The Mole Sez', "Can you dig it?"

The Old Amigo has been carting around a lot of dirt lately... probably a couple of tons. One of the neighbors has started referring to me (in a nice way) as "the Human Mole." We had a blast of rain through here, and it let us know just how full of water the garden area can get. So when the rain backed off for a couple of days, I hit the garden prep project really hard and got it wrapped up -- at least for this year. We're talking at least 300 cubic feet of dirt removed and either sifted (to remove LOTS OF ROCKS) or hauled over to a low spot on the property that I'd like to raise. That was all the heavy work. By yesterday evening, I hurt pretty much everywhere, but it is great to have it done.  

Next we plan to add a couple of inches of compost (already piled up and ready to go) to the bottom. Above that we'll mix sifted soil and compost. Then we'll top the whole thing off with some night crawlers and some straw. Ought to be great by spring.

At the end of the digging, I took a quick shot of the sunset over the Olympics. Pretty nice, huh?

Very nearly stupid with fatigue, I ate a quick snack and taught my regular Monday evening gentle yoga class. Most of my students are very kind, however, and applauded at the end. It was the biggest class ever (19 students). Speaking of kindness, one of the guys who works at the gym helped me scrub down the mats. Then I returned to mi casa, ate a real dinner (Angel had been gathering Chanterelles and made a fantastic mushroom Stroganoff), relaxed, and crashed.

On the Economic Front, it might be worth mentioning a couple of things:

• Paulson seems bent on spending every cent to bailout his buddies in Big Finance. We, The People are at liberty to spend still more of our tax dollars if we'd like to cushion other industries, but the Hankster sez' we should keep our grubby hands of the hundreds of billions that he wants to dole out to his cronies.


• The 5% or so of the TARP funds that we may or may not want to throw under the wheels of Big Auto is NOT supposed to come out of the piles 'o cash already allocated. Do your nostrils detect a stink?


• Wholesale prices seem to be falling. Hmmm... I've blogged this before, but it bears repeating: if we stop buying crap from BIg Retail, Bit Retail will just go away.


• In fact, if we start paying off our debts and then saving as much as we can, we'll avoid inflation. We are the ultimate drivers of the economy. If we spend with consciousness and intention, our purchases become a powerful political act. Keep that in mind.


• Would you like to shake things up big time? Don't buy stuff you don't need, and if you do need (really need) something, see if you can buy it used. This could quickly & extensively re-order the economy.


• Be careful if you play with sharp objects.

Finally, I wrestled with MySQL for much of the day. Talk about Old Technology. Talk about FUNKY user interfaces. Ouch. Well, I got a bunch of things going at least. Equally important, I'm set up to do some good tutorials next. I've started taking (typing) more detailed notes so that I have a trail of bread crumbs for the next time I enter these woods.

There are so many rocks.