Brrrr!

 A few blogs back I mentioned Galbraith's notion that free time was a type of wealth. I'd like to offer a thought on a definition of wealth that's been rattling around in my old brain, "get to" vs "got to". I think you can measure your wealth by looking at the number of things you've got to do vs the time you spend doing things that you get to do. Now part of this is simply a mind game as for one person a job is something they just gotta do and for another the same job is one they get to do. Perspective is variable and within our control and choice. There are some things that short of the Zen master do fall into the gotta do category. I won't belabor the idea right here just want to put it in your head, perhaps a future blog.

 Colorado's Front Range seems to always get a week or two, around this time, of very very cold weather. Last week was cold, this morning it was minus something. It's now mid day and up to a balmy 9°. So this might be 'that' week or it could just be winter and 'that' week is still coming -we'll see.

 Part of why last week was cold is our furnace went out. Now I've always considered our house old construction. With new windows and doors, a foot of insulation in the attic, and an old wood stove with a pile of wood out back, old construction - but resilient to winters. Ah not so moose breathe! Nope the whole system was unknowingly balanced on a 35 year old furnace.

  Now my oldest brother has a house he built of straw. Three Little Pigs comparisons aside, he tells me it is resilient when it comes to keeping the internal temperature constant. So one can build resilient systems and houses. One can also fool oneself into thinking that filling a few of the obvious holes is a good enough back-up plan. A few cold nights and you realize you didn't do as much as you thought. Sometimes you gotta replace the furnace!

 I will further offer that HVAC and plumbing are honorable trades. Sure once upon a time you had to know which of the local tradesmen were indolent or idiots. It seems that to a greater extent these days you have to worry mostly about sharks and sharpies.

 The temperature doesn't worry me for the garden but the dryness of the year and especially this winter's does. We are in extreme drought at this point. I know the popular school of thought is global warming. There is another school of thought that suggests colder and dryer, based on sun cycles. That is however climate not to be confused with weather and this is just winter. So I won't confuse things with that bigger conversation.

  To be a gardener you have to have hope for the future. You also have to guess the odds for the unknowable future. This year there may be no garden. My garden seeds are neatly arranged in their little crate next to the desk and the garden 'plan' is all laid out on paper but there may be no garden. I worry that the dryness will continue into spring and that would quickly lead to Denver Water eliminating outside watering. Now just as I've prepared with a plan on paper and will start seeds inside next month looking hopefully forward, I'm also preparing for the drought option. Yesterday was much warmer and I took the opportunity to spread some wood chips on my front garden. 

  Wood chips are like any mulch in that they reduce weeds, give the worms and bugs something to eat, and moderate summer temperatures thus helping with water needs. That last one was the part on my mind yesterday. My raised beds were tucked away for the winter with a mulch of leaves covered with a metal mesh to keep the wind at bay. Most of the rest of the garden is covered in a constantly added to layer of wood chips. Ruth Stout, that garden goddess, mulched with spoiled hay from her neighbors fields with great success. I recall she was asked, "how much mulch do you need?" Her reply was very Zen - "more than you would think."

   Inspite of constantly adding to my mulch both my leaves and my wood chips are fairly thin layers as those darned worms and bugs keep eating it and turning it into great soil. The amount of mulch is also a bit of a dance. Too much mulch and a seed of any type doesn't have a chance. The soil beneath might be rich and moist but no sun - no grow. The fruit trees might better handle a drought year with a foot of mulch but the companion planted garlic would likely never see the literal light of day. You can 'cheat' transplants like tomatoes and such into a deep bed of mulch. (This was one of Ruth's techniques using as much as a foot of hay!) But, not all veggies like to be transplanted and again seeds not just weeds need the light. So you dance with the odds and the different needs.

  Just as mulch is a dance, the other methods of resilience in a drought are also. I'll delay using my rain barrels as late as I can and have already winter watered my fruit trees. These are a type of dance between watering regulations, rain and evaporation. I could water my gardens till they looked like rice paddies legally in March but still have dead plants in June. Alternatively, I could fill my empty rain barrels only to get two feet of snow or a good thunderstorm wasted over the tops. Resilience is only resilience it's not anti-fragile. You can miss guess a thousand different ways, and usually do, and no matter how prepared you are that just gets you to the door of the dance. Enter and you get to garden and perhaps eat some delicious vine ripened tomatoes. Unless it hails!

  So too governments/communities are coming upon a drought year or perhaps a greater drought cycle. I don't know when the US government last had a actual budget surplus or no debt. I do know we are in store for whoppers this year in both categories. States across the nation (with some thankful exceptions) are preparing to drink from the fire hose of tax increases, debt, and unfunded liabilities. Cities and towns are ditto, again rare exceptions but only the rare ones.  Your share of your wealth is likely going down.

For me the classic lessons of government can be most easily seen at the smallest level. There they are stripped away of all the D & R pretenses of party differences. There you get to watch simple human frailties in all it's glory. I'm thinking of our 'cabin's' Landowners association. It's the equivalent of an HOA with all the silly rules and petty personality disputes. Sure you find a few sharks and sharpies on these entities but mostly your dealing with indolent and idiots. 

  In something of a cycle all it's own the Board of our landowners association has always vacillated between 'raise the dues so we can build reserves', and 'we need ___, spend the reserves and raise the dues to afford ___'. Throw in a few viscous lawsuits perhaps an unexpected expense or two and like most 'government' entities it's broke. But that's OK 'cause then along came a forest fire and wiped out half of the park and dues paying owners. This was inspite of the fact that a good deal of those dues and reserves were spent buying a fire truck and doing fire mitigation. One homeless guy cooking a steak while drunk made it all not enough. hmmm!

 Reserves are the mulch of individual budgets and governmental entities of all sizes. More than you'd think is always the right amount. They require real work to build up and are hard to not have them just blow away or be wasted during good times. Inevitably someone will say yes but this is a sigma six event the reason we have reserves is to spend them. (It should be noted that if you're having a lot of sigma six events - you're not!) Reserves give you resilience in droughts but the cosmic joke is they are not anti fragile.

  Complex systems in gardens, government, and life are fragile. Mulches and reserves can give you resilience if you have enough and maintain them. Anti fragile (things which benefit from disorder - sorry probably should have defined that earlier!)  Is a tough thing to envision and implement for any system yet I hope possible. If anyone has any thoughts I'd like to hear them - seriously!

  I'll leave you with it's a good day for reading and I've managed to find a good book to read and recommend. Mind over Money by Claudia Hammond. It's not a numbers book but a series of short bits on the psychology of money and very readable. It's from 2016 so the library or Amazon is your best bet. Hope you can find it. 

   Paul Simon  has me motivatin' to an Afro Caribbean rhythm and time to walk Copper before the sun and any chance for warmth disappears so gotta go. Doug A.  

  P.S. While walking Copper I thought of one possible anti fragile piece of government at the national level, war. More exactly avoiding war or at least being very minimally/least involved. The United States came out of WWI and slightly less WWII with it's means of production (farms & factories) essentially intact in a devastated world. The roaring 20s, the fabulous 50s, along with our world power status were pretty direct results. So maybe "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none." is an anti fragile strategy. I'm still hoping you'll offer some others. Perhaps some for States, and cities (HOA's seem a hopeless black-hole!) and how about some for me and my garden.