Skip to main content

bit more on Three Little Birds

While walking the dogs I thought about what the world would look like if our President had my schedule.

8:00 am make coffee
8:05 am drink coffee and read emails and various websites make note to ask how to unsubscribe from Reason magazine (how did they get my email?)
9:00 am walk dogs
9:30 am check investments online and try to get an answer about why gold isn't      $10,000/oz considering the debt and everything else.
10:00 go to gym try to get up to 7 miles on the bike and burn off 12 calories to make up for that whole pizza you ate last night (why did Melania just have one piece didn't she know I'd finish it?) hit steam room you deserve it!
11:00 play a bit of Civilization Call to Power (original version) as a reward for going to gym. (try to figure out how to sneak up on the Vikings - maybe check with DOD on thoughts)
12:00 weed garden. Call Michelle ask her if she had problems with that area where the arugula is planted also check with NSA see if they have any thoughts on that spot? Email ICE ask whats holding up the visa for the gardener (last guy didn't have to pull his own weeds!)
1:00 drink ice tea and read some of that book on relationships Melania wants you to read.
1:05 finish ice tea and think about building a new wall for the asparagus.
1:30 clean up dog poop in the rose garden - mow roses down!
2:00 play a bit more Civilization Call to Power as a reward for not mowing roses down and instead trimming out the dead.  call Surgeon General to see about getting more neosporin for 'rose wounds'.
3:00 start pizza dough in bread machine for State dinner with Italians. (check with State Dept. how many people again?)
4:00 clean West Wing and Kitchen
5:00 Play a little more Civilization Call to Power as reward for clearing your to do list. (finish before Melania gets home!)
5:30 watch news call Rachael Maddow to see if she wants to get lunch tomorrow (Clear with Melania!)
6:30 see whats on TV
8:00ish Greet Melania and ask her how work was (remind her of State dinner with Italians ask her if she thinks a salad would be a good idea)
10:00 State dinner (damn they eat late!)
try to get Kimmel to send you his monologue on VHS if dinner goes long. Call Ivanka see if she can set up Tivo(sp?)
11:00 ish  go to bed. dream about conquering world (on Call to Power!;~)
  

Comments

  1. Kelly WintertonMay 15, 2017 at 8:40 PM

    I actually did build an asparagus wall last year. It was made with some 3-foot tall fencing, in the same manner as those gabion rock walls. Except there are no rocks in my asparagus wall. This fencing wall encloses all my dead corn stalks and other assorted compost. The asparagus wall is on the north side of my asparagus bed, right up against the stalks and over the roots. The idea is that as the corn stalks and other compost material gradually and naturally break down, it feeds the asparagus. That wall also defines the north side of the asparagus wall, and smothers weeds on that side. I now only weed the south side of the asparagus bed. Actually before the wall made of fencing, I had an asparagus wall that was defined by bales of straw. The straw wall held up nicely for a couple years as it decomposed in place. That straw wall inspired me to build an improved asparagus wall last year.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Doug A.May 16, 2017 at 7:05 AM

      Kelly thanks for reading and commenting. I had to look up gabion walls to be sure I knew what they were, thanks for putting a name on them for me! Part of what I like about gardening and perhaps a topic for a future blog is the creative people like yourself. This seems an especially creative use of slow to compost material like corn stalks. Doing the right thing at the right time is gardening doing it so as to get multiple benefits from the same action approaches art.
      Largest gabion wall I every saw being built was years ago in Costa Rica. In essentially the middle of nowhere there were these 3 guys tossing rocks the size of your head one to the next. The top guy was dropping them into a heavy wire cage. The cage was being built alongside the road as a giant retaining wall for a section of the mountain that had obviously been a landslide problem in the past. Since watching that day I've no need to ever speculate (like you see on TV) about how the Mayans built their temples and walls. My brother calls it Mayan construction AKA bloody hard physical work done without complaint 'cause that is simple what needs to be done.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

After the Garden

  Those of you who know me know I hover somewhere between Catholic and agnostic. Thus when I say there are surprisingly few words about Adam in the Bible, you know I had to look to check. If you need to check it yourself go ahead you'll see. A little about how he came to be, a touch about Eve, a bit about that garden thing and then on to what the kids did. Really, I expected a lot more!   I mean what about that day Adam was sitting outside the garden fence thwacking a stick against a tree?! He was just thinking, I don't want any more sadness God. Yeah, yeah I know it's your plan and I'm not supposed to question it but your plan sucks! He flipped his middle finger towards heaven. As he did a hummingbird who had become blind landed on it. Yeah, see that's what I mean God. How am I supposed to fix this? Sure I can name it and that's fun but how can I fix the pain in the world?  Look at the old garden! It's an overgrown jungle. I need pruners, saws and a shovel...
Post a Comment
Read more

Eating hope

 Adam sat in the sun huddled under a blanket Eve had knitted. Scattered to his right and left a sketch of his new garden and a half dozen seed catalogs. Eve called these his garden porn. To grow a garden you have to guess the future and act in the present. Importantly, that begins with a guess. Some parts were clear; the average last frost, which plants could survive frost, the needed indoor start time for those and the later plants. That schedule had to be married to the best guess of what he wanted to grow and what might grow, again a guess. Once past the guessing a brief bit of pleasure gathering the seeds and ordering what was missing.   Adam looked at the sketch and knew from past experience this was about as good as his garden would look. Sure there might be some unexpected wins, a seed or plant that surprised. The unexpected wins would be more than offset by bad weather, pests, or just hopes that never blossomed. Poppies make heroin. Hope is like heroin. Last year ...
1 comment
Read more

A Fog

  If you've never been in a fog so thick that you can't see where to go, to read it sounds like a flight of fancy. I've been in such a fog as a young man driving home. You're creeping along a highway hoping what you're taking for a white line means something. Simultaneously, you're desperately eyes locked on the road ahead and fearing what might be coming up behind you. For some reason you feel compelled to get to the safety of home. Adam was in such a fog.   Adam had walked most of the way to Nod with his son Cain. To lose one son was a misery too great to bear. To never see the other again made it a journey he'd had to take. That was days ago and he'd been following the sun and the stars West back to Eve, his garden, and his dogs. The fog had begun lightly that morning with the path closed in but clear. Now he was on his knees looking as the path clearly split. Perhaps the Y would rejoin itself just a bit down the way. Perhaps one simply ended beyond w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bleeping grackles

 I've just spent the last 15 minutes searching bird guides on-line and on paper to try to figure out what is nesting in the grape arbor.  It looks like a nuthatch or wren that has dressed to go to work for UPS.  It's incredibly tiny and quite cute but clearly not one to be pushed around.  When I first saw it at the beginning of summer it was trying to take over a bird house I had created out of an old boot.  Some chickadees had moved in and I was thrilled to see the house used.  The chickadees had dutifully carried a boots worth of material from the yard to their nest.  At a moment when both the male and female were out collecting material my little UPS bird 'discovered' the boot.  He sat at the hole pulling material out.  Clearly their tastes in furnishings were different you could almost see him (her?) shaking his head "this straw with those drapes - come on!".  The chickadees returned and a battle royal ensued with it ending with two ...
5 comments
Read more

Atlas Pooped!

   Adam sat with his back to 'The Garden' fence and looked up at the predawn moon. He saw Sirius (the dog constellation) plainly but what was the name of that next constellation? Eve had named it and traced with her finger the bow and the belt. The belt, yeah, yeah, Orion! Orion walked with his Sirius on cold mornings as he had with his own dogs. He'd have to get home soon and walk 'em. A cool wind rang The Garden chimes urging him to move.  The peace and the beauty begged him to stay. He'd dally.   The new garden was slowly coming together. The raised beds were laid out some with permanent stone walls some with whatever was available. Soil had been scarce or more exactly worms and bugs were scarce. They'd come and were slowly showing up, 'tho not always the good ones first! Thus what he'd planted was thin and haphazard. Better something to eat than nothing. A couple of pears, a nectarine, and a fig, with hope for the future but nothing for tonight'...
Post a Comment
Read more

Taste like cucumber

I've got to start us off with Waylon Jennings' classic.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxll2-th4Gc Deb and I went down to our cabin in the mountains for the Memorial weekend.  More exactly we went down to our tiny RV on the property next to the cabin.  The cabin floor is close to finished and thus the bed and all are stuffed in the bathroom awaiting warm weather and the final coat of shellac.  A 20' RV two adults and two dogs makes for close quarters, especially when it starts raining.  That said there is something quite wonderful about playing rummy 500 by lantern light with Deb.  It's way too easy in a marriage to get to plinking along in your little path and forget how nice it is to have a wife you love. I suggested to Deb that although the RV is getting on 40 years old we could probably get a pretty penny for it if we marketed it as a marital therapy tool.  (therapy dogs extra!)   Being a gardener I have sprinkled some seeds as the cabin h...
5 comments
Read more

The tomatoes are red the gardener is blue

 I'm stuck in a loop. I think that's what software programmers call it. I know the roots of this hopelessness are firmly planted in the utter destruction of our cabin and property in the forest fire that I alluded to in the last blog's prologue. Knowing the source of a polluted stream doesn't really help if your just wallowing in it. It's the wallowing that is the loop. A sporadic series of should haves and could haves that leave you so second guessed out that I've got little mental energy to accomplish all but the littlest things. Musically speaking I got da blues!   The music is Billie Holiday - Lady in Autumn.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npoe5XeeMYE&list=PLbYb5_Imn1rsDMoIU38jxi_O0aRaYj4CG 'cause given my mood - well, it was the obvious choice.   If you're a libertarian like me it's hard not to on occasion reflect on a woman who's life included heroin abuse, alcohol abuse, abusive relationships and died at 44. The line between libert...
4 comments
Read more

Eat Pray Love

    Adam woke, to a sense of clarity. He felt like the the threads of the universe were connecting through his body. Every bird was sitting while he identified their call. Every word that he read fit like a puzzle piece in his mind. The air itself seemed more, more right. A manic morning and a time to avoid sharp tools? The pleasant hangover of a evening alone with Eve? Inhale deeply the morning air but tread lightly. The future was not mans to know! He no longer lived in The Garden. Yet he felt he could touch it. His arm, almost not his, reaching through a gossamer veil touching... Not the future, not truth, not any word that small more - je ne sais pas... more.   The peas were popping and the garlic and onions were reviving from their winter trials. So it was spring or perhaps a false spring as tomorrow would allow March to announce itself as either a lamb or a lion. But what would a wise man do on a perfect spring day. On a day when he could feel the universe coursing...
2 comments
Read more

Place your bets

  Adam was filling his water tank. More exactly, Adam was draining his water tank onto the compost pile while the rain was filling it and threatening to overflow the tank. Spring is a complicated time. Early spring is a dance with winter. Plant out too early and the plants will die or go into shock and actually take longer to grow. The spinach which poked up is great for an evening salad but it might stunt the onions it surrounds if allowed to grow too much. Leave the water tank to fill and overflow and the adjacent wood chips will wash down the hill. Leave the the drain open you capture no water for the dry weeks ahead. - Time to check the tank level. He put his hat on and walk in the rain.    The rain had been gentle and steady. Even with the drain open there was some overflow but nothing disastrous. Adam thought of the line from that sitcom long in the future, Mad About You. The wife is trying to get the husband to admit he was wrong. After many iterations he finally s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sandcastles

  Hey all, I am literally surrounded by life. The window in front of my desk looks out to my garden. The garden is lush green with knee high garlic and potato-onions, flowering arugula and crimson clover, along with second runs of spinach and cilantro getting ready to pick. Beside me under a grow light is a tray of tiny tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, sage, melons and squash. Lord the squash! Thinking the seed was old I heavily over seeded the little pots. I should be so vigorous in my old age. The thinning will be a problem but that is for another day. For now I needed to clear the pile of seed packets off the laptop and write. Write while Deb pulls dinner and a batch of cookies together in the kitchen and the dogs settle from our walk.  Yup, surrounded by life but on a maudlin day. Last night and this morning was strong rain and the rest of the day has been a heavy grey overcast. It is the day before Easter which by Christian tradition is a day of joy. The Gospel accounts which...
Post a Comment
Read more