? At least this worm farm never needs to be emptied – that happens continuously and the soil in that area is very rich – all year around.
It may well have been Mr Greer who suggested the ‘ick’ factor term, and it really sums up the situation, yeah. Is there a kids book with that title? It’s genius and would tap into a lucrative market. There was a best selling book in that genre years ago with the naughty title: Go the f-bomb to sleep. Perhaps a strong message regarding parental sleep deprivation? Certainly it struck a chord with a market.
Thanks. And credit where credit is due, it was Claire who pointed me in the right direction many years ago in relation to soil minerals. Of course, I can’t afford soil testing which is expensive down under, and so just enjoy a good enough guesstimate approach. Experimented with the new purchased batch of mixed sand + mushroom compost + compost (which is really a super fine woody mulch). So far the stuff looks good, and earlier today I created two additional garden rows in that large citrus enclosure. Of course garden lime + blood and bone meal + coffee grounds + coffee bean husks, were all added to the mixture. It’s potent. Anyway, one of the rows is entirely for sugar beets, and the other row has Japanese ginger at either end, but mostly mixed heritage varieties of radish and beetroot. The plan is to collect seeds which should be genetically viable because of the mass of plants which will hopefully grow in that area. Plans are one thing, and of course reality may differ, we’ll see.
Some of the raised garden beds in the greenhouse were fed that soil mixture today as well. We’ll get some tomato seeds direct sown in there over the next few days. There’s a lot to do at this time of the year, and in many ways we’re still creating infrastructure, like the two additional garden rows created today.
Do rocks grow? 🙂 Around here, they tend to get smaller what with all of the drilling and jackhammering.
I’m not a gambler kind of a dude, but if I was, my mad cash would be behind the tree getting to a horizontal state first, way before the water tank does. If the Titanic reached that angle, you’d know for sure that things were going to end badly, unless you were the baker – he had a cunning plan! 🙂 The water tank really needs to be fixed back to vertical because the lean reduces the overall volume of water stored across all of the tanks. They’re linked, and water finds it’s own level.
Yes, I recall you saying something similarly encouraging at the time in relation to the permanent dog paw prints upon the concrete stair step, and for the record, the miscreant dog was the notable Sir Poopy. He knew what he’d done too the cheeky scamp. Unfortunately the paw prints would upset the overall artistic composition of the staircase and it was repaired.
Interesting. I’d not head of the torch singers, and Lee Morse’s name popped up in the search. An interesting life.
Yeah, the hydrangeas here are that blue colour as well, and they’re equally as lovely. 🙂 I know people who treat their soils so as to produce the redish/pinkish colour hydrangea flowers, but like you I prefer the blue ones.
🙂 Very funny! The second best zombie killer is a two stroke machine, and it’s a real beast, although the electric equivalent machine is slightly more powerful I reckon. A person has to be alert when using that electric machine as the cord can easily be cut through. Not good.
There’s some sort of rabbit hole in one of the garden beds, and the dogs have been telling me about it for days. I’ll have to knock down the vegetation in that bed as well, and take a closer look to see what’s going on there. It may be a wombat hole, but until I get a closer look, it’s all hypothetical. Always something going on.
Hehe! Yeah, that machete behind the glass with the zombie warning would be a real statement piece, and would most definitely send a message about overall level of preparedness. Of course a handy sharpener would be useful as well. A samurai sword / katana would be a more versatile weapon though for dealing with zombies. Just gives a person that little bit of extra reach so they don’t get splashed with blood. Actually, do zombies bleed? I don’t think they do, but I recall seeing a zombie fluid scene in maybe the ’28 days later’ film. A gripping film too, if I may say so.
The wallabies are only in their early days on that path, so yes I agree, the marsupials need to show some solid experience there of keeping off the magic ‘shrooms.
I envy you your free speech, and support it’s continuance even when it may make for an uncomfortable nemesis. The guy would whack a defamation suit on me if I pulled that trick down here. Beyond my resources to fight. Speaking of such matters, the house insurance bill turned up in the mail today. Holy carp dude! A 50% increase on last year and it’s now a bit over $6k for the year. Such price hikes are unsustainable. I honestly have no idea how other households cope with such compounding annual price increases, but probably not well. And to think that serious people suggest that inflation is around 4%. Perhaps they are enjoying the wallabies habits to suggest such numbers? 😉
Had a delightful salad for dinner this evening. Boiled eggs from the chickens and greens and tubers from the garden, plus a tin of salmon. Yum! Here’s for the sensible dinner.
I thought that you were kidding around about the interest of Deltiology, but no. He backs away in fright!
The Huckleberry Ridge Fire will be burning hot given it’s in pine in a mountainous area. At least it doesn’t seem to be anywhere near settlements – at the moment. And with any luck, cooler weather will sort it out, maybe. Fingers crossed.
I’ll be interested to hear how the new supermarket experience goes. You’d imagine at first, they might have to undercut the competition to get customers used to shopping there? Dunno really though, that’s just a guess.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Gus,
Thanks for the trigger warning! 🙂
Yeah, that’s not good, and flies and poop will produce that combination. Mate, you’re made of sterner stuff than I, or at least have been put to the ultimate test – and survived.
That system would produce some amazing soil. Well done and total respect. Composting loos aren’t much different from the worm farm sewage system, there’s hardly any smell at all. And it’s so good for the soils. I imagine you’re getting your place ready for the coming growing season?
Planted out a row of sugar beets today, as I’ve got plans to produce at least some of the sugar we use here each year in wine making. It’ll be an interesting experiment, and last time I grew them here, they were a bit weedy – which is a good thing.
Simon, who’s blog is referred to in the blog roll is in Melbourne proper, and he’s got a producing Macadamia in his backyard. One year we cracked the nuts in a bench vice, and far out, they were good. I reckon your area, which is warmer again, will be really good for those nut trees and I will be interested to hear if you produce and harvest some. I’ve got two trees growing here, but it’s just a bit too cold for them and so they grow really slowly. Are you just feeding them compost?
Yeah, it’s been a good year for citrus. The grapefruit has been particularly good here this winter. Which ones have done well for you?
Sandra is the wine maker, but a quick search suggests the wines origins are Africa, Tanzania in particular. It smells great. The sake is doing well too, and we’ve wound that process up for the year.
Hehe! Oh yeah, water tanks can settle to a less than vertical position, but my experience matches yours and they seem stable enough. Wise to bring the tank back to vertical, and that’s my plan as well – wait until the tank is empty. At 5,000L, it’s way too heavy to even budge, let alone lift, when full.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – A visitor’s trip to your worm farm would be … anticlimactic? Kind of a let down. Yup. There’s a kid’s book. Would I lie to you? 🙂 Banned in some places. You watch. That will become your most popular web vid.
I ran a load of cherry tomatoes, through the dehydrator, yesterday. Looking good. This morning I pulled up the radishes that had bolted, and saved seeds. Even through they don’t need to be chilled, I popped them in the freezer, for a few days. The cabbage butterflies were really interested in those plants. There may be eggs. Or something. I clipped the flowers of the basil. Two European honeybees, took umbrage. But we were able to strike a detente. Then I harvested some leaves. Enough to dry on a couple of racks. I need to pick some more blueberries, tomorrow. Rain is coming tomorrow night. Only two more bags that need a bit of a top up, and enough for my oatmeal, tomorrow.
The Master Gardeners saw a rat, out by the gardens. I happened to run into Little Mary Sunshine, and reported it, to her. Made her day. 🙂 .
I hope I can find some mushroom compost, next year. Haven’t in a couple of years. My best garden, so far, was with mushroom compost.
Well, the staircase. Hmmm. The tracks are kind of performance art.
Torch songs and torch singers.
https://w.wiki/B94K
The term was first used, in the late 1920s, in an issue of the magazine Vanity Fair.
Let’s hope whatever is living in that hole is benign.
Zombie’s kind of ooze fluids. Although I’ve seen some really messy zombies. And, they drool.
Oh, Deltiology is kind of fun. They’re easily kept in albums. Some are quit pretty, and some are quit humorous. Back when I was in the tat trade, I used to look on E-Buy for old postcards of this area. They were cheap. I was able to more than triple the price, due to local interest.
My friends in Idaho, have a wildfire, very close by. The wind is variable. Sometimes in their favor, sometimes, not.
The high yesterday was 64F (17.77C). Overnight low was 55F. Forecast for today is 75F. Rain forecast for tomorrow night. Lew
Hi Chris,
I always enjoy it when you talk about poop (and soil). Soil is after all just poop further downstream.
I think you made a video somewhere about how to make dog biscuits. Some owners we knew fed their dogs olive oil with a raw egg every day. They had fantastic fur! (the dogs, not the owners)
My experience with rental bonds is that they will always ping you with something…
Do the birds eat the wombat poo or is it too cubic for such sophisticated tastes – they prefer more classic art than contemporary poo? Speaking of which, not sure what weirds people out about poo. Any sophisticated contemporary gallery would be amiss if it didn’t have dirty underpants glued to one of the gallery’s walls. That’s just high art I tells ya.
Your mangolds look fabulous. I could literally dive into your salad bed and witlessly bounce back as if it were a bouncy castle.
A lovely photo of a double rainbow (do I even see a triple there?). I think I can match that one with one I took a few months ago. I might send it to you so you can judge who wore it best. Note the reversal of color order on the secondary rainbow.
You need to do a video on your favorite fernglade cocktails. I call this one ‘sex in the bush’
– 2 parts banana wine
– 2 parts rice wine
– 1 part apple cider
and a camellia petal for decoration.
Whenever we walk past rows of flowers I regularly say “onto the flowers!”
Hi Chris,
I reckon your toilet system is much better than ours — we were constrained by the fact it’s a retrofit, and I wanted to find a way to install it non-destructively so it can be easily reverted to a flush toilet if ever needed. But it requires that I empty the wee bucket every day (who knew humans make so much wee?!?).
Our maca is about 10 years old, and had a quiet year last year, but about 150 nuts the year before (its first big yield). I’m hoping this year’s is larger again. Have since planted two more but they’re tiny. Bought one of the Aussie-made Maca-crackers, which are great for shelling them. I just wish I’d planted more nut trees when we first moved in…
But we have a little nook under our white sapote, macadamia, and mandarin. Have a little steel table and a couple of chairs and it’s very nice to sit there under the trees we planted.
The walnut is doing well (got about 40 nuts last year), but I wonder how it will go if Adelaide gets warmer and drier. The cherry is another tree that concerns me…
Citrus are great. I find it hard to understand why every yard doesn’t have some. We’ve started running a second fridge for fresh fruit (and a bit of beer). It’s full of oranges and mandarins right now, and they’re spectacular. (This is another way that the composting loo is fantastic — who knew people make so much urine? The citrus love it)
I’ll be very interested to hear how you go with sugar beets. We’ve had bees for a few years, and they produce such a ridiculous amount of honey, but with varroa I wonder how they’ll go in the medium term (might have to think more about pollinators — I know flies pollinate, but they’re a lot less appealing than bees!)
Cheers, Gus
Hi Gus,
Incidentally, if this house were anywhere near a sewer main, there’s no way we’d be allowed to install the worm farm system in its current form, and for your interest, that was one of the planning conditions for the building. However, the likelihood of a sewer main being installed in this area is so remote, that at a guess you’d be more likely to win the lotto. It is a good system because the internal house plumbing is what visitors would expect to see, and also it takes all of the organic matter that the dogs and chickens turn their noses up at. However, on the other hand, your system is great as well for the very reason that you are physically interacting with it every single day. Sure, it’s work, but you’re monitoring the process daily throughout the year, and that has a lot of unexpected benefits in that by now you’d know exactly what will occur with the inputs and outputs in most conditions. That’s kind of like the ultimate learning experience.
🙂 It sure is a lot, I hear you about that. Did you know plenty of farmers pay for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium minerals to add to their soils? And here’s you and I making those free sources available to the plants. Can it get any better than that?
Frankly speaking, I’m envious of your Macadamia harvest from two years ago. The hazelnut is also a fine table nut, but Macadamia’s are a unique flavour which is very fine. A lot of fruit trees are biennial in terms of their output, but that alone is not conclusive as to your observations. Your comment set my mind in motion and I noticed a reference to those particular nut trees being insect pollinated, and err, the persistent rain last summer was difficult for insect pollinators at that time of year. We had a bad blackberry season for that reason. The summer rains coincided with the arrival of the blossoms, and so insect pollinators were having a rough time of things, and who’s ever has a bad blackberry season? Except it happened here last summer.
Whoa! I’ve killed four walnut trees so far. Respect to you, those trees are really hard to get established due to soil water needs. But yes, summer temperature extremes and a lack of chilling hours can be an issue. As your tree canopy gets denser though, I’m guessing that the summer temperatures will be moderated for you and the surrounding trees. Dunno, it would be worth testing to see how the trees adapt to your local conditions during such extremes? Trees are tougher than we sometimes imagine them to be.
In Melbourne, I found that citrus gall wasp was a problem. No matter how well fed and cared for my citrus trees were, pests would spread from neighbouring properties. Those wasps are one thing I’m grateful that has troubles surviving the winters here. But yes, and having two legs provides the ability to err, select where the err, speciality fertiliser ends up! 🙂 Spread around the goodness so to speak. And absolutely, citrus trees need lots of feeding. Yup!
We’ve grown sugar beets before, and they were somewhat weedy, so conditions may suit them here? Dunno. I planted the seeds out yesterday, and it looks like there’ll be some rain tomorrow, then some warmth, so we’ll see how they go this time around. The new garden rows were very heavily fed and tilled.
Man, that’s a question I’m wondering about too in relation to the bees. And honestly I don’t know. From what I understand, and please correct me, but commercial hives are being treated with a combination of, or individually: miticide strips; oxalic acid; or formic acid. And I’m not cool about any of those approaches. The least invasive option may be to create smaller hives where the bees swarm more regularly, but obviously this will impact honey output. The more regular swarming I believe has the effect of breaking up the mites breeding cycle, and from all I’ve read it appears to be the most successful strategy, and so is probably the one I’ll trial. Not sure really. If you have any advice, I’m all ears?
Cheers
Chris
Hi Crow,
Always a pleasure to hear from you! 🙂 And trust me, it’s no hardship to talk about poop and soil, for as you wisely note, they are one and the same when viewed upon a loose time continuum.
Not many dogs would be consuming specifically baked for them Anzac biscuits, and for the record, there are no canine complaints. As an amusing side story, a friend visited years ago, and before I noticed he’d eaten six of the human variety of the biscuits in quick succession. Had to cut him off from the supply. 🙂 Probably a bit too much, but he was doing fine afterwards. Some folks are made of stern stuff. Three is my limit.
Oh yeah, dogs would love both olive oil and eggs. And anyone who is anyone knows that it is unwise to hang out with werewolves. You can’t be too careful in these matters dude. 😉 The fur is a dead giveaway. Full moon howling will be what you may see next.
I hear you about the getting pinged. Hmm, I’ve had both good and bad experiences on that front. Always raises the question: what is recoverable damage, and what is normal wear and tear?
That poop question earns you today’s coveted: Elephant stamp of approval. 🙂 Well done, because that is something which I have also wondered about and observed closely for many years. Turns out that the birds do not eat the native poop, just the dogs. And also, the birds ignore the rabbit, fox and deer poop. Hmm. That stuff works it’s way into the soils via native and imported dung beetles and not to forget the other soil critters. Also the rain breaks apart the poop and so it washes apart and thus increases in surface area. Sure means something doesn’t it?
Hehe! I’m not entirely sure whether the plants in that raised bed are proper mangols with solid tubers, although they are very closely related: Swiss chard. The leaves are tasty, and we eat heaps of them. You’re possible cavorting around on the soil surface would most certainly compact the stuff!
It was a triple – blink and you’ll miss it situation – and as I grabbed the camera, the rainbows rapidly dissipated. The sun was low in the sky with the sunrise. Email the photo through and I’ll happily post it up for us all to admire. Any email address to this specific domain will arrive in my inbox.
And thanks! You learn something new, everyday. I’d not known that about the colours being reversed in the secondary rainbow.
Oh my, that would be very messy, and the name of the cocktail is perhaps suggestive as to the outcome!
Hehe! Glad to hear that I’ve been a bad influence, or at least that’s what I’d like to imagine. 🙂
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
You know, you’re right about that inspection of the worm farm being anticlimactic. I really do try to hype it up though with visitors and make them feel like they’re about to be totally grossed out. Even dead chickens chucked in there, barely rate a smell. All part of the fun of a visit, and I’d like to kid myself that it is a form of aversion therapy so as to reduce the overall ‘ick’ factor in people about this subject.
Oh my but there’s some fun reddit forums on the subject of kids books about poop. Quite light natured and amusing. And yes, the title you referred to was mentioned as a fave. I’ll bet such books sold like hotcakes from your experiences of the book world days?
Imagine if the video went viral and I became known as the old bloke who talks about poop. 🙂 Actually, for your interest, my most watched video is actually about the treatment of poop in the worm farm. Honestly when I made it I was mucking around and being silly in the mode of Mike and Mal, the Leyland Brothers (who unlike me were serious), and the manufacturers contacted me one day years ago and asked me if they could use it. I’m not kidding. That’s the problem with putting videos up on a public forum, strange and unexpected things can happen. It’s still up on the interweb site, which is kind of cool.
If you lied to me, I’d know you had your reasons, and I’d be cool with that. 🙂 Mind you, that ain’t licence to go feral, it’s more that as I’ve aged the world has moulded me to accept that there is nuance in situations and circumstances. Dunno. On a serious note, and oh my gawd this is heavy, but when I was a young bloke I had a very black and white view of the world, and you know, that didn’t work out so well at all. Are we wading into deep philosophical waters here?
Nice stuff with the dehydrator, and radish seeds are reasonably large, presumably so the resulting plant can get off to a good start in life. Man, the cabbage butterflies drive me to distraction during the summer months, those things are feral. Always pays to be careful with seed in that regard. We tend to dry them out instead, but in many ways it’s the same process.
Whoa! Bee stings hurt, not to mention the swelling afterwards, and you got lucky there. Out of curiosity, did you clip the basil flowers because you intend to dry the leaves for use later in the year? You’ve inspired me to try and dry some of the leaves this summer.
Fingers crossed the rain reaches the fire affected areas. And best to harvest the blueberries before they split from too much water.
Hehe! In relation to the rat, as the old timers used to say, one good turn, deserves another. I have it from a reliable source that the Klingon’s rebranded that saying (but as we’ve discussed before they pinched it from earlier sources) as: Revenge is a dish best served cold.
I’d imagine you’d have to live not too far from a commercial mushroom grower to see such stuff. You can’t really buy proper mushroom compost in this area either, although years ago I spotted it for sale in plastic bags. It’s good stuff apparently, and I’d imagine a clever person could get the fungi going again with a bit of care and attention. I believe that what I see sold as mushroom compost, is composted racing stable manure combined with soiled bedding straw. Given it gets composted for a long while before I see the stuff for sale, it’s not too bad at all. It would be problematic if too fresh.
Hehe! I do my best, and if performance art it be, well that’s what it is.
Well yeah, that’s my concern too about the hole in the garden bed. Go cautiously is the watchword here. But something certainly needs to be done about the nuisance.
Drooling zombies would be particularly nasty customers, especially if the drool is infectious. It’s funny but zombies are a good old school monster in that they don’t even pretend to conform to the laws of thermodynamics. They remind me a bit of some of the old school sci-fi I enjoy reading – don’t we all?
It’s definitely a solid collection. Yup. And each new find would have it’s own story. Where did the card originate. What was the gist and tone of the conversation? Was the news good, bad or indifferent? So many questions, but then I see stories everywhere.
Hope some of your rain heads further east. Some summers are longer and more dangerous than others.
Did the rain arrive? It’s meant to rain here tomorrow too. I had some spare Calcium Oxide sitting around, it’d probably gone off over the years, but anyway, I spread it very thinly around an area of compacted clay, and I’ll be interested to see what happens when it rains, and then in the weeks afterwards in that area. It’ll be a solid fertility hit, and quickly, that’s for sure. Not something I’d usually do, but you never know and the soil in that area is already very damaged.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – There was a new book, on the libraries “on order,” non-fiction lists, last night. “How Banksy Saved Art History.” Sounded interesting, so, I put a hold on it. When it will show up …
Ah, yes. Aversion therapy. That was the term I couldn’t quit come up with. I think “Everybody Poops,” was after my time, in the retail book trade. The worm farm video, must be one of the older ones. I don’t remember seeing it. But I did watch your bread video, a couple of times. I hope the manufacturer sent you some mad cash. Or, at least enough to have a nice meal out. Do you get paid residuals? 🙂
If I let the basil fully flower, it’s at the end of its life cycle, and the leaves die. Keeping the flowers cut off, makes the plants bushy, and keep producing leaves. The bees and I seem to have some kind of an agreement. I move slow around them, and, probably don’t put off a fear stink. The last time I was stung by a bee, I was four and stepped on one, while walking through clover.
A blue jay was a lot more upset with me. We have a couple of volunteer sunflowers, in another bed. They’re on the small side, but the bees are done pollinating, and the jays have moved in. He took great umbrage, that in his estimation, I was too close. Moved off a ways, and gave me “what for” until I left the garden.
The Master Gardeners told me I should cut off any remaining pumpkin flowers, to send more energy to the developing fruit. Will do, this morning. They also said I should feed them some milk (!). Whatever. I guess they know what they’re doing.
I told myself, last night, that if I picked another quart and a half of blueberries, I could go to the Club for a cuppa. So, I did. Besides, I knew I’d need a couple of handfuls for the every-three-day oatmeal. Which is made. I’ll get the blueberries cleaned up, when I’m done here. Rain doesn’t seem to affect the blueberries. Tomatoes, are a different matter. I’ll go out this afternoon, and pick anything that’s near ripe. Run them through the dehydrator, tomorrow.
My friend sent me another picture, late yesterday. The smoke had moved into town, and you couldn’t even see across the street. They’re forecast to get some rain, tonight. So are we. But I just checked the weather radar, and I don’t see any big green blobs, moving our direction. The high yesterday was 72F (22.22C). Overnight low was 48F. Forecast for today is 72F.
“Revenge is a dish best served cold.” I thought it might be something, from Shakespeare. Nope. From a French novel, “Memoirs of Matilda,” 1846. By Eugene Sue. Makes many appearances throughout popular culture, besides Klingons. Even pops up in the “Godfather” movies.
Here’s another article on that landslide, in a California neighborhood. More “on the ground” reporting, from people directly affected.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/09/us/rancho-palos-verdes-california-landslide
Sounds like the city is giving them short shrift, due to them being the “poor” part of Palos Verdes. Sounds a bit like your mountain range, with a rich end, and a middling end. Lew
Chris,
I’m getting things figured out. The children’s program “Sesame Street” has the Cookie Monster. Chris has a Poop Monster. The city of Pisa has a leaning tower. Chris has a tilted water tank. A. A. Milne had Winnie the Pooh. Chris has square wombat poo. Did I miss anything?
Ok, so Dame Plum is enjoying training. Ruby is getting jealous. Ollie is just there. Careful lest Ruby drafts Ollie into her jealous revolution.
I learned early on that I didn’t want to be a manager at that organization. Lead worker was more like a sergeant. I was very comfortable with that. Plus, I saw too many coworkers move into management and turn into the type of managers they had despised. The transformations were almost overnight. It’s like they went to indoctrination classes. I chose to stay in my comfort zone and retain my humanity. 😉
Today, the birds were enjoying immersing themselves in the bird bath. Nut hatches discovered the flowering crabapple tree. One of the neighborhood hawks saw a potential meal. I happened to look out the window precisely when the birds scattered, and the hawk flew away with a sparrow in its talons. Soon thereafter, the birds began bathing again. Drama, trauma, life goes on.
Dentists. Ugg. The Princess had a tooth cleaning today. Now she has several other appointments scheduled for more work. Painful work. She’s not looking forward to these. “You pay these people to HURT me!” she says.
Killian’s human gave us 2 zucchinis. Nice large ones. Mine are all tiny. Gotta be a soil problem. Time to buy some steer poo and other soil to mix with this autumn’s leaves and dig into the garden area.
The hot spell has ended. There might actually be some light rain for the next 2 days. Maybe. And the air quality, which was rather a nasty mix of soke and dust Sunday and Monday, it has now cleared up fairly nicely, at least for now.
That was a great picture of the rain and double rainbows.
I know some people who would take one look at the leaning young tree and salivate. Then they would grab a chainsaw, try to “help” the tree by cutting it down. And maybe having that leaning tree get hung up and twist and thump them right between the eyes. Me? I would let things happen at a more sedate natural pace.
Oh, one of my cousins will be in Sydney for a conference sometime this autumn. She is reading books on Native American cultures and issues. She was wondering if you know of any books about Australian Native culture, history, modern issues. She is very inquisitive and likes to learn.
DJSpo
Hi DJ,
That show was around when I was a kid, but never watched it myself mostly because the show didn’t make a lot of sense. However, the puppet characters are iconic. The Muppet Show for some inexplicable reason appealed to my brain far more, and who could not like Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and the two old blokes heckling from their box seats? No, you didn’t miss anything there. 🙂 But I will point out that the trash bin the cookie monster lived in was adequate for a household way back in the day. Just sayin… I remember those.
Ollie is a big softie who lets the two Kelpies do all manner of unspeakable things to him. He loves the attention, however, there is a serious side to your warning. The long deceased Dame Scritchy used to play Sir Poopy and Toothy off one against the other, and she’d then back the winner. There was one day when two combined balls of mischief did Sir Poopy some leg damage as they caught him unawares. He had his revenge though much later like a proper Klingon would, and after that they were all monitored closely. But age eventually wearied all of that mischief. It’s a pleasure to have such a coherent pack nowadays. The dogs all like each other and enjoy each others company.
I hear you about that, and it was a wise move on your part to work within your limits. Like you clearly are, I’m also hands on, but didn’t learn that until I reached the higher echelons. At such moments you wonder why there are so many layers of hierarchy, then you think to yourself: I make an excellent Sergeant, why move beyond that role? 🙂 Clint Eastwood played that role and dilemma perfectly in the film Heartbreak Ridge. His troops were the best prepared, and survived.
Let’s just say that I did not enjoy the upper airs for they were murky and replete with sharks intent on doing anything other than working. There is rot at the core of civilisation.
Birds are rough as, yup. And they happily consume one another of the different species. Similarly I’ve watched Kookaburra’s raid the nest of a blackbird, and it was brutal, and they sat off in the forest munching upon their meal and laughing which is the call they make.
Please extend my sympathies to your lady, and hopefully the following procedures are err, over quickly, and that she recovers speedily. Not fun, but a person is better to face such things than the consequences of not doing so. I have a belief that overall health begins with oral health and have heard that there may be connections between the mouth health and heart disease.
Total score, and yup, you know what needs doing! To be honest, I’m no purist and a decent one off bag of pelletised chicken poop would also work wonders, but probably I wouldn’t overdo that stuff. It burns up the soil carbon. Like everything, a bit of this, and a bit of that would be the wiser course for your zucchini.
Yay for you for the rain! It’d be a really nice time of year in your part of the world. It was a really pleasant day here today, but alas paid work and stuff – which finished very late around 8pm. Anywhoo, about 6pm the heavens opened and so far 17mm of rain has fallen with thunder and lightning earlier. It’ll do wonders for the seeds I planted out on Monday.
The early morning sun was very low in the sky that day, thus the double rainbow. Sometimes the weather systems avoid the mountain range and skirt around it, and that’s how it rolled that day. Nature is amazing.
Hehe! Sound advice, and like you, I’m in no hurry to bring that leaning tree back to earth. For some unknown reason, they call that specific cut by the name, ‘The Barber Chair’. If such words fail to convince, well, fools rush in and all…
Hope your cousin has a fun time there as well. It’s a lovely city, but way too big for my tastes. ‘At home in the world’ by Michael Jackson for an outsiders perspective + ‘Sand Talk’ by Tyson Yunkaporta for an insiders perspective. The culture and the land are inseparable. Any plans to travel further afield?
Cheers
Chris
Hello Chris
I’m still here though even more behind on reading blog and comments. Not helped by the fact that my broadband went down and I had a few days without phone or computer.
The chap sent out to deal with it, couldn’t find me. Fortunately he encountered a friend of mine who was en route to visiting me. She told me that as she walked him through the woodland, he walked slower and slower and looked more and more nervous.
Later on one of his work mates phoned him and asked him where he was. He replied that he had no idea where he was, just in a forest. Finally my set up gave him the info. that the fault was 90 metres away. Which, as the crow flies, would be exactly where I had told him it always was. It is always there but they still start from the site of complaint.
Nonetheless he had to follow the line and so incapable of doing this was he that my friend had to go with him to the point where she could just point a finger at his route.
I honestly believe that he had never been away from tarmac before and neither could he understand spoken directions. He was young but very good at the job once it was in front of him. They live in a world that is utterly differen from my old beloved world.
Inge
Hi Lewis,
I’d not known that Banksy was something of an art historian, and that he references, and nay lampoons or highlights, art history. I’ll be very curious to hear your thoughts of the book when it turns from hold to ready to pick up. Hope the author doesn’t become tiresome, pompous and overly erudite. There’s risk there in that book of heading down that path, or do you believe that it will be an accessible read? I guess we’ll find out.
Looks like the official results are out for aversion therapy, and in addition there can be negative side effects. Oh well, I guess everyone’s different and what will work for one, won’t work for the other. I’m not particularly a fan of aversion therapy, because sometimes the mind can remain unconvinced even in the face of experiences to the contrary. The Editor really enjoys apple cider vinegar, whilst I dislike the stuff, just for one example that pops into my mind. It doesn’t seem worth the effort to overcome my dislike, so why bother?
Bummer, although I’d imagine you would have seen some book fads come and go in your time there, maybe? The worm poop video is from quite a number of years ago. Nah, I wasn’t fussed by that side of the story. The couple who ran the worm farm business were really lovely people and I’d spoken to them at the farm expos where they’d run a stall for their product. I’d always wondered if they were originally back to the land folks in the 1970’s and that was when they developed the system and had it approved, but never thought to ask them that question. They’ve probably retired now.
Ah, thanks for the info as I’d not ever managed basil plants that way, and will try it this coming summer. It makes sense for you to get the maximum leaf production. And exactly, if you act and feel super chill around the bees, they won’t bother you. The bees living here leave all of us well alone, even the dogs aren’t hassled. But if a person was to do anything stupid, there’d absolutely be consequences. A harsh way to learn. Unfortunately what you described is one way to be stung by a bee, and I recall a similar experience at around that age. The sting had to be cut out of the foot. Now, sturdy footwear avoids such dramas, but the ants are an entirely different matter – aggressive little scamps.
Speaking of such things, I had to remove a blackberry thorn from the Editors finger the other day. It was embedded quite deeply. Nasty things.
It was quite a nice day here today, but alas for most of it I was indoors doing paid work – the bills never cease – and about 5pm the heavens opened. There was some great thunder and lightning and almost three quarters of an inch of rain fell – and still continues to fall. The beet and radish seeds I planted the other day will get off to a good start. Alas I worked late this evening, something, something, bad in a past life… 🙂
Blue Jays are stunners, and they’re blue, but with attitude. 🙂 We’ve all been there – the told off bit of the story. Is the bird consuming insects or the sunflower kernels?
Yeah, that makes sense about the pumpkin flowers, and we tend to stuff them and then bake the flowers. They’re very tasty, although I’m unsure what variety you’re growing and whether the flowers would be suitable for that kitchen treatment. I learned that technique from the big shed dudes.
Well that’s a new one. Milk on pumpkins. Never heard of that, but like you say, they probably know what they’re doing. For your interest, I chucked the search into a search engine and people had been making pumpkin milk from the seeds so that muddied the interweb waters. Didn’t know that either! How much do I know? Beats me. Ah, milk provides the plants feed + antifungal properties apparently, and err, powdery mildew is a fungal issue with those plants. Well, you learn something new everyday.
Setting goals and rewards is an admirable way to get stuff done! 🙂 I’m amazed how productive the blueberries are in your part of the world. I’d not known that the blueberries are fairly resistant to splitting of their skins, but that’s been my experience as well, tomatoes are not great when confronted by lots of rainfall.
Hope your friends are doing OK, and avoid any unpleasantness from the fire? Your words prompted me to put in an order for some decent safety boots with heat resistant (300’C / 572’F) soles. I’d been putting that purchase off for a while due to sheer cost, but a few months ago I noticed the soles of my work boots were not all that temperature resistant. Hmm, could be a problem if worst gets to worst. It’s raining heavily tonight, but who knows what the future holds in store.
Oh no, the interweb just dropped out – at the tower. Always exciting.
Ah, the godfather, or as some folks see it, a how-to guide to better living. Not quite my cup of tea, although the Editor watched it for interests sake.
It’s funny how natural disasters and other serious challenges can bring out a resilient spirit within a population. It’s one of the good things in store for the future. And that’s a good observation, and funnily enough my response is quite similar to the folks in the article.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – Reading over your shoulder … when they closed the bookstore, here in Centralia, it was bought by another small chain. Micromanagers. I worked for them for about three months, and then got on at the same bookstore chain, in Olympia. A much larger, busier store, more employees. But I had learned my lesson, and never managed that store. I was content with being either the senior sales clerk, or assistant manager. Did that for three years, then we got a new district manager, who was bad news. I could read the handwriting on the wall, and bailed, at that point.
Yes, I hope the book on Banksy is readable. I just finished one called “Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today.” (Bishop, 2024). I didn’t get anything out of it. Skimmed most of it. Things she considers art, I don’t. Or, at least the examples she provided. There was a section on architecture, that I thought might be more coherent. Nope. I also have a new bio about the artist Monet, he of the waterlilies, on my hold list. It will probably be good.
Aversion therapy. Quit a few years ago, there was an outfit with ads in heavy rotation. 10 days inpatient, and a few followups. For alcohol treatment. They’d been around since 1935. Closed in 2002, as aversion therapy was getting a pretty bad rap. Worked for some, I guess. But really didn’t address underlying issues.
Re: Cider vinegar. Well, you don’t like pizza, for breakfast, either. 🙂 I sprinkle cider vinegar on most of my rice and veg dinners. Gives it an extra zing! But, to each his own. I suppose if I worked at it, I could develop a taste for sushi. But there’s so many other things, I’d rather eat.
Oh, yes. Book fads came and went. Diet of the week. Woo-woo psychological programs. Popular series. Potty training your kid. Potty training your dog. 🙂
I went out to pick some more basil, yesterday. Almost sat on one of those Golden Digger wasps. No wasps were injured in the harvesting of the basil. Neither was I.
I could see big green rain blobs, moving onto the weather radar, around 2PM. The rain arrived, very light, around 5. Then heavier, on and off through the evening. According to the forecast, we’ll have rain, on and off, for the next week. I wonder if we’ll have an early fall? One of the Master Gardeners mentioned, that her chickens are molting, earlier, way earlier than usual. Only one tree, here at the institution, has begun to turn color. I haven’t seen, or heard any geese heading south.
The Bluejays go after the sunflower kernels. I flushed three of them out of the garden, this morning, when I took H for a walk. So do the squirrels.
I’ll have to remember that, about milk and powdery mildew. Lost one patch of green beans, last year, to that. It’s been over 50 years, but I vaguely remember something from the book, “Farmer Boy.” It was part of the “Little House on the Prairie” series. The story of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s husband, Alonzo, growing up. A pumpkin growing contest? Some old duffer advising him to feed the pumpkin milk? But it seems that it had to do with wicking it directly into the stem. Roll up the IV! 🙂
The Idaho fires burn merrily on. My friend sent me some pictures. Nervous times, for them. Which I’m sure you’re familiar with.
You know, I never read the “Godfather” series. Or, saw the movies. I just wasn’t that interested. A terrible gap in my cultural literacy. 🙂
I seems like all I did yesterday, was fiddle with food. It was oatmeal making day, again. I got all the blueberries I picked, cleaned and on trays, in the freezer. Picked more basil and got it drying. Picked an enormous bowl of cherry tomatoes. I got them in the dryer, this morning. It takes about an hour to fully load the dryer. But, it’s perking along.
I was going to start the cucumber salad, and the penny dropped. There wasn’t enough room, in my refrigerator, for a big bowl of that, and a pan of cornbread. I’d often thought my fridge was tight, but it never dawned on me that, of course it is. It’s apartment sized. Seems like I’m always juggling for space, in there.
I saw an article, you might be interested in. I couldn’t link to it. More news from the Washington State Breadlab. They’re the people that develop new strains of wheat, and preserve old strains. The title is, “Can Better Bread Be A Climate Change Solution?” NPR. Hmm. Maybe I can link to it …
https://www.npr.org › 2024 › 09 › 09 › nx-s1-5002074 › bread-flour-climate-change
Give that a whirl. Lew
Chris,
Sesame Street wasn’t supposed to make sense. It was a lot of loosely written stories around which basic educational lessons were featured. Thinks like counting, the alphabet, things like that. I was too old for it when it first started, watched it some with younger sister and younger friends. There was also a fair amount of cutesy “filler”, as well as characters that *musical alert* that might break out into singing.
Now the Muppet Show and their movies? Those were fun and cute. Kermit was always fun. I always enjoyed the two heckling guys, too.
Dad had 3 big aluminum trash bins when I was growing up. One year he bought a truck load of chicken poo. Fresh chicken poo. It reeked for 3 weeks, even after being dug into the garden area. Our poor neighbors! There was enough left to fill all 3 aluminum trash bins for future use. As you mentioned, chicken poo is strong stuff. It burnt the peas to death that year. Two years later dad and I went to move the trash bins. The chicken poo had burned through the bottoms!
Heartbreak Ridge is one of my favorite movies. Clint showed what sergeants actually do – properly run the unit. I have read most of the Jack Reacher series of books. Reacher, a major in the U.S. army, repeatedly gives his sergeants a task and leaves them alone to do it. Growing up in a military family, he knew that the “sergeant network” could get anything done, efficiently. And a sergeant could make an officer’s life smooth or miserable. Getting things done via peer-to-peer communication was something I could do well. And it was a LOT faster than going up through the chain of command, over to another group, down to their “sergeant” for the answer, then reverse until I got the info. More fun than going to endless manager meetings, too.
I remember well the murky upper airs of management. I often attended the project management meeting that discussed all ongoing projects. My boss decided I was better there than he was. Watching the politics and murkiness of the actual department managers was interesting. Fortunately, by that time I was known to have a brain and to be honest. So it worked out.
The value of good techs…One of my section’s projects was going sideways in design. Our designers were overloaded, so the design was contracted out. The amount of earth removal and “fill” was severely beyond what our estimate said. Like triple. After a couple months of redesigns not fixing the problem, the #2 engineer in the organization called a meeting with the contract engineer, the in-house project engineer, the usual design tech (who was VERY competent) and me. The other tech and I looked at the contract engineer’s plans for about 30 seconds, looked at each other. She said, “DJ, do you see what I see?” I pointed at the design. “That?” I asked. She nodded. We explained it to the #2 Dude. He then promptly said some very choice things to the other engineers, along the lines of “You bleeping guys with all of your credentials, and these two TECHNICIANS figure out the problem AND solution in 30 seconds? And you call yourselves engineers? You should both be ashamed!” Quite out of character for him, but precisely the reason why he had invited the 2 of us to the meeting. He KNEW that we would figure it out quickly.
Ah yes, the kookaburra laugh. I remember the old days of shortwave radio, 1960s and 1970s. Radio Australia’s international broadcasts all began with a kookaburra laughing for one minute, then “You’re listening to Radio Australia”, followed by Waltzing Matilda. Spent a lot of hours listening to those broadcasts. Wee hours of the morning I’d listen to the more local ABC broadcasts, or else listen to a station from Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea. Now few of those stations exist, casualties of the internet.
A little of this, a little of that, a bit of something else. Good for the soil, good advice for us all.
The Barber Chair? Bwahahaha! Good name for that, totally appropriate.
The rain? Bah! Just enough to put a thin layer of mud on all the cars. Then smoke rolled in. Then the smoke left and there was 3 hours of clean air. Then the dust rolled in. Then just enough rain to mud over everything again. Now the air is clean again, at least for now. Weird day.
Thanks for the book info. I forwarded it to cousin. I don’t know what her schedule will be like in Sydney, so no idea if she will be able to actually see anything but the conference center.
DJSpo
Hi everyone,
As promised, a little treat for the long suffering regular folks who enjoy this blog. We’s gonna have ourselves here a rainbow off. Mr Crow has politely provided a photo from La Gomera, which is an island off the coast of Africa (part of the Canary Islands – the plants of which do remarkably well here):
Now, you’ve all seen the picture I provided, but just for comparative purposes, not that it’s a competition, maybe… But here it is again:
So yeah, let the opinions roll, although internally I’m hearing the Charles Daniels – The Devil Went Down to Cherokee, and thinkin’ I’d been beat here. 🙂
Cheers and enjoy!
Chris
Hi Inge,
That’s rather unfortunate with your interweb connection. I can comprehend how the phone went out as well, and glad to hear that it was not urgently required during the outage (an assumption on my part). Down under, my understanding is that all of the phone communications travel through the interweb paths, and that was one of the reasons my old, yet still working mobile phone, had to be replaced recently.
Ook! Ah, your story says loud and clearly to me: An utter lack of local knowledge. Yup, but at least the bloke was able to repair the fault, which presumably is at that pit which you’ve mentioned becomes immersed in water semi-regularly?
Inge, people are so reliant on GPS devices, that honestly, I have a belief that basic map reading skills are atrophying in the population. In the old days, the connection pit (90m from your house) should have been highlighted on a map, which the bloke had ready to hand.
Lost in the forest provided me with a few laughs. You should have seen the taxi driver who returned Sandra and I to the house one foggy night about five years ago when the previous Suzuki gave up the ghost in the city. It was pea soup up here, and I got the guy to drop us off on the road at the top of the driveway – and tipped him well for his efforts (which he was appreciative of). Probably the strangest taxi journey of his life that one, and visibility was so low, to him it looked like dropping us off on some remote mountain forested road. He even asked us: Are you sure you know where you are? Of course we did.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Oh no, those folks are my personal, and not to mention also yours, as well as the Kelpies, nightmare. I cannot work for micromanagers, few traits suggest a lack of work at their level, than that strategy. Nope, I fully get your decision, and wise to jump ship early. All I want to know from such folks is: Waddyawannado, then let’s do this. Dunno about you, but thoughts of such practices bring the word: ‘meddlesome’ to mind. You don’t hear it used much nowadays, but is that really our problem? I don’t think so.
Well yes, unfortunately when you mentioned the art book, the thought that I’ve also been exposed to such word salads in the past, and they simply didn’t communicate much that was meaningful as to the subject matter. And that kind of defeats the entire purpose of the book, sorry to say. Fingers crossed the book is good.
Monet had a good work ethic, and liked flowers, what’s not to like about that? He sounds alright by me. Yeah, hope the bio is good, maybe… 🙂
10 days! To be honest, my first reaction was: do you want fries with that? It’s a bit quick really, but your observation nailed the core problem there. Look, it might work, but as a gut feeling I wouldn’t be counting on it.
Breakfast pizza is just one of those things I can’t face, but your comparison is fair. I’m soft and have lived a mollycoddled life free of such tasty early morning (or late morning as the case may be!) tasty temptations. I have an almost religious fervour for toasted muesli + fresh fruit + natural yoghurt for breakfast – perhaps in a past life I spent time in a monastery? Drawing killer rabbits in the margins, I would definitely have done that. But breakfast pizza, hmm, no. The Editor loves apple cider vinegar, so there is occasional contention on this matter, yeah. Sushi is good, but I rarely seek it out – doesn’t stick to your ribs like the old timers used to say.
Did people really shell out of fad diet books? Well I never knew that. Ah popular series, guilty there – the David Eddings fantasy series were a hoot, but had to be ordered in advance. I understand that the romance novel still sells quite well. Do the libraries ever purchase them? For a second there, I blinked and thought: What? Potty training of dogs indeed… Dogs have their own opinions, and one must ensure that common interests align. Is H using the stair arrangement?
Man, only good things seem to be said about those Golden Digger wasps, and it’s a good sign you’ve got them in the garden. Beware grasshoppers and other insects, the golden digger wasp is on duty.
Sounds like an early fall, but who knows this far in advance? Chickens are all over the shop when it comes to moulting based on what the ones down here do, but usually they have the job done by the really cold weather of June and July (your December and January).
It’s continuing to be wet down here too, and the three quarters of an inch of rain last evening, brought that weirdly angled tree into a horizontal position. It was very thoughtful of the tree not to have anything underneath at the time of returning to earth. I’m going to mill that tree up. 😉
Three bluejays today, maybe five tomorrow. The sunflower kernels are perhaps fast becoming bird seed and/or squirrel food.
I’ll be very interested to hear if you observe any notable benefits from providing the milk to the pumpkins. And hey, back in the Little House days, things had to just work – or else.
Hope your friends in Idaho are doing OK? Not good, and yes, I know the feeling all too well.
No, I couldn’t watch the Godfather films either, let alone read the books – a more intense direct connection to the brain. They were too violent a story for my taste, and the Editors as well for that matter. She watched it to find out what the hype was all about, then she found out. The Editor can easily forget narratives, but I differ and here I quote the Hangover film series: There are some things you can’t un-see. 🙂
Hehe! Man, some days are like that, yup. You’re in the busy harvest time of the year. The more you preserve for the winter and early spring, the more work you have to do – now. People may grouse about the effort to visit the supermarket, but that’s just peanuts when compared to the effort of doing it yourself.
We have a smallish refrigerator / freezer as well. And yup, it’s like playing the game Tetris sometimes.
Thanks, there was enough info that I could track down the article and blithely ignore the requests for mad cash. Those are some clever folks doing all that work. Good to hear that some folks at least are thinking about, and then doing something about, such matters. There was an article about a local mob doing stuff with rice: George Hulbert Seed Vault to protect and provide the world’s rice seed stock for up to 100 years
Note to self, one day I’ll probably grow some mountain varieties of dryland rice.
Went to see a couple of open gardens today. A nearby town is holding a daffodil festival. One garden was attached to a very old house in town, with a super fussy garden (in my opinion). Another was a vast sprawling mass of garden over about 10 acres. Lovely stuff, and we had a good long chat with the owners who’d been creating the garden for over 48 years now, and the family had planted dozens of varieties of oak trees many of which are now over a century old. Walked around and marvelled for ages. There’s no official website, but if you look up ‘Roseberry Hill Kyneton’ you’ll see some great images of the garden. Really lovely people too.
Cheers
Chris
Hi DJ,
Oh, thanks for the explanation. And possibly you’ve inadvertently resolved a long standing question, because I remember watching the show, and thinking to myself: That doesn’t make any sense. Then went off and did something else more useful with my time, like dismantle radios, then try and put them back together again – and hope they work. 🙂 Musicals… I don’t think so man. On the other hand, my brain was totally down with Time Lords and Mutant Space Goats. I’m sure you know the feeling?
The muppets were cool, and ever so slightly irreverent. The script writers for the two hecklers had clearly been to some rowdy comedy shows over the years. Always dangerous to heckle a comedian. Sandra is something of a serial nuisance just in relation to comedy shows. She has this thing about sitting in the front row with shows, and I hate that. So about maybe two years ago we went to see the comedian Nikki Britton, and she’s pretty funny. Except, you know the front row and stuff. For some reason, I have this unassuming face like I won’t bite. Nikki gets me out of the seat – and I’m an introvert – then hands me this leaf blower, which I have to use on her. And yeah, my blowing performance was critiqued poorly. Should have expected that. Yeah, thanks for that Sandra.
Then there was the comedy show – The Aspie Hour – at the comedy festival. The guy and girl were really sweet so I could forgive the musical nature of the show, except, like front row and stuff again. The girl sits on my lap for a few minutes and does some of the show from there. I did quietly say to her as she departed: that was as awkward for me, as it probably was for you. My most recent strategy has been to dodge the comedy festival, and so far it’s worked! Nah, you go with your friends, that’s alright. Winning by dodging!
Oh yeah, that can happen – the stuff is acidic as. Not quite 1980 Alien film acidic, that’s the whole next level, but it could do that to a trash can given enough time. You remember the old bright yellow trailer? Yeah, all the mulches and composts brought up here over the years – and sometimes inadvertently left in the trailer due to the curse of Cherokee (over ordering of bulk materials and being unable to move them). Well, I’ve got a new galvanised trailer these days. The other one rusted through and was recycled. Got a couple of hundred in mad cash at the metal recyclers for it, but when supporting steel rails fall off, it’s no good. And yup, fresh chicken poop is hard on plants. We mix in the chickens soiled bedding so that brings up the carbon content relative to the nitrogen and slows the reaction a lot.
I really enjoyed the film as well, and it left an impression upon me as to how to get such things done. Yup. I’ve never read a Jack Reacher book, but only hear good things about them, and delegation is a real skill. When I worked in the top end of town, I’d rather have folks reporting to me that felt comfortable exercising their initiative, than drones. It is the poor mind who believes that they can know and control everything.
Nice work seeing through to the core issue of a problem. But then, the other folks were getting paid for making the situation bigger, so there is a minor conflict of interest there – which you would have known about as well. Man, I dunno about your country, but I’m having to be across a lot more issues of late – like that insurance bill the other day. Who’s interest is it in to over estimate the value of the house, and how did that all come to be? There’s a bit of a grab for mad cash going on.
Yeah, shortwave is a dead and dying medium, sorry to say. And like actual printed publications, the interweb has a lot to answer for on that front. Still, from a longer term perspective, things will revert sooner or later and what was once old, will be new again. Shortwave receivers are easy to make, let alone things like crystal AM radios. But will anyone remember? That’s the question. There are some folks doing some interesting work with low tech ham radio kits which they often build themselves.
🙂 Always wise to diversify in the garden, on many fronts. Hope the weather is doing good for you and your household?
Hey, the 20mm of rain last evening brought that leaning tree finally down to earth. I’m looking forward to milling it up for useful timber. It’ll be interesting as I’ve never done that work before.
Oh yeah, there are some times of year when cleaning the car is not possible. That’s most of the year around these parts. You can always tell who are the outsiders – their cars don’t have mud / dust all over them.
🙂 Hope your cousin gets something out of the books, and who knows, but my thinking is that some of the ideas will hold up a mirror for her to view herself. Yes, that will happen. A good thing.
Cheers
Chris
Hi, Chris!
I was going to comment about your photo up at the top – “What a beautiful rose” – but I see that I would have been entirely wrong, it’s a camellia. It looks like a rose. Interesting photo to go with your title.
But, wow! The parrots really do clean up the poop. Way to go, Ruby – right in the middle of the path. Some of our 5 dogs would habitually go right where someone was sure to walk. No parrots cleaned it up, only me. I think I’d rather be the cleaner-upper and let you keep the parrots; they have some very bad habits relating to fruit trees. Great little video.
For about 2 years we rented a house near where we were working on our log house. We had an HOA that told everyone how to behave. Does Australia have those? We always mowed the bitty lawn, etc, so received no nasty notes. But they wouldn’t even let people hang a bit of laundry out to dry.
Let him talk about soil, Sandra! I, for one, love it. The vegetables look GOOD. What nice clover.
The double rainbow is out of this world.
You certainly have the wind. We should have been having hurricanes, but none up our way so far. It is after one of those that I gather the kindling for winter.
I think that you actually like breaking up rocks, eh? That water tank is shocking to look at. Should you, er, be kneeling in front of it? Just sayin’; one never knows. The leaning tree is not so good either. The other leaning thing – your natural slope – is going to need a lot of steps. I think your place is making me dizzy . . .
Banana wine! I’ve never heard of that. I eat a banana for a snack in my car when in town and sometimes I forget to take the peel out til the next day. The car smells so wonderful the next time I get in it. Maybe it has started to ferment. Are you afraid the scobies will take over the banana wine?
The flowers are also out of this world. Breathtaking. Thanks!
Pam
Yo, Chris – Meddlesome is a fine old word. And, one doesn’t hear it enough these days. Probably too clear. Violates some PC rule, or something.
Yes, it’s a secret language accessible only to the initiated 🙂 . That other art book I read a few months ago, discussed that, and poked a bit of fun at it. The one where the woman worked in many different aspects of the modern art racket.
Ah, Monet. And he had gardens! Still a major draw. I used to sit in front of his waterlily painting, at the Portland Art Museum. Just taking it in. His house and gardens at Giverny are a kind of French national shrine.
Not to skate to close to politics, but there’s a hoopla about immigrants eating dogs, cats and ducklings! The horror, the horror. I couldn’t help but think if things get really bad, dogs, cats, ducklings, and maybe small children, will be on the menu. 🙂 I keep H plump, just in case. But that brings me to the book I read last week, “Field Guide to the Apocalypse. It got some play, in the press. There it is, bright orange cover, and all.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/11/health/apocalypse-disasters-teamwork-athena-aktipis-wellness
Yup. That’s what we called them in the book trade. “Diet of the Week” books. Everybody and their dog (no disrespect to dogs), had a magic bullet to shed pounds, fast, with no effort at all! It was an easy way to make your fortune, back in the day. I remember a time, when there was one such book. Everyone clamoring for it. I think we had 50 copies, on hold. We kept those at our information desk, which was halfway back in the store. Well … apparently, someone reached behind the desk and lifted a copy. That had been set aside for a woman who had a total meltdown, because we had ruined her entire life (or at least her trip to Hawaii), because she was leaving in a week, and had to shed 10 pounds. I don’t remember how that all resolved itself, but I don’t remember having to call mall security, to put her down.
Libraries, in past, were a bit “funny” about romance novels. Ditto kid’s series such as Hardy Boys, etc.. And paperbacks were verboten. But, when things got loose as far as paperbacks went, they started adding more paperback romances. Customers wanted them and the investment was small. There were some hardback romance series, that libraries stocked. Cheaply bound. Nursey Novels. Same old tired plot. Nurse / Candy Stripper / hospital volunteer finally lands the handsome young doctor. I think they fell out of favor, when the readers finally realized that doctors, in general, don’t marry their nurses. They marry other doctors. Might have an affair with the minions, but that was about it.
I think H loves her stairs. Gives her agency. She can come and go as she pleases, for either comfort of a perch to survey her realm.
Prof. Mass has called it. Fall is officially here. Or, at least beginning. Our night manager has a pillar of green beans, in his patch. When I took H out for a walk last night, I could hear a frog singing away, in the foliage! When I tried to get a look at him, he shut up. Daytime high was 68F (20C), yesterday. Overnight low was a steady 57F. Forecast for today is 68F. No rain forecast for today, or tomorrow.
Nice of the tree to cooperate. Resistance (to gravity) was futile.
I’m a little concerned, about my Idaho friends. Usually, she emails me before bed, and I respond in the morning. No email, last night. I don’t see any evacuation orders, for Council. But a huge fire, the Lava Fire, is just 10 miles away. As with Paradise, California, Council only has one road in and out. The grandly named US 95. But all it is, is a two lane blacktop.
More library news. I notice last night, that series I like, Best Food Writing, for the year, has changed. It’s now “Best American Travel and Food, 2024.” I put a hold on it, but probably won’t like it.
There’s probably a mathematical formula, for fussy gardens. Something like space divided by labor available = how fussy a garden is. 🙂 I take it you went to the Kyneton Botanical Garden? My, they did have some big tree ferns! I suppose the fussy garden was at the winery? Did you sample the vintage?
That was an interesting article, about the rice seed vault. Wheat seed vaults, rice … there’s some devoted to corn, here and there. Native American folks are doing some pretty lively seed exchanges, keeping pre-Columbian varieties going.
You know how I always joke about the mystery orange powder in Mac and cheese boxes. Well, there’s been some articles recently, that a yellow orange dye makes mice invisible. It’s used on a very popular snack chip. Lew
Hi Pam,
It’s a ripper of a flower isn’t it! 🙂 Ah, well sometimes a good contrast is a good literary device with a long history of usage, like say: Beauty and the Beast. It works.
They’re hard working those parrots, and the birds mostly clean up the lot. Dogs however, know where the greatest impact will be, and thus the choice of the centre of the path. And perhaps they’re also subtly using us humans as a tool with which to spread their scent about the landscape? Cheeky scamps. Sadly, as you suggest, the parrots have their downsides, and compared to thiefing off with an entire trees worth of fruit, picking up a few dog poops is quite the cheap price. Rumour has it that in your country, the fetching red and blue feathered parrots, fetch quite the price tag. Could soothe ruffled feathers? Sorry for the dodgy bird puns…
Pam, fortunately HOA’s are rare beasts down under which are probably only ever seen in apartment buildings, but maybe also in those gated over 55’s community housing things. Such restrictions would send me into the meltdown zone, and frankly I’m slightly in awe that you could cope with the minutiae and oversight. I’ve heard the laundry hanging out restrictions and always thought they were some sort of urban myth. You’re not kidding around though, are you? In the snooty inner urban, formerly working class area, but rapidly gentrified since the early 1990’s, we used to annoy the daylights out of some of the neighbours by putting the laundry on washing horses out in the tiny front yard. What can I say, the location had the best afternoon sunshine. It seemed practical, but over time the folks there became less practical, and so such things were shunned – but ain’t nothing they could do about it. It was funny, but we stayed the same, whilst the area around us changed.
Those raised garden beds are really heavily fed, and they produce wonderful tasting vegetables. The colours stand out too, don’t they? It’s the kitchen garden really, mostly because it sits right next to the kitchen and so grows some of the fresh greens. Did they call them picking gardens, or am I imagining that?
Truthfully, when the rainbow peaked, Ollie and I were out walking around the orchard, and we had to run back up the hill to grab the camera. We did look for the pot of gold, but sadly didn’t find any. One day, we may strike it rich, but sadlynot that day. Oh well, back to the drawing board. 😉
I’d heard that your hurricane season has been something of a non-event this summer. Has that impacted upon the usual amount of summer rainfall you’d expect? Hmm. Kindling is kind of important. Wednesday night, about three quarters of an inch of rain fell, and that leaning tree is no longer leaning – the trunk reconnected with the earth. The plan is to mill it up over the next few weeks. Should be an interesting job. The land is err, steep-ish, which is what you get when you buy cheap land. One day, I shall dream of flat land, but then I can do that dream thing any day, but working sloping land does tire oneself out, so you sleep deeply then you’re dream free, mostly.
It’s true what you say, I don’t mind breaking up the boulders. There’s a couple of different forms of granite here, and I never quite know how hard the boulder will be. Oh well.
Hehe! That’s pretty much what the banana wine smelled like. It was quite nice actually. People posting up the recipes were all freaked out by the look of the mash (they mentioned it, so that must be a ‘thing’ that was lost on me), but truthfully I’ve seen worse, as you’ve no doubt seen worse as well.
🙂 Thanks so much for saying that. I like the flowers too, as does all of the forest critters. That was the first camellia flower those shrubs have ever produced. I guess the plants enjoyed the recent feed of fruit tree mulch?
It was quite a pleasant day here today, although cool. The weather forecast for tomorrow suggests snow at this elevation, although the forecast looks too warm to me for that outcome. I’ll believe it, when I see it.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Sadly I’ve encountered a few meddlesome people in my life, so it is probably more common than the average wokester may imagine it to be. Meddlesome related (and scheming) folks was a core theme in the Wodehouse books – and probably one reason I put them to the side.
Alas for my poor education because such initiate-only knowledge is unknown to me, although I can deduce that they’re taking the mickey. Well done to the author for calling out such nonsense. Like all the weird goings on with your countries fat cats, I’m pretty sure the eventual loss of mad cash printing advantages will sort out that art lot as well. Then they might have to get back to producing stuff which people value. It’s not a bad way to put food upon the table whilst keeping a roof over ones head, don’t you reckon? An honest days work, fancy that!
I’d love to be able to wander around in Monet’s gardens, but such is not to be my lot. Enjoying the artists depictions from afar is pretty much the same thing as being there. Art can be transformative to the soul.
Well are they eating such animals? Has anyone thought to check the claim? 🙂 Plenty of cultures do consume such critters, although I’d personally avoid cat. I always believed that consuming carnivores was a bad idea, and it is hard not to note that our species has a preference for meat derived from herbivores. And the author is most astute, who wouldn’t want a Z-team ready to swing into action once the zombies begin emerging from the cold soils? That sort of co-operative reaction is very much in evidence after major bushfires.
Speaking of apocalypses, did you read that a mountain slid down into the ocean and caused the earth to ring like a bell for 9 days? Well, I didn’t hear the peals either, but apparently the seismologists recorded them: Mystery seismic waves that rippled around Earth for nine days caused by Greenland tsunami: study. Just as a bit of marketing, they could have rebranded that article as: For whom the bell tolls. Sounds much better, huh? 🙂
Anyway did you hear the earth ringing like a bell? Me neither. Movin’ on. Today I had a day just pottering around doing a bit of this, and a bit of that. As you can imagine, I’m still upgrading all of the fuses and joins in the solar power system, so did a few hours of that work today. The entire system project is really down to the rats and mice now, and any gains are minuscule. It’s more about ensuring the longevity of the system more than anything else, and also ease of problem checking and rectification. I was up ladders, and crawled into the roof space (it was hot in there). But got the work done, although there is still more work to do. When I first set the system up, some of the gear you can get access to nowadays, just wasn’t easily available.
Possibly not eating for the ten days prior to the holiday might produce that same effect? And also probably save the cost of the book, cocktails aren’t cheap you know. 🙂 People who deal directly with the public, like in the retail space or hospitality work, they need a medal, or a hug or something like that for what they have to put up with. Wow, what a story.
Thanks very much for the view from behind the curtains, because I’d wondered if there was some snobbery in library-land. Makes a person wonder about the sole purpose behind providing a local library resource is in the first place. Hehe! Lewis, I don’t doubt you as to your assertion for why that particular romance fictional trope finally died an unnatural death, I’m just reluctant to type the words into the search engine, such things are recorded you know. But purely for research purposes, here goes… … Oh my gawd! If the reports aren’t just a vast replaying of the interweb echo chamber, it looks like there is some statistical validity to the claim. Personally, I’m imagining that there would be a clash of interests and egos in there with those doctor to doctor relationships.
Go H! And beware should she ever deliver a sermon from the top stair. 🙂
Yes, Professor Mass has made the call, and also suggested that forecast moisture will be headed east. That being a good thing.
The forecast here suggests snow tomorrow, but I don’t believe one word of it. The forecast temperatures are just too warm. Will we get rain? Probably. But snow, unlikely.
The Borg also say as much, but they may be talking about something entirely different. Gravity is an unstoppable force.
Fingers crossed your Idaho friends are doing OK and that the communications are all that have been cut off. It’s not a good sign though.
Such things happen and unfortunately, publications, much like protests, often acquire other elements, which ends up diluting the overall message. Travel and food are intertwined, but they can also be mutually exclusive where neither the twain shall ever meet. Like you, I’d rather read about the food.
I like how your brain works there with the fussy formula. If I may humbly suggest that the formula be expanded to include the size of wallet and depth of pockets? Such things impact upon the formal nature of gardens. No sampling, for none were on offer and I avoid such things in the daylight hours. Those botanical gardens are open year around.
Oooo, that’s very clever of the Native Americans to continue the heritage breeds of corn. For once the hybrids and highly bred species succumb to poor soil fertility, that’s the plants we’ll all be left with.
The dye is both amazing, and tes not natural! 🙂 I can imagine people trying that in hot sweaty loud nightclubs upon their skin and then freaking everyone out.
Cheers
Chris
Chris:
That was a clever contrast.
Dodgy bird pun enjoyed; no apologies necessary.
No, I’m not kidding about the hanging-out-laundry restriction. Most all HOAs here have that regulation, and that’s even for the back yards.
We call them kitchen gardens; don’t know about “picking” gardens.
Without the occasional hurricane we certainly got less rain. It was an awfully dry summer. I don’t know how much they affect our average rainfall; they must in some way.
Yay! You don’t have to cut the leaning tree down.
If you can grow ornamental camellias, I wonder why your tea-growing project failed?
Pam
Yo, Chris – Yes, all that high falutin art talk is just a bunch of psychobabble, to me. Which I tend to tune out. “Can you repeat that in English, please?” 🙂
Apparently, that whole story got started, because a woman (not an immigrant), in another Ohio town, had a go-around with a neighbor, and was accused of eating the neighbors cat. Unknown as to if she actually ate the cat. And from that small incident, the crazy part of the internet, just got on a role. An echo chamber with embellishments added along the way.
I read about that Greenland tsunami, slopping around a fjord for days. I also read that a cruise ship was recently in that area (“See the fjords!”), and other tourists go walk-about in that area. It was just dumb luck that no one was about, at that time. For whom the bell tolls … sounds like a catchy title, for a book. Has a nice ring to it. 🙂
Actually, the phrase “For whom the bell tolls,” is from the poet (etc.), John Donne (1572-1631). Churches used to ring bells, called “death knells” when someone died. Sometimes, one strike for every year the deceased had lived. The quote is: “…never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” In other words (I guess) if you hear that bell, it might be for you. Creepy, no?
So, your solar is at a place where it’s less tinkering, and more maintenance? Oh, well, Leaves you more time to do other things. Like breaking up rocks or repairing old radios.
I sure am glad I’m retired, and don’t have to deal with the public, anymore. The stories I hear … Back in the day, you didn’t have to worry so much about life and limb. Not like today.
Oh, yes. Plenty of snobbery to go around, in Library-Land. Things are a bit looser, these days, but the hierarchy is still there.
It was 66F (18.88C) yesterday. Overnight low was 46F. Forecast for today is 68F. We had a break in the showers, yesterday and today. I have my 18 gallons in the freezer. So, I took a day off of picking stuff. Except for some carrots. Odd that. There were some carrots, hiding under the radish that had bolted. They’d been there, since spring. I thought they’d be all woody. Nope. They were just fine, and are now residing in my fridge.
I was going to pick blueberries for my oatmeal, this morning. Ended up picking another quart and a half. From one bush, sitting in one spot. Looks like a lot of them are going to go to waste. So … I got an attack of noblesse oblige, and will leave some down in the community room. I think I’ll also start taking some down to the Club. The waste just kills me.
My Idaho friends are fine. They had internet problems (due to the fire?). They got some of our rain, and it really knocked the fires back, and washed the smoke out of the air.
I agree with you. My garden formula was lacking financials. Leave it to an accountant … 🙂
I’ve seen some articles that Native American folk are also saving varieties of squash and beans. And in the upper midwest, they’re preserving plots of native wild rice. In the southwest, different varieties of peppers.
I got my paper phone bill, even though they take the charge off my credit card, automatically. It’s the only automatic payment I have. Soon, the paper statements, will go away. But I can tell you about those junk fees. I get two hundred minutes, a month, with no additional fees. I see last month, I used 4 minutes 🙂
The base rate is $14.99, plus $3.00 for voicemail. So, $17.99, which is the rate they advertise. With a small asterisk, denoting tiny small print, about possible added fees and taxes. When I signed up, they didn’t try to hide this. But on to the nonsense.
The bill is divided into two parts. The first is “Summary of Government Mandated Taxes and Fees.” Chehalis Sales Tax .41; Lewis County E-911 Radio Access Line Excise Tax .70; State Wireless 988 Excise Tax, .40; State Wireless E-911 Excise Tax, .25; WA Sales Tax, 1.57. Total of $3.33.
The next section is: Summary of Universal Service Fee, Administrative and Regulatory Fee and Other Surcharges. Administrative and Regulatory Fee, 3.23; Effect of City Tax – Chehalis, 1.14, Federal USF Surcharge – Wireless, 1.91. Total of $6.28. Bringing us to a total of $27.60. The actual cost of my phone, for a month. Lew
Hi Chris,
Loved the video! I’ve watched certain species of butterflies dine on pig poop. All our dogs have loved pig poop. Pigs poop in the same place and for some reason they like the poop right in front of the gate where an enterprising dog can reach their paw underneath and scoop out some of the delicacy.
Glad to hear you’ve negotiated some lower insurance.
Still very dry here but at least not humid. Sounds like the leaves will be turning earlier than usual and the fall blooms are coming and going very quickly.
Margaret
Hello Chris,
Great flowers coming in your early spring. Here, we have a warm and bountiful September, still lots of flowers glowing in the early evening light.
I am another of your soil-post-fans. The more poop the better. Many years ago I watched an inspiring video with your countryman Nick Ritar talking about phosphorous. After that, I have been looking for practical solutions to our family’s nutrient deliveries.
Soil testing is pretty affordable here, and in October, I will send some soil to a nearby lab for a 14-element test. Earlier this year, I tested for lead, since we live just next to a quite busy road, where leaded fuel was used for fifty years. No lead found, neither 2 meters, nor 10 meters from the road. (20 mg/kg, same as typical background normal level here) The cost was something like 50 USD for two soil tests.
Soil fertility is not easy. Keep writing. And making photos of your stunning chard. We learn from each other too, I think. I learned lots from Saint-Louis-Claires blog too. I love her questions to the garden.
I am curious to read how the sugar beets work out.
And talking about work, I hate meddlemanagers too.
Whenever I was in a management position, I tried to create large frames, inside which the people were free to paint. Some constraints are important, and some direction, but details just delay and diffuse. It also removes responsibility from the person who is just following orders…
David Graeber made an astute observation, that most “management teams” operate like a feudal court. The main task of the peers is to give prestige to their common boss.
Peace,
Göran
Chris,
Musicals. Mixed bag. I grew up watching and enjoying Sound of Music. I don’t mind it. All of the Disney cartoon movies had a lot of songs. Okay for kids, I guess, but those really were musicals. I can tolerate them and enjoy some.
Then there’s the Wizard of Oz. I enjoyed it until…I attended a Roman Catholic school when 12, 13 and 14 – 2 school years. The first year, under the guidance of a very talented nun (Bing Crosby’s niece), we performed Wizard of Oz. Made our own sets. Four sellout audiences of several hundred per session. I still know all of the lyrics to all of the songs. I still know most of the lines each character speaks. I can’t even think about watching the movie without getting the heebie jeebies.
But Time Lords, Mutant Goats, improbability drives? Much better. I’m still wondering after countless readings: what does a drink taste like that is almost exactly unlike tea?
I did enough acting many years ago that I could probably fare okay if called on stage under those circumstances. (No, I was in the choir for Wizard of Oz.) I would probably turn the leaf blower onto myself and blow myself offstage – exit stage right! Then wonder if I could disappear with a leaf blower in hand. 😉
The Aspie Hour? No. I couldn’t have handled that half as well as you did. My tendency would’ve been to stand up and dump the poor girl unceremoniously on the floor. That would’ve been horrid for all methinks.
Okay, winning by dodging. Gets me thinking. Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist. The Artful Dodger. The musical Oliver! Ooops! See, they’ll turn anything into a musical. Camelot, anyone? 😉
I read the first 3 books in the Dune series when I was in my teens. That was the entire series at the time. Something Duke Leto Atreides said in the first book stuck with me forever. He hated giving orders because once an order has been given about a certain task, an order must always be given regarding that task. I much preferred having competent staff who learned their jobs who could then take the initiative to do their jobs without being prodded and goaded. As a result, no micromanaging by me. Everybody is happier that way. If that means that staff learned new things, revised how to get to the finished product and learned how to get information via peer-to-peer communication, that was all icing on the cake for everyone.
Late on my career, when I was in charge of a program when they didn’t fill my supervisor’s position, I got to test my theory. I’d be told “DJ we need this thing by that date.” I’d talk to my “staff” (junior techs) and they’d divide up the work. I’d make sure it was correct. Then the Big Boss’s Bigger Boss would thank me for the job well done. My reply was always “Annie worked on this. Brian worked on that, then Annie put it all together. All I did was make sure the work was correct and readable in its final form.” In that organization it was normal for the person in charge to take credit for the work that staff had done. I couldn’t do that – give credit where it is due, but if something was screwed up in the final report, then I would take the blame as the ranking person. The Bigg Boss’s Bigger Boss appreciated hearing that the junior techs, who were newer employees, were doing well. The techs were happy that I bragged them up to the Big Boss’s Bigger Boss. I was happy that the junior techs did the bulk of the work.
House valuations. Ugh! Here’s how they sort of work here. The Assessor Dept (Assessor is an elected official) assigns valuations to homes based on comparing “similar sales” of “similar” properties. Several budgets are dependent on the property tax revenue collected, including the taxing agency’s “general fund”, which includes Assessor staff. If revenues are too low, perhaps no “cost of living” pay raises. Or worse, maybe layoffs. It is thus in the interests of the taxing authority staff to keep property valuations high.
Meanwhile, the property insurance companies have to insure the home at “replacement cost” valuation. Plus some amount to replace things lost in a fire such as clothing, furniture, appliances, televisions, stereos, etc. If the housing market is overheated like ours has been until recently, then it is in the insurance company’s best interest to overvalue the homes so they don’t have a shortfall of funds if a widespread disaster occurs. Although they ARE supposed to have some giant kind of investments and buffer and cash sitting around somewhere, so I don’t completely buy into the theory as I described it. What I REALLY think is that there is an awful lot of figuring new ways to enhance profit even further. A small fee here, another small fee there. Lew described it well in his phone bill discussion.
I made shortwave receivers back in the day. One was a Heathkit, another was a kit from Radio Shack. They were fun to make and worked well. I’m glad that I was actively involved back when the heyday was first starting to slow down, as there was a LOT of good stuff to listen to from all four corners of the globe. (Why does a round earth have 4 corners?) I bought a VERY nice receiver 22 years ago as a major upgrade. There was still a lot of good stuff to listen to, but not as many of the tiny broadcasters from Central and South America. Then the major broadcasters began scrapping everything and moving to the internet.
I was able to hear some rather obscure broadcasts back in the 1970s…Greenlands Radio (yes a shortwave broadcaster), a shortwave station from Djibouti in Afars and Assas, a station from Tashkent, and my favorite, Radio Tahiti. Sometimes in French, sometimes in a Polynesian language, and the most wonderful music! That was also the days of mailing a “Reception Report” and eventually receiving a QSL card as verification that I did listen to that station. I still have my collection of QSL cards. Some are really cool. I actually had a pen pal in Guatemala and another in Papua New Guinea, both of whom worked at the local shortwave broadcast station. It was a lot of fun.
Then a friend who was also into the same hobby got ahold of a zillion postcards that a local store was going to toss in the dumpster. All of the pictures on the cards were of the Spokane area. I began including a postcard or two with the reception reports I sent. In return, whoever was responsible for sending me the QSL card would often include postcards from their town. Alas! Those days are long gone.
Thursday turned into the mid week hiatus. A wonderful meal occurred.
Friday was a fun day. Killian’s human and I took the two dogs on a hike again. Same place as the last time. The dogs enjoyed playing in the Little Spokane River again. Dame Avalanche looks all clean and has even more fur shedding. I think she has lost 10 pounds of fur the past month! Well, probably not that much, but her shedding fur is like snot when you have a bad head cold: where does it all come from?
We have finally hit our weather change from the drastic heat to the next phase down. Supposed to last into October. Today was a nice 24C. Supposed to warm up to about 26C with nights that cool to a comfortable 9C. Unfortunately, dry as a bone. But, even though these temperatures are warmer than the “normal or average” it is a welcome relief from the intense heat. I should be able to get busy with a lot of outdoor work now.
DJSpo
Hi everyone,
So the weather is filthy here today. Bored, I went to the nearby town of Romsey to pick up a sausage roll and lamington. Had to eat the sausage roll with tomato sauce whilst getting slightly rained upon. The lamington is for later with a coffee. On the way back home again, it snowed. Had the camera ready to hand and took a brief video – hope you enjoy it as much as we did (and the sausage roll was very good as well):
Snow at Mount Macedon 14th September 2024
Cheers
Chris
Hi Pam,
Thanks. Hey, the weather did provide a dusting of snow here today (and there is a link in the comments below so you can see for yourself). The stone fruit crop will yet again be written off. Ook! Oh well, next year and stuff… It’s funny but in the higher reaches of the mountain range the snow would have been much more intense than here, and I was left wondering, do I go over and check it out and risk the tourist traffic – most of whom would have no idea how to drive in the snow. Yeah, nah – too much excitement for me. The lighter snow here was enough.
🙂 At the very least, my puns and dodgy sense of humour are keeping you entertained. Always fun.
Hmm, when you rent, sometimes vacancy rates are so low that you have to put up with all sorts of rubbish, but that laundry in the sunshine restriction would chafe. Fortunately, the wood heater provides enough heat for the dogs (Ruby is camped out in front of it right now, it being 34’F outside) and also drying the clothes. But when the sun is shining strongly, and it’s not too breezy, that’s called free energy. Presumably seeing someone’s washing drying in the sun is a poverty thing, but that doesn’t really make a lot of sense because a person doing so is actually saving mad cash on energy bills. The old timers used to say something about dollars and sense. 🙂
Oh, thanks for that. I tend to call them ‘kitchen gardens’ too, although I’ve heard some odd names for them over the years like a ‘truck garden’ and I have no idea what that may be.
Hmm. It’s possible that if you get warmer winters, more of your rainfall will arrive at that time of the year? Dunno. It’s been so long since the climate here has been predictable that I’ve got no idea as to what to expect from one month to the next.
I feel much the same about that tree. It was dangerous in many ways, none of which I now have to face. That’s a relief.
Ah, I’ve been wondering that as well. It may well be the particular variety of tea camellia is not suited to this climate. The books suggest that I have to raise some from seed in order to get a tea plant which will thrive in this environment. A job for later, but also a job which needs doing. There’s a lot of those – as you’d no doubt also have to deal with. 🙂 Still, keeps our minds active and sharp.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Margaret,
Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated. 🙂 The birds here don’t let anything go to waste. The clever magpies have even learned that some uneaten chicken feed gets washed out of their enclosures drain. So, in the mornings, the magpies will watch my activities, then wait at the chicken enclosure drain outlet for any tasty morsels to wash through – every day. The spoilt chickens are a bit slack about eating every last grain…
Oh yeah, butterflies and other insects are into pig poop, and I’d imagine if the chickens had access to it (although the pigs may try and catch the chickens whilst they were at that activity) they’d also scratch the poop apart and do their best efforts. That’s funny, and I can see that pigs would do exactly that. 🙂 They’re such lovely social creatures that they’d no doubt amuse themselves by giving the dogs some challenging activity.
Over the past few decades, they’ve constantly been releasing new varieties of dung beetles into the country, and those insects perform some amazing feats – and are great for the soils. They’re not so active at this cold time of the year (it snowed today, far out!), but when the weather warms they’ll be scurrying around everywhere and cleaning up. They’re actually also a good biological control for the fly population. When I was a kid, flies were really bad.
Yeah, thanks and the nice insurance company makes you work for every cent of savings. Hmm. Honestly, you have to be onto everything nowadays. Speaking of which, how’s Marty going in the queue?
Ook! That is a dry year when the fall leaves do that trick. Margaret, you’ll have to forgive me, but err, leaf change over tourism and stuff. A quick turn around is not a bad thing. When the weather is mild and the soil moisture plentiful, leaf change just lingers. Hopefully the leaves are providing heaps of fertility for your garden beds? Do you munch them up in a machine, or just let nature do it’s thing?
PS: There’s a link below (or above?) for a view into the snow fall today. 🙂
Cheers
Chris
Hi Göran,
When we first moved up here, an old timer I knew used to help me out with the bees. As you’d know, old timers sometimes don’t waste words, and early on he gave me a stern lecture about the lack of flowers (i.e. bee and other insects and birds food). Taking on board his thoughtful and also rather blunt words, we began planting diverse flower beds. Here in a milder climate (although it snowed today – video link above or below) they look like all year around flower garden beds, but probably in your part of the world they may have looked like, I dunno, hedgerows? Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to… Good luck! 🙂 I could have been blunt, and may get to that state in a few years. How much fun will that be? Dude, one day you wake up and discover that you’ve become the old timer… Hehe!
Yes, absolutely. As a species we have the most amazing opportunity to use our fossil fuel reserves and remineralise the soils, and yet, other things fill our leaders minds. Oh well. Still, that error also keeps prices down for I dunno, phosphates. 🙂 Historically, these things were always in short supply. Ah, the milkwood folks. I may have met them, and in the past they may have had something to do with my friends of the big shed fame. Dude, it’s a small world sometimes. 🙂
Oooo. Goran, if it is not too much to ask, I’d really appreciate it if you wrote about the soil test results and provided some commentary? The costs for the tests here are I believe up around three times that price.
Claire unstiningly provided those soil test results and commentary over many years, and corrected many of my own misconceptions. You might laugh, but in the very early days I believed that if a person simply added enough composted woody mulch, all things were possible. That was so wrong headed that I’m now embarrassed. However, such activities provided plenty of soil organic matter, but threw everything in the soil way out of whack. Even the fruit trees struggled to grow with such a muddleheaded approach. Nowadays I’m quite ruthless with composts and mulches and ask the hard question: What went into this stuff? Then I just begin adding in additional minerals to the mixture to make up for the very real lack of useful minerals. But to be honest, this is what living with declining soil fertility looks like. And it is going on right across the planet.
I’ll keep you updated. With the snow today, and possible frost tonight, the beets and potatoes were planted out at almost the exact right time – fingers crossed. Although one must never count their root crops too early.
That’s a great word, and one which I’d never heard before, but yes it sums things up nicely! And exactly, micro-managers encourage stupid decision making processes, and here we all are today. 🙂 Could things gets worse, yes, absolutely!
And yeah, as to Mr Graeber’s astute observation, why do you reckon I ended up butting heads with boards whilst sharing candid opinions? They all said they were able to relax when I was doing my thing, but not one of them liked me for doing and saying it. Hmm. Oh well, eventually I went off and did something more productive with my time (as you no doubts also experienced in that world). 🙂 Far out, what else do you do when confronted by reality?
Cheers
Chris
Hi DJ,
At the arts centre in the big smoke, they annually run a showing of that musical, and people get dressed up for it. Sandra has been there a few times with friends, and it’s a thing, I guess. I’d just say no. 🙂 But as a kid I recall going to the drive ins to watch that film, so it has pleasant associated memories. And dude, there are some naughty bits in that film. Language that would make a gentle person blush, but since that doesn’t apply to any of us, there’s a line which during those screenings, the audience would shout out something or other about: What is it, you can’t face? Although I don’t get what’s so naughty about that… 😉 Australian vernacular, it’s enough to make a person blush!
You got lucky there that you survived your early theatre experience. A lesser person would have been smooshed, and nobody wants that. I can’t recall whether you’ve previously mentioned that during your rehearsals the nun wielded a cane which swiftly corrected any minor errors? I’m sure she was lovely, maybe. Just keep away from the cane. 🙂 Had an old guitar teacher who gave up piano lessons because of that sort of swift remonstration. He might have been good too. I noticed you slipped in a sneaky maths problem there as well. Nice shot, and you might think I’m half asleep, but that’s only a quarter true.
What a question, and so I ask you in reply: could you un-taste such a drink? Look, my gut feeling suggests that we may both be something of a smarty pants here, and how did they get treated at parties in the book?
Oh my gawd, that is an awesome response – and would have stolen the show. Nice one, and a reminder: Note to self, work on improv. Man, I was like cannon fodder, or rabbit in the headlights, which is why I attempt to avoid the front row seats, but alas one must compromise, plus it does give amusing dodgy story fodder.
Well, that response would have also been quite the surprise as well for both the young lady, and the audience. We need to work something out here as an on call situational consultant arrangement! 🙂 I did my best on both occasions to play the assigned role gracefully, but if I’d had the option to say no…
Camelot, spam-a-lot? Are we descending into Monty Python territory here? The Holy Grail film was good, but I liked The Life of Brian better as it was coherent. Naughty Zoot! Yes, so much wrongness, it was good.
Exactly. Like you, I tried to foster a workplace where people knew what they were doing, and only came to me when guidance was required, or a problem had to be escalated. I’d sit down with people at the start of the work day and ask them what they were going to do, and directed them if anything was being missed, and got them assistance when they needed it. None of this stuff is hard, and is common in small business, but not so much in bigger enterprises. Your lot were lucky to have you doing all that stuff.
And essentially taking the credit for work not done by you, is an inherent problem of too many layers of hierarchy. Staff reporting to you, soon get to know whether you’re stealing their thunder.
All true, but I also wonder whether at the nice insurance company there are incentives somewhere (and this is purely a guess) that the value of assets under cover increases each year. The easy way to do that without attracting new customers is to simply upwardly value the assets. This in turn produces higher premiums, and everyone gets their bonus. It works in similar ways to the constant pressure for inflation, which few question – the same volume of sales produces greater sales numbers, and people get their bonuses. Hmm.
Yeah, it was amazing how those low frequency radio waves would bounce off the ionosphere, and could be picked up in remote corners (an amusing observation!) of the globe. There was a lot of broadcasts to be listened too, but like you noted, the days of such things declined as the interweb took over. Wasn’t the mail a fun way to send and receive ‘news from afar’? You’d always get the anticipation of checking the mail box out to see what was in there? Nowadays it’s all bills and online purchases. Although candidly I do have to purchase online a lot of unusual and hard to obtain spare parts for the house systems plus stuff for the machines (probably a red flag somewhere for sure, that – actually there is a story there), and going to the post office can be a bit like the experience of getting Christmas presents.
Very good, a dude needs to attend to his lady and ensure that she is entertained. Hope the tooth dramas are going smoothly.
Hehe! Sounds like a fun day for you all. And philosophers have debated this question over the ages: Where did all these dust bunnies come from? Incidentally, as to an answer, the jury is still out, although certain furry creatures can be pointed to as the source. The evidence is not conclusive though… 😉
Your weather sounds really nice. And did I mention it snowed here today? Hmm… 2’C outside right now is rather unappealing.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
I can comprehend dissecting art for the purpose of seeking narratives and hidden eternal truths, but word salad kind of analyses, do my head in. Yup, agreed a total time waster. Hey, I just noted down that most excellent phrase for future usage. Thanks!
Whatever else you can say about the neighbour eats cat story, is that it’s memorable. Creates quite the impression don’t you think? If you’d left me for a decade to come up with that story, I’m not sure that it would have occurred to me. What I’m left wondering is: What actually happened to the missing cat? Sadly it is a monster echo chamber, and all we can but do is our best to tell thing like they are. Do you reckon the cat would have been tasty? 😉
The article said that the fjord was frequented by cruise ships. You’d hope that future cruises took this new information on board? Dunno about you, but I’m of the opinion that a 200m tsunami wave is a non survivable incident for even the biggest of big ships. It certainly would have been a news worthy incident. There was mention of a missing dog patrol, and the odds wouldn’t have been good. Didn’t the 1972 film, The Poseidon Adventure feature a lesser rogue wave?
My reference was perhaps less historical, it was from a Metallica song. Disappointing, yes. Interesting, maybe. They had one or two quite good songs and were quite good when backed by an orchestra. Back to proper references. It is a very creepy sentiment indeed, and even more creepy if you heard it, but were presumed dead. Such things happened back in the day.
Maintenance and minor upgrades are where things are at now for the solar power system. I’m just trying to ensure that the system keeps on working during the worst case scenarios, and that there are fall back plans and quality fail safes for when things may go horribly wrong. Not a bad investment of time and resources, but who knows what the future holds in store on that front.
Dude, it snowed here today. The forecast called it, and we enjoyed a nice dusting of snow at this elevation. Higher up the mountain range (1,000ft higher again), I’m guessing was mayhem. For a few seconds I wondered whether we should head up and take a look, and then reality kicked in. Weekend. Nuff said. Here’s a look at the snow today: Snow Mount Macedon. Cool huh. 🙂
That’s the plan, we’re setting the place up to be easy to live at. There are plenty of ways you can set up a productive bit of land, and this is just one approach. Hey, I’m beginning to think that those young citrus trees the rabbits ate the bark from, may not survive. Oh well, lesson learned. Not to worry too, there are plenty of rocks as need breaking up! Can I work an Ugg! in there, yeah, I reckon so.
I’m hearing from plenty of people who do that work, and are hanging in there for retirement. Dunno man, it’s not good out there, but I have a hunch that should harder economic times arrive, people who’ve taken a sudden drop in their living standards, will have to be more polite. The old timers used to say that wealth corrupts, and there is an element of truth to that.
Hehe! But you managed and played that system just fine. Respect.
Your weather sounds pretty nice to me right now. It’s 34’F outside, and candidly the stone fruit crop is at serious risk. Oh well, here’s hoping for a better outcome next year. Well done sorting out the blueberries, and always good to treat yourself when a goal has been reached. I’ve haven’t got my head around growing carrots yet, but they can do that. The ones I’ve grown tend to be forked and woody, so I’ve clearly got a lot to learn. For your info, the local gardening club was encouraging the planting of those two plants together.
That’s very thoughtful of you on both counts. I’ll bet the berries disappear quickly!
It’s funny you mention waste, because I’ve been pondering a dilemma there, and thought you might be interested in it. So a café in the big smoke makes really tasty muffins. The last two weeks they’ve run out, and the lovely young folks there looked very uncomfortable (presumably there may have been scenes, but I assured them this would not be the case with me), and they told me that they can’t pick how much to make. I didn’t get the chance to ask them, but I was wondering if they were worried about wastage? The funny thing is, a muffin is a low product cost, high margin product and so losing out on sales due to lack of product, might actually cost the business more than the costs of the wastage. There’s a really weird balance in there to be found, but stuffed if I know where. What would you do?
That’s great news about your idaho friends not coming unstuck plus the rain. It doesn’t get better than that outcome.
Hehe! As has been said before, and is quite a valid observation in this formula instance: It’s not my problem, it’s how I’m programmed to function!
All that work on saving heritage and local varieties of edible plants will yield great dividends. No doubts about it. Plant breeding never really stops, but when diminishing returns are reached and soil minerals depleted, going backwards is a fine option. Yup. I’d love to get my hands on some varieties of wild rice which could survive in these sorts of cooler climates.
That’s a pretty cheap plan, but wow, I had trouble keeping up with all of those taxes. And it would make collection and distribution of all those different taxes, expensive. For your info, the nice telco charges me a basic plan, but it’s $65 per month, and 1/11th is federal good and services tax. Hope they don’t come up with any new taxes…
Yours is about half taxes. It’s an impressive effort. Makes the sensitive person wonder whether as the plan increases, so too do the taxes?
Just heard icy rain falling outside. Yay for us!
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – Which phrase? High faultin or psychobabble? 🙂 I had an interesting thought. If you look at words, on a time continuum, one would be in the past, and one more in the present. The past, where things were more “down home.”
“Four corners of the earth.” Well, if you look at a flat map of the world, it’s got four corners. 🙂
Landslides and tsunami. There was the Storegga Slide, which in prehistoric times, probably wiped out a good chunk of the population of Britain, and the continent.
https://w.wiki/BCFF
They’re keeping a sharp eye, on Cumbre Vieja, in the Canary Islands. Should there be a flank collapse, the resulting tsunami would probably wipe out a large chunk of our east coast.
LOL. Calm down Chris. You mentioned your snow, about eight times, and linked to the video, twice. We get it. Your excited. Probably wise to not go out exploring. Even here, people go nuts during our infrequent snowfalls. Fingers crossed, some of your stone fruit makes it through.
70F (21.11C) was the high yesterday. Overnight low was 55F. Forecast for today is 67F. It rained, overnight. More showers, today. Then two nice days. I picked a total of 3 quarts of blueberries, yesterday. Some went in my oatmeal, four pippins for the community room (taking down two at a time), and a couple of sandwich bags, for the Club. Jane brought in three boxes of fruit and veg, that she got from the food bank. You take what they give you, mostly, and there was more veg than she needed at the Funny Farm. I grabbed some apples and a celery. My fridge is stuffed with produce, right now. Although things eased a bit. I loaded up the dryer, with tomatoes, this morning. Two trays of cherry and two trays of Roma, etc.. I’ve decided not to worry so much about varieties, and just keep cranking tomatoes through the dryer. I want 12 quart bags, before the season is over. I’ll keep harvesting the cherry tomatoes, some were given to me by one of the other gardeners, and I’ll buy some Romas, at the veg store. While the prices are sort of low.
Supply vs demand. Which carried to extremes, ends up being “just in time” inventory management. And we know how that turned out.
You need a lake, to grow the native wild rice, here. 🙂 The native folk would put a hide down, in their canoe. Paddle out to the rice patches. Certain patches usually belong to certain families. They bend the rice over the canoe, beat it with a special stick, and the grains fall on the hide. You can buy wild rice, in some stores. Usually, really pricey. I’ve had it a time or two. Nice nutty flavor.
I made it up to the store that carries milk, in small quantities, last night. So, the pumpkins got a watering with it, this morning. Going back to the source. Our library system has a few copies of Wilder’s “Farmer Boy.” Not at my branch, but I put a copy on hold. Might take a couple of weeks, as all copies are checked out. That series is ever popular. Lew
Chris:
I watched your delightful snow video and saw the snow for myself, and much enjoyed that it was not here – yet. And maybe you won’t lose all your stone fruit.
Dollars and cents?
Here, a truck garden is a large garden – not actually a farm – that one grows to sell the produce from at a roadside stand or a Farmers’ Market.
Pam
Hi Pam,
🙂 Thanks, although as they say about winter weather: Coming to a place near you, soon! Hope the greenhouse works out well. It’s cold here tonight. Brr! Dunno about the stone fruit, we’ll see how it goes. This morning was 35’F and yet there didn’t seem to be a frost.
Maybe, but I’m thinkin’ dollars and sense! 🙂
Ah, that makes sense, and we’d call that a farm gate seller down here, although they are less common these days. You may notice a fortnight ago, we planted out potatoes… I’ve been buying potatoes from the same farm for years, but the guys get on in age, as I will one day. Oh well.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Nah man, it was the other phrase you mentioned: “Can you repeat that in English, please?” My gut feeling suggests this is a confrontational approach, but it just might work in some occasions where people are talking words which are the equivalent of donkey poop.
I agree, the economic environment does in some ways bend and shape the language, so yes, I can see that high falutin’ could morph into psychobabble. But either response could just as easily shut a conversation down. A less confrontational approach might be: “What do you mean by that? combined with the equivalent of a searching stare – which could be unsettling for other folks. 😉 And I use that to good effect like bringing a dog to heel.
Four corners of the map? I can see that. There may be an angle (please excuse the pun) in there somewhere? Do you reckon the flat earther folks are cashed up? Probably not. Drats, our fortunes have yet again escaped our clutches. Oh well, back to the drawing board. At this rate, we will get there one day, maybe…
Oh my gawd, the day the Storegga Slide let go and slipped into the murky depths would be a day to remember, if you lived far enough in land and at a decent elevation above sea level. Not much would have survived those under sea land slips when confronted by the unstoppable wall of water. I’m still wondering when a cruise ship will come unstuck. I don’t do cruise ships, so that is one less personal worry.
Cumbre Vieja is a fascinating chunk of geology for sheer force of nature, and probably quite alarming to live next to, but alas it may not turn into a megatsunami.
Dude, I’m trying to stay calm, but it’s not easy. There’s been no snow at all for four years, and then we’re confronted by a light dusting. You, who enjoy such extreme weather events every winter may have a different view on the subject, but it was jolly exciting to see the white stuff falling here. Didn’t settle, although further up the mountain range it would have. I’m watching the stone fruit to see how they cope with the sudden cold air. Surprisingly, it was 35’F this morning, but there was no signs of frost. The wind, I guess? Dunno.
Respect, and I’m unsure what you meant by the word ‘pippin’ in that context? It’s good to hear that your fridge is stuffed full of produce. It’s like a full shed of firewood in that you know you’ll be warm, or in your case, fed. 🙂 Opened the last bottle of canned plums this morning and there was mould on the surface. Threw out the rubber ring and checked for any issues with the lid and/or bottle. Not even worth feeding the stuff to the chickens – just in case. The worms are far less fussy.
That’s a good approach with tomatoes and the dehydrator. I’ve found over the years that the drying process concentrates the flavour, but have no real experience with the huge beef stake varieties of tomatoes. Dunno how they’d go. But I reckon you’re on the right track there.
Yeah, just in time is most certainly being wound back. Turns out, it is a good idea when the supply can be guaranteed, but in any other situation, it’s maybe not so good.
Began dealing with the rabbits today. Took the same approach Dame Plum and I did with the rats a few years ago – where are they hiding, and why? Some of the really woody shrubs in the garden beds are providing decent shelter for the critters, and well, they shouldn’t have ring barked the young citrus trees. It being Sunday, I kept up the Aussie tradition of the burn off, and sent some of the echium shrubs there. That will make a bit of a difference already with the rabbits.
We probably need a lake here as well to grow that particular variety of wild rice. 🙂 There are some dry land varieties, although I have no experience with them. Book knowledge…
Hope the milk on the pumpkins keeps away the dreaded sooty mould, and the fruit develops into full sized (or at least a respectable facsimile thereof) fruits.
Oh, watched the final episode of Clarkson’s Farm, and not saying you’re missing out, but it kinda looks that way to me.
Cheers, and better get writing!
Chris
Yo, Chris – “Can you repeat that in English? Most frequently said to a computer tech. 🙂
I read recently, that a way to defuse someone ranting about whatever, is to say, “There he goes, again.” Might be worth a try, but a situation hasn’t come up where I could deploy it.
The high yesterday was 68F (20C). Overnight low was 48F. Forecast for today is 67F. When I took H for a walk, around midnight, there was a decided nip in the air, which I haven’t noticed, before. No breeze, just a sharp coolness. Though the overnight low doesn’t reflect it. Another clear day, but rain will be back, tomorrow.
A pippin is one of those 12 pressed paper cartons, that make up a flat of fruit. I found that definition, once, but can’t find it, again. Definitions can’t seem to get past a variety of apple, or an obscure king. There ought to be a name for those things. “Carton” doesn’t quit define them. I don’t think.
That’s tragic about the jar of plums. And the last one, too! I ran a load of tomatoes, through the dehydrator, yesterday. I’ll probably do another one, today. I was at the veg store, and picked up a dozen Roma tomatoes. $1.98 a pound. Cost me around $5. I’ll probably pick more cherry tomatoes, today. And, there might be some of the first green beans.
The Rat Wars seem to have settled down to a low rumble. So bring on the Rabbit War! 🙂
I picked up a couple of books, from the library, yesterday. I started one, last night. “All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art.” (Whitfield, 2024.) “A dazzling insider’s account of the contemporary art world and the stunning rise and fall of the charismatic American art dealer Inigo Philbrick, as seen through the eyes of his friend and fellow dealer.” I read a couple of chapters, last night. I think it will be a good read. Learned a new word. “Scurrility.” Lew