I've put a rather odd mix of artists on the stereo but I think it will work, we'll see! First up is 'The King' Elvis Presley's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzQ8GDBA8Is Hound Dog.
I'll freely admit that while I like Elvis I'm starting off with him as a segue. Back when my Brother Glen and I owned some apartments down in Houston I noticed on the 'to do' white board a note "friend apartment #33". I asked him about it assuming a tenant had a friend that had gone beyond visiting and need to be reminded about how many people we were renting to. Glen explained no the friend was actually a rat that had been seen by the tenant. He just figured it was unwise to put "RAT!" on a board that prospective tenants might see. Seemed like good logic to me. Quite some time later I happened to be opening a ceiling panel for an AC unit in that apartment and a long dead and desiccated rat fell from the panel. It hit me square in my open mouth. I can tell you for a fact that no amount of washing your face or spitting will make you feel clean again!
So a couple of days ago I'm in the back garden with the dogs. Callie our old dog, suddenly jumps up and charges for the raspberry bushes. I see a rat the size of my foot bolt down the fenceline. The young dog joins the hunt and the rat dives into a small hole in the wood chips under the fence to the neighbor's shed. I have to say Callie, clearly, has been holding back on our very slow walks. No old legs when you're hunting I guess. Not wanting to disturb my wife with this news of a friend in the garden, I put it on my to do list as "Elvis".
I can't use poison or spring traps with the dogs constantly in the yard. I use havahart live traps and over the years have caught plenty of mice. This week with a slightly larger cage I managed to catch 2 rats. So far haven't caught the big one "The King". I know the Kings weakness, peanut butter and bananas, (actually what I bait the traps with) and Elvis is going down. As to where I release them let's just say don't piss me off ;~)!
As if on cue the music has changed over to Dwight Yoakam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGzvWhR1rlU Dwight's voice has defined Western music for me. If you recall the old Blues Brothers movie line https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS-zEH8YmiM Country music is certainly connected with Western music but yet as different as Texas and Tennessee. Even if you're not a C W fan give him a listen.
Just as I used Elvis, Dwight is a segue to a very Western issue - water. I've mentioned in past blogs that Colorado water law is based on ownership Rights. It's an important enough issue that it holds a spot in our State Constitution. Most residential water users have a water tap which gets water from their local water district. Forgive me if I go nerd light but what most folks never think about is that their tap isn't a water Right. Taps are simply a permission slip or license from government and subject to that governments whims. If the local water district says you have to use less water you have to do it or face fines. If you own actual water Rights, as most of the water districts and commercial farmers do, you own the right to draw X amount of water from a specific location on a stream. If your rights are more senior you get 1st suck on the straw with more junior Rights having to worry in drought years. Oddly, not using your water for "beneficial purposes" can cause you to lose your Rights, but short of that or selling 'em no one gets you to tell you to cut back. The water is yours.
Water Rights are one of the natural constraints on growth in dry Colorado especially along the Front Range which holds the bulk of the population. Ah but developers are creative sorts. Since the founding of the State developers have been creating dams and diversions of water to allow them water to develop land. Thus with a wife who curses traffic each evening I was of two minds when I read The Denver Post last week. The Post article by Bruce Finley was titled "Denver Water wants to double the amount of recycled water used in the city" http://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/13/denver-water-double-recycled-water/long title but pretty spot on. See Denver Water is the big water buffalo in the system and I would say goes out of it's way to promote growth. It's not that they specifically don't want me to grow rice in my garden paddies or that they want I- 25 to be a parking lot - just the outcome.
I would be remiss to not say that it's an absolute waste of expensive treated water to put it on my veggies. I have over the years looked for spots that had wells or ditch Rights but they are not easy to find, not close, and not cheap. Thus to hear Denver water talking about using "purple pipe" to use recycled water (lightly treated) to provide for pot growing operations and some other very specific (non drinking) uses I was excited. This wasn't exactly allowing homeowners to use gray-water systems to water their garden but it was a creative solution. And perhaps a step towards grey-water systems being allowed.
Yet like finding a rat in the garden it was troubling. Somethings are defined less by what they actually do and more by their nature. My Libertarian self likes the creative market forces brought to bear on a fundamentally limited resource -water. My gardener self likes the idea of using recycled water to grow stuff. But Denver Water is a quasi government entity. The politician in me smells a rat.
If you're given the choice to allow the 'market forces' or politicians to solve a problem, go with the market. Markets are slower to take up the challenge as even entrepreneurs tend to want government to foot the bill to make "our" lives easier. Yet, once creative or profit motivated people get rolling they tend to do the job surprisingly well. Self interest is a very good feedback loop. Government can do exactly the same thing but the feedback loop is weaker. Imagine if you have to work to elect a Mayor and City Council with the hope that among the many items they want to accomplish is to say build a 'better' water system. (different groups define better very differently!) With a lot of work and money perhaps your guys win. Now they get to wrestle with a bureaucracy that might have it's own motivations and view of 'better'. But your guys are determined and create a solution you love. Wait, time for another election and over time the intense motivation needed to create and maintain a political will tends to be usurped by crony capitalism. Crony capitalism uses many of the same terms as capitalism and will often be heard to proclaim "hey this is America last I heard it's patriotic to make a profit." The difference is fundamental. Crony capitalism relies on the power of government cronies to bend the rules to benefits 'friends'. Libertarian capitalism says here are the rules, profit if you can.
In the world of water districts things can be less black and white. There is a set of underlying market rules but also water districts with a mix of elected and appointed board-members. Additionally, water districts are rarely watched or at the top of anyone's political agenda. Except the rats!
Jackson Browne has changed the tempo with Running On Empty and I'm also running low https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_FRV2Qne0g so I'll quit boring you with an esoteric discussions of water Rights.
Having field dried the potato onions from my backyard I've culled and hung the best for replanting. It was a poor year. The hail storm this spring really hurt them and left them quite small. I can't tell for sure (as I haven't pulled them yet) but the ones at the row in the Mennonite garden seem a bit better shape. Oddly these seemed to have been less whacked by the storm and not at all bothered by the grackles so I think that was the difference.
I've also dried a bit of calendula flower and took a small harvest and dried some oregano. The calendula is pretty tasteless but I've read it's a good anti-inflammatory so I toss it on any meal that could use some nice yellow color. The oregano is flavor city. It makes it on anything Italian I cook and a good bit beyond that.
The corn is still small so I'm not sure how it will turn out. The watermelons I was trying to inter-plant with the corn in a modified 'Three Sisters' was a complete zero. I'll give it a try again next year as I like the thought of growing watermelons and never have. That's the way it is this time of year. Some things are done, some are still undecided, and some things are just getting going. The Cd player has just spun around back to Elvis so I'll leave it there for this week and boogie to a little Jailhouse Rock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj0Rz-uP4Mk&list=RDgj0Rz-uP4Mk -Doug A.
I'll freely admit that while I like Elvis I'm starting off with him as a segue. Back when my Brother Glen and I owned some apartments down in Houston I noticed on the 'to do' white board a note "friend apartment #33". I asked him about it assuming a tenant had a friend that had gone beyond visiting and need to be reminded about how many people we were renting to. Glen explained no the friend was actually a rat that had been seen by the tenant. He just figured it was unwise to put "RAT!" on a board that prospective tenants might see. Seemed like good logic to me. Quite some time later I happened to be opening a ceiling panel for an AC unit in that apartment and a long dead and desiccated rat fell from the panel. It hit me square in my open mouth. I can tell you for a fact that no amount of washing your face or spitting will make you feel clean again!
So a couple of days ago I'm in the back garden with the dogs. Callie our old dog, suddenly jumps up and charges for the raspberry bushes. I see a rat the size of my foot bolt down the fenceline. The young dog joins the hunt and the rat dives into a small hole in the wood chips under the fence to the neighbor's shed. I have to say Callie, clearly, has been holding back on our very slow walks. No old legs when you're hunting I guess. Not wanting to disturb my wife with this news of a friend in the garden, I put it on my to do list as "Elvis".
I can't use poison or spring traps with the dogs constantly in the yard. I use havahart live traps and over the years have caught plenty of mice. This week with a slightly larger cage I managed to catch 2 rats. So far haven't caught the big one "The King". I know the Kings weakness, peanut butter and bananas, (actually what I bait the traps with) and Elvis is going down. As to where I release them let's just say don't piss me off ;~)!
As if on cue the music has changed over to Dwight Yoakam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGzvWhR1rlU Dwight's voice has defined Western music for me. If you recall the old Blues Brothers movie line https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS-zEH8YmiM Country music is certainly connected with Western music but yet as different as Texas and Tennessee. Even if you're not a C W fan give him a listen.
Just as I used Elvis, Dwight is a segue to a very Western issue - water. I've mentioned in past blogs that Colorado water law is based on ownership Rights. It's an important enough issue that it holds a spot in our State Constitution. Most residential water users have a water tap which gets water from their local water district. Forgive me if I go nerd light but what most folks never think about is that their tap isn't a water Right. Taps are simply a permission slip or license from government and subject to that governments whims. If the local water district says you have to use less water you have to do it or face fines. If you own actual water Rights, as most of the water districts and commercial farmers do, you own the right to draw X amount of water from a specific location on a stream. If your rights are more senior you get 1st suck on the straw with more junior Rights having to worry in drought years. Oddly, not using your water for "beneficial purposes" can cause you to lose your Rights, but short of that or selling 'em no one gets you to tell you to cut back. The water is yours.
Water Rights are one of the natural constraints on growth in dry Colorado especially along the Front Range which holds the bulk of the population. Ah but developers are creative sorts. Since the founding of the State developers have been creating dams and diversions of water to allow them water to develop land. Thus with a wife who curses traffic each evening I was of two minds when I read The Denver Post last week. The Post article by Bruce Finley was titled "Denver Water wants to double the amount of recycled water used in the city" http://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/13/denver-water-double-recycled-water/long title but pretty spot on. See Denver Water is the big water buffalo in the system and I would say goes out of it's way to promote growth. It's not that they specifically don't want me to grow rice in my garden paddies or that they want I- 25 to be a parking lot - just the outcome.
I would be remiss to not say that it's an absolute waste of expensive treated water to put it on my veggies. I have over the years looked for spots that had wells or ditch Rights but they are not easy to find, not close, and not cheap. Thus to hear Denver water talking about using "purple pipe" to use recycled water (lightly treated) to provide for pot growing operations and some other very specific (non drinking) uses I was excited. This wasn't exactly allowing homeowners to use gray-water systems to water their garden but it was a creative solution. And perhaps a step towards grey-water systems being allowed.
Yet like finding a rat in the garden it was troubling. Somethings are defined less by what they actually do and more by their nature. My Libertarian self likes the creative market forces brought to bear on a fundamentally limited resource -water. My gardener self likes the idea of using recycled water to grow stuff. But Denver Water is a quasi government entity. The politician in me smells a rat.
If you're given the choice to allow the 'market forces' or politicians to solve a problem, go with the market. Markets are slower to take up the challenge as even entrepreneurs tend to want government to foot the bill to make "our" lives easier. Yet, once creative or profit motivated people get rolling they tend to do the job surprisingly well. Self interest is a very good feedback loop. Government can do exactly the same thing but the feedback loop is weaker. Imagine if you have to work to elect a Mayor and City Council with the hope that among the many items they want to accomplish is to say build a 'better' water system. (different groups define better very differently!) With a lot of work and money perhaps your guys win. Now they get to wrestle with a bureaucracy that might have it's own motivations and view of 'better'. But your guys are determined and create a solution you love. Wait, time for another election and over time the intense motivation needed to create and maintain a political will tends to be usurped by crony capitalism. Crony capitalism uses many of the same terms as capitalism and will often be heard to proclaim "hey this is America last I heard it's patriotic to make a profit." The difference is fundamental. Crony capitalism relies on the power of government cronies to bend the rules to benefits 'friends'. Libertarian capitalism says here are the rules, profit if you can.
In the world of water districts things can be less black and white. There is a set of underlying market rules but also water districts with a mix of elected and appointed board-members. Additionally, water districts are rarely watched or at the top of anyone's political agenda. Except the rats!
Jackson Browne has changed the tempo with Running On Empty and I'm also running low https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_FRV2Qne0g so I'll quit boring you with an esoteric discussions of water Rights.
Having field dried the potato onions from my backyard I've culled and hung the best for replanting. It was a poor year. The hail storm this spring really hurt them and left them quite small. I can't tell for sure (as I haven't pulled them yet) but the ones at the row in the Mennonite garden seem a bit better shape. Oddly these seemed to have been less whacked by the storm and not at all bothered by the grackles so I think that was the difference.
I've also dried a bit of calendula flower and took a small harvest and dried some oregano. The calendula is pretty tasteless but I've read it's a good anti-inflammatory so I toss it on any meal that could use some nice yellow color. The oregano is flavor city. It makes it on anything Italian I cook and a good bit beyond that.
The corn is still small so I'm not sure how it will turn out. The watermelons I was trying to inter-plant with the corn in a modified 'Three Sisters' was a complete zero. I'll give it a try again next year as I like the thought of growing watermelons and never have. That's the way it is this time of year. Some things are done, some are still undecided, and some things are just getting going. The Cd player has just spun around back to Elvis so I'll leave it there for this week and boogie to a little Jailhouse Rock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj0Rz-uP4Mk&list=RDgj0Rz-uP4Mk -Doug A.
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