The Great e-Scrape is Over

The chunks of stump now waiting to be burnt off

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Books are such wonderful things. A few years ago we indulged and purchased the entire collection of Jack Vance books in their Spatterlight edition. It sure is a lot of books and takes up a fair bit of space. The unusual name refers to one of the author’s narrative plot devices, but in reality it is a print on demand version of the Vance Integral Edition. Sounds impressive, but is what happened when a worldwide bunch of fans gets together and restores the texts to what the author originally had in mind. What joy I’ve had in the years since reading and re-reading the wondrous worlds created by that mercurial mind.

Around lunchtime today by sheer chance I happened to notice the large box of Stephen King’s books. Many a wee early hour of the morning has been spent wide awake in sheer terror wondering what may happen to the protagonists in their normal day to day activities, which by some act of strangeness, descends into a nightmare status mode six scenario! Oh my, I’d not expected such outcomes, and lost sleep was a fair price to pay to discover the conclusion. That author’s work was also cut by Editors (lovely people) and I’ve always been left wondering why the publisher deleted 400 pages from the original version of: ‘The Stand’. I’d not noticed one wasted sentence in the more complete edition, put it that way.

Then there was another box containing a multitude of Agatha Christie’s writings. Sure the author may have disliked the fictional character Poirot, but is an author really ever in control of their creations? And he seemed charming enough to me, if somewhat pompous. But then Sir Arthur Conan Doyle produced the not so charming fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, who candidly seemed like a bit of sociopath, and took credit for much of Dr Watson’s leg work. I prefer my fictional psychopaths to be a bit less self righteous, and the complete Dexter collection by Jeff Lindsay also sits in the bookshelf.

Speaking of which, there are long term plans to fix up the book shelves which line the hallway. The dust from a dirt road, combined with a wood heater are brutal on books. It would be nice to have some glazed doors protecting the wonderful contents, and maybe one of those sliding ladders so that the items nine foot or more above the floor can be reached! A ladder! A ladder! It’d look so cool.

Reading is one of my joys. It’s so nice to settle in with a book, have a mug coffee casually to one side with maybe some hot fruit toast slathered in butter, or a small chunk of cake. Now if only I could get paid for doing that activity, what a wonderful existence it would be. Woe is me, for I have to work, as does Sandra (who also enjoys the gentle art of reading).

Over the weekend, I was speaking with friends about all things AI (or otherwise hence known here as that thing Arty-Fish-Al Intelligence software). You know why that software is smart? My mates tell me that it disappears billions of dollars in mad cash to train the things, and that involves being paid to read, lots and lots. Look, I’d take the cash for doing that activity, even if it meant reading books that were of no interest. It’d be a sacrifice, but I’m up for it. Please send cheques to…

Here I must fess up, and they do tell me that confession is good for the soul. I have began reading the occasional book in the past, and put it down halfway through. One or two were even burnt, yes, it’s true! The textilogical demons needed to be exorcised by feeding them to the flames, and well, they didn’t have any choice did they? Anyway, I was protecting others from being exposed to such drivel. Yeah, maybe I was!

Alas, in these enlightened times there are no jobs for the serious reader, and sadly unlike AI, nobody has offered me billions for doing so. Cogitating upon the awful predicament of extreme wealth, I’m unsure if I’d live much differently to today. Although a few years ago I hired a Vermeer S800TX Mini Skid Steer Loader and was very impressed. I’d probably buy one of those, or an equivalent. It was really handy, but then by doing all the work around the property manually, I don’t have to go to a gym, or worry about the sheer number of cakes consumed whilst reading fine literature…

A few months ago I noticed on the statistics for this interweb site, that the AI robots had finally consumed as much text as they cared to do so. Things settled back down to normal, whatever that is. On a side note, it amuses me to consider that my values have been sucked into those models, only to be spat out again at some hapless unsuspecting user. But then the software monsters probably have been gorging to repletion upon some err, filter-free, opinions elsewhere on the interweb, and who knows what might come of that feast?

In more practical terms, with the website traffic at normal levels, the local Australian servers work faster, for me at least. If a person considers the blog text and the comments, I’d say we’re at around the ten million word mark. It’s a lot, and the site was a fat target for the hungry Arty-Fish-Al, and thankfully now is being ignored.

Interestingly, the other day I did a Google search to look up something or other, and noticed that the AI summary had disappeared. I’m grateful for that too, because I’ve observed in my professional life, that a few times the Arty-Fish-Al software returned an incorrect answer based on old information. They clearly don’t keep up to date with their reading those cheeky scamps! Remember that it costs a lot of mad cash to have those programs spending their moments reading (I’ll do the job cheaper, pretty please!)

I’m kind of wondering if the tech bros are running out of mad cash with which to pursue their AI dreams? Reminds me of a song: “To dream, the impossible dream!” Dunno where that came from, and it sounds an awful lot like a musical, but rest assured lovely readers, this blog will never be interrupted by an impromptu song and dance routine! That is guaranteed. Anyway, a lot of hopes are riding on those dream things, but the author Mr King proved to me that dreams can turn to nightmares, so my gut feeling suggests that human creativity will never be replaced by machine slop.

The bonfire begun last week, continued to burn on into Monday, and was slowly pushed together before eventually becoming ashes. No books were harmed in the process.

The big tree stump took a few days to burn. Super tough timber

Whilst attending to the bonfire, I decided to flatten out a nearby mound. We’d never been able to mow the mound because it had plenty of rocks. Presumably the loggers bulldozers decades ago had also worked around it because of the rocks. They run the risk of slipping off their caterpillar tracks and it is neither quick nor easy to get them back on again.

The mound looked more impressive than it appears in the photograph

The scary old rototiller and I slowly worked on the soil. It’s a great machine and can actually move small piles of clay easily. However, the rotating tines don’t like rocks, although they will loosen them. A useful pile of rocks soon developed and eventually the site became flat.

A few large rocks were discovered that need to be split

Two very large boulders were discovered in the process, and we’ll split them at a later date. Both will make very useful large rock wall rocks. Once the site was flat and the soil was loose, the big Japanese mower was used to smooth out the surface and mix in all of the chopped up organic matter. In two years time, it’ll look great.

The big Japanese mower was used to smooth out the soil surface

I must have been feeling very energetic this week, because I tackled one of the two upside down tree stumps in that area. A couple of hours work reduced the behemoth to about a quarter of it’s original size.

A large upside down tree stump was removed from the soil

I was defeated by the remaining chunk. We even hooked up 8,000kg breaking strain heavy duty nylon recovery straps to the stump and tried to pull the remainder out of the ground with the Japanese mower, but to no avail. Here is a closer image of the mess:

Looking at the tree stump and depression on the uphill side of the mess

A few days later… I began digging all around the stump, and sure enough, there were three buried arms. By the end of the job, I’d dug four feet down, then cut off the arms with the chainsaw. The heavy chunk could then be rolled out of the large hole I’d created.

It was a pleasure to see the chunks of timber arranged neatly on the now cool fire pit. I’ll burn them off once the next upside down tree stump gets done.

We then set about removing every rock protruding from the soil in that area. It’s pleasing to see the many useful piles of rocks building up, and this area was like striking a granitic gold mine! Every rock is useful around here, unless it is a Moby body rock and thus too big for us to do anything with. Once the rocks were removed, we backfilled the holes using a mattock and spade, then used the Japanese mower to smooth out the soil.

You'd never know the mess which only once was. And look at that fine dog and rock pile! — You’d never know the mess which only once was. And look at that fine dog and rock pile!

Observant readers will notice the second upside down tree stump lurking above Ollie in the previous photo.

Spring is on its way here. I noticed that one of the Mulberry trees has begun producing leaves, with some of the larger ones showing signs of frost damage.

A Mulberry tree is beginning to produce leaves

And in complete climate weirdness, the raspberry canes produced a few tasteless berries.

More climate weirdness, raspberries in July

It’s probably not a smart move to change the composition of gases in the planet’s atmosphere. And people oh so concerned about climate change, might want to take a good, long, hard look at how much energy those Arty-Fish-Al machines use to produce slop. I can read books for heaps cheaper, please do send me a cheque to…

Anyway, the warming climate is great for growing citrus here.

One of the young citrus trees is enjoying the conditions

Onto the flowers:

Succulents likewise love the growing conditions at this location

The Hellebores are very pretty additions to shady parts of the garden

And Hellebores come in a number of colours

Early Daffodils have only just opened their flowers today

We have clumps of Daffodils growing all over the place

The temperature outside now at about 11am is 8’C (43’F). So far for this year there has been 741.2mm (29.2 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 736.6mm (29.0 inches)

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4 responses to “The Great e-Scrape is Over”

July 27, 2026

Lew

Yo, Chris – Some book editors have been accused of almost entirely writing some authors books. Not so, in the case of Mr. King. That book I read a few months ago, by a Stephen King scholar (yes, there are such things these days), traced the back and forth edits, on a few of his books. Sometimes, King would take a suggestion, from his editor. Other times, stand his ground. Occasionally, King would come up with something entirely new, that worked best.

When “The Stand” came out, King didn’t quit have the following, he does today. The 400 pages were cut, because the potential cost of the book just didn’t pencil out. I’m sure, as an accountant, you can appreciate this. 🙂 But, once he had a massive following, who would pay just about anything for one of his books, the pages were restored.

Some authors claim their characters, once committed to the page, just take off and do their own thing. Often, much to the surprise of the author. Dickens claimed his characters … arrived. Almost in three dimension.

Rolling ladders. I seem to remember, in the stores I worked in, they had a nifty little trick. They generally sat close to the wall. Lift and pull, and they provided an angle that could be climbed. Lift and push, and they sat back against the wall.

You’re more likely to be paid for silk worms on your mulberry bush, than to read. 🙂 Although, if you search “jobs for readers,” there are plenty of leads. I think there was even a book, at one point.

I’ve never burned a book. Though I’ve sent plenty to the landfill.

Speaking of gyms and fitness, and all, I just read an article by Matt Damon about the prep he had to do to tackle the Odyssey role. It’s pretty interesting. I thought.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/odyssey-star-matt-damon-reveals-120059878.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

Yup. A musical. “Man of La Mancha.” A song and dance version of “Don Quixote.” Which I must admit I’ve never read … or seen in any version. Not even a “Classics Illustrated” comic. But, through osmosis, I do know a few details. Windmills, funny sidekick, horses and unrequited love. Or, something.

Ohhhh. A mystery mound! Are there bones? Well, at least you got some rocks out of the deal. Peak rocks on the “Limits of Growth” graph, will take a tic up. Temporary, I’m sure. Stumps? Eventually, plenty of ash to spread around, for the soil.

The flowers, as always, are lovely.

Well, the lazy pizza dough has rested long enough. Time for the fun part. Pushing it out to the edges of a 16″ pan, while rotating said pan. Lew
July 27, 2026

Chris at Fernglade Farm

Hi Lewis,

Truly, I don’t know how I’d feel about having an editor completely re-write a book, although if it sold well, that could be a good prompt that the author has some work to do. Funnily enough, the Editor here and I have to review each others paid work prior to sending it off to clients. So reviewing the blog has never been a big deal, even if critical issues were raised. By the way, acquaintances in the profession tell me that other firms send out work, without anyone else reviewing the content, and as you’d imagine, that is the path to major errors. It’s amazing what a second set of fresh eyes can spot.

Unfortunately, I hear of plenty of businesses doing that trick, and such savings are OK, until they’re not OK. The things I’ve seen dealing with shops and trades over the years. Presumably such things occur because they’re trying to improve their margins on work, but I dunno whether the resulting problems are worth the hassle.

What you’ve described between Mr King and his editors sounds like a healthy working relationship. 🙂 Not all suggestions need be taken on board, and not all writing is top notch, is it? Funnily enough we had that occur last night in the review process. I’d written: which by some act of strangeness, descends into a nightmare status mode six scenario! The Editor looked at me and she said: “What does that mean? It makes no sense.” The only reply was: “background colour, a Chris-ism if you will. Leave it!” There was much shaking of the head, but we moved on. 🙂 Go Mr King! Best not to be rail-roaded in matters of style, and I often think of the amusing line: ‘A sh#t eating grin’, which means little, and a whole bunch. Gives a pleasing sense of fun to an otherwise dark narrative moment – and we’ve all met someone smirking at an inappropriate moment.

🙂 I hear you about the economics, and indeed I can understand those dimensions of the matter. Hmm. The complete unabridged version of: ‘The Stand’, ran to what was it again, 1,320 pages (just confirmed the number for research purposes)? Proves it can be done, although on a practical note I do wonder how many years the thin paper has, and I despair for my collection of pulp paperbacks which are rather yellow with age now.

Speaking of large books, I spotted in the bookshelves, Mr George RR Martin’s weighty tome (hardback) of: ‘A dance with dragons’, and thought to myself that here is book with heft which could be useful in both offensive and defensive roles when the rudely interrupted reader finds themselves in a bar fight. Hmm. Has the gentleman completed the series yet? I’ve not had the courage to watch the much loved show on the basis that something must have been missing given the sheer detail within the books.

Ooo, doing some rando searches on reddit, I spotted that Mr Martin had met the author Mr Herbert prior to his passing from this mortal coil and discussed the ‘Dune’ series. I see, well, lot’s of problems there, and need the series even finish, and does it really matter? Probably not. Talking about six degrees of separation, for Mr Herbert was good mates with Mr Jack Vance, whom I’m pretty sure would have had some rather strong opinions in the matter of sequels and author type-casting.

I can certainly appreciate how that ‘characters taking off and doing their own thing’ would occur. If I may, with many of the projects here I simply open my mind to the potentialities and ask the hard question: ‘what next?’ It surprises me how often there is an answer supplied, but not too far in advance.

On that note, today there was paid work to be done, but in between we brought several loads of rocks back up the hill and have almost filled the two open rock gabion cages on the long wall of those. Might have to construct a new steel cage soon. And an idea as to how to finish up that area with the terraced blackberry bed, was revealed. Didn’t expect that.

Ooooo. Thanks for the ladder details, and I’ll have a think about how that can work. My vague plans for the book shelves in the hall are to make them more functional than they are now, but also attractive. Visitors are first confronted by a neat collection of old school bird prints on one side, and a long hat and bag rack on the other, before the hallway widens where the book shelves are. Gives a nice oldey worldy feel.

Oh poop! Silk worm enterprises in this corner of the continent have a reputation of not doing well. Sales of the book for job seeking readers, was probably the entire point of the exercise? 😉

Lewis, I do feel bad about the bonfire – book interaction, but it kind of felt right, and the ash was useful in the garden. Landfill, well, you know.

It is interesting what Matt Damon must have gone through to play the role. An impressive achievement, and I’d not appreciated that the director eschewed CGI. Very interesting, and that would take, skill of an extraordinary level. OK, you’ve piqued my curiosity.

I’ve not read Don Quixote either, but bizarrely, yours is the second reference to the fictional character and windmills that I’ve read today. Who knew that the big contraptions were also dangerous?

🙂 I hope that there are no bones to be found in the mystery mound, and so far that seems to be the way of things. Sadly Peak Rocks is always with us, and we brought a poop ton of them back up the hill today – but there is a goodly quantity in reserve thanks to recent exploration efforts.

By the way, happy birthday to you! An auspicious occasion and fine innings to which we can all aspire. 🙂 The pizza sounds good too. And has the ‘Deep Water’ nun question been resolved as at this juncture? Hehe! Go on, were there any?

What an interesting musical instrument and I’ve never encountered an autoharp. It’s pretty clever, but alas playing music is not for I.

See, that sort of shoddy clothes manufacturing with the jeans pocket, is exactly what not reviewing work looks like.

The problem with unlikeable fictional characters is that when they meet their end, you’re kind of left cheering on the bad deal that fate has dealt them.

Ah well, yes, you certainly did have to reduce the collection, and it’s a tough choice.

Queen Elizabeth II used to be plastered all over coinage in use down here. I must say that icons are always err, given a bit of a what the kids would call a ‘glow up’! I hear you, but live in a country with such things. Still, rights must be exercised, even if it inconveniences others, lest they be disappeared. We just don’t have any rights on that front! 🙂

Oh my! The POW hell ships were as bad as the rest of the experiences. It’s a barbaric way to treat POW’s all other considerations to the side, and maybe the torpedo was a coup de grâce?

And that’s an important point, in crazy times, the culture is not the individuals. Going through the check points during you know what, the cops were good, but the military folks looked seriously displeased. I get that story you mentioned. Yup.

Did you get any more rain? It’s drizzling here tonight, and quite cold. Brr!

The pumpkin plants will appreciate the feed.

How’s the chocolate price index going in your part of the world? I’d noticed that prices have come down here.

True poetic license to chuck in a Nanaimo bar as a plot device, and reminds me of Twinkie bars in a certain amusing zombie film. 🙂

Cheers

Chris
July 28, 2026

Lew

Yo, Chris – Book editors are an interesting lot. I’ve read where authors work well, with a particular book editor, and then they leave to work for another publisher, and a new editor is assigned to the author. Which can be good or bad.

I don’t envy the job. They have to keep the author happy, and an eye on the market. I read a bio of the editor Judith Jones, a few years back. As a young editor in Paris, she pulled “The Diary of Ann Frank,” out of a slush pile. Now a slush pile is the pile of unsolicited manuscripts that publishers get, “over the transom.” Those funny little windows, over the doors of some old office buildings. Junior editors jobs were reading through the slush piles to see if there were any hidden gems.

Jones had a knack / talent for editing cookbooks. She did all the greats … Child, Beard, etc. etc..

It could also be a fraught job. Suppose you overlooked a gem, and it went to another publisher. And, it was published to great acclaim (and a lot of money.) A lot of publishers, these days, do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. They depend on author’s agents to feed them possible publishable manuscripts.

I wondered about that line. I figured it was just another Chris-ism. 🙂 When we counted down tills, in the book biz, sometimes whoever was doing it, just couldn’t get it to balance. A second set of eyes often found the error.

R.I.P. pulp paperbacks. They have a limited shelf life. 🙂 They’d have to be in a climate controlled room, with monitoring of temperature and humidity. Think, museum. Which would extend their life, a bit. The only sure way to preserve them, is to de-acidify them. An expensive process.

Funny you should mention George Martin. I just read a short article on him … from the Onion humor magazine.

https://theonion.com/george-r-r-martin-hands-agent-unsolicited-4000-page-manuscript-titled-tuba-man-scuba-man/

Jack who? 🙂

Oh, I think you’d do ok with the silk worms. In your case, it would be different, this time 🙂 . I don’t know if I could put up with all the screaming, when you drop the cocoons in boiling water, from the tiny little worms.

Birthday was ok. The pizza was tasty, but needs work. I think I should have used chopped chicken breasts, instead of the canned stuff. And, real pesto. A bit more memory came back to me, and I remembered the restaurant pizza had feta cheese on it. I also looked a bit, into white sauces on pizza. They’re out there.

I watched “Deep Water.” No nuns were hurt in the production of that movie. As far as I could tell. Since modernizing their habits, they’re harder to spot. I began to wonder if anyone was going to survive.

People’s pictures on coinage. Another one from The Onion. They are so naughty. Commemorative stamps would also be another possibility. 🙂

https://theonion.com/u-s-mint-unveils-series-of-gold-coins-commemorating-presidents-extramarital-affairs/

Our high yesterday was 72F (22.22C). Our overnight low was 57F (13.88C). Our forecast high for today is 81F.

The Master Gardeners were here, this morning. They’ve put in a small lock box, for the key to their garden storage room. And given me the combination.

More flowers on the pumpkin vines. And, the green beans have broken ground. Wow. Less than a week. I saw three snails, last night. Two were ganging up on one slug, and another was taking on his/her own slug. I think I’ve figured it out, that the snails have the upper hand. There were no empty snail shells, laying around.

Lindt high octane chocolate bar prices, are still over $4. And over $5 in some places.

It was just so weird to have Nanaimo bars, pop up in two totally unrelated places, in less than an hour.

I’m reading a book, right now, “Cleanup on Aisle Five: Essential Work, Poverty Wages and the View from Behind the Supermarket Register.” (Larson, 2026.) I just read the chapter, last night, about when they put self checkout machines, in the store the author was working in. Oh, my. The problems with those machines. The things we talked about hardly scratched the surface. And I don’t even know where to start, describing other issues. Lew
July 28, 2026

Pam

Hi, Chris!

Hee, hee! That’s a funny title. Do I smell a pun there?

Now see there: “wide awake in sheer terror”. That’s why I don’t read Stephen King. I don’t need any help being one, big scaredy cat. I will confess, however, to having read all of Agatha Christie’s mysteries, and I love Poirot and Miss Marple. I don’t know why they don’t scare me so much. Maybe because I was such a child when I started reading them, and didn’t realize the reality of the murders. Doyle did scare me, and I only ever read The Hound of the Baskervilles.

You are thinking exactly like me, because I have the same road dust problem. My poor books, and most of them quite old, even a hundred years. Book shelves with glass doors are not going to happen, and I have considered making curtains for the front of the bookcases, but there goes the enormous pleasure I get from just viewing all the covers. I have fairly often put a book down half-read (or a lot less). I don’t have the time to waste on such things. And I have thrown a few away, too, as you said, spare someone else from such drivel. That doesn’t happen often as some people might want the drivel.

Ten million is a good few words. All that reading that you do is what makes you a good writer.

There was a windfall – Mt. Rocks. Not quite Peak Rocks, though those weren’t exactly easy to get to. It does look quite large in the cleared photo.

Chris! How did you dig 4 feet down around that stump? I knew Ollie had Pointer in him. I didn’t know it was Rock Pointer.

I would like to match my tasteless blackberries to your raspberries. I don’t know why; maybe the drought?

If AI siphons up anymore of your content, they are definitely going to see your offer to accept a cheque. I had an encounter with AI the other day. I was looking at a pleasant Youtube video about growing tomatoes. We all need help growing tomatoes, right? After a bit something began to bother me about the video, but I didn’t know what. I read the comments and a good few stated that it was AI produced. I could defintely tell that once I knew. I looked at the home page for the channel; no mention of AI. I looked back at the video and in very tiny letters it did say “AI”. The whole thing really bothered me for some reason. It happened again with a cooking video; I caught onto that one right away. And there was no tiny mention of AI anywhere.

From last week:

Thank goodness we don’t have Dendrocnide moroides, though we do have stinging nettle; I think it’s the same family and I much enjoy its tea. I do like DM’s other name better: gympie-gympie.

I’m glad that you like Mr. Bell’s book so far. I am halfway into the second book in that trilogy. It is very different, though still wonderfully written. In it he focuses mostly on the people and not much on the farming (so far). It is a lot more introspective, too.

What were the seedling fruit trees? And maybe next year, I won’t wash my potatoes. I didn’t get them put away quickly enough and too many are turning green.

Thank you so much for the flowers. They do march on!

Pam

The Great e-Scrape is Over

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