What an odd week it has been. It seems like only a few days ago that the air temperature in the shade reached 35’C / 95’F. Yet this week, when the dreaded alarm sound dares disturb my restful slumber, the skies are dark, and the air is filled with extreme humidity. The season flipped exactly on the autumn equinox. It sure is turning towards winter, right before my very eyes. As a side note, getting up in the dark irritates me no end, the patterns being not quite right… Coffee can only help at such moments.
This week at least, the need to walk around every morning watering the less hardy plants has ceased, freeing up plenty of time. The prolonged dry weather has caused me to be rather busy of late. By contrast, mornings have become more leisurely affairs, despite the notable lack of sunlight. Can’t have it all our own way, can we? The sudden change in weather has meant that regular rains have returned to the mountain range. Where was all that rain only a few weeks ago when it was actually needed? Oh well guess that’s what the water tanks are there for. When a person lives way out in a rural area, interpreting the weather forecast becomes something of a serious hobby. Everyday you pour over the available information like an astrologer reading the signs, and to try and get a feel for how the climate will be in the near future.
Analysing the data supplied from various forecasts over a long period of time, suggested to me that a week or so ago, the rains would return this week – and indeed, that’s what actually happened. Regular readers will recall that last week a project was commenced to upgrade all of the wiring up on the house roof top solar panels. The weather forced my hand with this job, mostly because it is not advisable to work on a corrugated metal roof in the wet. The steel surface during those times is just too slippery for the soles of boots to grip. Nobody wants to fall off a roof. So to do the work when the steel sheets are dry, was the smarter move. And the signs and portents with the weather divination suggested that winter weather was fast closing in. As the old timers used to say down here, better get a wriggle on with the work, whatever that means.
The re-wiring process took three days up on the roof, and thankfully is now complete. Candidly, it was all a bit mentally tiring to remain focused for hours upon hours whilst perched up in the air like a bird. However, as the English are wont to say: Mustn’t grumble. Good advice. Moving on… The house roof holds twelve solar panels, four of which are a bit of a distance away from the main eight large panels. This means that all the wires feed into two separate fuse boxes. Both of the original plastic fuse boxes have now been replaced with sturdier metal boxes. Every connection with the cables which had been out in the sun, wind and rain for sixteen years was replaced. Also the fuses were also upgraded to industrial grade equipment (high rupture current fuses for those who are technically inclined). I was dubious that the original much cheaper fuses would work when they needed to.
In other parts of the off grid solar power system, there are another three sturdy metal distribution boxes. As part of the annual maintenance cycle, all of those were inspected, tested, and cleaned. That’s it for work on that system and we’re now ready to head into another damp and cloudy winter. It’s worthwhile noting that both Saturday and Sunday enjoyed thick low clouds and each had less than one hour peak sunlight. That’s not enough solar power to fully recharge the house batteries, and certainly not enough to run the wasteful industrial civilisation we reside in. Hmm. Still, when the weather is dry, the view from up on the roof is impressive, and the panels get to enjoy that enviable view.
This week’s video was filmed up on the roof!
Work around here ebbs and flows with the seasons. Right now is the busiest time of the year. Generally speaking, up here a person does something when the time is right to do so, and that is always dictated by the weather. During the week, the various tomato vines have begun to be removed from the garden beds. Sure, the plants could be left in the ground for a few more weeks. This would provide a continued supply of fresh sun ripened late season tomatoes. But soon it will get even colder here and there would not be enough time to get the winter crops like radish, green mustard, beetroot and silverbeet established to a point where we can eat them. The plants in this area don’t grow during the depths of winter, but the cold tolerant varieties do remain alive and provide fresh food at a time of year when such things are scarce.
Around this time of year, the rats begin testing the house’s outer defences. Those twitchy nosed big rodents would love nothing more than to create a toasty warm nest under the house. This sort of untoward activity must be stopped! Every day we inspect the ground around the house and look for any signs of incursion. Lately we’ve been using cement to produce a hardened barrier that the rodents so far have been unable to breach. As part of that work, a few rat holes nearer to garden beds were baited and then sealed up using lots of rocks pounded into the ground. It’s not my preferred option, but during winter, hungry rats can consume all of the produce. An unpleasant activity, but it’s all part of the seasonal work around here.
With the now cooler weather following on from the autumn equinox, last week we were able to go on a local bush walk. The last one of those we’d done was in October last year, and it was frankly speaking hard ignore the snake we came across. Very deadly, possibly way too poisonous for its own good. Best left alone. It’s nice to know that the reptiles get sluggy in the cooler weather, but are no less dangerous. Whatever, we took the risk and enjoyed a nice local walk in a nature reserve and avoided all snakes.
Had lunch sitting at a picnic table with the forest all to ourselves, when along the path steps a sprightly old hippy. He’d been living in the area for decades in what was self described as a half finished house up the road. As someone who likes to complete tasks, this loose talk of unfinished business did not make for pleasant hearing. Foibles though can be forgiven, except he then went on to express his concerns about the world, ongoing wars, and as has been remarked upon elsewhere: death, flies and stuff. Man, you need to stop watching so much television. I’m just trying have my lunch in peace here mate! And that put an end to the one sided conversation.
Guess doomscrolling is a thing even for old hippies, but never thought to encounter it in a nature reserve of all places. If I may cheekily suggest, the old saying applies here: Before worrying, chop wood, carry water. After worries, chop wood, carry water! There’s always work to be done. Anyway, despite the evidence of the dry summer all around us, and the risk of encountering deadly reptiles and old hippies, it really was quite a pleasant place to spend some quality time. Fortunately after the hippy conversation, a most excellent apple cake restored my disturbed nerves.
Thought you lovely readers (and thanks as always for taking the time to read along and contribute to the ongoing discussion and dialogue) might appreciate another view from the roof.
Unfortunately the home made five element FM Yagi antenna was in the way of the view. You’ll notice that it’s something of a long way down! Just to geek out for a moment or two (less nerdy readers can skip on to the next paragraph) . The antenna was specifically constructed and tuned so as to pick up distant FM signals from the national youth music broadcasters nearest transmitter. Who says you can’t make this sort of advanced stuff at home?
Speaking of making stuff, another batch of soap was made this week. In order to save on costs, and because local olive oil suddenly seems hard to obtain, we trailed using the much cheaper local Canola oil (rapeseed oil). We’ll know how the soap compares after the cakes have cured in a month or two’s time. The other innovation we did in the process was to use a stick mixer to mix the ingredients. And whoa! Did that turbo-charge the process or what? The mixture was ready to pour into moulds almost immediately, except not realising that change, we left the mixture for an hour. That was interesting to get the now firm stuff into the moulds. The process used to take about three days, but no longer. This is an ideal job for people with limited living space, although it is not a process for those whom are careless.
The combination of hot and then wet weather has firmly set the crushed rock with lime which was placed at the top of the new concrete staircase project. It’s a pleasant place to walk upon, and the stairs are great to use.
And with the now regular rainfall, even the grass in the sunny orchard has begun to show some early signs of turning green again.
In breaking produce news:
The turmeric tubers growing in the greenhouse look like they’ve had a great summer.
Pumpkin leaves are displaying signs of sooty mould, which is an indicator that the growing season is fast coming to a close for those plants. The rabbits and rats have taken about half of the crop. Both critters are hiding their burrow and nest in a thickly planted garden bed, which now needs to be cleared. Due to summer burn-off restrictions being in place, this work could not be done. At this stage fire restrictions won’t get lifted for another month, but after that, the tide will turn and the garden bed will be cleared.
The hot and dry summer killed a few of the ferns. But the ferns which did survive the conditions, have now all suddenly put on heaps of new growth.
Even the mosses have bounced back now the hot and dry weather is in the past.
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 11am is 13’C (55’F). So far for last year there has been 142.0mm (5.6 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 137.8mm (5.4 inches)
Comments
44 responses to “Out in the backwoods”
Yo, Chris – Ah, yes. Weather. “Every one talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Mark Twain? Or, Charles Dudley Warner? (Who?)
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/04/23/everybody-talks-about-the-weather/
I must say, now that I have a garden, and a dog to walk three times a day, I pay a lot more attention to the weather.
That’s a lot of information about solar power systems. But all useful and helpful. If nothing else, people may think twice about going solar. Or, at least take a long hard look at their systems, that may already be in place.
The video was really good. Very smooth. Something I noticed that may mean something, or may mean nothing. After your video finishes, we here at home see 6 panels of other videos, from U-Tub. One, or at most two, might be videos of yours. All the others are videos, by other people. Though with a homesteading / back to the land / gardening flavor. This time, all six panels were from Fern Glade Farm. Maybe you’ve reached some critical mass? Given the arcane operation of said website, as I said, could mean something. Could mean nothing.
Poor old hippy. Television may be the only company he has. But, I tend to agree with you. People here at the Institution, or at the Club, who chatter too much drive me up the wall.
“View from the roof.” Vertigo isn’t just a movie by Alfred Hitchcock. 🙂 Ever notice how when you’re in high places, you can actually feel the pull of gravity? Trying to lure you to your doom.
So what’s up with the lack of local olive oil? Any clues? I know the olive trees, around the Med, are doing it tough. And production from those areas has really fallen off. It will be interesting to hear how the Canola experiment works out.
Boy, the Turmeric really took off. Just for scale, about how tall is that plant. In general.
What is it about ferns and moss that are so fascinating? Other than that they’re both prehistoric plants. Before flowers, tubers and seeds, there were spores.
Your sugar maple is really putting on a show, this year. Can the leaf peepers be far behind? Wash my mouth out with Canola soap. 🙂 Lew
Hi Margaret,
So glad to hear that Marty has been moved and settled into his new digs. You’re a saint, there’s no getting around it. 🙂 And yes, sewage flowing forth inconveniently at exactly the wrong moment is something I once dealt with as well. I feel your pain there. Could it get any wronger a moment than that? In my case it was during an open for inspection to sell a house, and fortunately the quick thinking real estate agent locked the back door and hid the key. Hmm. A lot of mess to clean up, and it defies my imagination what folks think it is OK to chuck down into the sewers. A visitor appears to have caused the drama.
Oh no! Now a visit to the dentist for Marty. Oh well at least he is doing his rehabilitation exercises.
Sorry to hear that your comment disappeared. And a true bummer for you and your garden that the weather has been dry. Are you going to do chickens and pigs again this year? For your interest, occasionally down here controlled burns don’t quite live up to their name, and end up out of control. Mostly from my perspective this is due to poor timing (exactly, too windy – you called it) and incorrect scale – like trying to do too much. And there was that time the fire coincided with the footy finals… Hmm. All we can but do, is hope they know what they’re doing.
Yours is an exciting time of year with promise of the future harvest and summer bounty. 🙂
Good stuff, and don’t you reckon everyone needs time out to do some quality reading. How’s the book club going?
Thanks for the kind thoughts, and that job up on the roof is now done. Thankfully incident free.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Göran,
🙂 It’s been fun hasn’t it?
Continued excavations today for the site where the two new water tanks will eventually be located. The weather was perfect for such work.
Your comments have been forwarded onto Sandra who was greatly amused at your observations. Thanks for the laughs, and you do know that the old timers used to say that pride is the devil! 😉 Oh well, it’s your friends choice, and no reflection on your good self. Man, I absolutely agree with you, there’d be enough intrigue in such a location without a character having to regularly commit heinous crimes. I rarely watch any movies and/or series, and certainly not that storyline. Sounds like a dangerous place to visit if you ask me! You’re lucky to have escaped with your life. 😉
Yes, the subpar platform for that creator unfortunately lurks behind a paywall. And your explanation makes a lot of sense, zero input sounds great, but may indeed be low input – which is something else altogether. Thanks for the introduction and I see he does a weekly podcast. Hmm. May contact him. Here, I will differ because it is almost impossible to purchase salad vegetables which are the equivalent as to what you can grow yourself, but then we consume a lot of salad vegetables and not everyone does. People’s diet can vary greatly, and that’s cool. Agreed, the words ‘staple crop’ can mean anything and everything. I’ll have a listen to see what he has to say about the world.
Nice one with the soil additions. As a general observation about bone meal, the smellier it is, the greater the phosphates. I’ve seen claims varying from 3% to 6% with that stuff, which is quite a lot. Interestingly, I too add tiny quantities of Boron to the soil, it’s one of those minerals which few people think about, and virtually every plant needs, fortunately they don’t need much. You can get it from cardboard, which we burn and spread around the ash – it is not an ideal situation, but I’m realistic about recycling.
🙂 The phrase is good, however I’m not sure that it is snappy enough to capture people’s minds who may have short attention spans. The middle ground is the perfect place to be, although the ground does shift around a lot.
Respect. Getting those nut trees out into the community is an amazing achievement. Do you ever get to visit any of the trees you’ve grafted and sold?
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Mr Twain appears to have been (sort of) busted by the quote police! However, being a neighbour of the gentleman in question, it would be hard not enjoy the use of a most excellent pithy line which he clearly would have heard over the years, would it? The question I have to the quote constabulary is, if the witty observation stayed with the original gentleman, would we have heard about it today? Hmm.
🙂 The weather is a fascinating subject, and you have incentive to concern yourself with it’s vagaries. Me on the other hand, once stored a complete kitchen outdoors the same night a super cell dropped four inches of rain in an hour. An expensive lesson. Now the weather forecast is treated seriously.
Speaking of such matters, today was delightful. Cool and sunny. The house batteries received a full charge, and we did a shandy day of work. Spent a few hours continuing the excavations on the new water tank site. It’s looking good, but may end up being a bigger job than I’d first anticipated. Oh well, the weather was nice for the digging.
Thanks, ordinarily details are skipped over because they can be dull, but in that case, well, thought some further explanation may be of interest. Other than that, it would be hard to know what a person is looking at. The vids are picking up momentum in terms of views. In the big smoke I see posters praising ‘no new coal or gas’ and note that they’ve ignored oil (maybe something to do with 90% import dependency), but also the claims seem odd because as a society we’re so heavily dependent on those same energy sources. Renewables just don’t stack up, and I really tried my best with the technology.
It’s hard to know what goes on with that arcane algae-rhythm, but one from a few weeks ago was picked up and ran off on it’s own, so yeah, maybe that is what is going on? It’s just about to run past the most popular video done many years ago on the worm farm system.
That was my gut feeling too about the hippy. What do you do? And the conversation was dark (initiated by him), but from what I could ascertain, he really had very little to be concerned about, and was doing even less towards reducing his anxiety. Possibly my personal pragmatism may not be shared by the population at large! 🙂
Vertigo has a really interesting plot, with a great twist in the tail – so to speak. 🙂 And it is good to see that in the end the protagonist missed out on the girl, but cured his fear of heights. Not a bad deal, because the lady seemed like bad news. The feeling didn’t bother me working up on the roof. Other times, yup.
Dunno what was going on with the local Olive oil, and at over $20/L, that’s $76 a gallon, it wasn’t cheap either. They’d be pressing olives now, or at least in the near future. On the other hand, we did find out a rumour as to why coconut oil now can’t be found on shelves. Apparently an influencer is promoting it’s use as a hair care product. We got some, but thought outside the box to obtain the oil.
They’re lovely plants the ferns and mosses, and it’s a pleasure to live in an area where they can and do grow. Those plants speak of a wetter era.
The leaf peeper comment of yours needed a trigger warning! Actually so to did the login computer screen this morning which had a close up photo of a UK wild rabbit. Hmm. Even the dogs were put out of sorts at the image. Hehe!
Dogma had such a good cast, even the most excellent and amusing George Carlin. It’s preposterous that Jay and Silent Bob could be the chosen prophets, but there you go, that’s how the story rolled. Nothing wrong with a bit of irreverence, and it is notable how films shy away from that form of humour. It was mentioned that Kevin Smith even joined in the protests against his own film – great publicity.
It sure looked like a grunion and was referred to as a smelt species. Chicken it is then! 🙂 Do you eat much fish? Tinned salmon is probably the closest I’d get to eating fish. There was a dead stinky salmon brought out in Parliament the other day, a very theatrical move.
Digital cameras can be highly variable in their quality. Sometimes the security footage of bears trashing houses and cars can be quite amusing, but obviously not for the people directly involved. Bears are clearly quite intelligent creatures.
Oh right, garlic species do tend to be reproduced by replanting cloves. The thing I wonder about though, is if they’re reproduced by cloning, how are there so many different varieties of garlic? Makes you wonder doesn’t it? At some point the varieties must have been reproduced by seed, and I’m aware that the technique for raising garlic from seed has been cracked, but not widely used. Onion is more likely grown from seed, but far out those seeds have a really short shelf life.
Has the airport weather website popped it’s head back up again? I’d be feeling a bit edgy of the weather websites all went down…
How is under two hours a long movie? What the heck? Three or four hours would qualify for that title. The Editor is keen to watch that film.
🙂 Agreed, sheep, cotton and flax are the future!
The rat wars are going well brother Lewis. May we all succeed.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (the Bible.) 🙂
There is still nothing happening with the local weather station. I did find another site with information. But where they’re getting it from, I don’t know. Yesterday’s high was 64F (17.77C). The overnight low was 41F (5C.) The forecast for today is 52F. If the local weather station doesn’t thaw out, I’ll use this other one. It will take some getting used to. It’s a bit harder to use. Raise a glass to fully charged house batteries.
Last night, I watched a new movie, “A Real Pain.” Starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin. Culkin won this year’s best actor Academy Award for his part. Culkin is the brother of the kid in “Home Alone.” It’s a comedy / drama. Two Jewish cousins, left a bit of money by their grandmother, go to Poland to see where she grew up. So, they join a holocaust tour. Yes, that’s a real thing. One cousin is a neurotic who agonizes over everything. Has the job, wife, kid, lives in New York City. The other is a wild man, who still lives in mom’s basement. It was good, engrossing in some parts, and funny as heck, in others.
Taking Kevin Smith’s whole carrier into consideration (actor, director, comic book store owner), he’s a real national treasure. I’m glad he took his heart attack seriously, got his act together health wise, and will continue bringing us precious little gems. 🙂
Wow. That’s an eye watering price for olive oil. I grab the good stuff (California) when I can find it. Other than that, it’s the stuff of mixed parentage. Not too bad, but not all that good, either.
I should probably eat more fish. When I eat it, it’s usually tinned tuna. The quality of which, can really vary. I try and hold out for the good stuff, but, it’s expensive. Now that I’ve conquered tuna loaf, I may be eating more
And, from the wonderful world of archaeology, we have the Nuragic culture.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/sardinia-trade-britain-bronze-age-b2722627.html
I’d really not heard much about these folks. Other than some pseudo archaeological show about Atlantis, claiming these folks were the root of that legend. (Get over it, folks, the basis of the Atlantis legend was Santorini aka Thera).
The Master Gardeners were here, this morning. And, they were a little miffed. They’d started clearing out the rhubarb bed, but hadn’t completed it, yet. I was out around 7, last night, potting up 12 Jerusalem artichokes. In the rain. I noticed someone had finished clearing that bed, and the remaining rhubarb was stacked next to the raised bed. Well … sometime between last night, and this morning, who-ever must have tossed the rhubarb root, in the dumpster. Which was picked up, early this morning. Goodbye rhubarb! Lew
Hi, Chris!
For some reason that shot of you made me think of “Fiddler on the Roof”. Did you ever see that old movie? The fellow would sit on his roof and play the violin. I guess the neighbors didn’t mind. He had a whole bevy of daughters to marry off, but no money. Though you did not play your violin, you did listen to music, I think you said.
I hate getting up in the dark, but am still doing so this late in the season because they changed the time. Curse them. No – I mostly take that back. Mustn’t grumble . . .
I have been watering twice a day for some days now; some of that is just to keep my little cool weather plants cool because it has been so hot. It has just started raining, but we shall see if it amounts to anything. It’s supposed to cool off quite a bit, though.
Aren’t you glad that you beat the rain to your roof? That metal does look awfully slippery and perhaps a body on top of it might attract lightning? I don’t see how you sat up on that peak without developing a permanent dent in your tush. I enjoyed the rooftop video and I imagine that you feel some relief in now having a metal box instead of plastic. I was glad to see inside the box so that I could see what you were talking about last week. You know, 3 or 4 days a year without solar power does not seem so bad. We used to have to go without power for what added up to weeks per year before they finally buried the lines in the neighborhood.
Ook. I’ve got to get after the rats. One dreams of little electric fences around every garden bed.
How unpleasant to run into such a person on a nature walk. He certainly sounds unnatural. Still, better than a deadly snake.
I have a stick mixer! I still have old olive oil. I don’t have molds and I don’t know if we have any lye. So – I’m only halfway there. Maybe that’s why I never get to it.
The turmeric is huge! Surely it must have some good sized tubers.
Beautiful fall maple leaves; our Japanese maple has bright red leaves right now, too, though in an opposite season. Beautiful flowers, also. Thanks!
Pam
Hi Pam,
Rumour has it that the story is sad, but an excellent reminder of how cruel our fellow humans can be when the mood arises – on all sides of that story from my perspective. The matchmaker for example presumes too much. It’s also a – and here I must whisper the word – musical! What an ear worm that ‘if I were a rich man’ song is.
Yes indeed, the tunes were very much assisting to relieve the mind during the work up on the roof. Did you know that the national youth music broadcaster turned 50 this year? No? They replayed the first hour of broadcasting from 1975 recently, and the song list was pretty good. Knew most, but not all of them, and the hair and body shirts. Hmm, so 70’s it hurt: The first hour of triple j from January 1975
No! Absolutely feel free to grumble about this topic. It’s not right… It was pitch black and foggy this morning when the alarm went off. Made it interesting taking Ollie out to do his morning ablutions – a wallaby bounced off in pure fright. I’d worry about bears and mountain lions in your part of the world at such ill omened hours of the morning. Ook!
The rain sounds promising, and hope the storm delivered a decent downpour for the plants (and also to reduce the dust). Did you get much, and has the weather now cooled down? Hope your fruit trees aren’t now having a freak out due to a sudden cool change?
Fortunately the trees around here are much taller than me up on the roof, still a person cannot rest on one’s laurels. I’ve seen trees hit by lightning around here (and a modem blown up by a near strike) but haven’t heard of any person being hit. Has that happened in your area?
Yeah, 99% uptime is actually pretty amazing, it’s just not the same as the grid which sets the baseline for people’s expectations in that regard. Burying those power lines would reduce the fire risk too in your area, hopefully. It’s a super expensive job that one.
🙂 Pam, now you’ve got me thinking of little tiny electric fences around garden beds! Thanks for the laughs.
Agreed, I’d choose an encounter with the hippy over a deadly snake any day. I dunno, have you ever met anyone who talks at you, and not with you? That was him, you’d think he’d ask at least one question, maybe?
Ha! Lye is super easy to make. 🙂 Sandra does this process and I think she uses a lye mixture made from caustic soda. Hey, hope the canola oil works out the same as the olive oil soap? It sure is cheaper. It’s a busy time of year for you. Has the roof been completely finished – if I recall there was some talk of flashing around the chimney, maybe?
Fingers crossed we can harvest some of those turmeric tubers. In previous years the growth has not been as good, and I can’t recall now what we did differently this year. Ook… You’d have to sort out the rats and the greenhouse at your place, but the tubers might survive in there, maybe.
Oooooo! I love Japanese maple trees. Yours sounds lovely, and they have such great colour and shape – and are super hardy once established. Thanks for saying that about the flowers, they’re a real joy.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Just in case your vigilance out in the garden wasn’t quite properly caffeine fuelled, here’s something new to worry about: Warnings after cassowary attack in Cardwell backyard puts elderly man in hospital.
Much more interesting than the politics which is all over the news. They’ve finally gotten off their backsides and called a federal election for May 3rd. The population – which has to compulsory vote at risk of a fine – doesn’t reward long and drawn out election campaigns. 🙂 Some folks enjoy politics as if it were a sport, I just want them to stop mucking around and get on with the job at hand! 😉
Thanks for the well tested saying. Funnily enough, I’d known of the word ‘haughty’, but not realised the full significance of its meaning. Hmm, not an enviable state of being is it? And mate, I’ve met a few people like that over the years! I do my best to project a sense of calmness and humility when so required. Being pushy and acting superior, really annoys people. Still, as noted before, for some adventurous folks it can be a lifestyle choice.
That’s not good about the local weather station. Has it popped up again onto the interweb today? Clearly it’s still early days for your spring, and down here if the seasons were flipped upside down, I’d not have the tomatoes in before early May. Plenty of other plants will grow in the cooler soils you’d be seeing now. Do you grow rocket or mustard greens? And did any plants survive that extreme winter cold snap you had a month or so ago?
Always good to see the house batteries in a high state of charge, yeah. Not always the case in the cooler months. Still, I’m coming around to the idea that they’re there to be used, not looked at. It’s hard to really know how long they’ll last those things, but from what I understand, I’m not abusing the technology – and that’s a good starting point. I do have to get some spare parts though for the batteries, just in case. Man, where do you stop with all this stuff? I have no idea.
Thanks for mentioning the film, just checked out the trailer. Jesse Eisenberg is an outstanding actor – I recall him in the role he played in the film ‘End of the Tour’ and that film has haunted me. Really? I missed that about the win (but wasn’t taking much notice of the awards). Well done him. Man, I won’t judge that activity and found myself in the killing fields in Cambodia long ago when western tourists barely stepped a foot in that ravaged country. There were so few tourists, that the locals used to wave and smile at us. Hmm. People can be remarkably cruel. Might check the film out.
A medical episode can really focus the mind wonderfully for some folks, whilst others, yeah, not so much. It’s hard to know how people will react in advance. Tell ya what, as you go on in life, the bodies start piling up sorry to say. You’d have seen that too. It’s genuinely hard to know what a persons kryptonite will be don’t you reckon? Good to hear that Kevin Smith has taken the incident seriously. Respect and I too look forward to those gems! Makes the world a brighter place.
And yeah, the price of the olive oil almost gives me heart palpitations! Far out. Inflation is a real thing down here, although the media suggests that it’s somehow under control. Me thinks not, but what do I know? I can’t quite bring myself to purchase the stuff which has uncertain parentage. It’s not that the stuff is dodgy, it’s just not as good as the local oil to my palate. And it doesn’t come from California, I’d be happy with that, no, it has origins elsewhere…
We both live inland, how do you get fresh fish when you’re inland? Mostly it’s frozen. In the Queen Victoria market in Melbourne you used to be able to buy fresh fish from vendors, and it’s pretty good. We occasionally do tinned salmon, which most likely comes from salmon farms in this more southerly part of the continent (and they grow a bit in Tasmania). Hey, I once read about a shark which cleverly jumped into a salmon net. The possible word to describe the predatory and toothy scary creature is: Full. 😉
Having a meal to make with the produce helps matters too. I’m very partial to seafood chowder – the New England style. Yum! You barely see it anywhere down here.
It surprises me that anyone would believe that the ancients didn’t trade over vast distances. That used to be part of the culture down here, and probably pre-dated the Nuragic folks. The ancient mariners would have been a specific caste of the population at a wild guess. The only reason I say that is because I’d read that with the Indigenous folks there were some people who had specific skills and they travelled extensively and weren’t attached to any particular group. I reckon things in the past were far more complicated than the sort of simplistic arrangements often presented of accounts of pre-history. But dunno really, just guessing. What do you reckon the likelihood of things being far more complicated way back when than most would acknowledge?
I defer to your more learned understanding of the Atlantis.
Oh no! Someone chucked out the rhubarb crowns. Not ideal, but I can see how it came to pass.
Worked in the big smoke today and got home late. Me tired. 🙂
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – That was quit an article about the cassowary. Wildlife people tell the public, over and over again, not to feed the wildlife. Or, they might become a problem. But do people listen? Bears, come to mind.
Haughty. A lot of that going around.
No, the regular weather history page, has not been restored to health. But I’m finding the alternative page, easier to use. Yesterday’s high was 52F (11.11C). The overnight low was 38F (3.33C). Forecast high for today is 55F. Starting day after tomorrow, we’re supposed to have a four day run of nice weather. The garden beckons …
I have parsley and mustard greens that overwintered, pretty well. That cold snap did set them back, a bit. But, they’ve fully recovered and are banging along. I had some of both, mixed into my dinner, last night. My order from Nichols Garden Nursery came with a planting guide. Easier to use than the one on my gardening calendar. When I flipped over the page, of my calendar, I see last frosts spread all the way through April. By the way, it’s April Fool’s Day. Keep your guard up! 🙂
I got an ad in the mail today. The small hardware chain has begun their “dirt cheap” sale. I’ll have to stop by and see if the mushroom compost is included in the sale. I was wondering about thrifty ways to plant small seeds. I know there are gizmos you can buy. I stopped by a garden supply today, but they didn’t have any. I noticed they’ve got a lot of cool weather bedding plants, in. So, home I came and went to the Font of All Wisdom aka The Rabbit Hole. One idea that sounded pretty simple is to mix a pinch of small seeds with a couple of tablespoons of corn meal. I thought about dry coffee grounds, but that’s not advised. For a number of reasons.
One of the tour group in “A Real Pain” is a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. He moved to Canada, and found the Jewish faith … comforting. So, he converted. Given his background, and wanting to examine that aspect of Jewish history, he joined the tour group.
Speaking of movies, I re-watched “Fight Club,” last night. I had seen it decades ago. And as you’re constantly quoting and referencing the movie, I thought I’d give it a spin. 🙂 I didn’t really remember much about it, other than I didn’t remember it with any particular fondness. I had completely forgotten that Helena Bonham Carter was in it. And she’s always a joy to watch. And, the twist at the end and apocalyptic finale, was intriguing. But overall, I thought the guys were like adolescent girls, who intentionally cut themselves, just to feel something. Anything.
I suppose you saw that Richard Chamberlain has died. I checked, and the library does not have a copy of “The Last Wave.” Usually, when a famous actor dies (Gene Hackman is a recent example), the library orders in a bunch of their films. I think I’ll put in a request for it, just to make sure they get it. My, he certainly was a busy actor. Film, TV, the stage.
I discovered something interesting, in the library catalog. They have all the Criterion Collection films, listed in one place. 400+. A lot of it is weird, foreign stuff, but there are a few things I’d like to see, or re-see. I stopped by the library, this morning. Over the weekend, I noticed there were a couple of films, sitting on the shelf. So, I picked them up, this morning. Reviews to follow. 🙂 While there, I picked up the book / bio from which the movie “Outrun” was the source material. I really liked the movie. I’ll give the book a spin.
After the library, I stopped down to the Club for a cuppa. We’re supposed to get a food box, tomorrow. The commodity box, with possible fruit and veg. The counter volunteer also works at the local agency, that receives and distributes the commodity boxes. Plus, they have a food bank, of their own. She doesn’t work in that section, but said that she has never seen the food bank, so empty. Not a good sign.
We’re close enough to the ocean, that the stores do carry some fresh fish and other seafood. But, it’s always pretty pricey. A lot of the tinned salmon I see, is “wild caught.” Maybe because we’re so close to the source. I quit like New England clam chowder. There are a couple of soup brands, that put out a pretty good product. I think I mentioned that decades ago, I had some home made salmon chowder. A memorable meal that sticks in memory. I’m sure the salmon was bought right off the dock, as it was a small cafe, in a seaside town.
Dog is being a little stinker. It was time to give her another flea pill. Last time, she wolfed it right down. So, I put it on her kibble, and covered it with a bit of fried egg. Completely cleaned the bowl … except for the pill. Sitting forlornly on the bottom. It’s now a battle of wits. No treats or food, until she eats it. When dinner time rolls around, I’ll give it another try (if she hasn’t caved, by then) with maybe some rice and mixed veg. Lew
Hi Lewis,
The wildlife here has to make do and deal with whatever they can earn. There’s no handouts, such things would make the animals less wild, and more along the pet scale of things. One of the worst birds to feed around here are the Sulphur Crested Cockatoos. The birds have super strong beaks – and occasional bouts of potty mouth (intelligent birds) – and if put out of sorts, they can easily cut through solar power cables, munch up timber window frames etc. Best not to feed them in the first place. Hmm. But do people take heed of such good advice?
Here, I’m struggling to comprehend the sort of thought processes involved in an incident where a person feeds a wild bear. Man, I really tried hard to get into that head space, but was eventually defeated by the effort. It. Makes. No. Sense. Whatsoever. On the other hand, I can comprehend how a person could have a pet bear raised from a cub, and there are people who do so, but it’s a long relationship built on trust, and the bear should be kept well fed at all times, just sayin…
The local magpie family here are aware of my activities, and our interests run in parallel, but that is a different kind of relationship again. They occasionally benefit from our activities, but such treats are not a given, and to date no demands have ever been made by those birds.
Don’t you reckon haughty is such a great word? Maybe it is just me, but sometimes I do wonder whether the vast unearned wealth sloshing around society has done some folks any good. I mean you kind of said it succinctly, pride goeth before a fall etc…
Ha! So what you’re saying there is that the loss of the local weather station you were used to observing, forced you onto a new service which was somewhat better? Oooo yeah, your plants will positively bounce out of the cold soil with a run of nice days.
It was a really lovely day here today. Almost perfect. Inside on the computer banging away at the keyboard was where the idyllic sights of the outdoors were viewed. Oh well, bills must be paid, and this requires work, plus it’s nice to be useful within the community. Provides a sense of purpose.
Dude, nobody pranked me yesterday. How cool is that? Did you survive unscathed? Maybe the tradition, like the mischief of the elder folks, has been forgotten? Where ever did the idea for April fools day originate? Sounds medieval to my reading ears.
Nice score with the planting guide. They’re super useful as a memory jolt that certain tasks must be done throughout the year. Steve Solomon’s book: ‘Growing vegetables south of Australia’, contains a rough planting guide which almost perfectly matches the climate here on the mainland of the continent at 2,300ft above sea level. Obviously, he wrote a similar book about your region (or near enough to). Not at all sure why your area is called Cascadia?
Go on, did you go back and pick up some mushroom compost? I’ve had good results with the stuff as well, although it forms a third of the mixture I purchase nowadays. That’s funny, but I’ve never been bothered by really tiny seeds – and carrots and onions come to mind there. But then at this stage I can afford to be wasteful with such seed. It’s probably not ideal is it to do so?
Hehe! Well that is hardly surprising at all about coffee grounds and seeds. By the way, that was why I was surprised to discover that they are somewhat pH neutral. Who knew? I was expecting them to be acidic because the coffee grounds happily grow fungi. Lot’s of fungi, and those soil critters prefer acidity. Beats me what is going on there, and possibly the various claims about pH neutral are wrong. Might test the stuff…
You may note that I mix coffee grounds into compost and then add blood and bone meal + the three types of lime usually seen in the garden. Way back in the day I just used to chuck the coffee grounds around the soil surface, and did so for years, and the results weren’t great. Mixing them into existing soil is probably a pretty good way to work with them. It’s like everything, add in moderation.
By the way, I don’t get hung up on such matters. The soil here was so poor to begin with, it’s only been on the up ever since, but try and juggle all of the competing problems, including economic realities.
I can see that about that character in the film. Trying to make sense of, or peace with, the world is a decent use of a persons limited time. A lot of pain in the world there.
Helena Bonham Carter did a great job in the film. An intriguing review, and here I may differ with your interpretation. The characters in the film can also be viewed as participants in a grand social scheme otherwise known as society, which left them feeling ultimately flat and unfulfilled. Thus why they were swept up in the antics of the group, which provided deeper meaning and stronger connection. In many ways those foot soldiers had been denied growth into adults and elders, and perhaps were lashing out in anger and thus seeking the different path? There’s truth in what you wrote, but that was the early stage of their journey. To be brutally honest, your elites (and ours as well) permit only a very narrow vision which isn’t working out all that great at the street level, and if alternative visions aren’t aired and discussed, well ‘smash it up’ becomes the logical alternative. Ain’t my circus. The characters in the story weren’t building anything new up, they were smashing existing things down. Much harder to build.
The actor lived to a decent age and enjoyed phenomenal success playing a wide range of characters. One of my regrets is having missed the earlier Shogun mini-series, by all accounts it’s very good. Have you seen this series, or the latest?
Do you mean: ‘The Outrun’, film from last year? What a lovely story too. If I may, it takes a small place to focus the ego away and onto things other than itself don’t you reckon? I’d never be happy to live in a city again. Glad to read that the author has so far avoided the call to dark. Please do let me know if the book is worthy of reading? Right now I’m reading a book penned by my friend Simon: Archetypology, Volume 1: The Archetypal Study of Human Nature. It’s fascinating to look at the world through a new lens.
Oh poop! That’s not good news about the food bank. Did the box arrive?
Fish is pricey here, no getting around it. Salmon is wild in your part of the world anyway, so the chances of the tinned fish being wild caught, is actually pretty good. Down here it is a farmed fish. 🙂 A strange way to raise fish in my opinion. Interestingly, one of the towns in the state to the west of here, has that as an industry, and yet are also talking about constructing a desalination plant to boost the water supply. Are the two industries compatible? Dunno, but maybe, maybe not. All the brine from the desalination process does not go to the magical land of ‘elsewhere’. Nope.
I’m in awe, what a meal that fresh chowder would have been. Yum!
Clever dog, and she’s onto your tricks. 🙂 Hey, you might have to come up with new tricks? With Dame Plum and the very occasional worming tablet, I shove it down her throat, not pretty, but she’ll spit it out otherwise – and they’re meant to be chewable.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – So, who taught the Sulphur Crested Cockatoos potty mouth … Chris? There was that article, not long ago, about someone being trapped in their house, by legions of raccoons. All expecting to be fed.
Well, the rich are different. Every once in awhile, I see an article about how different (and clueless) they are. They use their money to glide through life, all rough edges being smoothed off. Money as a lubricant.
I can’t say the new weather page is better. Just different. I guess it was the change we had to have. 🙂 Our high yesterday was 54F (12.22C). The overnight low was 34F (1.11C). That’s pretty low. The forecast high for today is 54F.
No one thought enough of you to prank you? Me, either. 🙂 Lots of theories on where April Fool’s Day came from. I was surprised that it’s celebrated around the world.
https://w.wiki/39Z3
Cascadia is so named, due to the Cascade Mountain Range that runs from British Columbia, down to Northern California. It divides the wet side, from the dry side. Pacific Northwest works. Or, Ecotopia, from the title of a 1975 book. The region breaks away from the rest of the world, and becomes a bit of a hermit kingdom. It’s many years later, and one of the first reporters is allowed in.
I went racing down to the small hardware chain, this morning, to beat the crowds and pick up some of that mushroom compost. There was no crowd. They were having a “Dirt Cheap” sale, on all kinds of composts and garden soils. And, of course, the mushroom compost was not part of the sale. I still bought 8 bags of the stuff, at $7.59 per. I’ll side dress all my garlic with it, and throw some in the strawberry bed. Some will go other places. Asparagus bed? Probably. Pumpkin barrel? Yup.
Re: “Fight Club.” I blame society. 🙂 And, I had a thought. Why worry about olive oil, for soap, when you can just pull a night raid on a nearby liposuction clinic? 🙂
I read “Shogun” and saw the original series. It was quit the TV event. I don’t think the new series has come out on DVD. If it does, I’ll see it.
“Yes, the book “Outrun” was the basis for the movie. Which I saw, recently. And, have been recommending to a lot of people. It’s the best “recovery” movie, I’ve seen in a long time.
I see the food box truck, is down in the parking lot. Report to follow, tomorrow.
Even with all the wild caught salmon, we have in this part of the world, there are plenty of salmon “farms” along the British Columbia coast, and up into Alaska.
H is still a little stinker. Last night, I heated up some rice and mixed veg. Carefully camouflaging the pill. She ate everything, but the pill. Tonight, I’ll try heating up some of the frozen pork stock, I have. I told her this morning, “If you don’t eat the pill, I’ll take you to Dr. Amanda and get you a flea SHOT!”
I asked the library to put “Last Wave,” on order. We’ll see. Last night, I was going to watch the 1958 British film, “A Night to Remember,” about the Titanic. In 1953, there was an all star American film called “Titanic.” Then, in 1955, Walter Lord came out with his book “A Night to Remember,” which became an international best seller. In 1958 the British film was made. It’s part of the Criterion Collection, and there were so many “extras” on the DVD, that I never actually made it to the movie. 🙂
There was an hour long documentary, “The Making of …” done in 1993 by the producer of the film. Which also included quit a bit about the author, Walter Lord. How he came to write the book. It was an interest, from childhood. Tracking down survivors, etc. By the way the producer, William MacQuitty was a child, and actually saw the Titanic being build and launched.
Then there was a long interview with Eva Hart, who was one of the last of the survivors. An old lady in 1992, but sharp as a tack. She was a young adult, when the boat went down. Then there was an half hour interview, from 1962, of a Swedish woman and her two daughters. They were some of the few survivors, from third class. Then there was an hour long documentary “The Iceberg That Sank the Titanic.” From 2006. All very fascinating.
But, I probably won’t see the actual movie, for a couple of days. Tonight is a popcorn night. I’m going to watch “The Beekeeper.” Judging from the trailers, it’s one of those vengeance / vigilante movies with lots of explosions and a high body count. What more could one ask for? Lew
Chris:
I did not know (how remiss of me) that the national youth music broadcaster turned 50 this year. I congratulate them. I graduated from highschool in 1975, for which I was very grateful. Far out – those songs brought back a lot of memories, some good, some bad.
Nope, we only got about 1/4 inch of rain. It did cool off a lot (had been in the mid 80s), but will zip back up again tomorrow. The fruit trees seem okay, though they can’t decide whether to wake up or go back to sleep.
We’ve had lots of lightning strikes to trees, occasionally one catches on fire, but since it’s usually raining, that gets put out. Usually. I don’t know any people that have been struck, except for one time when my son was a baby and lightning struck very near me as I was putting him in the car and knocked the two of us against the car. neither of us was hurt, but it was really scary.
I sort of meant that about the tiny electric fences except that I would be the first one to be shocked as happened when I was setting up an electrified wire on top of our 4 foot wood and wire horse fence to try and keep Bob the Tailess from escaping. It didn’t work (on Bob), but besides my own accidental shock (with wet hands), all three males of the species on the place felt they had to test it personally to be sure it was working. It was.
Oh, lordy – have I met people who talk at me and not with me!
It’s a miserable experience, especially when you are in a situation where you cannot escape.
The chimney flashing still awaits. The figs cannot wait.
I am having the Great Tomato and Pepper Disaster. All my started ones look weak and sick. I am pretty sure that it was the store-bought readymade seed starting mix. Prior to this, I have always made up my own mix, but this year my neighbor and I decided to trial this stuff. She is having the same problem. I have tried to salvage what I could, repotting the best looking ones into my homemade potting mix. Only time will tell. I have also planted new seeds in my own mix, but it’s getting a touch late. Besides which, shrinkflation has reached the seed packages and there are not many seeds in each one anymore. I haven’t been able to save my own seeds for tomatoes and peppers (do have other veg seeds) for several years. Anyway, I can’t waste seeds.
I have found a new delicious treat: The budding flower heads off of the kale. The Red Russian Kale is bolting now with all this heat and I do not want it to (I have plenty of those seeds saved), so the flowers need to come off. The White Russian Kale is not bolting yet.
Pam
Chris,
Hmmm, I see the leaves are starting to change color there. I won’t tell the tourists if you won’t. Gotta keep the traffic minimized.
You mentioned the clay in your local roads. Clay “pockets” were some of the worst parts of trying to pave and maintain roads when I worked for the road engineers. Hard surfaces can slide around atop the clay. Then there’s always the clay heaving. Not to mention the water that might surface from the clay and blow a hole through the hard surface.
The standard method to minimize the clay traditionally was to dig it out then replace it with rocks and gravel. However, a much more user friendly technique was developed. It also made the base under the hard surfaced road much more permanent. It’s called “cement treated base”. I’ve seen three depths for this, 18 inches, 2 feet, 3 feet. Basically, a machine has a giant roto tiller on it, and it roto tills the dirt/gravel/clay road while mixing in dry cement concrete mix. The theory is that this mix will cure into a very hard and deep base. Asphalt can be applied directly to this surface. The roads I saw constructed from that in bad moisture and clay areas turned out very good, lasting longer than traditionally built roads and without the shifting problems normally associated with clay.
Enjoyed the views from your roof, including the view Mr. Yagi Antenna has. That’s nasty working on the metal roof, but the result looks good. My limited experience with metal roofs us that they are either hot and moderately slipper, or they are wet and cold and slippery as ice.
That view of the top of the new staircase shows off the finish very well. The large rocks look great there, and the finished surface is superb. The Princess also admired how fantastic it looks. That camera angle also gave me a better idea of how it fits into the farm as a whole. Thanks.
We’ve got some kind of “weed” in bare patches of one yard. It’s also in bare patches in young neighbor’s yard. But the “weed” looks remarkably like it can be used as a ground cover. It has the most delicate tiny white flowers. Oh, and some moss somehow volunteered to grow with it. I’m hoping that these can become a lazy alternative to trying to get even dryland grass to grow there.
Meanwhile, we’ve had a busy week. Monday was a mix of routine appointments, including one of my two regularly scheduled dental cleanings. They said my teeth and gums look great. Tuesday was a long day. We left home before 7 a.m. to go to Toppenish. It was about +3C. We enjoyed a mix of rain and snow for 2/3 of the trip. Brother had some new electronic equipment that I needed to put together and hook up for him. Then we took him to a good lunch. Then home, with nothing but clear and dry roads for the return trip. We rather enjoyed a slow day on Wednesday.
The Princess recorded the ice skating world championships. We watched a lot of it this evening. I enjoy many of the musical selections. One couple skated to a version of Brubeck’s “Take Five”, a song I’ve enjoyed since introduced to it when I first started university as a music major, I think maybe back in the days of the Trojan War or something. 😉 Anyhow, that sent me down a rabbit hole on the interweb, listening to that and other Brucbek songs, Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things” from that (dread) musical “Sound of Music”. Oh, and the Stan Getz version of “Girl from Ipanema”. Another of my favorites. My music theory teacher used to sit at the piano, giving his lecture while playing that particular song in his own impeccable style. Day after day. Why? Because he could use that song as an example of a gadzillion details of music theory. That was an extremely fun class.
DJSpo
Hi Pam,
I know! 50 years is hardly youthful is it? But then, the nice folks at the controls of that radio station nowadays are so young that they can teach us oldies a thing or three! Respect, and despite being very young in those days the AM radio banged out the same-ish tunes you were probably listening to as well. And ain’t that the thing? Some memories are good, others, well, maybe not so much.
It’s not a bad amount of rain, and will certainly tamp down the dust, for a while at least. Hope some decent rains and warm weather perk all those fruit trees up in your immediate future. And if they don’t, I was personally astounded that the apricot fruit in the sunny orchard survived the brief snowfall last early spring. Hmm. The shady orchard was wiped out for stone fruit. And hey, sometimes I wake up of a morning and feel that way too. 😉
That makes sense, but sometimes we get dry lightning storms where the rain isn’t enough to put out a smouldering tree. That’s a problem when hotter and windier weather arrives later. Many years ago, the more alert residents in this area, plus the fire brigade all went out hunting to find where a lightning struck tree was smouldering. You could see the trail of smoke rising from the tree, but nobody knew where it was way out in the thick forest. That was a bit of a minor drama.
Whoa! Your story of the close strike which pushed your son and yourself against the car must have been a heart starter incident? Glad to hear that you made it through unscathed. I’d have been scared too.
🙂 Pam, well done there, and tempted as I’ve also been when encountering such err, electrifying systems, my gut feeling suggested that they’d produce a notable feeling of discomfit. Thanks for putting the theory to the test there! And hey, during the re-wiring recently of the solar panels up on the roof, there were a number of occasions when those pesky chunks of technology zapped me. You can’t switch the things off, so they are always live when the sun is shining. Quite the tingle I can assure you. Good to see that the household at your place likewise all put the claims to the ultimate test. 🙂 I’ve heard stories that people who are authorised to use tasers (at least down here) have to be zapped themselves as part of the training so as to comprehend their actions.
So they’ve got such folks in your part of the world as well? Bummer, sorry to say… And yes, that has been my experience as well, such folks abuse social norms so as to corner us unsuspecting folks – then they proceed to bore us in three dimensions. I’d be curious what your strategies are to escape from such dastardly behaviour? Years ago I used to have a neighbour who’d drone on and on about the most boring drivel. So after a while, I’d just say: Graham, I gotta go man. Nice speaking with you. And Pam, he didn’t notice any difference. Hmm. Seriously I have no idea what to make of such folks? A mystery huh? 🙂
Ah, of course, hope the figs are attended to and that the rat damage can be grown out. So overall, were you all happy with having a greenhouse?
Holy carp, that’s so not good. If it were just one of you having difficulties… A few years ago down here, some very strong herbicides ended up in a compost mix allegedly via golf course organic waste. Seed raising mixture, if I may say so, needn’t be too rich – the seeds have most of what they need to get started. Yikes! I wonder about this issue too with every load of organic matter I bring back here. Any signs of recovery?
Your loss of seeds reminds me of the time I lost the yoghurt batch due to contamination. A lot of years went into that batch. Ook!
Yum! Yum! Flowers are a very rich feed. And I love kale. It’s just germinating now, and one wonders if there is enough warm weather left in the season before winter.
Cheers
Chris
Hi DJ,
The tourists are slowly starting to dribble into the area. Your observation very much matches mine, and yes leaf change is under way, but it will be rapidly over this year. I read an article on an area along the coast where koalas can be spotted from the road sleeping in trees. Well, that area is not coping with the sheer number of tourists (cars and buses), and the koalas are moving out due to the continual disturbances. Plus the tourists are occasionally angry at locals when there are no koalas to be seen. All very unpleasant…
The clay in this corner of the continent is often described as ‘reactive’, which is hardly an encouraging proposition for road making and long lasting asphalt surfaces. It’s harder again with the dirt roads around here. Actually, on that, as a little side story, to have dirt roads in this less fashionable area of the mountain range, does reduce the traffic. And the car is never clean. Summer, dust. Winter, mud. Hmm.
Down here, we still do the traditional method of using mixed gravel road base, compacting it down, then applying a coat of asphalt. The major roads of course like freeways get thicker coats of asphalt. Concrete would be a handy product – also subject to heaving (especially at the edges) – but is never used down here (that I’m aware of). But then, it might be in the fashion you described it as being used, like a dry mix which would soak up the water from the surrounding soil. Quite clever really.
There’s a product down here known as fence-crete which works kind of the same way, but for setting fence posts. I prefer to use a water tight cement mix, but that’s me.
Thanks, and your experience is exactly how things are up on a metal roof. If I may elaborate, in the dry the roof is not quite slippery, but more of a slow slide. I anchored my feet onto the protruding hex head screws which have zero give and are anchored into the timber roof battens. Ice is right out. 😉
Large rocks make for most excellent garden edging, and wow do they get to enjoy a pleasant vista or what? 🙂 Thanks for the feedback and blessed be goodly supplies of the choicest of rocks, but alas reality intrudes upon plans and does its own thing. The two edge rocks on either side of the concrete step had a nice structure to them.
Did you know that competitive lawn culture is a thing with some folks? 🙂 If I may cheekily suggest, such people have too much free time on their hands. It’s amazing to see how many different plants end up in a well established ground cover. Both of those sound like excellent plants and they all perform different tasks. I’d imagine that Dame Avalanche enjoys the feeling of moss under her paws? Down here there’s always a plant punch on between the grasses and clovers where one harvests nitrogen from the atmosphere, and the other uses it when in excess in the soil. A nice balancing act.
Respect for the good report card, and gums are a thing worthy of a bit of extra attention too. Doesn’t take much care, but probably unwise to dodge.
Man, that is so cold sounding. Brr! 🙂 But on the other hand, it’s nice to be useful with such electronic gizmos. Glad to hear that the trip went smoothly and was enjoyable. Where did the snow suddenly go?
Hehe! Yes, the Trojan War, I remember that too. Helen wasn’t worth it you know. Beautiful yes, but did you notice that things were so much calmer after the abduction? All the drama that famed beauty caused. And then, I may have heard you say something like: look the war is not all worth the bother – Cassandra has some opinions which maybe we should listen to. But did they listen? Hmm. 🙂
Lucky you having musical theory lessons, and they did sound like a lot of fun. I can’t recall, but did you ever learn an instrument?
Speaking of electronic gizmos, I went to use the digital inductance tachometer today to measure the chainsaw idle speed (I’d been tuning the carburettor). And the battery was flat. No worries I thought to myself. Open the device up, and oh my! The button battery was spot welded onto the contacts. What a total and complete waste. Not meant to be replaced is the message taken away from that incident.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Look it wasn’t me, although honestly it could have been as I’ve been known to express a deeply felt expletive. Who knows what the local birds are listening into. On the other hand, that communication works two ways and the birds alerted me to a large wedge tail eagle lazily circling in the air just above the house. An impressive bird.
On that note, a Powerful Owl and mate finally turned up last night. My hope was that the large birds dealt with Kuato the possum (and friend) before those two produced more possums. Hmm. And the King Parrots were in the kiwi fruit vines tonight dining upon unripe fruit – as you do when you’re hungry. Hope they leave some fruit because they won’t be ripe until a few frosts have been felt, which is sometime in early June. Oh well…
What? Legions of raccoons… Sounds like the plot line from a horror film. Gotta check this out. Wow, that’s a lot of racoons. 🙂 I noted that in one of the articles mentioned was made that it was illegal to feed large carnivores in that area. Like who would even do that?
You may have mentioned long ago that in the middle ages, the nobility sent their kids off to work as pages or maids in waiting with allies. It would be an interesting way to learn about different geographical areas and how the underside of the world operated. There is balance to wealth which would be difficult to maintain I reckon.
It wasn’t much warmer here today. 19’C / 66’F and it rained tonight about a fifth on an inch. The dogs and I were out walking around and had to race back home before the rain really picked up. We only just made it! Of course the two kelpies enjoyed the faster paced walk, mostly because they don’t really do steady and relaxed.
Nice to hear that we both dodged the pranksters. In fact, other than you, nobody else I encountered that day even mentioned the tradition. Talk about decline of the west… Who knew that New Year’s Day originally had not begun on the 1st January. My brain has now exploded!
Thanks for the explanation, and the Cascades are an impressive mountain range. The photos were lovely. The map of the notable volcanoes in the range made for slightly uncomfortable reading. I recall as a kid pouring over the National Geographic magazine which featured the Mount St Helens eruption. The Earth is not quiet.
Mr Greer mentioned the Ecotopia book long ago. Thoughts of utopia often break upon the rocky waves of reality.
That’s outrageous. It’s not much of a sale if the mushroom compost was excluded, still, it’s good stuff so nice score with the eight bags. Have you spread them onto the garden beds yet? Asparagus will enjoy the feed for sure. Pumpkins seem to be heavy feeders from what I’m seeing here. The leaves here are getting powdery mildew which is definitely a sign that the end is nigh for those summer lovin’ vines.
Didn’t the Duke from Repo Man also blame society? 🙂 It’s intense being a repo man. Actually, now that’s a film I should re-watch. Hey, the book and film probably caused security on bins at such businesses to be upgraded! I’d imagine that people are now taking drugs for such outcomes and that particular fat supply would be thin on the ground?
I’ve only read the Shogun book, and it was an awesome tale. The scene where the captain after having absorbed much Japanese culture, reconnected with the sailors and was disturbed by what he found, kind of was like a form of culture shock. I’ll be curious to hear what you have to say about the latest series. It’s got some big boots to live up to don’t you reckon?
Thanks for mentioning the Outrun film and I’ll put it on the to-see list. Review to follow at some point in the future.
To be honest, hearing about the budget cuts, I’m wondering how that will play out with your food boxes. Was it as bad as we thought it might be?
Hehe! Go H! Lewis, are you suggesting that you’re being outwitted by a dog? 😉 They’re clever creatures and the ones here are forever trying to out-alpha me. Must they continue to do so? Seems to be the case. With such pills I also crush them between two spoons, wet down a beef jerky strip, smear on the pill and then feed it to the dog. Done, and mostly works.
So did you end up watching the Titanic film ‘A night to remember’? Out of curiosity, how did the third class passenger escape and make it onto a lifeboat?
The Beekeeper film sounds every bit as explosive as your review. A bit of an adrenalin pumping exercise. 🙂
Hey, spotted this interesting article about teaching students useful stuff: Tiny home fulfills big dreams for Lismore students who built it. I was looking at the interior of the building thinking it was pretty darn good.
Went to tune up the chainsaw today and got the job done by ear and memory. The little digital tachometer (measures engine speed) had flat batteries. I opened the device up so as to replace the battery and discovered that the button battery was spot welded onto the metal terminals. I’d never seen that before, and nothing quite says ‘use once only’ like that. Not happy because the devices are quite pricey. Oh well, I guess that’s what mad cash is for.
Cheers
Chris
Hello Chris,
Spring is here and weeding is the main work of the week. Replanting trees and preparing for the grafting season. Excellent sunshine weather makes work even more fun. I find it sometimes hard to pace myself, and overextend, and feel a bit exhausted the next day.
Regarding seeing my “baby” trees growing up – yes! It is so much fun to see the small trees I grafted five, six years ago, and now they are much taller and heavier than me. Some already give quite some harvest, especially the hybrid chestnut trees.
It is so concrete. And so good. In the last few years I have grown and more than a thousand nut trees, and they all are coming into bearing.
The most mind-blowing fact I learned the other day, that hazelnut bushes that are regularly coppiced can live to more than 3000 years. There are apparently some hazelnuts on the island of Gotland in the Baltic that are more than 3000 years old. People have been continuously harvesting since the bronze age.
Imagine if the hazelnut bushes you and Steve plant still give good foods a few thousand years from now?! How crazy is that?
On the other hand, regarding seeing what you have put into the world… I have a related feeling everytime I see a Wolvo XC90 SUV car. 25 years ago, as a fresh engineer out of uni, I worked on the first car in that series, implementing a completely useless “infotainment” system. I feel a pang of guilt every time I see one of those obesely heavy resource-hoggers.
We live with what we have done to the world.
A last comment regarding garlic, that you mentioned. I have a friend, the most excellent plant breeder Andy Dawson, who knows how to trick garlic into putting out flowers to cross-pollinate different varieties. Very few people do these days, but it is certainly possible. He develops the most amazing things, some photos here: https://seedshepherd.com/home-en
Peace,
Göran
@ DJ – AAAACK! That sounds like Shot Weed (aka Hairy Bittercress.) It’s been blooming over, here, too. Very invasive. Called Shot Weed, because it can shot it’s seeds, very long distances. It will take over.
On the other hand, it’s edible. And, healthy. Related to sprouts, cabbage, etc.. Has a slightly peppery taste. But how much of the stuff can you eat? :-). Lew
Hi Claire,
Hope you’ve got your gumboots handy?
What’s going on? Massive U.S. heavy rain event could mean historic flooding this week
This storm sounds like one to watch.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – I noticed a bald eagle, this morning. They sometimes nest in a grove of trees, up behind the Institution. I also noticed that the ravens dove into the trees, when the eagle showed up. They are also interested in that patch of real estate.
Who would feed large carnivores? Morons. A lot of that going around, too. 🙂 Competitors for this year’s Darwin Award. People looking to take the perfect selfie. LOL. They may end up feeding the carnivore, but not quit in the way they imagine.
Our high yesterday was 53F (11.66C). The overnight low was 37F (2.77C). The forecast high for today is 57F. Four nice days coming up. Calendars are interesting and complicated things. Julius Caesar revised the calendar, as things had gotten so out of whack. It worked, for awhile. But, accuracy tends to drift. It’s often hard to figure out dates, in the past. Due to time to time adjustments to the calendar. Calendar reform. That may vary from place to place.
Yes, the Cascade Range is very pretty. When we can see it. There’s also the Coastal Range. Which I can see out my window. Not as high, and doesn’t do much to block the weather. Except for that “rain shadow” that Prof. Mass is always banging on about. East of the Olympic Mountains.
Ecotopia was a nice fantasy. Like Star Trek. 🙂
No, I haven’t scattered the compost. Trying to make me feel guilty? 🙂 I managed to get two of the eight bags, out of my truck, this morning. That was enough for one go. I am ancient, you know.
I hadn’t thought about the new weight loss drugs effecting liposuction clinics. There have been articles about national weight loss programs, that are doing it tough, these days.
I’ll see the new “Shogun,” if it makes it to DVD. Not a sure thing. Same outfit that waited four years to release “Dig” on DVD. I’ll probably watch “A Night to Remember,” tonight. The interview with the Swedish woman, and her two daughters, did ask how she managed to make it out of third class. She was speaking Swedish, and I don’t know how good the translation was. She was asked about that. Something about “ropes.” She had made friends with a third class steward, who awoke the family and told them to get up to the boat deck, immediately. Maybe they just managed to get through, before they slammed the gates shut? It might have just been the interview, but the poor woman seemed really stressed. PTSD.
“The Beekeeper” was a bang up movie. Early on, you get to see the “boiler rooms” where they steal money from people. Lots of cool explosions, and a high body count, of very odious people Apparently, I’m not the only one who liked it. “Beekeeper 2” is in the works.
We got our food boxes, and they were pretty standard. Nothing out of the ordinary. 2 boxes of corn flakes, and two quarts of shelf stable milk. A box of elbow macaroni and a quart of some kind of apple drink. 1 pound of rice and one pound of white beans. A pound of pistachios. A one pound bag of red beans, and two one pound bags of pinto beans. A loaf of ballon wheat bread. A jar of peanut butter. One shelf stable packet each, of chili and another of chicken. 2 pounds of cheese “product.”
Produce was a bit thin. Three apples, three onions, four potatoes and four pears (that had seen better days.) One tin each of peaches and salmon. Two tins each of green beans, corn, carrots, peas and unsweetened apple sauce 🙂 .
We got the first advertising flyer, from the big new Winco store, that is opening. Next Monday. I’ll give it a couple of weeks for the tourists to clear out, and shop late in the evening. I keep hearing that they have a lot of bulk bins that people seem to like.
That was a really interesting article about the tiny house that the students built. Not much of a view, however 🙂 . I wondered if they took wildfires into account? Commendable that they used a lot of recycled material. There were also a couple of interesting sidebar articles, about other student building projects.
A couple of interesting articles from the Wonderful World of Archaeology. Our old friend the Dodecahedron makes another appearance, but not in the way you’d expect.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgzg1vzx1yo
More discoveries from Pompeii.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/02/science/life-size-statues-pompeii-tomb-scli-intl
Poor lady has lost her head!
You might take a look down the rabbit hole. See if anyone else was a bit miffed, about the tachometer. Doesn’t seem very sporting. Maybe there’s an odd workaround. Lew
Chris:
Chris! Zapped on the roof! What if . . .
I have used the same strategy with those constant talkers. The funny thing is that they just keep on talking, while I am going! I have learned to interrupt gracefully with people that aren’t quite as bad, and actually get a word in. But not with those ones with diarrhea of the mouth.
Yes – the greenhouse was a lifesaver; couldn’t have kept that many figs alive all winter without it.
Not much signs of recovery. I have planted a lot of new seeds, but it’s getting pretty late in the season. Today when planting out some lettuce grown indoors – I’ll not do that again; they grow just as fast seeded outdoors – I noticed some volunteer tomatoes that are up that look better than what I grew. They are guaranteed to have blight, but any tomatoes that go into this soil will get blight. I may bring them in as it is supposed to freeze next week.
Pam
@ Lew,
I don’t think it’s shot weed. The leaves are very different and the flowers are much smaller. I’ll take another look, though.
DJSpo
Chris,
Hey, I noticed the discussion about Shogun. I’ve read the book a few times, have the 1980 miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain. We recorded the new version and binge watched it. I really really like it a lot. I thought the Richard Chamberlain version paid too much attention to his character and not enough to the eventual shogun. The new version has a better balance in my mind.
Jeepers! What do the tourists think? That the locals have hidden the koalas from them? Bleeping bleep Shostakovich Fibonacci toccata fugue city folk bleep.
I noticed that here, that gravel/dirt roads reduce traffic from what a paved road would have. There were a few potential paving projects that got stopped by the neighborhoods for precisely that reason. Can’t say that I blame them, either. I lean toward that side of the equation myself. After all, the road was dirt when you bought the place, so you knew what you were getting. But many folks hereabouts who moved to the country from the city want their city services and conveniences while enjoying living away from city congestion.
I’ve seen something like fence-crete here. I too prefer the real concrete mix.
Hey, the few times I was on metal roofs, I used those hex head screws that way too. Works fine as long as they were actually screwed in correctly. 😉
Yes, those two edge rocks were perfect for those spots.
I’ve seen some of those lawn competition people. I’ve never understood how lawns can be competitive. I’d rather have some flowering things mixed in, a bit of moss is fine, and the dance between clover and grass is a fun thing to observe. Besides, there are some rather invasive plants in this area that are impossible to eradicate. I prefer trying to limit their spread, but they ARE green and don’t take as much water as grass. There are a few spots in Dame Avalanche’s part of the yard that have thin grass atop the moss. Strangely, she prefers other parts of the yard.
We were fortunate on our trip that the temperatures were too high for any snow to stick. Plus, with the mix with rain, not much could accumulate anyhow. It was over 10C on the return home and somewhat sunny.
Well, umm, yes. Cassandra wasn’t the only person in that place and time who had a Cassandra Complex. Those of us who see and mention the unpopular views are so often ignored, discarded, marginalized, etc. As far as Helen goes, well, I made the suggestion to King Priam that maybe Paris and Helen should be banished, sent to Europe where they can build a city in what will be known as France. He was, however, loyal to his son regardless of the cost to Troy.
Oh, yes. I grew up in a musical family. Mom played piano and organ. I learned to read music as soon as I learned the alphabet. Grew up playing piano, later learned bluegrass banjo in my early 20s.
Battery welded in? That’s just wrong. I bet you check into that before buying a replacement. Wow, that boggles the mind.
DJSpo
Hi Goran,
Weeding is the gift which keeps on giving, and here it is free feed for the chickens. Every day a small patch is weeded, and sent into the chickens for processing. Makes the job easier doing it a bit at a time. Ah pacing, what an interesting topic you’ve raised. Long ago I used to do a lot of distance running, and um 10km was the preferred length. Man, the sunshine is nice, but a dude has to attune the internal ear to what is going on inside and with overall energy levels. One of the things I noticed with that distance was that people used to sprint off from the start of the run, you’d let them go, and then catch them as the run progressed. Sprinting of course uses a different energy in the body. Hmm, pacing… 🙂 If I may say so, sustainable means getting up and doing it all over again the following day!
Well done you with the nut trees, and clearly you selected for some good rootstock and scion wood to be producing after so few years. The chestnuts here are getting large, but not producing so well, yet.
Whoa! Who knew that hazelnuts if properly coppiced could live for so long? Have you ever managed to travel to Gotland island? It’s pretty impressive to consider the time scales, and maybe a year or two ago we visited an abandoned gold rush era (1850’s) stone miners hut and noticed an old quince tree still surviving with zero care. Plants are amazing.
Man, I drive a Suzuki Jimny, and not all that much or far either. I fail to comprehend the appeal of very large vehicles, although the ‘might is right’ safety aspect is not lost on me. But the heavier the vehicle, the more fuel and consumables are required to run the things – and that costs mad cash.
And that’s exactly it. This is what we’ve done, and the consequences will be ours to face.
Respect to your friend for taking back charge of seeds and producing locally adapted varieties. Of all the many challenges facing the future, that is right up there in the list near the top. We’re doing similar work, but nowhere near as advanced as your friend Andy.
PS: I don’t grow garlic, it’s a long story…
Cheers
Chris
Hi Pam,
Getting zapped by two connected solar panels was a bit of a nuisance. Imagine feeling a very strong continuous tingle in your fingers, and that was kind of how it felt. It was on the hot day when up on the roof my fingers were a touch damp from sweat – moisture being a good electrical conductor and stuff. I’m curious about the electric fence zap, but shy away from making the ultimate test knowing that it might hurt! 🙂
What if, indeed! Went to a farm expo today and had a fun time. Purchased a small Stihl battery powered leaf blower. It’ll never get used for moving leaves because a rake does a fine job. Nope. This machine will be used for cleaning purposes. The chainsaw mill produces an astounding amount of sawdust, and the blower will spread that material around and also clean the air filter on the chainsaw. But then, we had another good idea, which from hindsight may not have been ideal. We used the blower to clean out the dust in one of the house’s hydronic radiators which are connected to the wood heater. Pam, dust went everywhere! You could see it in the air where the sun was shining in through the window. At least the radiator is now clean. Ook! Had to vacuum afterwards.
It’s hard isn’t it to get a word in with such people. Hmm. Dunno about you, but I can sort of see that they aren’t connecting with the people that they are speaking at. You know, it is possible that such folks can’t pick up on the social cues of their audience, or haven’t been trained to do so. But yes, I too have been working on gracefully interjecting and exiting such conversations. The funny thing about the worst offenders, is that they don’t seem upset when I call time out on the conversation. Dunno what to make of that. Have you seen that occur?
Yo! Go the the greenhouse, and that sounds like a good result to me. For your info, the greenhouse here is the best supply of fresh edibles during the depths of winter. Don’t tell anyone, but another greenhouse would be totally awesome! Have any plans been made to get onto the rats earlier next winter? Ook! Hopefully it wasn’t a gopher?
Sorry to hear that about the damaged figs, but you never know what happens as the growing season gets much warmer. Fruit trees can be mysterious in that regard. Learning, we’ve all been there! For some reason that I now can’t recall, we gave up on lettuce a few years ago and plant leafy greens like rocket instead. And it will be interesting to hear if your volunteer tomatoes outperform the selected varieties which you’ve raised from seed.
Tomato blight was found at one growers site up north of this state. Your words kind of scare me! Oh well, global problems for a global world.
PS: Had a very tasty chilli cheese kransky for lunch today. Total yummo! Have you had any further rain? I noticed an article suggesting that there were epic storms to the west of you.
Cheers
Chris
Hi DJ,
How good was the Shogun book? And what a story. Wasn’t it loosely based on real events? Thanks for the review, and sadly I have not watched either series. Education these days… As an amusing side story, I read the book in the 80’s but trying to find a copy of the series in those days – even with video shops – was a nightmare which I eventually gave up on.
Now that you mention it, that was kind of how I interpreted the motivations behind tourists being angry at locals for the lack of koalas on demand. Hey, if I were a koala there, I’d pack up and head further from the main road where it would clearly be much quieter. Dunno how long you’ve been reading, but years and years ago, we used to occasionally head down to the part of the state to get away and see the ocean. It’s been a long time man, and there’s a good reason for that. Interestingly on a only minorly related side story, some scenes in the original Mad Max (the Road Warrior) were filmed near to there. Oh well, Max would probably be mad too at the changes.
Haha! Thanks for the laughs. Yeah sure, I guess it doesn’t hurt to ask for city services in a deeply rural area, but a refusal may offend! I can’t recall who, but years ago someone once asked me if we’d consider ditching the worm farm and connecting up to a town sewerage system. You know, I wasn’t actually certain they were joking around… Man, I really enjoy the challenges of providing all of these services. Keeps the brain sharp. Bizarrely enough, in the unlikely event that a sewer was ever installed up here, we’d be legally obligated to connect up to it, and had to sign off on that. It’ll never happen due to the crazy economics of that fleetingly remote possibility.
I’ve tried the fence-crete product, but always mix up a water tight strong cement mix. You can vary the ratios to produce the outcome you want, so why wouldn’t you do that?
Is it just me, or do I detect a story there? Go on, what happened? It never even occurred to me that the metal roof sheets wouldn’t have been screwed down correctly. Of course we did all the carpentry and made the roof battens stronger than required in the building codes. It’s only holding down the roof sheets, doesn’t make much sense skimping on that part of the job. 🙂
Went to a farm expo today. Had a very tasty chilli cheese kransky in a roll with fried onions and extra cheese. Slathered American mustard (I could have gone the hot English variety, but one must make do with what is there) over the sausage. And all was good with the world! You’d have enjoyed the expo, and there was even a woodcarvers group selling their works. Saw machines. Was tempted by machines. Sandra was equally tempted by machines, and that is the most serious barrier hindering purchasing which in such instances are always required to be hurdled.
It’s kind of funny, but all of the available rocks are graded according to their potential use. I keep thinking about Scott and Helen Nearing when I’m doing that work. They of course had a ready supply which was raided constantly, breaking apart boulders adds a new dimension to the work and thus we can only but conclude that peak rocks is real! You heard it here first, and thanks for the lovely feedback. 🙂
I’m very much with you in this matter, and what grows is what is meant to be there when it comes to ground cover plants. And that’s exactly what I find, some plants are just best suited for a particular area and use. It’s better for the soil to be shaded by plants from the summer sun than for the earth to bake hard like concrete. Few invasive plants are good enough to outsmart fossil fuel powered machines when properly used. Ooo, I saw so many useful machines today at the farm expo…
The warmer early spring weather would have made for a more pleasant drive than a combination of snow and ice. Spring is definitely on its way to your part of the world. Hey, we get the lost hour back Sunday morning.
The whole Troy thing was a complete mess, and well hubris and stuff has been known to turn to nemesis. Incidentally, how do you pronounce the word nemesis. Down here, with the flat accent it would sound like: Nem-E-Sis. I only ask because I’ve heard people from your country pronouncing the word: Nem-Eee-Sis with a more prolonged sound with the ‘e’ letter almost as if it were drawn out.
Very good. What a lovely sounding instrument you learned. Do you still play much nowadays? Many years ago when I commenced learning to read music, there was a moment of horror when I glimpsed just how much effort it would require to move past the stage I’d gotten to. Hmm. Complicated…
Dude, I wanted so bad to be able to open up and check the replacement machine, and couldn’t find anything on it. Sometimes with this stuff, you just have to roll the dice and hope for the best.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Those eagles would take a lot of feeding, and are pretty good sign of a healthy environment. Surely nobody would feed those birds? 🙂 You sent me off on a rabbit hole, and I’d not realised that a few decades ago the large birds were way down in numbers. Good to read that the population has recovered. Hey, I get that, and Ravens are clever birds. Down here, all of the birds crack the sads when a wedge tail eagle flies overhead. Guess that they’re all at risk. The magpies will openly attack the eagle as a group, all the while huge bird pretends not to notice the act of indignity.
Straight to point there, and yeah carnivores like to eat. It does seem like a rather unwise decision to feed an unknown bear and/or mountain lion. Hey, at least we all get to enjoy the perfect selfie moment, although as you suggest the self absorbed person might have some regrets there – for a moment or two anyway. Sharks and crocodiles down under tend to have similar outcomes, although I’ve never heard of anyone attempting a selfie with such truly dangerous creatures. There’s nothing soft at all about those two animals, although I once saw a sign with a stylised cartoon depiction of a crocodile with big bright red human lips and a massive bow behind the head. It just looked wrong – talk about artistic license! Probably not art.
Julius Caesar seemed like the kind of guy who attended to business. Man, mucking around with calendars is an entirely new concept to me. Education certainly did not cover this issue. Guess it makes sense, how the seasons and years were marked varied differently across time, culture and area. Makes me wonder when the ‘leap year’ concept was introduced to the calendar, and whether anyone lost their head, excommunicated or where burnt at the stake over such matters?
Ha! You got me there. I guess you were talking about Seattle? 🙂 Very funny. But I can see how the Olympic mountains could produce a rain shadow to the east.
Oh you’re on fire tonight! That’s two in a row. Yes, just like Star Trek. Jokes aside, it is a utopian vision of a militarised society.
No, not trying to make you feel guilty, merely curious. The stuff will have a long shelf life, so no hurry. I usually end up with the ‘hurry up’ problem when there is a trailer load of compost waiting to be distributed. Dude, we’re all gettin’ old! 🙂
Anyway, compost is the last thing on my mind today, because we went to the Seymour Alternative Farming Expo. So much fun and I reckon we were there about six hours all up. Interestingly the poultry sale had been shut down due to you-know-what, so we couldn’t buy any chickens. Oh well. There were some state goobermint folks there who got a bit of the defensive when I pointed out the expo wasn’t in an effected area. Might have said: “So you don’t trust people is what you’re trying to say! Chris, keeping it RL! 😉
A minor sour note. Had a most excellent cheese kransky for lunch. Actually the sausage was an innovation because it contained chilli, mild to my tastes, but still great. The bread roll had fried onions, extra cheese and American mustard, which is quite sweet rather than brain explodingly hot. Sometimes a dude needs some brain pain from hot mustard! Knowing the English, the heat probably comes from an addition of horseradish? Dunno.
Saw machines, lot’s of machines. Drool. More drool. The Editor thought one of the machines might not be a bad idea. We’ll see. The kelpie working dog folks had a good talk then demonstration. Ice cream, dipped in chocolate with a flake chocolate stuck in the side all in a waffle cone. Scoured through some tool shops and picked up a few items which were on the ‘list’.
So seriously, during the year when I get an idea for a handy tool that would be nice to have, but not necessarily needed, I add it to the ‘list’. At the expo there are what I impolitely describe as ‘sh#t shops’ full of all sorts of tools sold at reasonable prices, most of which are pretty good based on past experience.
I’ve heard similar reports from down under. Hmm. I keep expecting to hear that there are hidden and previously unknown costs for those drugs.
Oh well, guess you’ll be waiting a while for the release of the series. It happens, although makes little sense to me because people may turn to other sources which may not return much in the way of revenue.
That’s not good about the PTSD. I’ve heard that survivors guilt is very real and probably not something you’d want to have to deal with. On that note, I’ve spoken with people in bushfire affected areas where their house survived, yet the neighbours did not. Hmm. A lot of guilt there.
Allegedly in the news today there was some item about retirement funds being hit by hackers. The text appeared to be cagey about the losses.
The contents of the box sounded OK to me, although I’d ditch the pears into the soil. They’re meant to be consumed mildly fermented, although that process can be taken too far. Did you take much down to the Club? And how are they doing with the suddenly new management?
Yes, wait and the crowds will subside. Hopefully the store hours work out with your plan.
That’s what I thought too about the article. More internal photos of the tiny house would have been appreciated. Mind you, if someone paid $65k for the thing, it was probably pretty good. It’s such a great learning process for the kids that kind of thing.
It amuses me that the cheeky scamp wanted feedback on the replica. A rather confident person if I may say so. My gut feeling suggests the item may go back on the market, sans pinched photos.
Speaking of which, some cheeky wag used an old chunk of software on this website to distribute newsletters. Long ago I’d helped out a reader and installed some software, then forgotten about it. It had a minor exploit, which was exploited, as you do. Anyway, as soon as I noticed the weirdness, the software was deleted. The nice hosting folks worked out what was going on and I was very appreciative of their efforts. Anyway, so much for doing a good turn, then getting done.
Oh shame that the lady lost her head, but such things have been known to happen in history. The detail of the priestess is amazing.
What a surprise, but that particular model of tachometer is no longer made. Wonder why… It’s so wasteful, but even feedback now would be a waste of time.
Delightful weather here today too for the expo!
Cheers
Chris
Hi Chris,
Oh yeah, the rain. The heaviest rain is well south of us, like around Memphis, but we are on the northern edge of the rain area. The rain began on late Wednesday afternoon following a day of near 100% humidity and a high that reached 81F. Got a total of 1.0 inches from that rain, about 0.2 inches yesterday evening, and are predicted to get another 2 to 3 inches today through tomorrow. We’ll get the usual urban street and creek flooding but nothing like the river flooding that places like Arkansas and Tennessee are expecting. The worst part is that the area of the heaviest rain isn’t where the areas of excessive dryness and drought are, so it will be of limited benefit at best. And after it stops raining, it’ll get cold; we’ll likely to get frost or a light freeze, with the apple and pawpaw trees already in bloom. I’ll update you next week.
Claire
Yo, Chris – Yes, the Bald Eagles (and a lot of other birds) near bit the dust. Due to DDT. Thank you, Rachel Carson.
Julius Caesar had all kinds of plans, which were cut short. (Pun?). He wanted to create a lot of public libraries, around Rome. Once the civil wars settled down, that was realized, by his successor Augustus.
Our high yesterday was 57F (13.88C). Our overnight low was 32F (-0-C). Forecast high for today is 66F. I don’t know about that overnight low. I didn’t see any signs of frost, this morning. But, I’ll note it on my calendar, anyway. Prof. Mass has a post on soil temperatures and planting. I noticed a local store has cool weather veg bedding plants. I removed two more bags of compost, from the truck. 🙂
Sounds like you had a good time at the farming expo. A new machine or two, maybe some tools. And, of course, the tucker. Chili dogs have been a thing her for quit awhile. I even read a book, last year, about someone crossing America, searching for the perfect chili dog. 🙂 Sad about the mustard. Even our horseradish mustard is pretty tame. But, if you add a pinch or two of Coleman’s dry mustard, it becomes a real sinus clearer. Of course, the folks who really know how to do mustard right, are the folks from the Land of Stuff. Most of their restaurants here, always come with a small dish of dipping mustard. Which not only clears the sinus, but makes the eyes water. Wonderful stuff. A couple of questions. The expo? Alternative to what? And the sh#t tool stores? Is that used tools?
There was a very good movie (to me), back in 1971. “Trojan Women.” It’s after the fall of Troy, and the women of Troy are being divided up as the spoils of war. Helen has to be kept separate, from the rest of the prisoners, as, she wouldn’t have lasted long if thrown into the general population. Gotta blame someone I suppose.
I watched “A Night to Remember,” last night. One of the problems the movie had, when it came to America, was that it didn’t have any recognizable stars. To Americans. But, good reviews and word of mouth made it successful. Kenneth More was the lead, as Second Officer Lightoller. The actor was generally unknown to me, but I thought he looked familiar. Probably because he did a lot of BBC stuff. But I did spot David McCallum, as one of the Titanic radio officers. In the 60s, he became quit well known here, in the TV series, “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” (Also, more recently in the NCIS series. Which I don’t watch.) One of the many (and most popular) 1960s spy series. One of my cousins was quit enamored with him. 🙂 And, the baker who managed to survive the cold water by being well lubricated gets a lot of screen time.
How did I miss this? I was checking the library catalog, to see if they had the other 1950s Titanic movie, with all the American stars. No. But I spotted a mini-series called “Titanic: Blood and Steel.” Turns out, in 2012, for the 100th anniversary, there were two mini-series from the same company. “Blood and Steel” is about the building of the Titanic. The second, “Titanic”, is about the actual sinking. Which our library doesn’t have. BUT, all four episodes are available on U-Tub. I put the first one (building) on my hold list. Took a look at the trailer … and took it off my hold list. Just didn’t grab me. I’ll start watching the second one, later.
By the way, I got an e-mail, yesterday. At my suggestion, the library is ordering some copies of “The Last Wave.” I hope it’s the Criterion Collection version. Always interesting “extras.” I see “The Dig” is in transit, to me. With the changes to the library courier system, I might get it tomorrow. Or, maybe next week.
The pears have already been cut up and added to my kitchen scrap bag, for eventual deposit in the garden. I took down three bags of stuff, I didn’t want, to the Club. I’ll keep doing that, but, I’m stepping back from the pantry. I keep hearing there may be changes to the pantry, of which I have no part in. Moving it, whatever. Maybe doing away with it, entirely. I don’t feel to bad about it, on reflection. I’ve done it for three years, and someone else (who thinks they can do a better job), can step up. Besides, it will put an extra one to two hundred bucks in my pocket, each month 🙂 . I still might pick up condiments, as they never show up in our boxes.
If this big discount store follows the lead of it’s other stores, it will be open 24 hours a day. I’ll still do a lot of shopping at the discount yuppie food store, and the dollar + store. They’re closer to home. I figure I’ll go over to the big new store, a time or two a month.
Maybe your next tachometer will have a replaceable battery. Fingers crossed. Not a surprise the older one isn’t made, anymore. Word gets around. Even if you didn’t get the memo. 🙂 Lew
Fusing for DC- this was the video I found when I was looking into doing some DC loads, to see the difference from AC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zez2r1RPpWY
That’ll grab your attention!
Gonna tell us how the rooftop filming was done? Big ladder? Haven’t watched much of your utoob, so don’t know if you have some sort of motorized camera, but the image didn’t look hand held.
wet roofs- true story- My summer job during college was painting barns and houses, working for the high school wrestling coach (that was his summer job as well).
He got the contract to repaint a barn roof, which the galvanizing had started to fade, and rust was beginning. We were pretty busy that summer, so he asked if I thought I could do it on my own. I saw yes, he dropped off the paint and gear, and left for the next job.
Well, I jury rigged a dicey access scheme, since young men are invincible, don’t you know, and got to painting. I was over half done, when I could see rain clouds advancing, but really didn’t want too leave the job undone, so tried to beat the rain.
I did not. Shocking how quickly my boots no longer afforded traction. I slid down to the lower edge of the roof, and gripping the edge of the roof with my hands, slowly inched my way over to the ladder. Awfully glad that my hands were able to grip tight enough to hold fast. Anyway, made it off the roof, but could easily made it off much quicker and against my will. I don’t mind heights, and still climb trees and such, even get up on my own barn roof, but am no longer invincible, so act accordingly.
Chris:
We have that small battery-powered leaf blower, except that it is a Milwaukee brand. Sometimes I think my son has every tool Milwaukee has made. Ha, ha – we had the sort of experience you did when we turned on the attic/whole house fan while we had a fire going in the fireplace. What a mess, and we’re lucky the house didn’t burn down.
I have never waited to see if the busy talker is upset about me ending the conversation. I just get out of there.
I just don’t know about the rats. I would like to just stick my head in the sand, but I’d probably come face to face with one in a tunnel. I still think they are in the upper garden (that’s not where the greenhouse is), but they’re being coy. I’ll soon know by what disappears. I have covered the young pea shoots as best I can with mosquito netting. So many things love young pea shoots.
Is it sodium hydroxide that you use for your soap? Liquid or powder?
I wish I had a chilli cheese kransky . . .
Pam
Chris,
The Shogun book is/was excellent. I enjoy reading it every few years. Yes, loosely based on historical persons and events.
Sounds to me as if the tourists want koalas on demand. It’s a wild area, not a zoo.
The Princess has an idea about the koalas and the tourists. The tourists need to make reservations 3 months in advance, date and exact time, in order to see koalas. The locals will then push a cage out of the bush. The cage will contain a stuffed toy animal that looks like a koala, the stuffed animal being radio controlled so it will do tricks for the tourists. For a fee, a local will take a picture of the tourists as they drive by their scheduled koala.
The cost of constructing city sewer in your remote area would be beyond prohibitive, wouldn’t it? And aren’t there a lot of hills to pump the sewage over, or to deeply dig through for pipe placement? Some things just aren’t meant to happen. That said, my opinion is that your worm farm is a better use for the sewage than what is typically done by the city sewer.
Hmmmm, every time I hear that phrase “city sewer”, I’m reminded of an old Far Side cartoon. A family of alligators are in a shack in the swamp. Entering their door is an alligator carrying a suitcase. One of the family in the shack says, “Hey! It’s uncle Erwin from the city sewer!”
Yes, keeping all of your systems running is good work for the brain. As is the planning you do for the future. A lot of the work you do on the farm systems also requires that the brain be engaged. Good stuff.
Nope, no story about sliding on the metal roof. I just remember my imagination was working in high gear while I was up there.
The time that I was somewhat nervous and rather irritated was in one of the pine trees in dad’s yard. Tree branches would rub against the power lines when it was windy. Naturally, he never asked me to climb the tree and trim the branches when it was calm. Oh no, not him. I had to climb the tree during sustained winds of 30km/hour with higher gusts, limbs rubbing against the power lines, saw them off with a human powered pruning saw. 10 meters up the tree, that tree was swaying, let me tell you. I was NOT happy up there.
The farm expo sounds fun. The kransky sounds wonderful. More than wonderful. Glad you both resisted the urge to buy kore machines.
No, it makes a lot of sense that the rocks are graded by potential use. It seems natural to do that, at least to my mind. But I lean towards that type of analysis by nature.
I learned to pronounce nemesis much the way you pronounce it.
Haven’t played banjo in decades. Unfortunately. Some unfortunate injury issues kept me from playing for several years. I still have a few issues with that wrist on occasion.
Roll the dice and hope for the best. Sounds like how many people go through life. 🙂
DJSpo
Hi Claire,
Warm days accompanied by high humidity are unpleasant to say the least, and the pressure in the build up to such storms can be felt. Hope you both did OK in those awful conditions? Memphis is a notably wet climate, even in the more usual years. Their average would be near record breaking here – and I’d be freaking out.
Is that a month’s worth of rain in only a few days? How’s the big river looking? Too much rain is hard on plants, especially young seedlings. Fingers crossed your garden drains quickly.
Oh my! A cold snap like that can knock trees around. Mostly the vegetables survive, but blossoms and early fruit maybe toast. Bizarrely some of the apricot crop here survived a late spring snowfall last year, so you never know. Apples are one tough tree, maybe. Good luck and I’m thinking of you. Hope it’s not too bad.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the video, but I knew about this matter. Hmm. One of the reasons I upgraded all of the fuses right across the system, was that there was a DC arcing incident. Not good. Switch gear for disconnecting DC loads needs to be very good indeed, thus the use of relays and other such devices. They’re just more expensive which is why we use AC in houses – it’s cheaper.
🙂 You have an alert mind. Respect. The camera tripod was anchored over a ridge line on the roof. Two legs were on one side, whilst the another was on the other side. The camera was very sturdily anchored. A good tripod makes a huge difference to filming.
Always wise to have a summer job at such a young age. Worked in a Tandy Electronics store myself. 🙂
Oh my what a story, and you also proved that if a person wants to hang off a roof by their fingers, they’d best be young and strong! Oh man, I so hear you there, and nowadays I pour over the weather forecast and try and plan work accordingly – as no doubts you do.
You got quite lucky that your fingers were able to grab the edge of the roof, and that it could support your weight. We’ve all been there!
It’s a hard lesson to learn, but also a truly valuable one to recall for future usage.
Cleaned out the greenhouse today of the tomato vines. It was a difficult decision, but with a 4’C morning, the question becomes: Does a person need a memo that the growing season is near done?
Cheers
Chris
Hi Pam,
Ooo, cue machinery envy! 😉 Milwaukee make great tools, there’s no getting around that, and in the reviews (yes, I watch such things as Project Farm on utoob – such a great independent tester of all sorts of products, the viewing is riveting) that brand does score consistently well. I use DeWalt and Stihl stuff, but mostly because I have the batteries. Plus Stihl make commercial grade chainsaws – which are needed here.
Hehe! It happens, oh yeah, dust like that incident is a real pain and if I might add, not burning down the house is a very good thing. 🙂 Hmm. Last night I spent an hour with the vacuum cleaning up the dust. The other pain is hay-fever from excessive dust…
It’s a good option to end the conversation and run, although here you can blame curiosity, I can’t say for sure what the impact of cutting it short is. Dunno. A mystery, and usually I’m clued in to what people’s emotional states are, but that situation draws a total blank. It could well be that the people who do such things, are even more mystified? Or maybe they just haven’t learned to do small talk? It’s a skill that.
Absolutely, Pam, it would be awful to confront rats on their own turf, and you’d be upside down too! Yes, here you must be guided by your gut feelings and avoid poking extraneous body parts into the sand. Seems like good advice! 😉 Youch, and agreed, the rats know more about your garden than the three of you combined. Fingers crossed that they are unable to cross the territory, and that Mr Baby does his job.
Yup, one of the ingredients is 98% Sodium Hydroxide. It’s in a crystal form, which looks like small granular chunks. Nasty stuff and soap making is not an activity for the careless. But the soap produced is amazing quality.
Pam, look I must talk up the chilli cheese kransky. I know it sounds funny, but it’s a highlight of the culinary year. You could go to the local supermarket which has a well stocked deli and purchase the sausages, but! Are they going to be cooked on a massively large round metal cast iron grill suspended over smoking charcoal which had been burning for hours? I don’t think so. I tell you, it’s complicated, now in the aftermath I’m feeling loss at the completion of the journey, and yet at the same time looking forward to next year. If you ever do come across well made chilli cheese Polish style pork sausages I’d recommend the test. Do they even have such deli delights in your part of the world?
Cheers
Chris
Hi DJ,
Hmm, your words are an excellent recommendation, and sound like a good idea to delve into once more. And don’t you reckon the best books are the ones you come back to time and time again? For some reason unknown to me, Jack Vance’s ‘Demon Princes’ series of five books deeply resonated, and I could delve into that world every year, easy, and simply enjoy the story telling even though I know where it concludes.
Who knew that tourists could be demanding? What do you mean that this random occurrence utterly outside anyone’s control hasn’t happened – someone’s gonna pay bad! 🙂 Kudos to your lady for a fine work around to the onslaught. Last I heard, the local council there and locals have decided to stop buses from parking in the area. It is a main road – the only one. We now no longer visit that area, it’s too much.
Oh yeah, the pipes and pumps and creek crossing would be an extraordinary cost, and so far removed from economic realities that it hurts the mind thinking about the craziness. It’ll never happen. The worm farm is a great system, and operates using gravity and critters. I tell you what, the forest animals would be rather unhappy if the output from the worm farm suddenly ceased – it produces the greenest and most cropped ground cover plants that I’ve seen around here. Plus those forest animals spread the mineral fertility outwards. The current expectations for sewerage systems in rural areas haven’t been in place for all that long. Way back in the day, peoples poop was used as a valuable resource.
That’s a very funny cartoon, and so true. My favourite was a pilot and co-pilot looking out the window of a large commercial aircraft with the caption: “What’s that goat doing up in the clouds”.
You get better at this stuff too over the years. Today we pulled the tomato vines from the greenhouse. Sure there are some warmer days coming up, but you know deep in your bones that the winter crops (radish, beetroot, kale and mustard) need to get into the ground and grow before it gets too cold. Of course it helped that this morning was 4’C and the weather sensor readout in the kitchen suggested that the felt like temperature was 2’C. Took Ollie out to do his morning ablutions and couldn’t fault the ‘feels like’ temperature… 🙂
Respect. I too consider worst case scenarios when the outcome is possibly pretty bad. Not sure what other folks do on that front, but risk is an aspect you have to take into account consciously, if at all possible.
I wouldn’t have been happy about that either. What’s wrong with doing such work when there’s no wind? Out of curiosity, was he good with maintaining things? For your interest, Sandra’s parents used to send her up the tree and do a similar pruning job, for the exact same reasons – except not usually when it was windy. Idiotically, they’d planted a pine tree underneath the power line linking the house to the street – as you do. I guess not everyone can look at a situation and/or thing and see where it will go.
Yeah, the farm expo was fun, but I’m not entirely sure that we resisted the urge to buy more machines. 😉 Let’s just put it this way, a serious enquiry was made and they were talking prices for a demo unit. Hmm. I’m leaving that one to fate and will know more next week, if it’s meant to be, it will work out.
What, is there another way to look at these things? Maybe I don’t want to know. Rocks are very useful and if carefully placed create a pleasing aesthetic.
Thanks, as I was wondering about how that word was pronounced in your country. Probably a local accent I’d heard from elsewhere. Interestingly the accent is pretty standard right across the continent down here, although there are a few minor local differences.
Oh far out, sorry I forgot about your hand injury. You haven’t mentioned it for ages, how’s it all healing up? And do you have full use now?
Well, when you have to act in the face of limited information, I guess doing nothing is always an option, and dunno about you, but overall I’d prefer action. That’s the murky world where gut feelings rise to the surface. But are they right? 😉
At this point it might be worth saying: Ugg! And you know what I mean! 🙂
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
I appreciate the weight and mojo of the book Silent Spring, and the extraordinary impact and reach it had, but do you ever wonder how a single book can produce such profound turning point? It’s pretty awesome to consider don’t you reckon? And um, if I may say so, I rarely see insects in the big smoke. Maybe it is just because they are everywhere up here and that’s become the new norm for me. Dunno.
I’ve mentioned this to you before, but a few years ago I read a fiction book from just prior to the time of Silent Spring and the general advice to deal with insects was chuck some DDT into the water. As you do. It was a tea spitting in surprise reading moment. No doubts we’ll be leaving written records to the future of some truly odd activities from these days. Makes you wonder doesn’t it?
Like the pun, very nice and rather appropriate. The ancient Roman public libraries would have held some treasures.
Your night was rather chilly if I may say so. It was 4’C / 40’F this morning here, and that was a touch brisk. Yeah, I would also call that frost worthy weather which cold sensitive seedlings would not like. Frost ice (not sure what it’s technically called) doesn’t always form at such air temperatures down here, and I have no idea why.
Thanks for the heads up on the Professors essay and I’ll check it out after. Hey, the little lonely lost hour returns tonight in a couple of hours time. About time, I could use the extra sleep.
Good stuff with the mushroom compost. Slowly but surely, always wins the race, although that’s what they tell me and it’s not a statistically valid survey.
We ripped out the tomato vines from the greenhouse this afternoon, then cleaned and fed the soil. Ran over all of the tomato vines using the ride on mower. Turned three plants upside down to see whether the fruit ripens. And collected plenty of late season green tomatoes which look as if they are likely to ripen inside the house. They might. Feeding the soil is always fun work and feels as if a person is doing some good.
Probably plant out the winter seeds in the greenhouse tomorrow. There’s meant to be a run of warmer days later in the week, so the plants hopefully get to grow fast in those conditions.
It was a fun day, and it is something I look forward to each year. I’d imagine that the crowds there today would have been feral being a weekend, so it’s nice to go on a weekday. I see, hmm, you know I’ve never seen a chilli dog for sale down here. Interesting and probably very tasty. In this case, the chili was part of the sausage mixture, so it was a hot sausage – which sounds all a bit strange now that I’ve typed it out. Oh well, moving on… 🙂
Such journeys are the stuff of legend. I recall you mentioning the book and was wondering if the author came to acceptance that perhaps there was no perfect chili dog?
Yeah, the American mustard is tasty, I just wanted some brain pain, eye watering, and oh my gawds my mouth is on serious fire and can’t be put out, kind of a mustard. A touch of horseradish will produce that result! 😉 One must be content with what they have available to them. Absolutely, Coleman’s will lift you to such heady heights, or is it lower you to the pits of hell? Hard to be sure, but it’s sure gonna get them sinuses clear.
Oh, the Sh#t shops (not their official name, just my cheeky description) sell all new tools. There are just tables and tables of all sorts of useful stuff, and people are scouring over the offerings, myself included. The stuff is usually well priced too.
And I’m not entirely sure (and it’s a great question) but the ‘alternative’ may refer to small holders and hobby farmers. We’ve been to the expos pitched at the bigger farmers, and those are called ‘field days’, not sure why – the appeal wasn’t quite there because the scale of the machines and other stuff was not appropriate for our uses. The sausage guy was there though.
I guess in those days, being on the losing side of a war meant ending up as a slave in ancient Greece, so blame could very well take on quite a physical dimension. From all I’ve read it is a superb film. Your taste is good.
How have I missed the Man from U.N.C.L.E? Lots of loose threads left deliberately. An intriguing plot device. Lead character out acted by a support character. David McCallum had a very long and successful career.
The baker is another mystery, although I went into a deep dive on that topic a while ago and I sort of got the impression that the booze did something to stop him from having a heart attack. To be honest there were a lot of ‘don’t do this at home kids’ kind of warnings as to reproducing his feat of endurance. There are some folks who do such feats, but it takes a lot out of them.
Man, I’m crashing out. Will speak tomorrow.
Cheers
Chris
Chris:
This just in:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2ewxjjw842o
Why don’t we love rats? We know they only have our interests at heart. Scroll down a bit to see the UK (who isn’t?) is full of rats.
Pam
Yo, Chris – When Shogun, the series came out, I had just began working at the B. Dalton Bookstore in the Lloyd Center Shopping Mall. In Portland. The beginning of my meteoric rise, through that corporation 🙂 . I did a window display. Borrowed a spectacular Japanese wedding kimono, and some other Japanese tat. All of Clavell’s books, in paperback or hardback. We sold a lot of books out of that window. More probably due to the series, than my display.
At the same time, I knew a young Japanese girl, who worked in another store, down the mall. Every night the series was televised, we slammed our stores shut, and headed to a local bar, where they were televising the series. She translated, as it went along. She seemed really hesitant, and I asked her about that. She said it was very authentic, and they were using language as it was spoken, at that time. She compared it to trying to read Shakespeare. Makes sense. Time period was about the same.
Summer jobs. I just read an article yesterday, about young folks and summer jobs.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/04/health/teen-jobs-essay-wellness
I’ve seen footage, from the 1940s and 50s, of school kids sitting outside, having lunch … as a big truck drives by and envelopes them in clouds of DDT. To show how safe it was. Another thing interesting about old school footage, is how thin and fit the kids are. Hardly a fatty in sight.
But speaking of birds, there was this …
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/04/uk/hawk-flamstead-captured-terrorized-residents-intl-scli-gbr
Roman libraries were pretty interesting. I studied them a bit, for my library classes. I even have a book or two, about them. Other ancient cities had public libraries, before Rome (Alexandria comes to mind.) They were a bit late to the game. But eventually, there were as many as 27 in the city. Most were divided into Latin and Greek collections. In the Villa of the Papyri, the Greek part has been found. The Latin part may still await discovery.
A lot of the workers in the libraries, were public slaves. I once saw a tombstone that was a doctor, who cared for library workers.
Speaking of the Romans, it looks like the summer archaeological field season, is kicking off, in the northern hemisphere.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/04/science/mass-grave-roman-soldiers-austria-intl-scli
Our high yesterday was 64F (17.77C). The overnight low was 34F (1.11C). Forecast high for today is 69F. Cold enough to freeze, but no frost? Got me. Probably has to do with dew point, or something.
Never enough time to do all the tasks I think I’m going to do, in the garden. I weeded out one of the garlic beds, and scattered about some of the mushroom compost. I beat back some of the mustard, and some of the German Chamomile. I was curious. Chamomile can be a perennial, and annual, or a biennial. Depends on how cold the winter is. I had a hard time getting them started, last year. Now, they’re all over the place. 🙂 I also noticed that there are lots of ladybugs, about.
When we think of a chili dog, here, it’s more something like this.
https://w.wiki/Didn
It’s pretty much standard restaurant fare.
Oh, I figured that was a cheeky description. 🙂 Actually, someone could make a good living, hunting up old tools, refurbishing them, and flogging them at an alt-expo. Although they may have some rule against flogging used goods. Flea markets and boot sales might be more appropriate.
“Field days,” are outdoor military displays, sports displays, or, social gatherings. Probably, because they happen in a field 🙂 . I think animals have “field trials?”
I still remember being quit gobsmacked, when I first saw “Trojan Women.” Some little theatre, close to Uni. It IS a tragedy. Tragedy on tragedy. Not something to see if you’re feeling a little down in the mouth. 🙂
I swung by the library, this morning, and “The Dig” was waiting for me. I probably won’t watch it, tonight. I started to watch “Wildcat,” last night. A bio-pic of the author Flannery O’Connor. I think I tried to read her, years ago. Not my cup of tea, who knows why. But, I like author bio-pics, even if I don’t read there stuff. I never made it to the movie. There were “extras”. Lots of extras, and they were interesting. The actor Ethan Hawke’s mother, was an O’Connor fan. And so was he. His daughter, Maya Hawke, came to him, and asked if he’d be interested in making a film about O’Connor. That she would hire him to direct it. She plays O’Connor. So that might be on the agenda, for tonight.
“Listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere…” 🙂 A few days ago, I picked up a book. “The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America.” (Kennedy, 2025.) It’s well written, and pretty engrossing. Lew
Chris:
As far as I know we have all of the world’s delights in my part of the world, I’m just missing out on them . . .
Pam
Chris:
Hey – I liked Project Farm, I like the topic and I think he probably knows a lot, but that fellow talks too fast. It makes me nervous. Kind of like those people who just keep on talking nonstop that we were just discussing.
Pam
Hi Pam,
Oh yes, fast talkers are an interesting bunch, and candidly make me nervous too. Does my brain work at such speeds? Maybe, but I do wonder what important matters they’re trying to slip past me, and you may feel the same? However, I believe that with the project farm guy, he deliberately speeds his voice up as a form of brand enhancement. I get that. To be honest, in my day to day talk, I kind of speak at my own rate so as to be comprehensible. The idea is to convey and discuss messages, but fast talkers have other ideals…
I so hear you about that. You know, I work six days per week and just hope that it’s enough. Life fleets past, yup. But what do you do? This seems to be my lot. If you work this matter out, please do let me know.
On that note, moved about six oak trees today. One of them was an evergreen variety. They’d all been raised from acorns, but for various reasons were planted in an area where they’d not been able to get enough attention during hot and dry summer periods. They’ll require watering for the next month or so. Oh well, there’s no really good time to do such work.
Hmm, I had a t-shirt with that exact mine warning sign from that country. Mr Pot and his utopian seeking cronies were all bad apples. On the other hand, Ronin the rat has an enviable sniffer. What I want to know is how is an African pouched rat not a marsupial?
And that is interesting. I’d have to suggest that rather than having too many rats, the folks there have too few cats and dogs. Dame Plum would never tolerant such rodent mischief.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
I loved the old timey shop window displays. It’s all about brand recognition in these more enlightened days. The Editor used to work at one of the big department stores in the big smoke (one which appears to me to have lost it’s way), and knew people who did that work. I reckon it pulled in the punters, and if I may say so, is a form of art.
🙂 Dude, that’s a really fun story and some settings are just made for convivial conversations and shared entertainment. As a perpetually tired uni student studying part time whilst working a full time job, after uni one night I jumped off the train at the station and headed into a bar across the road. The plan was to meet a friend of mine, who was there. In those days plans were made and kept. It was during winter, late, dark, and I ended up having a lovely chat with a young lady who was reading ‘Lord of the Rings’. Being the recession, she candidly told me that the heating bills were killing her and the pub was warm and sort of lit. Sometimes it’s nice just to hang out with your people. I was too tired to pursue anything and in those days had troubles keeping up with my peers social lives.
Yes, working as a teenager will teach you things that no school ever will. And you get mad cash, what’s not to like about that? I regret not having ever done hospo work, but did retail which is sort of close, but not quite.
Dude, people in footage from the 1970’s look like me. Hmm. It’s really a sign that the soils ain’t as fertile as they once were. As a society, we grow plants nowadays (and the livestock consume such plants) with less proteins, minerals and enzymes, every year – and this has been going on for longer than you and I have been around. There’s consequences for this.
I feel sorry for the hawk, and am always careful with my interactions with the local birds, they’re not pets. All I can but hope is that we can align their interests with ours.
Out of curiosity, do we know whether the Roman libraries were opened to all? And makes you wonder about possible finds at Pompeii. Some of the techniques to recover papyrus could reveal who knows what treat.
The Romans were in decline by the 1st century, and the costs of defending against the Germanic tribes was really begin to add up. Kind of a weird return on investment matter. It was interesting that few weapons were found in the mass grave – which suggests who dug it.
Ah, dew point of course! Something to which I don’t quite comprehend.
Exactly, how does anyone get all the necessary stuff done, let alone anything extra? Today we moved six small oak trees to a more suitable site where they’ll get more care and attention in future summers. The trees are tough as, but they don’t grow when soil conditions become too dry either. Man, it’s hard to get everything which needs doing done, then extend the infrastructure / growing area. Sooner or later you hit a point where maintenance is only what you’re doing. Then even that gets too much. I’ve seen such gardens.
🙂 Chili dogs look great, but are simply not seen down here. Those were what I thought you were talking about.
I agree, people make a good living now scouring through discarded items. There’s a well known brand of battery vacuum machine which often get discarded due to uncleaned filters and/or faulty batteries. Those machines aren’t hard to fix, and they get resold. We’re very wasteful as a society, and plenty of old machines can be repaired. It’s getting harder to do so with newer equipment.
Very good, yup. Field days are indeed held in a field. And working dog trials are indeed called that. Do the words convey proper meaning though?
Agreed, the ancient Greeks (and Trojans for that matter) sure knew tragedy. I recall many years ago reading a collection of plays from Euripides. He wove that state of existence throughout the works. I tend to believe that in the west we ignore such over arching themes to our peril, for sometimes we’re blindsided and know not how to react without serious emoting. All rather dull really, and mostly inappropriate.
Flannery O’Connor is a fascinating author, and one I’d not previously encountered. The uncanny comprehension of human behaviour has piqued my interest. Hmm. Did you enjoy the bio-pic? Sounds like a surgical procedure! 😉
Far out I better get writing.
Cheers
Chris
Yo, Chris – Rats! I thought maybe Pam linked to an article I saw yesterday, but that was something completely different. The Birmingham, England, garbage haulers have been on strike, for a number of weeks. And, boy, has the garbage piled up! Along with the rats. You think you have problems … 🙂 .
I’ve always had a bit of a knack for display. Even if it was just books with no tat to go along with it. My uncle Larry did display for Sears, for years. Pubs and other public places are known as “3d spaces.” In general for people. There’s home, work … and third spaces that people’s lives revolve around. My third space would be the Club.
I think hospo and retail are very similar. Having worked both. Pretty much the same “life lessons” are learned.
You’ve mentioned it, before, but I recently saw an article that nutrients have decline, across the board, by about 40%. On average. I think it may be time to sprinkle a bit of stove ash, around. Haven’t done that, since fall. I’ve got to get that boron into the soil. See, I listen to what you say. 🙂
We really don’t know much about the inner workings of Roman libraries, and it probably varied depending on who was running the show. But, in general, they seemed to be open to all. If nothing else, you could probably slip an attendant, a bit of jingle. Rome also had a number of book sellers. All located in one area. They had slaves, to make copies of manuscripts. You could buy “off the rack” editions, or, commission something of better quality paper, and more guaranteed “true” copies. I suppose there was also a bit of a trade in used manuscript roles.
I think the article mentioned the lack of any items, in the Roman military pit. Scavenging battle fields was a time honored custom.
Our high yesterday was 73F (22.77C). The overnight low was 46F (7.77C). Forecast for today is 58F. The rain came back, late last night. I heard it start, just before I went to bed. A good thing I hit the garden hard, yesterday. H and I just missed a shower, this morning.
I spent about three hours in the garden, early evening. There was weeding, and a lot of mushroom compost, scattered about. I weeded out the horseradish barrel, and topped it up, with compost. I’m digging out the Jerusalem artichoke barrel, as I want to use that for tomatillos, this year. Most of the garlic beds got a top dressing of compost. Hacked back the mustard. Still a ways to go.
I had a hard time getting my German Chamomile started, last year. But it really took off, late. I had dug out quit a bit, the other night. And left one plant … that turned out not to be chamomile. It was a carrot. I pulled it (it went into last nights dinner), and, I hadn’t gotten to a coupe of chamomile volunteers. So, I mixed a lot of compost into the soil, and moved them to where I want the plant.
Old machines, even machines that are not so old, are generally of better quality than the new stuff. I think. Well worth taking a look at, and repairing if possible. I think I mentioned the last place I lived had many vacuum cleaners, that just needed a good cleaning, and maybe a belt replacement. Available at most hardware stores.
Field trials, etc.. “…words convey proper meanings.” Well, they do to those in the know. 🙂 I think a lot of work, or jobs have their own vocabularies. And that’s half the battle of learning a trade or skill. I read a few more chapters of “Outflow”, last night. Many words particular to that part of the world. But, the author was kind enough to provide a glossary, right up front.
I watched the Flannery O’Connor movie, last night. It was pretty good, and I’m sure catnip to her fans. There were short, dramatizations of some of her short stories. So, am I tempted to pick up some of her work, to read? No. I now have a good overview of her life and work. If she comes up in polite conversation, I can at least make a (I hope) intelligent comment or two. 🙂 Lew