It's 5 in the morning, I'm just back from dropping Deb off at the airport where she'll (hopefully) be able to fly out to visit with her sister Karen. Karen's prognosis is still quite bad, and while the weather is minus something with snow, Deb is as dutiful a sister as she is a wonderful wife. Karen and I are both lucky to have her in our lives.
With Deb off the music is on despite the hour. There could be no more appropriate song for the season than Colorado Christmas by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The visual quality, if you watch, is poor but I consider it more a song of the mind. For me much of it's appeal are memories of a Colorado that is harder and harder to find. Some of the memories are just personal ones, little to do with Christmas. One memory was a small herd of elk coming out of the morning fog from the spring below our cabin. It was fall not Christmas as the bull elk chased off younger rivals and guided his ladies up to and then past our cabin windows. Deb and I sat with 2 dogs each of us focused but quiet as this bit of nature unfolded. It was as beautiful as the song.
Less sanguine, Cooper took the weather and Deb's luggage as an obvious sign the zombie apocalypse had arrived. Clearly the humans were beating feet and not taking him with them. The message for him was every dog for himself. While Deb and I were off to the airport he managed to get the large box of dog biscuits off the dryer. Apparently there is a limit to how much he can eat (this has been debated by us!) as there was a 1/2 box uneaten. Who says a lab can't save something for tomorrow. Back in my drinking days I would have been quite proud of his temperance.
With the weather, today will most certainly not be a do anything in the garden day. A couple of the seed catalogs have arrived and it will be a good day to do some indoor thinking. I always feel bad with my abuse of the seed companies. I buy so few seeds but I do like the physical thumbing through of a catalog. Mind you the on-line catalogs have an advantage in the depth of information they can provide and companies do offer on-line only varieties. Ah but to thumb through and fold a corner on a page, old school.
One piece of the garden planning will be should I dial back on rotating garden beds and companion planting. The rotation of veggies among the beds has been something I've struggled with from one year to the next. The garden is small and some areas just lend themselves to a particular plant with better sun or recently with trellises, arbors, and fences to grow up. My thinking is heavily influenced by this video. His basic point, of taking a step back and realizing a dozen feet left or right doesn't mean that much, makes sense. Well, up to a point - most of my beds are raised beds and really I don't know how much the soil shares vs simply rows in a field. I believe the phrase is 'we'll see'.
The companion planting piece is even more complicated because it's a loosely used word. Is a plant companioned because it can be planted in succession with another and thus uses the small space better? Does a plant pairing add a deterrent to a pest? Or just that tomatoes like carrots, beans don't like onions and garlic, and fennel doesn't like anybody? Additionally I've tried, mostly with herbs, to add perennials to the beds using the theory that it's good for the soil to keep 'a root in the ground'. As I say complicated but the perfect day to have an argument with myself. Funny thing is seeds just want to grow and most of my fuming and fulminating is just a silly distraction to let me believe I'm important to the process.
It is a thing, that gardening is full of theories and themes. Is Ruth Stout a better method than say Back To Eden, No till, Permaculture, Lasagna, trench composting the list is endless. Add to that list is my 5-B hardiness zone really the same as an upstate New York 5-B? Heck I could watch Charles Dowding videos all day but is his British rainfall even comparable to dry Colorado. Does a method for a farmer make sense for a backyard garden and what are your micro-climates!? The point was brought home to me while grabbing a stack of gardening books from the local library. Our library has a decent sized collection on gardening. I realized I had read most of it and found little that spoke to my situation. Gardens are like individuals unique with commonalities. It is pleasant to think about and debate the merits of this aspect or that unique feature with a cup of tea in hand on a cold winter day. Eventually, all the little schemes and dreams are meaningless if you don't put a seed in the ground and grow something. Perhaps the best rant on this point begins at 4:54 in this linked video.
I've been an Elon Musk fan for quite sometime. No, I certainly don't agree with everything he's done and I doubt he knows or cares one way or the other. He has through his wealth and personality reached the status of a public personality and thus we all get to weigh in on his life. As is the nature of that status his privacy is to an extent invaded. He recently was derided for his decision that if you Dox you are off Twitter. Part of that derision was of the ha gotcha variety - you hold your self out as a free speech/ no censorship advocate and here you are censoring. We all censor and we all have a line of that's too far "...endangering my family is not...(OK)."
I've never been a fan of Donald Trump. When he was elected President I did hold out some small hope that he might break the military/intelligence/industrial complex but I certainly don't agree with much of what he did and I again doubt he cares. His tax returns he considers private and the absolute lies told and promoted by FBI officials and Democratic opponents about collusion with Russia he feels are indictable.
The whole circus of hearings and investigations the new Congress will hold will no doubt match the circus of hearings and investigations of the recent Congress. With no Party holding absolute power the media will pick it's sides and it's 'facts'. It will attempt to be loud and continue to be divisive but will change your life hardly at all. Thing is, as time slips by with us distracted by these circuses, we go deeper in debt and further from a solution. Is a solution still possible? When was the last time the Federal government actually had a merely balanced budget? (Not paying down our astronomical debt - just not adding to it.) This does actually matters to you and your family. Is your dollar buying less? That is because there are more dollars that have be created out of thin air (not through work measured -if loosely- by the GDP). We have fallen off a financial cliff as a country and that might mean this is the zombie apocalypse and it's time to grab the biscuits. Or you can enjoy the circus. Might I suggest a good Earl Grey or perhaps a Lapsang Souchong to sip with the show.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a prosperous (we'll see) New Year Doug
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