Unlearning

Unlearning is a funny word. Makes me think of George Orwell’s classic ‘Double Plus Ungood’ concept from the how-to guide book for authoritarian regimes: 1984. A strange year, I recall it well. But whilst strange things did go on around that year, at such time no authoritarian dictatorship was directing the minutiae of my life. Such events came to be 36 years later. In those earlier days, the 1985 John Hughes film, The Breakfast Club, perhaps far better conveyed my generations dismay at the complexities and anger over artificial abstract conflicts, whilst displaying the hypocrisy of elders. What can I say, it was a strange year.

Around that time, the seminal 1970’s British punk band The Clash, caught the change in the social winds and perhaps decided that being cool for cats didn’t pay as well as writing pop songs. The band split and reformed under a new name: Big Audio Dynamite, whatever that means. Heck, being a very young High School kid, I liked the new pop song direction of the punk band. In those days FM stereo radio was relatively new, and you could listen to the new wave of music using chunky headphones hooked up to your Walkman. Shame about the ruinously expensive AA batteries the things ate.

On the other hand, the portable radio and funky 80’s tunes made delivering newspapers in the pre-dawn hours bearable. The dark skies before dawn have never been my friend. On the push bike whilst carrying a heavy load of newsprint, in all weather, the tunes kept me pedalling hard and long. Good exercise. After a while you’d have memorised which houses were on the delivery route. The scamps who’d fallen onto hard times and neglected to pay their subscriptions in those days were the true enemy of the people. Subscribers kept my youthful weekly pay going.

The mad cash earned in those early pre-dawn hours of my youth was well spent. Pinball arcades had machines which kept the youth of my day busily killing space invaders. And I did my bit for the team, and bravely tackled the pesky aliens. Just like facing off a horde of zombies though, you eventually lost. Unfortunately, I’d perhaps done more than my fair share, and the machines regularly emptied the savings. The Pyramid building society failure where I’d held a savings account took the rest. My deeply ingrained cynicism began early. However it’s worth noting the works of altruism, as I did my very best to rescue the young lady from the clutches of the video game evil Donkey Kong. But alas, easy credit in those days was something for the future, and once the paper delivery pay ran out, that was that, and Donkey Kong got the chick.

Fortunately, by 1994, I did somehow manage to nab the chick. That was when I met Sandra. Unfortunately in the intervening decade, I’d not saved a single cent and still lived pay cheque to pay cheque. By that recession, with 10% unemployment, I was candidly grateful just for having a job. My dire financial situation in those days were excusable, and Sandra trained me ungently in the art of fiscal responsibility. A valuable lesson.

In those days I was working full time and studying part time at night for an Accounting degree. You’d imagine that the universities were preparing their students with valuable life lessons such as say, how to live within your means. I can assure you that the subject was never broached! Sandra’s tutorship was much more practically based, and it is worthwhile noting that she had a far better handle on the subject of economics having received the top mark in her year at uni. Lest she get an over inflated ego, I managed the top mark in the subject of Accounting theory, which was all about ideas, concepts and history. Very interesting for a persons world-view, but perhaps lacking somewhat in practical application. What can I say, I write, she edits, and these are different skills.

It’s funny thinking you know about stuff, like mad cash, when looking around at the wider society, the concept of living within one’s means is treated as an abhorrent idea. It’s not lost on me that the practical application of the subject is an entirely different thing.

I’ll tell you a funny story. Years ago I used to believe that it was possible to outwit the old timers many practical applications in relation to the subject of agriculture. The old timers were always banging on about crop rotation. Boring stuff. Surely if a person just added on enough regular top ups of super double plus good soil feed, the problems they spoke of in hushed tones, were defeated. After all, aren’t we the smarter ones in these enlightened days? Turns out the old timers were right. Grow the same plants, in the same soils for long enough, and eventually things start going wrong.

So there I was looking at the garden bed on one of the terraces which grows the Globe Artichokes, and the plants looked pretty sad indeed. They’d been grown in the same spot for six or seven years and in their day produced plenty of tasty chokes, but this summer, the plants just gave up. Trust me in this, the need for crop rotation is real.

Then in the garden bed on the other side of the same terrace, the dogs had long been running backwards and forwards on the very downhill edge of the soil. I’m sure the exercise was fun for them, and yeah, thanks for that Kelpies! However, whenever it rained, loosened soil from the garden bed edge would wash down onto the next lower terrace where the ten grape vines grew in a bird proof cage. The vines no doubt appreciated the feed.

So there are now two 10m / 33ft long garden beds not producing anything of note at this very peak of the growing season. Like playing the video arcade game machines, it’s just all a bit wasteful. So we’ll clear out, feed and turn over the bed growing the Globe Artichokes. The other garden bed is receiving a rock wall on the downhill side. That’ll stop the dogs antics and retain the soil. Practical responses to problems, keeps you applying your learning, but more importantly, keeps you sharp.

Here’s the sad looking Globe Artichokes

Whilst trying to work out how to fix those two garden beds, we took a look around the other terraces to see what was working. And that was when we noticed that a decent rock wall on the downhill edge of the terrace would probably help the plants. Here’s the nearby terraced garden bed which is working:

A rose, beans, and self seeded tomato, none of which have been watered

We’re yet to clean up the Globe Artichoke bed. That can wait. The other garden bed is in far greater need of assistance. A day was spent scrounging around the property looking for suitable rocks to bring back up the hill and place on the very downhill edge of that terrace. And we almost, but not quite finished that job.

Rocks were placed on the very downhill edge of this terrace

Both sides of that garden bed received larger rocks. And over the next week, the intention is to heavily feed the soil in the beds. That fertilising has already begun.

Ollie stands in the heavily fertilised section of the garden bed

This weeks video is about the restoration of those two failed garden beds:

Organic Vegetable gardening – Failed garden bed and restoration part 1

Monday had been crazy hot and windy. Fortunately the nearby bushfire mentioned in last weeks blog was contained. It was however a fine day to hide in the house doing things, like making a tiramisu from scratch for Christmas day lunch.

A tiramisu was made from scratch for Christmas day lunch

It’s difficult to imagine, but the following day, the temperature plummeted and it was freezing cold and wet outside as the cold winds blew in from Antarctica. The maximum temperature was 12’C / 54’F and we ran the wood heater in order to keep warm. Such a sharp change from the day beforehand does your head in.

The wood heater kept us warm on a cold summers day

A tiny bit of rain has even fallen during the week. The plants don’t grow in such cold conditions, but it sure beats the risk of being burnt out by a bushfire.

It does a persons head in to go from super hot, to super cold

Regular readers will recall my ongoing battles to dodge the epic LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) costs. The rental charges had risen annually to $260, whilst a 45kg / 100 pound bottle cost $200 delivered. The costs had gotten a bit out of hand, and no matter how little we used of the gas, the rental charges kept rising. Anyway, no point whinging when the situation can be altered. Using our collected cunning and resourceful brains, we sent the large bottles back and cancelled the service. Instead we now use two much smaller barbecue sized 8.5kg / 19 pound gas bottles which are only $32 each with no rental charge. You do the maths…

Unfortunately the physical connections to the gas lines in the house didn’t reach the much smaller bottles. So I made a sturdy metal stand out of scrap to hold the two bottles at the correct height. A day of cutting, drilling and welding, produced this super sturdy metal stand. Total cost to produce, NIL. Since the photo, caps and feet have been added to the vertical support posts.

The two smaller gas bottles not sit on a nifty metal stand

During the week, some of the plants growing into and over the many concrete staircases were trimmed back with the electric hedge trimmer. A very sharp and useful tool. The prunings get dumped back into the garden beds.

The concrete staircase leading up out of the courtyard to the terraces was trimmed

During the week about 40 jars of various types of jams were made. It’s been a busy week, and making jam is a way of preserving the berry harvest. Plus there is nothing finer tasting than raspberry jam spread on a slice of oven warmed freshly baked bread during winter. Yum!

In breaking produce news:

The fruit on the first apricot tree of the season finally ripened.

Ripe apricots on the tree

The birds had been taking more than a casual interest in the tree, so we picked it clean. Much of that fruit was turned into a tasty jam.

The harvest of a single apricot tree

The raspberries are still continuing to have their best year ever. The haul from those berry canes has been astounding. They are now slowing, and the blackberries are only just now beginning to supply ripe fruit.

These thornless blackberries are not quite ripe, but they soon will be

There are ten grape vines happily growing, and they’re all dual purpose table and/or wine varieties. Seven of the vines are producing fruit, and the clusters of grapes are growing larger every week. By first frost, which should be sometime in April, the grapes will be ready to pick and eat.

The clusters of grapevines are getting larger

About five of the apple trees are producing a decent crop. The others are on an off year, so it is always wise to plant a diversity of trees. Apples are biennial producing trees, which means that they take every second year off for growing purposes.

Some people may see apples, I see cider!

Pears don’t produce anywhere near as heavily as do apples. However, the fruit is fine if allowed to ripen correctly. It’s been my experience that they are notoriously difficult to know when exactly to harvest.

European pears do well in this climate
As do Asian pears

It interests me that the local parrots prefer the juicier Asian pears to that of the drier but larger European varieties.

Long term readers will recall the ongoing Rabbit WarsTM. Due to hostile bunny activities in one of the larger flowering garden beds, a huge wormwood shrub had been removed months ago. At the time, in that bed I roughly planted four rhubarb crowns. Far out, those plants have grown strongly in only a few months.

Four rhubarb crowns have gone off like a frog in a sock!

Despite the mostly hot and dry weather of the past month or so, the potatoes continue to show how undemanding a crop they are. The row of sugar beets has done equally well. It’s been perhaps a touch too dry for the row of radishes, as they do prefer damp soil. The many dandelions have likewise thrived in the conditions! In the foreground of the next photo below, you can see that the Japanese ginger has also enjoyed being relocated out from the greenhouse.

Potatoes, sugar beets and dandelions are all doing well. Radishes, not so much

During the day, the air hums with the sound of busy insects going about their activities. I spotted a native bee, wasp, or whatever, on one of the dandelion flowers.

A native bee or wasp on a dandelion flower

There was murder on the orchard floor! Something, presumably owl, kookaburra or fox had nabbed a baby parrot. Such is life.

The dogs and I discovered this mess early one morning

That’ll teach the bird to get up too early.

Despite the meagre rainfall in recent weeks, the place is still looking sort of green and lush. If this weather keeps up though, by mid next month things will be much drier.

You can see where the big trees surface roots extend

Onto the flowers:

The garden beds are a riot of colour
This is a very old fashioned rose, which sets viable seed
The Roses are loving the mostly warm and dry conditions
These tightly formed Rose flowers have the best fragrance

The temperature outside now at about 10am is 23’C (73’F). So far for last year there has been 934.2mm (36.8 inches) which is the same as last weeks total of 931.6mm (36.7 inches)

44 thoughts on “Unlearning”

  1. Yo, Chris – Well, that was a pleasant walk down memory lane.

    “Oh, look!” (Say the Fluffies.) “Our very own super highway!” So how are you going to retrain the dogs to use the path, and not the beds?

    Theme seems to be crop rotation. I do wonder what small micronutrient (maybe) has been exhausted from the soil. Something that your most excellent fertilizing program misses. Maybe the plants just get tired of the same old view, and want a change of scene? Might also be something in the micro soil critters. Maybe some varieties of them build up, to the point where it’s detrimental to the plant?

    “Ollie compacts the soil in the newly fertilized bed.” 🙂

    That was a good video.

    Your weather sure has been up and down. But a bit of cool and damp ought to help out with the fire situation.

    That’s a nifty stand, for your smaller gas canisters. And nifty (or thrifty) that you figured out the maths.

    You picked a good season to take a little time off. All that fruit, coming to, well, fruition. You see apple cider. I see apple butter. 🙂

    Your flowers are a riot of color. I think the old roses are my favorites. Lew

  2. Hi Lewis,

    There’s something quite amusing at how Polyphemus evolved over the centuries from a hard-bitten take no prisoners kind of monster to that of some sort of urbane love sick fool. My but the standards of story telling declined over those hubris filled centuries, but perhaps the audience just got soft. But yeah, a very large one eyed pirate would be a fearsome opponent, after all you have to ask the hard question: Sure an eye was lost, but what happened to the other guy? 🙂 Never thought of the encounter from that perspective, but it makes a lot of sense. Hey, I never interpreted the classics such as Beowulf, to be a factual retelling of actual incidents. Indicative maybe.

    The grotto is astounding, and you sent me into a rabbit hole on the subject of the ancient city of Troy. And yes, best not to mess around with the activities of the gods.

    A dark and mysterious tale that, the Teddy Bears picnic. Best if the naughty bears were encountered after 6pm, which is the general suggestion and advice of the tale.

    Yup, the winter months are rather humid, and down here it stays at such levels for about half the year. It’s curious to me that the recent very hot days have been accompanied with cloud. Sort of suggests that perhaps there is a lot of water vapour in the atmosphere, despite the lack of recent heavy rainfall. Actually the cloud is welcome because despite trapping in the heat, it provides some relief from the summer sun. 25’C / 77’F here today. Quite nice.

    Took the day off any and all work and just loafed around. A gourmet pie was consumed, but that was about the only notable thing. It’s an impressive effort don’t you reckon? 🙂 I’ll get back into rock work tomorrow, and maybe finish that garden bed.

    Dude shopping is the only way to go. 🙂 Browsing? What is this thing? Yup, get in, get whatever it is, then get the heck out again. There’s no relaxation to be had from the shopping experience. And here is where plans come to the fore. Some of the big box stores provide aisle and bay numbers for stuff. Hmm.

    On the other hand, nothing wrong with hanging out where the hip and cool folk are – they might know something you don’t. Maybe… Makes you wonder why they were there, given it was a Sunday?

    Very funny! But also very true. The room was not specified and temperature can vary throughout a house. The rear of this house has windows facing downhill, and those allow in more light, but also outside temperature differentials – despite thick double glazing. The front of the house remains more temperate. I’d design a slightly different house if it had to be rebuilt.

    Yum! The meal sounds tasty, and now I’m salivating thinking about it. Salad for dinner this evening… One cannot complain though given the earlier skewering of the gourmet pie beast.

    That’s a lot of butter, however the chef made it to the ripe old age of 91, so the facts are suggestive. I’d be happy with that outcome. It’s hard to explain how foods come in and out of fashion, like take eggs for example. One minute they’re good for you, the next they’re the work of the devil. It’s hard to know, so I just ask the question: Am I functioning correctly? Dunno, there’s probably an easier way, but maybe considering the moderation aspect is not a bad beginning. Anyway, I doubt that there is a one size fits all approach to food.

    Yeah, it was pretty funny, and the chef clearly had a sharp wit.

    Thanks for saying that about the trip down memory lane. The blog wrote itself, and it was fun jumping from one idea to the next and providing links and back around agains. I’d actually planned to do a retrospective of the past years work, then the other idea popped into my head.

    Training the dogs is possible, physical barriers are perhaps better. 🙂 Those two nimble dogs have zero reason to run along the edge of the terrace now. I’ll try and finish that work off over the next couple of days. The plan is to get the winter crops in by February so the winter plants will get off to an early start before the sun no longer provides any heat whatsoever.

    Exactly! Something has changed with the soil and clearly it would be unwise to continue growing Globe Artichokes in that bed. There’s a school of thought which also suggests that root exudate’s are equally responsible for the declining health of the plants growing in those beds – thus the need for crop rotation. Plants are notorious for their chemical warfare, and maybe the species has just pushed things too far. Nature is rarely stable in its plant communities, and our annual edibles are fast moving greenies. To be honest, I don’t really know what the variable is which has altered, there are too many moving targets and unknowns, and so I’ll rely upon the old timers suggestion to rotate crops, reset the bed, feed it generously and start all over again.

    Interestingly, looking at the statistics, the vid took off like a frog out of a sock, then something happened. There’s a much debated practice allegedly going on in the algaerythm which is known as shadow banning. The comments received a month or two ago with the word ‘lies’ may have triggered that response because the same thing happened then. I’d never have posted such comments, but there is no control in that medium over such foolish words. Hmm. I have to recall that I’m dealing with a business, and they have a business model which I may not fit. Hmm. I may try deleting and re-releasing the earlier vid but make it slightly different, just to see what happens.

    Ollie is very naughty to have done that soil compaction, and usually he is unable to stomp upon garden beds. I mean, we go to such lengths to provide fluffy fertile soil for plants to grow in, and he just compacts the stuff without a care in the world. Maybe compaction is the natural state of soil? 🙂

    Even the big fire off in the west of the state has benefited from the cooler and calmer weather. Next Saturday looks hot, but cloudy again – not that I’m complaining about that turn of events.

    🙂 Yes, the most important question of all nowadays may in fact be: why pay more for the exact same thing? I’d gotten the impression that they gas folks were happy to deliver, for a price – which screamed ‘go away’, but if you don’t here’s the bill. Plenty of less motivated people around here will hang on to the service.

    A friend introduced me to apple sauce last week. Forgot to mention that. Looked and smelled nice enough, but I couldn’t figure out a use for the stuff.

    That old fashioned rose is a ripper, and produces a great display of flowers. Plus it self seeds, and the new plants are pretty much the same, but with slightly different colour variations.

    Cheers

    Chris

  3. rotation- It’s funny, we have not been as methodical as you in adding nutrients, we toss on chicken coop compost, and leaves, but have never done a soil test in the garden to see how things are going, BUT, we’ve always done rotation. We have little lock maps of the garden from each year we’ve been here, and move things about. Again, we are not methodical, so don’t weigh yield, keep notes on heat to year performance, but it’s easy to do, and the oldsters did it, so……..

    tiramisu- Do you actually make your own lady fingers? Do you make a reasonable substitute? We’ve never made them, and they are hard to find to purchase around here. Thus, Tiramisu is a seldom eaten treat unless we eat out and have room for dessert.

    unlearning- it generally takes a hard rap on the head, or equivalent, to unlearn some things. Lots of unlearning in the future for many. The key though, is what lesson has been learned, and what is the new path chosen??? Difficult to see. Always in motion the future is.

  4. Yo, Chris – Two guys were killed by a Sasquatch, down in Oregon! 🙂
    Maybe the teddy bears, framed the Sasquatch.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/29/us/washington-forest-death-sasquatch

    Probably went into the woods wearing flip flops and trainers. Oh, well. They just squeaked in under the wire, to be considered for this year’s Darwin Award.

    One of my favorite movies is “Trojan Women” (1971.) Incredible cast. Also an interesting tale is the rediscovery of Troy, by Henrich Schliemann, in the late 1800s. Archaeologist or treasure hunter? You decide.

    Well, that’s global warming for you. Cranks more water vapor into the air. Our high yesterday was 46F (7.77C), Overnight low was 39F. Forecast for today is 45F. The atmospheric river seems to have ended, and we’re back to scattered showers, again. H and I actually had a dry walk, this morning.

    In stores of any size, here, aisles generally have numbers. And, occasionally little reader boards with a brief description of what’s on that aisle. We’re the land of 24/7 shopping. But, depending on the time of day, the mob is either to a greater or lesser extent. The Store of Walls is open 24/7. And, I hear the new Winco store coming in, is also a 24/7 operation.

    Rebuild your house? Wash your mouth out with soap! 🙂

    Today was a “make oatmeal & fruit” day. I’m into my last gallon bag of rolled oats. When my checks come in, at the end of the week, I’ll have to visit the rarely visited store, and hump back another 25 pound bag. It’s probably going to be a popcorn and cheese night. I’ll settle in to watch that old British version of “A Christmas Carol.” My, it’s a tale with real staying power.

    https://w.wiki/CaJL

    Yes, one can suffer whiplash, from “this is bad for you,” “no, this is good for you.” As someone over at Mr. Greer’s stated (in relationship to drones), what are they trying to distract us from?

    Do dogs need a reason? 🙂

    Maybe, the root calypta wears out. Ages out. Similar to telomeres, the terminal regions on our chromosomes.

    https://w.wiki/9hFs

    Yes, you could try re-releasing the video. Maybe the troll has moved on to bedevil someone else.

    Apple sauce is a side dish. It’s a handy way to get another serving of fruit, into one’s diet. We often get tins of it in our food boxes. Really tasty with a sprinkling of cinnamon, or a pinch of nutmeg. And, as I’ve mentioned before, you can swap it one for one with oil, in a lot of baked goods. LOL. You’re either sending me up, or overthinking the whole thing.

    The auction folks have set up the on-line bidding function, for the New Year’s Day auction. It runs 4 pages, and about 36 of my items, are included. I’m getting some bids, on some of my stuff. I’ll be able to watch the auction, and get a general idea of what my stuff sells for.

    I’ll probably make the cornbread, for my lucky New Year’s Day meal, tomorrow. Most likely in the evening. I even picked up fresh yeast, to give it a good rise. Lew

  5. Hi Steve,

    Good to hear, and in fact if I had to choose between either strict crop rotation and adding in heaps of different soil minerals, then I’d do like what you are doing.

    Man, we’ve only been able to dodge doing a proper crop rotation merely because we can bring in so much organic matter and soil mineral additives. And even then, we face diminishing returns and have to start rotating crops – look at the Globe Artichoke bed, it’s not going well and the plants have been grown in the same soil for six or seven years.

    Basically, you’re doing what that the old timers used to do. Fertilise with what you’ve got access too, and rotate the crops. As far as I can understand things, that is the way of the future too. It’s not lost on me that the price of fertiliser went through the roof when diesel costs went up. A 20kg bag of blood and bone meal sets me back about $65.

    We’re not that methodical either, and a rough plan of the garden is how things roll here.

    Anyway, got the rock walls on the narrower of the two garden beds finished today, then topped up the soil with some nice soil feed. It’ll grow some decent winter crops, such as silverbeet, kale and green mustard leaves.

    Yes. Both the mascarpone cheese and lady finger biscuits were made from scratch for the tiramisu. Here’s the video for the biscuits: Tiramisu easy making part two Ladyfinger biscuits home made. The home made ones are way better than the store bought biscuits.

    They say the flip side of a crisis is the opportunity to change, and lets hope that’s the worst. Thanks, and that concluding sentence would have done Yoda proud. But it’s true too! The future is hard to see.

    Cheers

    Chris

  6. Hi Lewis,

    It’s pretty dumb to head out into remote country unprepared, and that’s the sort of thing which can happen. But then maybe it was the Sasquatch? Nobody said it wasn’t… Must be the time of year for such things, we’ve had reports of a few deaths of bush walkers in remote areas of Tasmania. Victorian bushwalker dies in fall at Tasmania’s Federation Peak in Southwest National Park.

    That rough climb is very remote and not for the average person. Recovering the body would have been a very difficult operation. Actually, someone in that general area recently was stuck in fast moving water and eventually had to have their leg amputated. Go into the woods looking for adventure, and you might just find it. Best not to mess around with the teddy bears picnic.

    It wasn’t hot here today, but working out in the sun sure was cooking my head. We moved some large rocks back uphill and placed them on the rock wall below the long line of water tanks. That rock wall is very long and the job is progressing. 🙂

    The area there already had some smaller rocks, so those were now redundant and all were moved even further uphill to be used on the terrace garden beds – that’s where the globe artichokes are failing.

    On the terrace there are two long garden beds. Thanks to all of the relocated smaller rocks, one of those two beds is now finished! Yay! Then just because we hadn’t done enough work, we took up four huge loads of soil feed mixture to the finished bed on the terrace. Well, that’s one of the two garden beds now done.

    The narrower garden bed is ready for winter planting, but I probably won’t put the seeds in the soil until late January early February. The plants would perhaps not enjoy the summer weather.

    The other much larger garden bed with the globe artichokes should be cleaned up over the next day or two. That’s the plan at this stage, as long as we avoid the dreaded teddy bears lurking out in the forest… Always risky. I treat them gingerly and pretend not to notice them and their frolicking antics. Is there a better path?

    Euripedes knew how to tell a dark tale, and what a great cast. Hmm. I’ll see if I can track down a copy. It’s been so many years now that I’ve had three weeks off paid work, that I’m finding that there is this thing called ‘free time’! Who knew that was even a thing? This holiday business is pretty good. 🙂

    It’s funny you mention that bloke and his activities at Troy. Probably didn’t have the right credentials, connections and/or lineage because I noticed some untoward and disparaging comments as to his work at the digs. Was anyone else doing the digs there? Maybe he was both kinds! 😉

    Seems to be the case with all that extra water in the atmosphere. Just for fun, both Saturday and Sunday are forecast to be up around the 100’F, but cloudy. It’s good to be us. Good to hear that you and H finally dodged the rain this morning. It’s been more than just a few days of wet walks. Did much of the rain get to the eastern part of the state?

    Yeah, the big box stores with long aisles (and those are not that common down under) tend to have the aisle descriptions at either end. The other day I noticed that the descriptions had to be read for either side of the aisle, but I can sort of understand why that would be. It’s just when you’re walking from one angle, you only get to read one of the two aisle descriptions – and they’re different. Probably not how I’d arrange things.

    In the past the 24/7 shopping thing was trialled, but they’re not very common at all down here. Most retail closes at 5pm, some like big box hardware stores may open to 9pm, and super markets probably 11pm at the very latest (most will close 8pm or 9pm). Presumably the economic viability was tested and found wanting. Late night shopping however is good for night owls.

    Well, you’re right and a good mouth washing out would be required if it was a voluntary thing. I guess I’m talking here hypothetically if the house burned down in a fire. My mind is rather active and it’s hard not to think about how the building design could be tweaked so that it would work better and be easier and cheaper to rebuild. Probably how my brain works with plan B thinking… I wouldn’t do that work on a whim, put it that way. I hear stories that the cost of materials has shot way up. The other day at the big box hardware a large box of timber screws was $90. Had a bit of a double take there. They’re good screws, but far out.

    It’s a never ending job keeping the home food stores replete! Made a batch of toasted muesli this morning myself. Dude, there were musical adaptations of the classic tale – the old brain was bruised thinking about how music could be adapted to A Christmas Carol, but I agree with you, the story has legs and will survive way off into the future. A good morality tale which even Euripedes would have recognised, and dare I say it, sung the praises of. 🙂 I spotted that Patrick Stewart has done a version of the tale.

    Holy carp! I missed that about the drones, but it’s a good point, and maybe they were there in smaller numbers and nobody noticed. The numbers may have gone up in recent times and reached a tipping point. Personally, I reckon the drones are data gathering, like the machines on the sides of the freeways seem to do here. So much data, and so little information. Eventually such data harvesting efforts will collapse the electricity grid.

    Absolutely not! 🙂 Dogs don’t need a reason for any activity, they live entirely in the moment. Lovely creatures.

    Telomeres is like the revenge of the analogue inherent problem. When copies are made from one analogue format to the next, there is always a touch of loss and distortion. Remember the old cassette tapes, far out, you could hear that story playing out. Hmm. If such things replicated perfectly, there’d be no chance ever of useful adaptations entering the environment. My take on that world is that we’re built upon adaptive errors.

    Ah! With the videos. So I took a deep dive this morning onto comment moderation with utub. Switched it on (not previously realising that was possible), so no more trolls. Also the two offending comments were deleted. We’ll see what happens with the algaerythm now. At the end of the day though, gargle is a business and in order to promote the vids they seem to want $200 from me per vid. Looking around the web to read of other peoples experiences, that’s sort of the mad cash they earn for each vid assuming the people supply one per week. Look, I’m not excited by that business model, and so will forge my own path there. The odds perhaps are against me though. With paid work, I try to remind people as much as possible about exploitative arrangements by suggesting: Are these people your mates? Distils the message to its simplest core issue.

    What I also learned was that there is a strong possibility that the algaerythm takes into account certain negative words used in comments – and I’m guessing both people triggered that for their own purposes, although how they knew is a mystery to me. But the word ‘opaque’ springs to mind when interacting with that interweb snake. Not your mates…

    Nah man, I’m over thinking the whole apple sauce matter purely because I’ve got zero experience with it. Trust me, whilst I’m cheeky, I’m 100% serious in this regard. It’s just a product you don’t ever see down here. Down under they produce a lot of canola oil and not to mention good quality olive oil, so plant fats are readily obtainable.

    Good luck with the auction results, and may you do well.

    Yum! Yum! Hope the cornbread turns out well, and I’ve never made the stuff. Corn flour always looks much finer than bread wheat flour to me, but it’s a grain. It’s a public holiday here tomorrow, so I’m hiding at home. Salad for dinner. Not very festive, but I gave up on celebrating new years long ago. Might watch another episode of Clarkson’s Farm – oh my, that is an astounding show. I’ve never encountered anyone who lives on the land and hasn’t loved that show. Please excuse my slight deviation from the blog rules, but he’s really pissed off people at the local council because it looks to me like bureaucratic over reach of the direst sort. An astounding insight into farming large scale, and possibly that was the intention. Hmm.

    Cheers

    Chris

  7. Yo, Chris – Life is perilous enough, without going looking for “adventure.” I figure I take my life in my hands, each time I walk H up and down four flights of stairs. I saw a headline, about that water amputation. Reminded me about the 2003 story, of a guy who had to cut off part of his own arm (with a dull pocket knife) to get free of some rocks. Oh well. He got a book and movie out of the deal.

    https://w.wiki/CapS

    So, were the smaller rocks sad, at being made redundant? 🙂

    RE: “Trojan Women.” Well, they did call it a tragedy. I can remember practically staggering out of the theatre, after seeing it.

    The high yesterday was 48F (8.88C). The overnight low was 34F. Forecast for today is 43F. But we did have a bit of a frost, last night. My car door was frozen shut, this morning. I don’t pay much attention to the weather in eastern Washington. DJ keeps us filled in. As do my Idaho friends, who don’t live that far from him, as the crow flies.

    I try and do my bit, as a late night shopper, to make it worth their while 🙂 . Though with all the holidays, and all, my shopping routine has really been thrown off. I really needed to get some bananas and food for H. So, I first stopped by Tractor Supply, which is a huge farm store. It was overwhelming. An aisle (both sides) and a half of dog food. Neither of the brands she has eaten. I finally gave up, in disgust. Stopped by the Club for a cuppa. I was going to check out the new veg store, up in Centralia, but they don’t open until 11 (?), and I didn’t want to be out, that long. So, I went down to Pet Sense, which is a small pet store, next to the big grocery warehouse store (where I’ll probably be getting my banana, in future.)

    Turns out, Pet Sense is owned by Tractor Supply. Prices aren’t that much more. The manager happened to be there. She used to work at the closed veg store, and although a “normie” was aware of the Club, and our pantry. Not only did she give me her discount on the dog food, but also kicked in $20 for the Club food pantry. I both a couple of bags of food, for the Club pantry. Will take it in, tomorrow morning.

    I watched “A Christmas Carol,” last night. Well worth a bowl of popcorn. It came out in 1951. I thought it was earlier, as it was filmed in B&W. Staring some actor named Sim. There were extras, by Dickens scholars, and it’s considered one of the best film adaptations. Sir Stewart’s version was also mentioned as good. In Britain, it was titled “Scrooge.”

    Digital is also not so hot at migration of data.

    In general, I think apple sauce is healthier than the oils you mentioned. Though I’d use olive oil, in a pinch. It’s also less expensive…

    I added up the bids that have come in so far, for my stuff that’s been listed on-line. I’m north of $900, gross. The way the auction will work is, they’ll start the bidding at the highest on-line offer. And, during the bidding will be taking bids both from the floor, and on-line.

    Well, tonight is New Year’s Eve. There will be fireworks. Luckily, they don’t bother H. I’ll stay in and make my cornbread. I’ll have my “lucky” meal, tomorrow night. Around noon tomorrow, I’ll start watching the auction, on line. I’ll probably get a rough idea of what my gross will be. Looks like the weather is going to be ok. Whew! Lew

  8. Hi, Chris!

    I remember The Clash because my brother was a big fan, though I was not. I’m glad that you had “music to throw papers by”.

    Sandra trained you in fiscal responsibility. That’s what my husband did for me; at least he tried very hard . . .

    Enlightened times, they say . . .

    Those are pretty sad globe artichokes. Maybe they’re suffering from old age? And for the garden bed you repaired – where did you get all those rocks?

    I am glad to hear that the fire has been contained.

    Those gas bottles are what our greenhouse uses. What a really nice little stand for your bottles. Once again, art and functionality meet each other at Fernglade Farm! And I’ll include Ollie in that, too, since he’s right there. As usual.

    What a charming picture the stairs and bench and flowers make. I am imagining relaxing on your bench.

    So you’ve finally had a good apricot harvest. Well done! And that’s an amazing number of grapes.

    Oh, yes – the rhubarbs and beets and potatoes look so good. Be sure you eat some of those dandelions, unless the are a bit too much mature now. Early spring is a better time.

    I didn’t know Kooks attacked other birds.

    Regarding crop rotation in your video (thanks!), the one vegetable that I have heard that can safely grow in the same spot for several years are tomatoes. I can’t tell for sure from the ones that we have grown because we seem to always have so much trouble with blight no matter what. Do most plants actually grow at night? “He’s a dog and he does what he wants.”!

    Thank you for all the flowers. You never seem to have trouble with the flowers!

    Pam

  9. Chris,

    Happy New Year. Good work with the apricot harvest. The pears all look promising too. And thanks for the flower pictures. They’re especially welcome during the winter greys.

    We got a gob more rain over the weekend. It was enough to bring the total for 2024 a smidgen above “average” after being in severe drought midway through November.

    Skiff of snow Sunday night. Fog this morning followed by snow. No accumulation here but the mountains are getting a good coverage. Dame Avalanche is completely happy with these conditions.

    The Breakfast Club? Great movie. Both the Princess and I adore it. However, I’ve always thought that Ally Sheedy’s character getting the hair and style makeover wasn’t true to her character. Yet a fun movie, and appreciated by those of us who lived on the margins for whatever reason.

    The Drones and Other Distractions. Maybe a movie about a dystopian future? 😉 All I know is that I’ve been spending extra time outdoors in nature. Listening to the crows and ravens is always restoring. Or watching snowflakes or listening to the rain patter on the patio roof.

    DJSpo

  10. Hi Pam,

    How’s your son going?

    Your brother had good taste in music. And yes, such things are very much a matter of personal taste. In those days, the newspapers were stuffed into letterboxes, so no throwing – believe it or not, in these enlightened latter days, the papers are delivered by car, wrapped in plastic and just thrown out the window to land somewhere on the property. I’m sure there must be some sort of art to the sport, but I fail to see it. Anywhoo, way back in the day, if it was raining, I’d drop the papers on the front door step (presumably out of the rain). All very civilised.

    🙂 Pam, I’m sure you’re worlds away from where you used to be on that fiscal responsibility matter! It’s not very fun is it? Oh well. There’s a middle ground somewhere between asceticism and the spend thrift. I’ve met and known people at either end of the spectrum.

    Hmm. That’s a great observation. Looks like the plants form clumps which live for about five years. People divide them up at that time, so presumably they’re a bit like asparagus in that the root systems eventually become too big over a long enough period of time for the available soil.

    The rocks come from here, there, and everywhere about the property. One of the perquisites of living on the side of an ancient super volcano. Mind you, the supply of readily available rocks is always getting exhausted, and that means breaking apart boulders into more manageably sized rocks.

    Thanks! Your part of the world was quite lucky on a fire front with all that hot, dry and windy weather of last summer. I do my best to keep an eye out for the risk, but not let it bother me too much. It’s complicated.

    Yeah, those are the standard barbecue gas bottles, and you can get them everywhere on a swap-and-go basis. They’re $32 each just for your info – how does that compare to your part of the world? Hope the greenhouse is going well. Ollie is a noble and regal creature who loves posing for the camera. The stand for the gas bottles was all made from scrap metal – it’s sturdy. Don’t mind a bit of fabricating and welding.

    On cool nights you can light up the sticks in the brazier and sit back and enjoy the stars. A lovely place to spend time.

    Planting any fruit trees is a long term plan, but when they produce it’s delightful to reap the rewards of years of feeding and attending to. As you note, this is the first decent crop for about five years.

    Have you ever cooked dandelion tubers? I’ve tried the leaves and they’re not bad tasting but a touch furry. It may be too late for the dandelions… Rocket is a far more preferable salad green.

    Kookaburras are quite naughty with their fellow birds. The magpies deal with them, the parrots are frightened of them, and one day years ago I watched a Kookaburra raid the nest of a blackbird. It was brutal, and once safely in the forest they performed their notable laugh.

    Bizarrely, tomato diseases down here are rare. But truly, would you like me to tell you something that makes you happy, or err, the reality about crop rotation and tomato vines? And that’s my understanding, plants tend to grow at night. The cool nights here during the growing season is a disadvantage, although I sleep better in the cool air. Dunno.

    More flowers to come, and in the warm sunshine today the roses smelled beautiful.

    Cheers

    Chris

  11. Hi DJ,

    Happy New Years to you and your lady! Having home made pizza tonight. Yum!

    Thanks, and do your fruit trees produce every year? The trees keep their own counsel and do their own thing. But truly, it’s amazing that some of apricot trees survived two late frosts and one light dusting of snow. I’d changed the fruit tree soil feed about two or three years back to include blood and bone meal which is rich in phosphates, so I’m guessing that changed things, maybe.

    There’s more flowers to come, and the roses in particular smell great on these warm-ish, sunny and dry days. Alas, the winter months can be like that.

    Rain for you means above freezing temperatures, which is good. Is the soil frozen though? Always good to get winter rains into the ground where it belongs, rather than running off – although the thought of culverts popped into my head, not sure why. 🙂 It’s been a bit dry here relative to previous summers. For the past four weeks there has been tiny amounts of regular rain. It’s just hard to know how much of the water reserves do we use. So far we’re down about 30kL out of a total of 127kL of storage.

    What is meant by a skiff of snow? On the other hand, good snow coverage in the mountains means decent river flows in spring and early summer.

    Dame Avalanche was built for such weather! Hehe! We moved heaps of large rocks back uphill today and installed them on the long rock wall below the line of water tanks. Not finished that job, and also ran out of large rocks. That means smooshing up some boulders. Oh well. The Kelpies were running around in the hot sun and cool air for many hours, and both were knocked out and are quiet tonight. How these two dogs could ever consider working on some far northern dusty hot and dry cattle station rounding up cattle, well, it’s just not going to happen. They’re clearly alpine kelpies…

    🙂 Such an awesome film, and it made quite the impression upon me too. John Hughes was a master, and the essay delivered to the teacher at the conclusion of the film was outstanding. But yeah, I see what you mean about the goth character.

    Nah, the drones will be gathering data. What else would they be doing floating around making a nuisance of themselves. However, it could be part of the new ‘bread and circuses’ distraction act? Dunno. I always like it when eagles take them out! 🙂 Hard to get outside time at your season of the year, but a person can only but do their best.

    Do people get that winter sunlight deficiency thing in your part of the world? I suspect that people down here can get it, but whilst the winter sun is not great, neither is it skating the horizon either!

    Cheers

    Chris

  12. Hi Lewis,

    How appropriate is the book title for that hand smooshed guy? Just reading between the lines, his survival came right down to lucky timing of the amputation. Imagine being the vacationing family which came across him in the aftermath? Hmm, would I be friends with the guy? Probably not. When you’re young and dumb, by that very nature, you do dumb things, like heading off for adventure by yourself, alone with no way of communicating with the civilised world. It’s funny, but I was talking with a lovely local the other week (who also heads out camping) about when I was younger just taking off into the remote alpine areas for some time out. We agreed it was a bad idea. And as an older bloke, and maybe wiser, I now realise that there are people such as the button man wandering around those remote areas. He’d have known I was in that area too, because when you light a fire the trail of smoke gives away your location. I doubt he’d be trouble, but would the encounter scare the daylights out of me – yeah. It just never occurred to me that there’d be people living rough in such a difficult to survive area.

    Ah, well, now you mention it. The smaller rocks were of course upset, but amends were made and they were err, redistributed to rock walls on the terrace which we’re busily repairing. Hopefully the ruffled feathers were smoothed, but you never can tell with rocks.

    You have most definitely piqued my curiosity about the film. And with free time on my hands, watching films becomes possible.

    Your maximum temperature of yesterday is not far off the weather outside here right now, although it is past 10pm. 54’F, and far out tonight feels cold to a summer soft person such as myself. Did you use the water trick to pry open the frozen car doors? That happens here from time to time, and it’s a bit unnerving mostly because I don’t want to damage the rubber seals.

    Good to hear, and we’re all doing our bit really! I actually like shopping at the big box hardware store in the evening because it’s quiet. And yeah, they’ve started selling dog food too. Must be a thing? Actually, I have to fess up, they were $20 a pack cheaper for the 18kg (40 pound) bag of dog kibbles. I did mention to the enthusiastic Editor that hopefully the stuff is the same. Might be a price leader trying to squoosh the competition? Dunno. Interestingly the local feed store sells a lot of poultry and horse supplements, and some high end dog food (something called mysteriously a science diet).

    It takes a while to change a dogs diet, unless you go hardcore and just switch over and starve them out. I’m not advocating that process, but have on a few occasions become the steward of fussy eaters with former owners of great expectations. Yeah, yeah, nah, they’ll eat the same good stuff the other dogs eat! 🙂 And sure enough it took a few days, but we all got there in the end – and one dog in particular began to smell better. Some dog foods make the canines hair smell doggy, but few people believe me about this. The dogs here are very neutral smelling and clean, but then they have a lot of grass and dry soil to roll around in.

    Man, it is awful to enjoy a food product for many years which then either suddenly changes, or worse, mysteriously disappears! That’s kind of how I came to make our own toasted muesli from raw materials. The product I’d been enjoying since a young age, started adding extra sugar and salt, and then quietly disappeared from the shelves. Change sucks.

    Lady luck was shining on you that morning! Dude, that’s how you win customers, although it’s probably a long shot to expect such bonuses at every visit. Did you get the bananas though? Veg stores are getting a bit thin on the ground down here.

    Ah, that Sim. I thought you were talking about some computer game. 😉 The bloke has a wonderful voice. Looking at the film I had the impression that in the past, I’ve watched that version. I love the baroque language used in the dialogue. You rarely hear such poetic command of the English language used these days.

    Well yes, there is that problem of upgrading from one digital database or format to another. Did you know that mp3 compressed audio was around in the 90’s? Even some of the picture formats such as jpeg, also date back to those days. Innovation in computing hasn’t been all that crash hot of late, and I refuse to talk to chat bots.

    Dude, I’m a bit spoiled on that front, and would use olive oil.

    Well done, and so far that’s a great result. Hope today’s bidding continues to do as well. Were you happy with the results?

    Hey, it isn’t just you, we stayed in as well. Did a lot of socialising last week, and my brain needs down time to recover. And truly, it’s been decades since I’ve been anywhere which can throw a decent new years eve party. Anyway, it’s 2025 down here and I can confirm that the sun did rise on schedule. 🙂

    Cheers

    Chris

  13. Yo, Chris – Happy New Year! I’m sure 2025 is going to be interesting. There were fireworks last night, and I decided to wait and take H out about 12:30. I noticed that right at 12, the nonsense came to a screeching halt. When I took H out, I discovered why. It was pouring down rain. They got rained out 🙂 . There’s some guy, down the hill, that every 4th of July and New Years, well, I swear he sets off dynamite. Always a few blasts that rattle the windows. Well, over for another year.

    I guess the Club had a good turn out. A bit of money was raised, through raffles and such. Per my usual tradition, I paid my yearly Club dues, this morning. We’ll have our yearly membership meeting, later in the month. I don’t know if there’s anything I need to be aware of. I’ll find out before hand, so I’m not blindsided.

    I was out rock hunting, years ago, in the east county. I parked a little too far of the pavement, and every time I tried to regain the pavement, my truck slid a little further, toward a creek. Luckily, a nice couple showed up with a winch. Hauled my sorry a__ out of there. I mentioned to them that some people shouldn’t go out in the woods, alone. They had the good grace to just smile. Where the two guys died looking for Sasquatch, is Skamania County. Which runs from the Columbia river and terminates at the eastern end of our county.

    Our high yesterday was 39F (3.88C). The overnight low was 37F. Forecast for today is 45F. It’s sunny, with some blue sky. There was snow, in our forecast, last night. Blink and you’d miss it. It was there, and a couple of hours later, gone. I saw nary a flake. My truck is parked at the very end of the lot, and the passenger door faces the rising sun. I was able to get it open, reach across and pop the driver door from the inside. Occasionally, I’ve had to crawl over the stick shift.

    If I have to change H’s food, I mix a couple of batches of the old with the new. And, add a little inducement. Maybe some chopped fried eggs, peanut butter, thawed frozen veg, or rehydrated cranberries. I’ve occasionally given her yoghurt, again, and she isn’t itching, so, occasional is ok, I guess. She gets some of the above, every other night.

    Well, as with so many British actors of that generation, Sim had a pretty solid background in theatre. Reading his bio, he seems to have had a special interest in speech and elocution.

    https://w.wiki/CbJa

    Why I turn on the subtitles: many modern actors seem to mumble a lot.

    I made my corn bread, last night. I start with the basic Betty Crocker recipe, and … adapt. I used yeast, instead of baking powder and soda. Threw in some thawed kernel corn. Some pumpkin and sunflower seeds. Swapped out the shortening with apple sauce. Used almond milk with a bit of honey, instead of regular milk. It turned out a bit dense, but tasty. I meant to mention, corn meal comes in different “grinds.” Everything from near powder, on up. The grind I use for cornbread is Bob’s Red Mill, medium grind.

    Well, the auction starts in about half an hour. I’ll sign in and see how my stuff does. I added it all up, last night, and it was slightly north of $1,000. Gross. Lew

  14. Chris,

    A skiff of snow? It’s the amount of snow that originates from a trace of rain. 😉 A skiff is roughly equivalent to a light dusting of snow. Today we awoke to more than a skiff. Maybe 1cm.

    The ground is frozen. Kinda sorta. Not very deeply frozen, and it will probably thaw out by the end of the week. Warmer temperatures and more rain are expected. The rain should soak in.

    Typically, the cherry tree and the chokecherry trees produce every year. This year there were no chokecherries and few cherries, as there was a nasty frost at precisely the wrong time. Nor were there many crabapples. It was a bad year for tree fruit throughout the region.

    Alpine kelpies? That’s funny yet it makes a lot of sense. Having spent a lot of time in mountains, and a lot of time in hot and dusty plains, I’ll chose the mountains nearly every time myself. Does that make me an Alpine Viking?

    Maybe the drones are a “bread and circus” diversion while also searching for some type of data? All I know is that I don’t like the “recreational” drones some people have in the neighborhood. The obnoxious drone person appears to have moved, so things have gotten saner. The obnoxious drones would zoom around at waist level in the streets and sidewalks and invade yards. Anything that can take those out is okay by me.

    Getting outside for significant amounts of time is a necessity for me. Appropriate clothing and getting acclimatized help. As far as SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder – yes, it is a problem here for people. Getting out even on gray days helps some, at least for me. However, Vitamin D supplements are a regular thing in my house.

    DJSpo

  15. Hi Chris,

    I love apricots but rarely have them. It seemed canned ones were around more when I was a kid but you don’t see apricots too often in the store. Generally dried ones are the ones available at times and they’re pricey.

    Some like applesauce with pork and/or potato pancakes.

    Hope you have a quiet New Year’s. We spent last night with our friends from the retirement home, Bill and Kathy, as we usually do on New Year’s Eve. We celebrated New York’s New Year so we could get home and to bed earlier. It was already hours past my bed time. It was a pleasant evening but still too late. This morning I got the tree and other decorations down and put away this morning. I just leave a small tree with white lights up for awhile longer because I like it.

    Marty has a cold now. My sister went to see him yesterday and said he was subdued. The nursing home requires masks now which I understand as their residents are quite vulnerable. I hope they don’t get something too serious going through and end up having to stay in their rooms. Marty would hate that! My SIL said his grandmother’s nursing home had the unmentionable running through it so they are confined to their rooms but at least can have visitors. What an awful policy that was.

    We had some rain the other day when it was in the 40’s. I was happy as it washed all the salt off my car. Colder now but not too bad and not much snow in the forecast. Not complaining as I have a lot of driving to do lately. Marty’s nursing home is over 30 miles away. My sister who after me understands what is entailed with Marty’s care and move the best has left for Florida for 3 months. Needless to say I am not happy. My sister, Julie, has offered to help but as it often is the case it would take me longer to explain some of this stuff than to do it myself. She is helping with repacking and moving as well as visiting Marty.

    We with only 4 hours of sleep last night I’m fading fast so it’s time for a nap.

    Margaret

  16. Chris:

    Unlearning – that’s what happened with me and maths.

    My son was doing quite well after the accident until he came down with something horrible that he caught at the emergency room. Bronchitis, or maybe pneumonia. Prior to that calamity we were all set, he and 3 women (one of them being me) to drive an hour and a half to a small used car lot in a mountain town that supposedly had a car like the one that had been totaled; he did love that car, had had it 16 years. Luckily, he thought to check with the owner before we left and, by golly, he was just heading out of town for a week. My son then decided that this would be a good time to go and look at a Gator 4-wheeler thingee (except this one had 6 wheels). He assumed that he would be able to go by himself. His wife and her mother wanted to go, and I was not going to be left behind. He warned the Gator fellow when he talked to him about what was coming, the man laughed really hard.
    Luckily for my son, his mother-in-law said she had better stay home and work on her school curriculum, I wanted to stay with her, and his wife asked him if he could manage without her as she had better stay home, too. He looked so relieved.

    Interesting about the papers. In the suburbs where I grew up they were always thrown, maybe to the porch, maybe halfway there on the lawn. 🙂 There was an art to the throwing and many paperboys took great pride in their aim. They got better tips, too.

    In my part of the world a 19 lb. (it is actually 20 lbs. here) tank would cost $15.57. I think. I had to do the maths, with $3.46 per pound for 4.5 gallons (a 20 lb tank). So, I don’t know if you and I are comparing apples and apples.

    No, I’ve never tried dandelion root, though I eat the leaves frequently. The root looks rather chewy – but good for you! One makes tea, I think.

    It might be good that you have the cool nights as tomatoes have trouble forming fruit at high temperatures.

    Pam

  17. @ Claire:

    Thanks for telling me last week about the accordian effect in car crashes. I’m still not sure how he got out of it relatively unscathed. He had to climb out the window, which was miraculously still working, it, of course, being electric. I may not have mentioned that he had 6 propane tanks in the back seat of his car when the crash occurred. He had been going to put them in the trunk and had decided against it for some reason. One wonders if they could have blown up, being rear-ended.

    Pam

  18. Hi Pam,

    Ha! Have to fess up that maths is also not my friend, and thus am unqualified in any shape and/or direction with that abstract language as well. It’s all a mystery to me that lore…

    Yes, it is well known that hospitals are full of sick people, and such things can happen. Long ago Sandra had an injury with her Achilles tendon, and went to the local doctor – and came home with a notable stomach bug, although had not gone there with that. If it’s pneumonia with your son, that’s pretty serious and not to be taken lightly, so hope he’s doing OK? They used to use laughing as a physical therapy in order to bring the goo up out of the lungs. Not a bad idea.

    Ooo, they’re an interesting machine those Gators and the old farm machine repair dude (when he was around) had a six wheeler second hand version which from memory he wanted $12k. It had a 20hp Kawasaki motor – sorry I remember such details, but more recent events such as what I did yesterday are frankly a bit hazy… 🙂 Truly I’d never seen such a machine before, which is why it stuck in the memory. I don’t think they’d be that useful on a slope, although it depends on where the load in the tray was placed over all those wheels. Dunno.

    Candidly, he sounds a bit ill at the moment, and probably would do better focusing on recovering, maybe! 🙂 Hope he’s feeling better today?

    Down here with newspapers, if those sorts of activities occurred no matter how accurately thrown, there’d be complaints for sure the day the throw was ever so slightly off – at least back in those days. I don’t reckon many people get their newspapers delivered nowadays – which probably put a whole lot of kids out of work. A bit unfair really. Pocket money was a mythical unicorn when I grew up, as it was sometimes heard of, but never seen, so working as a kid provided the mad cash.

    Pam, Christmas time was the time for tips in that line of work, except for the knitted tea cosies from the old folks home, that was a truly mystifying tip. Still can’t make sense of that, a bit like receiving a box of handkerchiefs as a Christmas present from my grandmother on my mothers side, she was really odd. In both cases, cash would have been preferable. My grandmother on my fathers side however, was the loveliest person and she took us kids in on school holidays.

    Ah, a bit of rounding and we’re talking the same sort of numbers. Energy is notably cheaper in your country. Thanks for the numbers.

    I think you have to roast the dandelion root for it to be edible. It kind of looks like a parsnip, and I’m not much of a fan of parsnips – although your opinion may differ, maybe.

    Oh! I didn’t know that about tomatoes. Always something new to learn with plants.

    Smooshed up a lot of boulders this morning. The supply of large rocks has increased, for now.

    Cheers

    Chris

  19. Hi Margaret,

    Apricots are a funny tree in that as a mid sized stone fruit, they’re very early in the season, but ripen after cherries. I sort of suspect that like strawberries, the fruits contain a number of chemicals to improve their flavour and aroma, but they’re low in sugar – being an early fruit. Spring weather conditions have to be almost perfect for them, and they are a marginal fruit in this cool changeable climate. However, a few years ago I altered the soil feeding regime and added blood and bone meal for that fruit trees soil feed and maybe it’s helped because half of the apricot trees fruited this year despite two late frosts and one minor dusting of snow. Challenging conditions for such early trees.

    Hmm. I’m not a fan of the dried apricots because I believe the industrial processes use a sulphur compound to speed up the dehydrating process, and for some reason that chemical does not agree with me. Before antibiotics, sulphur compounds were used, so I have an odd notion that such chemicals wreak a bit of havoc with my gut flora and fauna. Some folks may be tougher than I on that front…

    Anyway, they’re such a hard fruit to grow. This is the first crop in five years, and it takes a hot and dry year for the trees to produce. There are easier fruits.

    Oooo, I’ve never tasted a potato pancake. Sounds intriguing, and down here, you generally are served pork as either ham off the bone, pork belly (super yum but so rich), a ham hock soup, or as a minor addition to the very tasty Bahn Mi roll. So apple sauce just is not a condiment you ever see.

    New Years has been quiet and thanks for your thoughts. We did a lot of socialising last week, and the introvert batteries here are being recharged! 🙂 I like your style with celebrating the earlier time zone, and it’s a great idea. The decorations of the white tree would add a festive air, and it being the depths of winter in your part of the world, a bit of colour would not go astray. It was a lovely cool summers day here today, and we smooshed up some boulders into large rocks for various projects. Stopped when the neighbours turned up for a rare visit which didn’t last long.

    That’s awful, and hope Marty feels better soon. Well, you can only hope that the worst is avoided.

    Margaret, we’re social creatures, so isolation is a particularly problematic response and to be honest, such places as where Marty is, they run better if family can check in regularly to make sure that nothing is going awry. Everyone is different, and I can accept that, but I was no fan of the lockdowns, and we just happened to end up in the most extreme version of that, anywhere on the planet. Some may call that luck, but I dunno.

    Glad to hear that you received some rain and it had a good chance of getting into the soil. But oh my, cars would rust out with all that salt on the roads. I’ve heard of collectors purchasing cars from down under for that reason – no salt on the roads.

    From memory, weren’t you the oldest child? Such achievements can sometimes come with undocumented responsibilities. On the other hand 30 miles is not around the corner from my perspective so it does you credit driving regularly that distance. The centre of the big smoke is only 40 miles away from here. Far out. Is Marty eventually going to move closer?

    Oh well, few things are perfect, and maybe visiting Marty is what he needs from your sister, as well as the more practical stuff from yourself.

    You’re an absolute legend. Four hours sleep and I’d have crashed out long ago. Enjoy your nap, they’re such a civilised way to refresh the brain.

    Cheers

    Chris

  20. Hi DJ,

    Ooo, my head is spinning Exorcist style because you used a description to explain another description. 🙂 It hurts! It hurts!!! Hehe! Ah, I see, a skiff of snow is the sort that most likely falls here – a light dusting – and you can sometimes see little chunks of the ground showing through. All is now explained, but of course you were technically correct too in the cheeky first sentence, so I’m not taking away from that. Now I’m left wondering, how does a person describe 1cm of snow?

    The forecast suggests 30’C for tomorrow, then 38’C for Saturday culminating in a cooler day on Sunday at 37’C. No need to run the wood heater, that’s for sure. 🙂 It’s not windy though and there’s cloud in that forecast, so maybe it won’t feel as hot as the numbers suggest, maybe.

    Thought you might be interested in a few brief photos of the more extreme weather events down under last year. The ice is particularly impressive, and I’ve never seen that happen: Australia’s weather extremes in 2024. Great photography and the images make me feel cold, just looking at them. Brr!

    It’s good weather for you with the ground only sorta frozen and with some rain on the way later in the week. It’s always awful to watch rainfall running away over the ground to the land of elsewhere.

    Ah, yes, cherries being small stone fruits do tend to produce annually here too, except for when there are late frosts, heavy rain and the occasional poorly timed snowfall. Do you net your cherry trees? It’s not economical for me to do so with the cherry trees here when there is a local cherry farm with commercial grade bird netting. And I’ve discovered that too many cherries upsets the guts. Ook!

    Far out, crab apples are a super hardy tree, so wow, your spring conditions must have been against them. And sometimes that happens with an entire area with its fruit trees, in that nature just has other plans in store for them. Interestingly, crab apples flower here a little bit later than apples, so your news is not good. I’m yet to have a failed apple or pear crop, although it will happen one day. That will be one sad year for fruit.

    Hehe! You definitely have Alpine Viking blood coursing through your veins, and like your example I much prefer the mountains every time. Being out upon a plain, don’t you get the feeling that a sabre tooth tiger is about to stalk you down and there’s no easily defensible position?

    Although now I know more about some of the more unusual people living rough out in the remote alpine areas I used to thoughtlessly camp out by myself alone for days, I kind of feel a bit differently about those areas. Mind you, I didn’t go in with a bad attitude and would have shared a beer, fire and meal with such a person had they come across my path. Other folks may take a more confrontational approach, and well, that’s their business. Probably not the wiser path though. Have you ever unexpectedly come across an interesting person way out in the middle of nowhere?

    Yeah, the drones are probably both types, and other explanations as well. I know people who are excited by drone technology, and the tech just seems super fragile to me as it’s made in the land of elsewhere. And here, a cricket bat is your friend. It’s much wider than a baseball bat and has a flat face which can smoosh a pesky drone far more easily. A baseball bat may deflect a drone, whereas the thing is not going to survive an encounter with a cricket bat. No way.

    Spinal Tap – Ian’s Cricket Bat – the manager wields it like a Viking war axe.

    Good to hear that you’ve got the supplements for that time of year, but like you I tend to spend as much time as possible outside during winter. Not always easy to achieve. I’ve not ever taken the supplements, but only hear good reports about them.

    Cheers

    Chris

  21. Hi Lewis,

    A happy New Years to you and H as well. And unfortunately I have to agree with you about 2025 being interesting. Just hope it’s not like that Chinese apocryphal curse. Yikes! Man, I’d happily settle for boring, staid and not much happened during the year. Over stimulation of peoples emotional states is very much a thing these days. Of course, it’s not their fault, it’s how they’re programmed to function (as sang the singer).

    Far out, if the bang is loud enough, you’re probably right. Some folks have err, interesting hobbies, and the stuff is not all that complicated to make, you just have to be super careful. I read that during WWII, the local chemists who made the stuff usually worked in well established teams and wore felt clothes with no metal zippers and/or buttons. Man, it’s not the kind of work where you’d accept a fill in body for the day when someone on the team was sick. No way!

    They do firework displays in the cities, but out in the rural area at this time of year there are fire risks, so they’re banned. You can’t buy them in this state anyway, unless you’ve got a license for that line of work.

    It’s not a bad idea at all that the Club runs an event New Years Eve. Quite clever really, and glad to hear that the coffers scored some mad cash for things like rent and utilities – such things are not free. And I also tend to try and avoid being blindsided at such meetings, best to be prepared for a response and be ready in case things get out of hand. Hope nothing dire is on the agenda, and that the plumbing situation stays fixed.

    What a heck of a situation to have your truck in, and yeah it would be a bit nerve wracking. Lucky some nice folks turned up at the right time, and with the right gear. It’s funny how such things work out, most of the time. But yeah, they clearly displayed good grace. There’s a local road here which I’ve never completely travelled. Every single time, the road surface is either mind bendingly wet, or there are trees down across the road. It’s just not meant to be, even with four wheel drive engaged, so every time I’ve turned around and given up. It follows a creek which is why the road surface is so wet and muddy. Clearly nothing there I need to see.

    Sorry, is it just me who finds the name ‘Skamania’ amusing? Ska of course is an early 1980’s music genre originating out of England. The band Madness, is probably the exemplar of the genre. Sorry for that digression, and we shall now resume the usual programming! 🙂

    That’s some proper cold winter weather, although like those two unfortunate dudes discovered, it’s probably colder elsewhere in your area. It’s still early days for lowland snow, so who knows what the future will bring for you? It’ll be 86’F here tomorrow.

    Today however, was a superb cool summers day. 70’F but a bit windy. We took the machines and tools down to a rock outcrop on the edge of the forest and smooshed up some boulders. After many hours, we liberated fourteen large rocks which will be super useful for the many rock projects we’ve got going around the place. We might even make another steel rock gabion cage over the next few hot days. We’ll see. The boulder outcrop has even more large rocks to give on another day. We stopped for a late lunch, and the timing was good because the neighbours at that exact moment made a rare visit to their block of land.

    Ah, I see, one side of your truck had defrosted.

    That’s a good idea about slowly introducing new food for H – if that was needed to be done. I’d not thought of doing such a thing, but have only ever had to do that rarely. Ah, I’d also forgotten that she has an allergic itchy skin reaction to dairy. Yoghurt is pretty good, and the dogs here get that added to their breakfast every day. She eats a good diet from what you’ve said. Did you ever work out exactly what food was causing the reaction, or was it a combination of products?

    Performing in a theatre would not be for the softly spoken, and as you say, mushy-mouthed. Imagine the audience heckling by crying out: Speak up! And a lot of English actors have a background in theatre reproducing Shakespeare’s body of work. That would certainly train the voice and ability to project emotions. Never a dull moment in those stories.

    Sub titles are good, yup!

    I avoid using baking powder and/or soda mostly because I don’t enjoy the taste it leaves if accidentally over applied. Hmm. There’s some very interesting forums on the interweb in relation to cornbread and yeast, and the one on readdit (!) went into the science of how to make the cornbread rise using yeast without adding in bread wheat flour. Very interesting, and it’s impressive to see folks adventuring in the kitchen – like what you did there. Tasty stuff.

    Such grades of cornflour are unknown to me, and the stuff I used on the lady finger biscuits for the tiramisu was as you first mentioned, almost a really finely ground powder. It’s ground far more finely than the bread wheat flour we use. Hmm.

    Good stuff, and yeah I hear you, there are auction fees. Hope the auction brings in a good result. 🙂

    Cheers

    Chris

  22. Hi Chris,

    Glad your year is off to a fine start! 70F would be a typical low temperature for July and almost unheard-of cold for a high temperature at that time of year where I live.

    We have been enduring a long cloudy stretch. The sun showed its face at times yesterday (New Year’s Day) with a high of about 45F, a bit warmer than normal. It’s around that again today with cloudy skies, but starting tomorrow it’ll get steadily colder. By Sunday we are supposed to be subjected to a winter storm which could bring us a mix of snow, freezing rain, and sleet, and plenty of whatever we get. Then it turns even colder, with highs below freezing and lows around 5F / -15C. Whatever we get over the weekend is going to stick around in a frozen state for awhile. We’re preparing to get the wood heater going as it will make this cold stretch a lot easier to bear and provide heat for warmth and cooking if the electricity should happen to go out. If we get enough freezing rain, that’s likely to occur.

    My two apricot trees had their baby fruits freeze out in early spring, after blooming far earlier than usual due to the very warm winter we had. Getting enough heat in the summer to ripen apricots is never a problem here, but having the flowers or developing fruit not freeze to death rarely happens because they bloom so early. If we are lucky enough with weather to get fruits to nearly ripe, critters usually eat them before they ripen. Occasionally we do harvest a ripe apricot or two for ourselves – from which I usually have to evict a larval inhabitant before we eat them. They are very tasty, definitely worth going to the trouble of de-insectifying prior to eating.

    I’m also recharging my introvert batteries after having our neighbors and another friend over yesterday for the traditional lucky New Year’s Day meal of ham, blackeyed peas, and cornbread. The neighbors contributed the ham, and the cornbread was made from the dent corn I used to grow before the critters figured out that I was growing it for them.

    Claire

  23. @ Pam – that’s incredible that the propane tanks survived the crash. Your son listened to his intuition and it paid off. We occasionally carry propane tanks in our minivan; after this I’m going to put them right in back of the front seats, to take advantage of the accordion effect.

    Claire

  24. Yo, Chris – Some things in my life are so regular, they are boring. But, as I remind myself, boring is occasionally a good thing.

    Here, by law fireworks commercially available are pretty tame. But, there seem to be other sources, for fireworks with more … punch.

    Maybe you’ll have to hike that road, to see what’s what. Just don’t do it alone 🙂 .

    Yes, it’s just you that thinks the name Skamania is amusing. Now, if it was the town of Humptulips … I drove through there, a time or three. There’s no “there,” there. Once upon a time, it was a happenin’ place.

    Our high yesterday was 45F (7.22C). The overnight low was 41F. Forecast for today is 48F. There were a few clear spots, yesterday, but we’re back to drizzle, today.

    Mixing H’s food is just a preemptive strike. In case they’ve slightly changed the formula, and it’s not to her liking. Sure, I could starve her out, but why bother, when mixing a couple of batches is no big deal. I don’t know what she’s allergic to. The tests are pretty expensive. Gluten? Probably not. Only 1% of dogs are. It’s just trendy, I think. But there are possibilities with beef, chicken, eggs and dairy.

    On the other hand, I saw an article, a few days ago (can’t find it now), by a woman who has a gluten sensitivity, who noticed while traveling in Europe that the pasta and bread didn’t bother her digestion. Why? The flour used and the way things are made.

    I had my cornbread, collards, black eyed peas and ham hock, last night. Tasty. I have enough for tonights meal. H got a bit of pork fat and a knuckle bone. She liked that, and it kept her occupied for an hour or so.

    That’s quit a feat to figure out how to do cornbread with no flour. As an off the wall comment, I notice that some recipes here don’t specify what kind of flour to use. Slackers. And, not many of the commercial flours list protean content, on the bag.

    Well, the auction is over, and the results will be a mystery, to me, until the check comes in. 🙁 I hadn’t checked out how they ran an auction, in a couple of years. Well, about an hour before the auction started, suddenly, there was a notice. “This is an absentee bid auction. All maximum bids placed will be taken to the live auction for bidding against attending bidders.” Every item was marked with “Pre-Bidding Closed.”

    So, I couldn’t have the fun of watching the auction in real time. Besides my stuff, I was also curious about possible trends, as far as other people’s stuff goes. The market. How is the tat market doing?

    I did find an archive of previous auctions, but, there was a notice that prices were not uploaded. I speculate, that that may cost more. So, things have changed, and I really don’t know why. Though I have theories. This auction house, and several others use a platform called “Hi-Bid,” for their on-line auctions. There are others. Maybe, it was just too confusing, keeping track of on-line bids, and bids from the floor, at the same time. It also slows down the process and auctions like to keep momentum going, and excitement, high. Or, might just be software problems. Or, it costs more. All of the above? None of the above? Also, lack of on-line bidding in real time, makes for a bigger crowd turnout. Anyway. I’ll just have to be patient and wait for the paperwork and check to come in. Probably, a couple of weeks. Lew

  25. Chris,

    Okay, you asked for it. Snow measurements. First there’s a skiff, aka light dusting. Then there’s the heavier dusting, up to maybe 0.25 inches. Next comes “not quite a half inch”, aka 1 cm, sometimes also called a “short half inch”. Then we get into more normal measurements, like 6 inches or 25 cm or whatever. Until we get too much snow, in which case the words to describe such freshly fallen depths are not allowable in a family friendly forum. 😉 You noticed the precision involved with the terms for those lesser snowfall amounts.

    Coo! 38C? Ouch! I’m happy with the temperatures we’ve been having: -1C at night, +1C for the highs. I’ve gotten acclimated and am even enjoying the fog. And the odd skiff of snow. 😉

    All of that ice? Nice photos. Thanks for that. Be grateful that you’ve never experienced ice like that. It’s brutal. But beautiful. My mother spent a year teaching in Ohio on Lake Erie. She took many wonderful pictures of what high winds on a giant lake in freezing temperatures can do. Very unique and beautiful ice patterns resulted that’s for certain.

    My cherry tree is much too tall to net. Also, the fruit flies get to the cherries before they’re ripe, and I won’t spray them with toxic chemicals. The birds eventually eat them, so I happily feed the birds. The chokecherries don’t have the insect problem, so I get some, the birds get some and everybody is happy.

    Dude, the spring was so weird last year, even the quince failed to produce. And many vegetable gardens struggled mightily with the summer conditions.

    Oh yes, I had some interesting people “visit” when camping. Even when winter camping, surprisingly. Things always stayed mostly friendly. My favorite time…it was July, a young friend and I were spending a weekend in our favorite area 90 minutes from here, mostly north. As we were going to be beating through thick brush in the heat, we were wearing military surplus clothing – durable but not heavy weight. We were sitting enjoying an evening campfire when some strange looking guy, a bit older than me, walked into our camp. He was high on some drug or other, very obviously. He kept asking us where the marijuana was growing, then he noticed our “military” clothing and went into a complete panic, took off running back to where he’d come from.

    I’d forgotten about that cricket bat scene. Thanks for the chuckle.

    DJSpo

  26. Hi Claire,

    Thanks, and hope your year is also going well! Been doing a lot of rock work this week, and yesterday smooshed up some boulders and created about fourteen large rocks (and many smaller gabion cage fillers). It’s a good start to the year. Might make a steel rock gabion cage tomorrow in the hot weather.

    The weather here is remarkably variable. If I had to dare give any advice to anyone, it would be to deeply respect a stable climate. This morning was 8’C / 46’F, whilst right now at 5pm it’s 30’C / 86’F with a couple of warm nights now in the forecast. Tomorrow and Sunday will reach 38’C / 100’F. Then heavy rain and thunderstorms on Monday apparently. It’s difficult to grow plants in such conditions, but you get by.

    Ah, and you’re experiencing a similar shift in temperature, but on the colder end of the continuum. Stay warm! And yup, wood heating provides reliable heat when all other sources are exhausted. As a summer soft person, this loose talk of -15’C produces a mildly unsettling feeling. Hope the now dormant plants cope OK with the lows? Weather extremes are always hard on the electricity system, which is a system that is more fragile to such environmental shocks than most people consider. The demand loads from hot spells such as what the east coast of this continent will experience over these few days is difficult for the components within the grid to deal with.

    Yes. Your experience with apricots matches what I observe with them (however, mine to a lesser extent). Like the almonds, they flower so early in the season that any sudden cold snap, frost, snowfall, can wipe out the crop. Only a third of the apricot trees here produced fruit this year due to two late frosts and one dusting of snow. I’m looking closely at why those trees produced when the others didn’t, and am wondering if the extra blood and bone meal which they received helped the resiliency. It’s just a guess because I really have no idea.

    Incidentally, this is the first apricot crop in five years due to the reasons you mentioned. Super tasty fruit, but marginal is how I’d describe them.

    There’s a plum/apricot hybrid tree called a plumcot which is over a decade and a half old, and the tree flowers even earlier. It has never produced fruit here. There are barely even any insect pollinators at that cold time of year. Oh well…

    For your interest, the parrots prefer apples to apricots, although that is no guarantee of safety, and the birds can learn quickly and teach their feathery friends.

    🙂 Wishing you a speedy recovery of the batteries following on from the festive season. That’s a really lovely winter meal to share with friends. Yum!

    Claire, it’s been remarked upon elsewhere that: ‘grow, and they will come!’ Trying to find a balance between what the garden grows, what the critters eat, and what we harvest, is a very complicated and shifting subject. I’m still not sure what to make of the Sambar Deer and their antics. Dunno.

    Cheers

    Chris

  27. Hi DJ,

    Ah, yes, of course. Thanks for alerting me to ‘the precision involved with the terms for those lesser snowfall’ issues. So, and here is just a bit of wild theorising from someone with little experience of heavy snowfall, but! When there is only a little bit of snowfall, a person can take the time out to discuss and assess the quantity, and also converse with other people as to the quality of delivered snow. However, when the stuff is several feet deep, there’s simply no time for such niceties, and it all becomes: A lot! 😉

    It’s 30’C outside right now, although still cool inside the house. Tomorrow and Sunday will be different again at maybe 38’C. This talk of snow, ice and sudden cold snaps, has a very pleasingly cooling effect.

    Man, dunno about you, but I sleep better in the colder weather and could not live in the tropics where it is hot year around. Enjoy your well earned skiff of snow, and hopefully Dame Avalanche is bouncing around the backyard thinking of scenes from ‘The call of the wild’.

    The photos of the ice were from the large island state to the south of here (Tasmania), and I believe were taken in the central highlands not too far from a big high altitude lake (although peanuts compared to the one you mentioned). Although land in that state is rarely flat. I doubt that the climate here much further north could get cold enough for such horrendous icy conditions, so yeah, thankful is the word.

    Oh my! You learn something new every day, and the lake-effect snow from Lake Erie sounds pretty brutal for those on the eastern half. It’d have been an experience for your mum there, that’s for sure. The waves on that lake would be off the charts, talk about surfs up.

    I get that about the tree being too tall to net, and birds do tend to dine upon pest and produce equally. Little goes to waste in nature. Fruit fly is not here, but cherries always slowly die back in the autumn from pear and cherry slug – no big deal, the plants are done by then anyway. Some folks ask me why I don’t net all of the trees, and completely disregard the crazy economics of that proposition. Better to concentrate on growing stuff than trying to outwit all of the hungry critters who have nothing but your produce on their minds 24/7, 365 days a year.

    Yikes! Quince is a difficult tree to fruit I reckon. The plant clearly originated in a very hot and dry climate, and they simply don’t do well here either. A shame, because the fruit is pretty nice stewed. Yup, climate stability is a thing of beauty. Where ever has it gone?

    Ha! Thanks for the fun story, and yup paranoia appeared to be the way of things in that instance. Like you mentioned, most encounters were quite friendly, and decades ago, there were less people out and about in the bush. So presumably if you were there in the first place, people would acknowledge an aspect of competency. Based on the regular news reports over the past week or two of the summer holidays, many folks are in remote spots who appear to lack competency. Being dead from preventable things such as exposure, sort of suggests this possibility.

    Hehe! When next you encounter that pesky drone (and hopefully the kook has now flown the coup in your area!) remember the cricket bat. A handy bit of equipment in a tight spot of bother.

    Headed up about an hours drive north today. Had a nice lunch in a garden sitting on the grass in the shade of some exotic trees. There were heaps of people out and about too, it being the summer holidays. With the much hotter weather expected tomorrow, I do wonder if people will still be travelling around the area. Dunno, might head out to take a look, maybe.

    Cheers

    Chris

  28. Hi Lewis,

    An almost-mention, entry for this years Darwin Awards. So we we’ve been discussing bush walkers getting into trouble, and I read an obscure reference to a couple of walkers being rescued in Freycinet National Park in Tasmania. Now, I’ve walked there a few times, and so had a very hard time trying to ascertain just how they got into trouble. The park just isn’t that big, and I’ve done the loop walk. How could this be? Then the photo was released to the media. Hmm: Interstate hikers rescued while trying to descend mountainside on Tasmania’s east coast. Not disparaging their efforts, but the word ‘idiots’ come to mind, and they got seriously lucky being rescued from that descent.

    Agreed, boring is good. You’ll get no argument from me there. I’ve experienced exciting and unpredictable events, and can assure you that as you wisely noted, by comparison, the regularity of day to day existence has much to recommend it.

    You got me wondering about fireworks. Up until a few years ago, you could purchase fireworks freely in the nations capital territory. I guess they needed the influx of mad cash? Who knows? Anyway, that eventually got stomped out, and it’s no longer legal to own them as an individual. Guess you have to be in the trade… Given the lack of demand for official displays, it’d probably be a hard way to make a living. I remember when you could buy them at the corner store and just set them off. Things have changed since those days, and inevitably there were stories of horrendous accidents with the explosives. And I reckon that’s how things would roll down here, there’d possibly be sources like everything. Given the summer fire risk, people are pretty sensible on that front, maybe.

    Good advice, and that’s not a bad idea hiking the road. I’d not deign to bring the wrath of hubris down onto my head though, and would let the Editor know where I was.

    Fair enough, a bloke must sometimes keep himself entertained, even if obscure English music references fail to amuse others. 😉 Basically, I thought it was funny… No! That can’t be true. Surely nobody would name a town Humptulips? Ah, I see an English adaptation of the local language. Hopefully nobody in these more enlightened days attempts to err, do naughty things to tulips. Hardly satisfying, at a wild guess. If I recall correctly, there were a couple of English cheeky scamps who set out to document unusual place names in the UK.

    This morning was 46’F, so not that much different. A layer of dew hung over everything. Then, the sun rose and the air temperature in the shade got to 87’F. Quite warm really. After a warm overnight, tomorrow looks set to break the 100’F. I’d be happy for some drizzle right now, the paddocks and grass on the sunny side of the property are fast drying out. Some rain is forecast for late Sunday and into Monday, so fingers crossed. Might even have to top up the house water tanks from the reserves.

    Dude, 100% I’m guessing the formula is being messed with. Economic realities suggests this outcome, but as to the details, the likes of you and I will never know. Your dad’s biscuit ingredient memory may be suggestive.

    I get that about mixing in the new feed just to see what happens. It’s just a dog feed situation I’d not yet encountered or thought of, yet. Hope H is cruising along and avoiding itchy situations. Man, that situation with the tests, I faced that as well with the eczema on my hands. It was a laborious task over a long period of time to discover which was the exact product causing the skin mischief. They do say that it’s been tested by dermatologist experts, so who am I to argue – it’s just no longer on the shopping list. Hmm. H could be allergic to anything and far out, if you get say eggs from here, there and everywhere, who’s to know what feed the chickens were even eating in each instance. It’s a complicated problem. What do you do?

    Hehe! Oh my, we’re talking about wheat. It depends upon the variety of plant, the soils, the climate, the sprays, how the flour was ground, the bleaching, how long it has been stored. So many variables with just one food stuff. If I grew and supplied flour (an unlikely event due to cool summers), the protein content would never be displayed! It’s really hard, but here we purchase bags of high protein unbleached flour. Here’s the thing, high protein flours produce heavy dense loaves. And pasta. Hmm! Lot’s in that topic, yup.

    Yum! A lovely meal for a wintry time of year. Haven’t had dinner yet, but enjoyed a lunch of a tasty ham and salad roll sitting in a garden on the grass in the shade of a big old willow tree. There was also an apple cake too, which is not a slice of cake, but a stewed apple concoction wrapped in shortbread with icing on top. So good, and it’s very difficult to source a tasty one in these enlightened days.

    Go H! Pork bones are quite rich, and dogs love them. Good for her teeth too. Man, you used everything of that hock, including the squeak!

    It’s pretty amazing that feat with the cornbread, yeah. They went super science on reproducing a similar protein structure to bread wheat flour. Bubbles were apparently the main issue, although a person can relate to that… 😉 And yup, people who don’t know how to cook, probably don’t even realise that there are different types of flours. Why would they?

    Good luck with the auction results! I see, hmm, you didn’t ask, but my best guess is that happens in order to stop ‘vendor bids’ during an auction. They’re a false bid placed by the seller to increase the interest and end price. I’d stop the online bids beforehand as well.

    Yeah, I’d worry about such things too. But you’ll know when the check comes in. Incidentally, does the check arrive with an itemised result listing? Hehe! The dust will surely settle soon over the auction.

    Cheers

    Chris

  29. Chris:

    I love the laughing idea for bringing up mucus. I’ll try to be funny.

    I appreciate you questioning the Gator’s use on a slope. Surely my son has considered that. That’s one of the reasons he likes the CAT so much, the tracks/crawlers are so secure.

    I’m not sure the folks in the old folks’ home had any cash. My experience with the assisted living and nursing homes is that there are a certain amount of sticky fingers in those places. I had an encounter with that myself. So, unless the resident is really sharp and pretty much has a safe to keep it in, keeping cash on hand is discouraged.

    Expecting snow and ice in a couple of days.

    Pam

  30. @ Claire:

    This was a sedan, so the tanks were right behind the driver’s seat and some did bang into it at the impact. That seems a bit risky, too.

    Pam

  31. Yo, Chris – I see Claire had the same New Year’s Day traditional meal, as me. Hedge our bets for a prosperous New Year. 🙂

    I’d say those idiots are more climbers, than walkers. You think they would be tipped off, by the name of that mountain range. The Hazards? Seems pretty clear.

    Pyrotechnics businesses are often family run (multi-generations), and can be a bit of a globe trotting mob. I seem to remember a movie, a long time ago, about such a family. Then there are specialties. Experts that do the public displays. Pyrotechnics for the movies. Experts that know how to bring down buildings. Other experts who specialize in capping oil well fires. I’m sure I’ve missed a few. When you need something blown up, best to call in an expert.

    There’s a spot in the road town, out on our coast named Sappho. Sappho of Lesbos (a Greek island) was a famous 5th century BCE poet. The village had a highway sign, “Entering Sappho.” It was stolen so many times, they finally gave up posting it. 🙂

    Our high yesterday was 46F (7.77C). The overnight low was 41F. Forecast for today is 49F. Slight drizzle. Unlike you, our Sun / Mon forecast is for clear and sunny. Usually, this time of the year, clear and sunny means freezing temperatures. Not if the forecast holds. Just more winter weather weirdness. I sat down last night, and transferred my weather history, from last year’s garden calendar, to the new calendar. First frost, last frost. Little notes on any odd happenings. If it’s a La Niña or El Niño year. Or, neutral. I’ve got records running back to 2018, now. LOL. Can’t see any solid trends. We’ll get a first frost, sometime in the fall. We’ll get a last frost, sometimes in the late spring. That’s all I can say with certainty.

    I’ve gone back to giving H a bit of yoghurt or chopped up eggs. but not much, and only once a week. So far, doesn’t seem to bother her.I finished up my New Year’s Day meal, last night. But she still has some pork hock bones, in the fridge. I’ll warm them up and dole them out to her.

    Apple cake sounds a bit like our apple turnovers. Which can come in a puff crust, or a shortbread crust. Usually triangular, but not always. With a bit of icing on the top … or not. They can either be wonderful, or, pretty awful. A dab of apple something between two pieces of cardboard.

    Seller bidding is usually frowned upon. At least at well run, legitimate auctions. The auctioneer can close out the bidding, leaving the seller holding the bag. Which usually brings a stop to that kind of behavior. Then there’s “taking bids from the chandelier.” 🙂 Best I just link to a glossary of auction terms.

    https://news.artnet.com/market/art-auction-glossary-guide-2571010

    Hmm. I notice there’s not a description of “bidding rings.” A group of dealers will get together, before an auctions, and agree not to bid against each other, to keep prices low. After the auction, they retire to a nearby pub, and divvy up the loot. They’re illegal, in some places.
    In that TV series about a British antiques dealer (“Lovejoy”), bidding rings were often in evidence.

    I’ll get a fairly itemized list, of what my stuff sold for. Although, some things were sold in “lots.” Four or five items in a clutch. Maybe, one item the auctioneer thinks will go high, and mix in other lower price items, to make sure they at least sell.

    I finished an interesting book, last night. “The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of An American Reporter in Nazi Germany,” (Toler, 2024.) Sigrid Schultz was an American who joined the Chicago Tribune’s Berlin bureau about the time of WWI. She and her mother just happened to be living in Berlin. Due to her unique set of skills, knowing several languages and having a knack for developing contacts, she became the bureau chief, in 1925. She managed to hang on in Germany, until 1941. She returned at wars end, for a few years. It was quit a balancing act. Reporting on the rise of the Nazis, and staying on the right side of the censors. At one point, she would send an honest report, outside of Germany, and created a totally fictional reporter, as her cover. She changed her style of writing, just enough, so the officials wouldn’t make the connection. Fascinating book. Lew

  32. Chris,

    We were supposed to have freezing rain today. Instead, I awoke to see that we had a snort of snow and that it was raining at +2C. What is a snort of snow? Similar to a skiff, except that it only sticks to automobile roofs and windows. Depth from a skiff to a heavy dusting is included in this technical definition. 😉

    Yes, sleeping is much better in colder weather than in the heat. Much better.

    Dame Avalanche was doing the Call of the Wild thing on Thursday, what with it snowing and all. Today? Nope. She has been dozing indoors all day with brief outdoor interludes. If it’s raining, she prefers to sleep. Hmmm, that is probably a different aspect of wild’s call?

    Today has been spent performing indoor odds and ends. Mingled with naps, of course. Winter rains make me want to sleep more, too.

    I’ll make myself a good cricket bat, keep it near at hand when doing outdoor work. I’d like nothing more than to send an annoying drone for an unexpected flight. I played some cricket in Fairbanks, Alaska before winter set in. The bat that was available was not as wide as the one in that video clip. Interesting data point: I played a LOT of baseball and softball. The type of swing for those sports does not even come close to being useful in cricket! And it is very hard to change over and learn the cricket swing.

    Hmmmm, here we are a few days into 2025. So far, it feels no different than 2024. At least to me. Well, I did notice something a bit different from a few days ago. Two or three crows were upset about something, flying to the northwest. The entire murder sporadically appeared over the next 5 minutes, all flying to the northwest. Perhaps they spotted some nice, fresh roadkill and were hoping to be the first scavengers on the scene? Call of the Wild.

    DJSpo

  33. Hi Pam,

    🙂 Laughing is most excellent physical therapy for bringing up gunk-on-lungs, and who doesn’t love a good laugh? On that note, I’ve long tried to keep people I’m teaching either amused and/or laughing along.

    Pam, the gator machine looked amazing and I was deeply intrigued by the thing and so had a long conversation about it with the old farm machine repair dude. We got one of these things instead: The Razorback | Slopes + LONG grass! A beast of a machine, although it’s Japanese built and may not be sold in your part of the world.

    If I’m not mistaken, Margaret owns one of gators, but my memory may be playing tricks on me there. And of course, I’m not dismissing your sons judgement and experience. I can only speak from my own perspective when dealing with sloping land. Did he end up buying the machine, and more importantly, is he feeling better?

    Yup, track / crawlers have a lot to recommend them on sloping ground. 🙂

    What? Well that’s a perspective I’d not ever considered, but now you mention it – makes a whole lot of sense. OK, so the lovely old folks were expressing their appreciation for the early pre-dawn newspaper deliveries by gifting what they could. A delightful way to consider the inexplicable tea-cosies from that perspective! Makes you wonder what other indignities the old folks had to deal with? And I’d like to believe that I was a little ray of mercenary young sunshine in those days – which probably made them all laugh. Not a bad outcome…

    Ook! Well, ’tis the time of year for weather extremes. Having a heatwave here myself right now. Had to film this weeks video earlier this evening in the heat because I’d not be allowed to use the angle grinder for cutting steel tomorrow – one never wants to be the most hated person on the mountain range if a fire sprang from their land due to stupidity. Hope the snow is not too deep or problematic and that you and your family stay warm.

    Cheers

    Chris

  34. Hi DJ,

    You have so many terms for snow that my brain is beginning to hurt! 🙂 A professional winter hazard I guess, and things could be worse for people in your part of the world on that front. Exhibit A: What happens if you receive 42mm of snow? I fail to believe that nothing special would occur in such an instance with that auspicious number.

    Last night was warm, but tonight is warmer again. It’s still 26’C inside the house at about 10pm, although outside has cooled somewhat to 22’C. An uncomfortable night. Yup, sleeping is much better in cooler weather.

    Ah, all serious dogs know that rain is far more unpleasant than snow, thus a day to while away the hours dreaming of better conditions. Earlier this evening was 32’C, but cloudy and so I took the dogs for a walk. They’d been resting and preserving their energies for most of the day, as had I. Got through almost a quarter of the Dracula book today. It’s rare that I’ll take a day off work.

    That drone thing would be annoying to say the least. You may not be aware, but maybe two years ago in this state, an elderly couple camping in remote forest were allegedly pestering the wrong person with a drone, and things went very badly for them. Hmm. Best to not annoy random people is my thinking, but everyone is different.

    Well done you, and yes, it is a very different skill set. If I may, baseball swings across, whilst cricket has to swing the bat in a sort of upwards direction. Not the same skill set at all. And a person has to be alert less they’re clopped by the ball, far out those things hurt. Interesting, the bat in the clip didn’t look different to what was expected.

    Hmm, did you know that cricket is on the rise in your country as a sport? And I see that a year or two ago the US beat Pakistan, who are no light weights in the game. I recall having an amusing and friendly chat with a guy in India about cricket, and they’re no slouches I can assure you and can serve us a hiding from time to time. I have no doubts that with more interest, more players, more leagues, your country will do very well in that sport.

    Is it 2025? Nobody told me… 🙂 Feels the same to me too. Well, road-kill is fair game for the crows. Birds know stuff. Hey, so there I was watering the citrus orchard when overhead flew wedge tail eagles and off in the forest the deer were doing their cough/bark sound trying to intimidate me. I don’t think so, and so I yelled some ungentlemanly words at them (it’s just not cricket ol’ chap!) – and they departed. The eagles went about their business unfussed by me.

    Cheers

    Chris

  35. Hi Lewis,

    I’d never previously heard of a blind marsupial mole. An amazing creature, and sand would surely be easier to swim through than hard clay and/or loam. It’s quite astounding that the completely unrelated moles in other parts of the world, look eerily similar.

    It’s uncanny that Claire enjoyed the same meal as yourself, and I was too much of a gentleman to say anything about it, but since you mention the situation… Is it really a traditional mid-winter meal? It’s hard not to notice the inclusion of items preserved from warmer days.

    Makes you wonder why they didn’t try and slide down the steep slope? Hehe! But yeah, the name is a dead giveaway. It’s hard to know what such people think when heading out on such an adventure. I’d take one look down the steep slope and think to myself, I’ll get to the bottom of the mountain quicker, sure. But will I survive. Guessing not. As I mentioned to you yesterday, we’ve done the loop walk around that national park and so it was quite difficult to imagine how folks had even gotten into trouble, but who expected that climb? Now if they’d had ropes long enough to reach the bottom, probably no dramas.

    Agreed, best leave explosive demolition jobs to the experts. There are utoob videos of building demolitions going horribly wrong, and they’re the sort of thing you’d not want to be involved with.

    It’s so hot here today that I decided to do very little. Well, that’s not entirely true, I made great in-roads into the Dracula book which is quite a fun and gripping story. Read almost a quarter of the book today. Had a nap. Watered the plants which needed a bit of extra assistance in the heat. Tried to stay cool. Had to do some of this weeks video a few hours ago because it involved an angle grinder and I’m not allowed to use one of those machines tomorrow – it being declared a total fire ban day. But mostly just took it easy. You need days like that too.

    The cheeky scamps! Ah, such road signs are crying out to be err, nicked.

    Sounds like you’re in for some freezing temperatures, and if I may add, clear winter night skies produce the best star displays. It’s still quite warm here, and I read that the weekends weather has been the warmest in a decade. Sure feels it, and it’s still hot right now. Oh well, things will change Monday and hopefully some decent rain falls.

    Ooo! Nice work with the garden calendar and your miles ahead of our efforts in that regard. The Editor is responsible in this household for lists and maintaining the calendars. Hehe! Dude, they tell me thirty is the number for statistical validity, but I seriously can’t remember why that would be. Possibly similar to how 42 is the number for stuff. A mystery. The climate changes, groans and shifts whether we like it or not, and that all probably happens faster if we treat the atmosphere like a sewer and community of plants on the land like an inconvenience! But always has our species meddled, it’s how we roll. 😉 Man, it’s hard for me to discern patterns in all of this, I mean the forecast for late next week looks positively monsoonal. How does that work?

    Good stuff, and yeah I do that with the dogs feed – try a bit of food and see whether they do OK. Obviously there are some food stuffs us humans enjoy which can cause our canine friends injury. I once long ago stuffed up on that front from a lack of knowledge, but fortunately it didn’t seem to be a problem and the dogs in question all got to a ripe old age. Lucky H with the bones. Hope she enjoys them and savours every moment. Good for her teeth too.

    Yeah, apple cakes are sort of similar to a turnover, but I’ve had those and they were different using flaky pastry which had been deep fried. But that outcome happens here too with apple cakes in that they can be really tasty, or as you noted, like cardboard. Those tasteless ones are disappointing. How hard is to make a proper tasty spicy apple stew? The two fat ladies may suggest a dash of nutmeg, and it would work a treat! As would cinnamon. Yum!

    Did you know that seller bidding is a thing with house auctions down here – they call them vendor bids, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense because the vendor clearly can’t afford to end up winning the auction. Now bidding rings, whoa! But still, if the items get sold and there was no other interest, that may be the sale price. An auction is the mechanism of price discovery at it’s finest. And antiques dealers have to make a margin and living as well.

    Hope the results are good, and that you glean the direction of the market. Always a tough sort of gut-feeling thing, and economics can alter trends that’s for sure. Sometimes hard times breeds a call to nostalgia and that can bizarrely drive up prices for formerly depressed items. Hmm.

    What a story. The journalist would have developed an extraordinary breadth of skills, and gotten out in a nick of time.

    Cheers

    Chris

  36. Hello Chris,

    Unlearning is hard. I grew up with a lot of ideas about the world that have been knocked out of my mind, during collisions with reality.
    I thought that “technology solves all problems” and “growth is great” and lots of other rubbish.
    Looking back, I am most surprised by the lack of thinking training at the University where I spent five years of my young adult life. We learned very complicated formulae and recipes for solving very specific problems, but we never learned to choose which problem to solve.
    Even the next five years at University, training for a PhD to become a researcher, was very limited. I learned to choose problems inside a very, very narrow box.
    It took me twenty years confronting reality that made me think and start to unlearn and relearn.

    I had a similar naive view of growing veggies, mainly due to too much exposure to permaclutter junk literature. Some in that field are most excellent, talking from experience. Others extrapolate too much.
    Now I am even honest to myself that it is quite hard just to get seeds to germinate properly and to get plannable amounts of seedling starts to plant out. Sometimes 0/20 seeds make it to a plantable seedling. Sometimes all. Therefore, during the last ten years, I have just been seeding far too much, and planted out the veggies that took. The veggie patch always looks impressive to visitors, full of vegetables, but it is because nobody else knew what I wanted to grow and failed.
    It has been a learning journey to add sufficient fertilizer/compost/manure as well. Rotation is necessary, but difficult if you don’t know how much cabbage will materialize and how many pumpkins show up.
    Since last year, we use grow lights and slowly start to get a feeling for the right kind of soil mix for seedlings. Today I set up the grow lights to be ready to seed chillis next week. Every year we get better.
    Many things to unlearn and relearn.

    The weather is crazy here too. Last night we had heavy wind, snow and -9C, now it is raining at +4C and no wind.

    I am surprised that quinces are difficult to grow at your place. They grow well even here in Southern Sweden. There are a lot of Eastern European varieties available here (‘Vranja’,’Aromatnaja’,’Muskatnaja’ etc.) that were developed during the Soviet times, and now spread with the world market. In October, I picked 10 kg of quince at a school where I sometimes teach about nut trees. The fragrance is superb, and I think most apple-recipes are better with quince.
    The flowers are also stunning, like small roses.
    Did you plant any quinces yet?

    Peace,
    Göran

  37. Yo, Chris – What I found interesting about the blind moles is that their pouches are reversed, from other marsupials. So their pouches don’t fill with sand and smother their babies. As they’re doing the breast stroke, through the sand. 🙂

    That New Year’s Day meal is a SE US tradition. That seems to be spreading. It’s really sympathetic magic. I think. I’ll have to ask Mr. Greer. It’s to bring one financial luck, during a new year. Scroll down a bit, and there’s an entry for the New Year’s Day meal.

    https://w.wiki/Ccua

    I’m glad you’re enjoying “Dracula.” There’s a lot of chatter here, over a new version of “Nosferatu.” A riff on Dracula, that originally came out as a German silent movie in 1922.

    Our high yesterday was 48F (8.88C). The overnight low was 45F. Forecast for today is 47F. With lots of rain. Though H and I squeaked out, before it started. Well, at least with your upcoming monsoonal weather, you won’t have to worry about wildfires, for awhile.

    I always take a quick look down the rabbit hole, about anything out of the ordinary I might be tempted to feed H.

    I someone is unknowingly bidding against a bidding ring, They’re liable to run something way up … and then leave the bidder, holding the bag. I must admit I’ve done it a time or two. Someone is bidding against me, the item has gone beyond what I’m willing to pay. But I bid a couple of more times. And then leave them hanging. I had a method of bidding, that was a bit unusual. I got confused with all the up and down of my bidding number. So, eventually, I’d just hold up my number and leave it up, until I either won the object, or, when it reached my limit, would then drop out. I think I got a bit of a reputation, around the auction.

    I see a one thousand pound piece of space junk, fell on a small, isolated Kenyan village. Luck was with them. It didn’t hit any people or structures. There was a recent article on Kessler Syndrome (too much space junk). Unfortunately, it was behind a pay wall.

    I saw an interesting article, about an early Australian. Ferdinand von Sommer. I hope you can see it.

    https://www.alternet.org/genius-or-charlatan-the-strange-tale-of-a-19th-century-polymath-who-left-a-trail-of-controversy/

    I also read something concerning, about the new movie, “28 Years Later.” A great deal of the movie was filmed on I-Phones. Gosh, I hope it isn’t as bad as that “found footage” craze, from a few years ago. Lew

  38. Chris:

    You are always amusing.

    I like that Razorback; it’s a nice machine. Alas, it only seems to be available in Australia.

    My son does feel better, enough to bring some big extra loads of firewood, and to keep up with the greenhouse plants in the cold, and to fix the water heater that broke today.

    Chris, you are always a little ray of sunshine, as well as being amusing.

    I just finished enjoying your flowers again. Thanks!

    Pam

  39. Chris,

    Just a quick response…
    The proper way to refer to 42mm of snow is, well, it depends. Early winter, on a day with not a lot on the agenda, 42mm is properly referred to as, “Cool! Snow. After breakfast I’ll go outside, clear off the car and shovel snow.”

    If tired from several consecutive days of moving snow, “What’s the weather forecast? Will it turn warmer and rainy and melt off soon?”

    Then there’s days like today, when I had to get the Princess Mobile out of the driveway so I could get my car out of the garage for an early morning carving thing. “Shostakovich! Where the hades did that white crap come from?!?”

    As you can see, 42mm does necessitate special mentions that are purely situationally dependent.

    DJSpo

  40. Hi DJ, Pam and Goran,

    Thanks for the lovely comments, but err, it’s 8pm and today was 38’C / 100’F in the shade, and of course we worked! It’s still over 30’C now, and no air conditioning. Whatever, we built a new steel rock gabion cage today, and it was a sweaty experience I can assure you. Made a video about it too, not the sweaty bit, but the rock gabion cage construction.

    Anywhoo, it’s been a super long and trying day and I promise to reply tomorrow, but until then, enjoy your winter weather – and know that I’m super envious of feeling cool. 🙂

    Cheers

    Chris

  41. Hi Lewis,

    Ooo, firstly, breaking news from the crusty depths: Geoscience Australia records three earthquakes near Broken Hill in 30 hours. The giants are clearly rattling their cages! 🙂

    The moles are amazing for that adaptation. And did you notice in the article there was some mention of them originally burrowing through rainforest soils? Long ago when the planet was warmer, about a third of the continent was covered with rainforest. Walking around the forest here, you notice plenty of rainforest plants just hanging in there eeking out an existence and biding their time. I’d not want to produce edible crops in a rainforest because it would be difficult.

    On that note, we picked another 7kg of tasty sun ripened apricots today from two trees. The total fruit harvest from the three trees which produced fruit worked out to be about 10kg / 22 pounds, most of which will be converted into jam tomorrow (although some will be left for fresh eating over the next week or so).

    It’s meant to rain heavily tomorrow with over an inch in the forecast. The plants will very much appreciate the drink as many are looking a bit dry stressed. The perfect day to cool the house down and make some jam. It’s around 28’C inside the house right now, and warmer outside. My head hurts! 😉

    Still, best not to waste an hour of this thing called life, and today we made a new steel rock gabion cage, but this time recorded the video so people can see how it’s done. The video is live now on utoob. Dunno whether anyone will be interested in the subject matter, but we’re working the system on the cheap. They’re not your mates, put it that way.

    Lewis, I’m blown away by the images of the superb soul food. Lovely stuff, and yup such a meal at New Years could only but bring luck to the cooks and diners. Yum! The Hoppin’ John meal tradition is one that brings people together. War is hell.

    Dracula is actually a really fun read, whilst being super creepy. I’m about a quarter of the way through the book. It’s an interesting way to recount a tale through the medium of correspondence and journals. The Editor tells me that many old school books were penned that way. Anyway, I give the book a big thumbs up recommendation.

    There was an article on the new Nosferatu film where the critic blew both hot and cold. Have you watched the 1979 remake? I saw that years ago, and it was suitably gothic. The original 1922 film though has been highly influential.

    Nice work dodging the rain, and those weather radars are pretty good! Fingers crossed we get a decent dump of rain tomorrow, but just in case I began pumping water uphill from the reserve water tanks. The pumps ran hard for about seven hours, but they’re powered from the sun (solar electric) so no big deal. Even in 100’F weather the locally made solar electrical gear worked faultlessly.

    Dunno whether I mentioned it, but I contacted the solar DC battery to AC mains electrical inverter manufacturer (which closed down mid last year) for service details – and have heard nothing from them. Ook. Oh well, another job on the list for me cataloguing the various bits which need replacing on the oldest devices. I’m already busy, but oh well, what do you do? They did say they’d continue servicing until mid this year, but maybe they simply lost interest.

    You’re clearly more alert than I was, but nowadays I do the same with dog feed. Our canine friends can have some odd reactions to human foodstuffs and medicines.

    In auctions, is there such a thing as a fair game? I tend to believe that everyone goes in with a plan, but whatever the case may be, the price when the gavel falls, is the final price all other considerations to the side. Your strategy is a goodie, and it sends a strong message. Actually we’ve done that at a house auction for what was basically a solid brick shell of a run down Victorian era house in a nice street. Added about 10% to the price too as there was just one other bidder at that stage. Don’t regret it either.

    The space junk wasn’t in the news down here, I guess it’s not a good look. Whoa! It’s big, but then I recall when Skylab crashed over the Australian continent, and have seen the wreckage in a museum over in the far west. Oh yeah, put enough stuff up in orbit, and sooner or later it’ll be like the ultimate in galactic pinball – and the skies will be closed to us. It’s like the ultimate in an abuse of the commons.

    What an interesting chap, and I’d never heard of him before. To be honest, the amount of criticising the guy did, would probably make more enemies than friends – even if he were right. Those were pretty early days of the colonies, and well, there’s an old saying about letting perfection be the enemy of the good enough.

    Yeah, I noticed that too about the filming too, and it seemed weird to me. But then the trailer looked good, so who knows? It may be hype.

    Cheers and better get writing.

    Chris

  42. Hi Chris,

    Considering that heavy snow is falling as I type and that I am a summer loving person, I’d prefer your weather to mine. Not that the universe cares the least bit what I prefer. Snow it is, and snow I shall deal with. The wood heater is very welcome at times like this!

    I’ve opened the window to the front porch/greenhouse to keep it a little warmer, and it is above freezing out there. The Meyer lemon has survived well below freezing temperatures, but experience with previous trees that died has shown me that the Bearss lime and the kumquat cannot tolerate the level of cold the lemon tree can. If I can keep the porch at or a little above freezing through the long cold spell that is beginning today, all three trees will survive. Wish them luck!

    Claire

  43. Yo, Chris – That’s odd about the earthquakes. They mentioned mining, but is there any fracking going on? We’re getting a lot of earthquakes in our lower midwest … due to fracking. Places that have been heretofore geologically stable. I wonder if any of it is due to Antarctica shrugging off a huge weight of ice? Rebound. That’s what causes a lot of earthquakes, in England. Even after all this time, from the last Ice Age.

    Plenty of mushrooms, in a rain forest. 🙂

    The apricot jam sounds really nice. A bit of a luxury item. Speaking of fruits and such, I paid a visit to the new-ish veg store, up in Centralia. Rather underwhelming. Not much stock, and pricey. I also stopped to pick up a 25 pound bag of rolled oats. Bob’s Red Mill. About $1.39 a pound. Not bad. I’ve already got it broken down into gallon bags, in the freezer for a few days. Make sure there aren’t any bugs in it. A few days, then it will go into 5 gallon buckets. I also got some rice soaking, overnight. Whoa! When I was rinsing it, it was the dirtiest rice I had come across. Needed several more rinses, than usual.

    Odd weather. The high yesterday was a steady 46F (7.11). It was also a steady 46F all night long. Forecast for today is 51F. We’re in for a run of pretty nice days. No, or not much rain, and sunshine.

    Someone might be interested in the gabion cages. They serve a useful purpose, and are visually striking.

    Letters and diaries are one method of writing. I see it, every once in awhile. I think it may have fallen out of style as someone declared it as “lazy.” But who doesn’t want to take a peak at other’s innermost thoughts?

    I don’t think I saw the 1979 “Nosferatu.” I got thinking about comedy takes on vampires. I found this …

    https://collider.com/funniest-vampire-comedies-to-sink-your-teeth-into/

    Everyone from Mel Brooks to Nick Cage (twice), took the idea out for a spin.

    I don’t know. I’ve always kind of felt that auction prices are what an item is worth. Although I wonder at some of the outrageous prices paid for some things. When participating in an auction, it never hurts to send the message, “Don’t f___ with me.” 🙂

    I saw an offhand remark that Stephen King is coming out with a new book “in a few months.” I’ll have to look into that. Something called “Never Flinch.” Lew

    Glad you enjoyed the article on a quirky early Australian. Probably no-one you studied in school. Lew

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