The Path

Yesterday I got the path I'm installing on the west side of the property more-or-less wrapped up. All the heavy work is done. Early this AM the Old Amigo figured out a way to trim it out nicely. I met the new neighbors... a young couple with two little kids. Great that we'll have some children in the neighborhood again. Nicki, that's the wife, came over and asked me what I was doing. "Trying to make the view a little bit nicer from your new kitchen," I replied. I think she liked that.

Angel volunteered to go over to Henry's to get more "Mt. Shasta Medium Bark Chips". I bought five bags there, but it wasn't enough to fill the frames to the right level. Unfortunately, now the guy at Henry's says that they have never heard of this product. Go figure. I still have a big pile of bark shreds from when I rented the shredder, but that's more useful for mulching. It's too fine to be placed anywhere that is exposed to the wind.

We'll get it dialed in. Even if we have to go over to Sequim and get some bags from HD, we'll figure out a way to wrap this up and make it look good.

Today is cool and windy, the dog days of August masquerading as autumn. It is nearly time to dismantle the bird netting over the main garden. Yesterday I chased Young Bambi and some of his friends out of one of our flower gardens three times. OTOH, we had a visit from a pair of bald eagles. They rested near the top of one of the big pines just north of us. Spectacular.

Well, I need to read some material for a job I'm bidding on. It looks interesting and the gig is with a startup with some smart guys. Could be fun.

Press on.

High Summer in the PNW

The PV array on the roof produced 620 KWH of energy in June. That's more than 20 KWH per day! The next several days are forecast to yield completely sunny weather. Today I read the meter and did my monthly Green Tags attestation ritual. The regional energy monopoly, PSE will be calculating net-metering payments in July. This is the sunny season.

Two weeks ago, I climbed on my good extension ladder and using a L O N G pole and synthetic sheep's wool window washer-thing and a hose w/ a nozzle attached, cleaned dust and bird droppings from the PV array. The panels are visibly cleaner and since our big construction projects are done (for now at least) less dust will be flying around. Clean panels make for better power generation.

I received the soil analysis back from Twiss Labs. As I suspected, the soil in our main garden area is woefully deficient in Nitrogen. At a pH of 6.6 it's also a bit alkaline for some of the vegetables we've planted. Today I broadcast about 2 pounds of ammonium sulfate on our 320 sq ft garden. As instructed on the package, I then watered the fertilizer into the soil. As I type this Angel is giving the plants another drink.

Hopefully this will do the trick. We've had some spinach and some other greens but everything seems to be growing slowly.

The soil analysis indicated that we have plenty of organic material (that's good news, considering all the back-breaking work I did last summer). Phosphorous, potassium, and trace minerals are good too. Next year I'll emphasize organic supplements, but for now I decided to kick start the particular element that was lacking.

Since elemental sulphur is indicated as a way to lower the pH of the soil, I'm also hoping the application of ammonium sulfate may make the soil slightly more acidic as well. We'll see, won't we.

Our summer visitor dance card is filling up, which is exciting and fun. We have someone staying with us now (an old friend of Angel's) and have a near constant stream of friends and relatives staying in our guest quarters in the carriage house through mid September. Given all the changes in the past year, Angel and I are grateful for friends who have been able to make the trek up here to the 48th parallel.

The air is still, and the sky is blue and bright. It is just shy of 8:00PM.

Press On.

Chipping

I've been splitting bark from the firewood. The bark seems to stay damp longer and perhaps absorb more water than the core wood. This makes fires harder to keep burning at high temperatures -- which is important for clean burning in the stove. So I usually split the bark off each piece with a hand axe.

This makes for lots of pieces of bark. So I rented a shredder and spent four hours last Sunday feeding the shredder with chunks of bark. I learned right away that the shredder's maw wasn't large enough, nor was the shredder sufficiently powerful, to accept the largest bark pieces, so a lot of effort went into breaking the bark into pieces that were 3 or 4 inches wide.

It was warm and sunny on Sunday here, north of the 48th parallel. This made for hot, dusty work. After a while I realized that I'd better wear a dust mask. Fortunately we had some in the garage. Of course the shredder is also really loud, so I had to wear big, ear-muff-type ear protectors too. I thought about wearing goggles as well, but decided that the built-in protection at the input of the shredder was sufficient.

It didn't seem like this should be all that heavy of a job, but I must say that after four hours of working with this beast, I was pretty much ready to sit down and have a snack.

Now, however, we have a nice pile of coarse sawdust and wood chips. The green in the pile is from a couple of pine boughs that the wind had pruned from the some of the larger trees.

I figured that it wouldn't hurt anything to have some of that mixed into the chips. Here is a shot of the pile. It's probably hard to see in the photo, but the pile is pretty substantial. I've tried screening it to use coarser pieces for mulch in flower beds. This might be a good idea, but it's also pretty important to allocate time to the most important tasks. We're getting the main garden in, and I've got to build a net over the main (16' x 20') garden area to keep the crows from destroying it.

Oh, here's a close-up of some of the wood chips. You can see that we've ended up with a nice mixture of small chips and coarse sawdust. The sawdust will be a good thing to add to the worm bins for bedding. The worm bin articles say that the little worm guys like sawdust, and I know that none of this has had fungicide sprayed on it.

Since it comes from conifers, I'm pretty sure that the sawdust will tend to make the soil more acidic if we use it as an amendment. We want to grow berries and several other plants that like acidic soil, so I think this is good to have. I hope to get this bagged and stored away before it gets rained on too much.

Deflation?

Deflation? We don't got to show you no stinking deflation.

The Amigo read that deflation would be bad.  It would cause prices to fall, wages to fall, and (gasp) corporate profits to fall.  My, my.

Let's see... if prices fall, well our purchasing power would increase.  It might let us live without incurring debt.  In constant dollars real wages have been falling for the last 8 years -- unless you're one of the Robber Barons feeding at the private trough at the pinnacle of the economy. The Friendly One merely notes that corporate profits have been growing and growing and growing for a long time. Maybe it's time to take a look at that model to see if it still makes sense.

Note that local economies may do okay during times of deflation.  People can trade work for goods or other work (consult your tax advisor for implications of bartering).

It is not clear that deflation is a disaster for any but those at the top of the pile, and we probably don't need to worry about them too much.  An adjustment, certainly.  Perhaps a move away from the consumer treadmill.  Perhaps a slower, simpler pace.  Maybe I'm wrong about this, but we would probably adjust.

Cooperate with your neighbors.  Plant a garden.  Tend it.  Share the food.  Share some meals.  What a concept.

Rain and Relatives

We have out-of-town guests.

I like my in-laws.  They are fun to be around.  One of our visitors is a cousin of Angel's, Cousin R.  He's a university professor.  Very intelligent and personable.  I enjoy talking with him; although we hardly saw each other today today (he hung out in the guest house and worked while I hung out in my office in the basement and did the same).

Next week he goes to Geneva to lecture.  Like I said, he's a smart guy.

Then there's Uncle R.  He's a retired truck driver.  Has lots of native intelligence and practical knowledge.  Like me, he enjoys green tea.  I've spent quite a bit of time chatting with Uncle R.  Today we talked about microwave ovens and electric lawn tractors.  And forklifts.

Finally, there is M**2.  That's Angel's mom.  She'll be staying on with us after Uncle R. and Cousin R. leave.  She'll move out to the guest house, which is finally done.  She specifically wanted to visit during the dark time of the year.  And so she has.

It is good that we all get along and have plenty of space to get out of each other's hair, because it's been raining for a couple of days now... on-and-off, but mostly on.  The weather forecast says that it's supposed to stop raining and be mostly clear for about a week.  That would be welcome.  While I love the rain, we didn't get the garden finished.  A long story, that:

• Farm Girl has to take care of her farm


• Notof is in jail - nothing too serious


• Carlos works for the Blind Man


• I'm trying to learn Python, PHP, C#, MySQL, and a little Django


• ...and the incomplete part of the garden is about 12" in water

OTOH, I've figured out a strategy to finish the little bit that remains.  All I need is a few dry days for the water to soak in.  It's going to be great.

The compost is coming right along too.

My yoga classes are starting to develop.  Four classes at The Gym.  Another level 2 vinyasa class at the studio in Uptown.  I love teaching yoga.  It is too bad that it pays poverty wages.  Still, if I am able to get a good grasp of most of the above programming technologies, I may be able to get some work applying them... and that would pay above the poverty level.

Which would be very nice indeed.

Almost

We are almost to the election. This will be a long 2 1/2 weeks. I worry about some last minute news story, claim, or projection -- real or fabricated -- that might alter the trajectory of events. This is the first time I have felt truly optimistic about our political prospects since the year 2000. Little did we know that we would be misruled by brigands for 8, long years. This terrible national mistake is almost over. The healing process is almost ready to start. America may once again take her well-earned place at the forefront of civilized nations. Almost. Almost.

We have almost got the yard in shape for winter. If the weather holds, until Halloween, we'll manage nicely.

Today I completed breaking up the soil and removing the largest rocks in 3/4 of the first section of the main garden. Angel worked a good mulch / compost mixture into the sifted soil. This is heavy work. If I could do this much each day for the next four days, we would have the first section of the garden prepped. This is probably not a reasonable goal, but it is almost a reasonable goal.

One of our neighbors, Nancy, gave Angel some root stock for five, shade-loving plants. We got these in the ground today too. This is not nearly enough to constitute a landscape -- or even a landscape plan, but it is almost a good start for some of the places snuggled against the north side of the house.

The rocky soil -- glacial till, I have heard it called -- is beginning to yield to our efforts. We are beginning to see the incredible number of rocks as a resource. We have almost enough piled up from the main vegetable garden preparation to make a beautiful private garden space. I am beginning to visualize this private space on the east side of my office. It may well be fenced off from the rest of the property. This will keep deer out and will allow for privacy... a special, spiritual sanctuary. We may use the small rocks in a gravel path. We may use the larger rocks in a wall. There are almost too many options from which to decide, and this project will of course have to wait for a time when we have basic, remedial and preparatory work done.

I have almost resigned myself to my lack of employment prospects. I continue to pursue opportunities, real and chimeric, but I am slightly less frantic. I am slightly less distraught with our circumstances. It is possible that Angel's work could turn into something that could almost support us. Then the pathetic contributions through my work at PTAC might almost be enough. All we need is something like steady state expenses covered. We continue to reduce our expenses. I hope to learn to do more and more for us so that our expenses continue to drop. It is not a plan, but almost an idea for a plan.

Almost.

Almost.

Busy Sunday

It is great to have an almost functioning shop again.    About all that remains is to go through all my supplies (fasteners and scavenged parts, mostly) and get them organized so that I know what I've got.  I expect to save quite a bit of shelf space by consolidating & organizing the supplies, and this should allow me to use that shelf space to hold still more supplies. 

I already put the shop to use.  We picked up a pretty good wheelbarrow for $12 at a garage sale.  It only had one problem: the wheel was wobbly on the axle.  I had some thin-walled plastic pipe and I cut a sleeve/bushing to make the wheel fit right. Wobble gone!  

Angel & I did some good garden work today.  We basically need to move all the amended soil for the garden to the north edge and pile it in sort of a temporary "berm."  This will give us room to work south through the garden area. Here's what we do:

• Break the soil apart with a pick.
• Pull out the big rocks.  Some of them are bigger than two fists and are real tool-breakers.
• Pick out some of the medium sized rocks.  This leaves a sandy soil that compacts too easily.
• Add a large amount of compost & mulch.

This is time-consuming, heavy work.  And we're racing with the seasons to get the main garden ready for winter.  If we get this all done, we'll spread the bermed soil evenly through the garden area, cover it with some mulch -- perhaps straw if we can find something that hasn't been treated with fungicides, etc. -- and add a bunch of night crawlers.  Come spring, we should have a garden ready to plant!

The north & east sections of the property continue to get better.  I've almost finished with that work.

Completely different topic: The Presidential Election.

Even though the debate was fairly lame, I think that Senator Obama was asked a good question, namely, what sacrifice would he ask of Americans at this time.  

I am not surprised that in his answer he only alluded to a need to conserve energy. Remember, after all, what happened to the last president who actually asked Americans to put in some heavy lifting for the country.  Jimmy Carter tried hard to get us to conserve and we rewarded him for his efforts by voting him out of office ASAP.

There are many things that we as Americans can do for the country.  And I don't mean "go shopping" either.  Since I'm not running for office, I have the freedom to say what's on my mind.  Here are some things that we should be doing:

1. Figure out how to use less energy.  Find one person with whom you can carpool.  That will cut your fuel costs in HALF.  Yes, you'll relinquish some of your precious independence. You'll also have to cooperate with a neighbor to make it work.  Quite a sacrifice.
2. If you are able, grow a little bit of your own food.  Even if all you can do is put a couple of tomato plants in pots on your condo balcony, those tomatoes will be fresher and won't be transported who-knows-how-far from their place of origin to your local supermarket.  They won't be sprayed with anything that you didn't spray 'em with either.  Sacrifice?  Well, you'll need to pry yourself away from the TV and remember to water your vegetables.
3. Bake some cookies for the neighbors.  Do not expect anything in return.  Just show a little kindness to people whom you may not know all that well.  If you've got a Grumpy Gus (no offense if you're named "Gus" and are reading this and aren't grumpy, okay?) next door who is just too surly to deal with, well take some cookies to someone else on the block.  Smile.  Introduce yourself. Make nice for 5 or 10 minutes.  No agenda.  Now there's a sacrifice for you.

Now I could go on, but three things are enough for now.  If you're interested in more things you could do, file a comment on the blog and I'll think about making longer list.

Take a deep breath. Hold it gently for a couple of seconds, and let it out.

Is that the right rock?