BeauSoleil is tapping out a fast paced rhythm. Buckwheat Zydeco and The Cajun Allstars will join in for a day of Cajun music to match the temperature. It's odd on a hot and humid day to hear such lively upbeat music. My only logic I can put to it is you don't pick up the fiddle or go to the Fais do-do till the work is done and the evening cool lets you cut loose.
Along that line of thought goes the 'garden'. An odd moment early in the morning or following an afternoon thunderstorm allows me to keep up with the general maintenance of a suburban yard, lawn and such. To really cut loose and garden will have to wait till the temperatures cools in the fall. I'm simply not acclimated yet. I have however started.
Nothing grand mind you but a start. Couple of days ago I finished mowing the lawn put the mower on the lowest setting and scalped a 35' x 7' section. With the thick black plastic pinned down on it, the hope is to use a bit of judo. The heat of July and August isn't likely to change just 'cause I'm sweating. Might as well use it to kill the Bermuda lawn underneath - we'll see. I've watched plenty of YouTube videos suggesting a similar approach but there are always variables. Is a month and a half enough time? How soon till the grass re-establishes itself ?
An additional unknown is the slope of the site. It sits on the south-side and will get serious sun so good there. The soil is about 6 or 8 inches on top of rock. This is about the same around the lot and the area in general. That piece as I've mentioned doesn't faze me as I like raised beds. (It is a pleasure to sit on the edge of a bed and weed - that pleasure becomes a necessity the older I get!) Thing is building anything on a slope requires some thought. I don't know if the grass was a brilliant piece of landscaping that I will miss as a gullywasher of a thunderstorm dumps water next to the house and it wants to go downhill. Will a stone wall, of any configuration, hold back wet soil? Will my garden end up in an angry neighbor's yard? I think the worries are greater than the slope but we'll see! Part of gardening is thinking and worrying but at some point you have to plant something or you are not growing anything.
Something most non gardeners don't realize is the amount of time it takes to get a modest veggie garden producing. Not really an issue if like myself, and most of us who play in a garden, it's a passion and a pleasure that you plan to enjoy the rest of your life. You can reduce the amount of time by throwing money at the problem. If you tried that during the lockdowns you learned that compost, hoses, heck even seeds were expensive - if you could find them. What worries me is I saw during the lockdowns people assumed that they could simply switch from buying at Safeway to picking in their garden. Searching for any resilience is playing dice with the gods. Looking for resilience with a veggie garden is playing dice in the god's casino. Deb and I took a risk in leaving an established garden that was producing a good portion of the veggies we ate (Note I didn't say all - really note that!). From what I hear from friends and family in Denver it turned out to be a good year to have taken that risk, with rain and hail wiping out gardens. If you're looking to add to your resilience with a garden (for whatever tough times you see ahead.) - start 5 years ago. If you can't do that, start now!
With that reminder to myself we started a compost pile. The raised beds well, step 1 black plastic down. I'm trying to locate local Alfalfa bales with the understanding they won't be sprayed with herbicides (if anyone knows different please let me know asap). I'll use them to build the beds for the first year or two while compost 'happens'. None of that sates the beast inside that just wants to grow something. Pulling the potato onions from Deb's sister's garden plot helped. A basil plant from the produce aisle at the store filled a crevice. But there is a void I need a garden growing. Perhaps I'll put some peas in somewhere and try for a fall crop.
The music has changed over to The Boogie Kings which blends Cajun, country, boogie and something they call 'swamp pop'. Had never heard of that last one. A quick search seems to show it as a jump back to the 50's music scene which was much more of a local situation with local bands throwing a regional twist on the hits of the day. With the change in the music I'll switch over to politics.
Like my garden the 2024 election cycle is still in it's infancy. I'll no doubt vote for the Libertarian candidate even if he doesn't have a pulse. That is a cynical look into the future and what I expect will be the eventual nominees of the Republican and Democratic Parties. I am by nature both a Libertarian and a politico. It is kinda like loving baseball and watching the local amateur ball team play. You see some good players and some sloppy ball but you know the game is the majors.
In the political realm I'm thrilled to see my old political party the Dems fighting cleaver and tong to keep JFK Jr from being acknowledged as a candidate. He's polling just under 20% and could pull an upset in New Hampshire. He could play the role of Eugene McCarthy in 1968. Additionally, he has the lowest negatives and highest positives polling of ANY candidate (even after recent personal attacks)! As I've said before he is no libertarian. Whatever non-libertarian views he has aside, he has pushed his campaign forward with what I believe is a deeply personal attack against the deep state/military industrial complex. He seems to be willing to push back against most of the direction Washington has taken these last 55 years. (and more) I'm very OK with that.
Kennedy's fight for his Party's nomination is a fight against the full power of vested, and I would add evil, interests. To watch his campaign is to watch a flawed man demand to be listened to. He speaks where he can to whoever will listen. He goes on too long on points and then startles you by bringing all those facts together in a solid narrative. His fans and base should not be looked at too closely by a libertarian like myself. His election would further perpetrate the absurdity of a 'landed gentry' ruling class (think Udalls, Pelosies, Bushes, Clintons, and Kennedys). It would put in office yet another deeply personally scarred person. Yet to turn the tide at this point, yeah I'm OK with all that.
My other old political party the Republican's Vivek Ramaswamy has none of the deep personal scarring of Kennedy. As a former Libertarian he also more closely aligns with my views. (I do think he sees immigration through the eyes of an Indian American vs a Mexican or Latin American - as in legal immigration should be merit based on education not two arms and a strong back - and yes that is somewhat racist for me to say but...) He is differently polished and his voice isn't damaged like Kennedy's. His name is unpronounceable by the vast majority of Anglo voters yet he is polling a comfortable 3rd. He's driven by a techie background and freely talks about polling in pulling back of the wizards curtain of how messages are crafted in politics. The polish hasn't yet driven him to be a generic candidate but has given him a cleaner campaign message. Yet for all his personal success I worry that he is too clean and will be overwhelmed by the power of the stench in the swamp should he somehow manage to be elected. Yet with us so far off the cliff of what we face in the future anyone who wants to start the return to a Constitutional Republic - Oh, I'm Ok with that!
I worry that like most efforts to prepare for the future we as a country have started too late. For us to be resilient as a country we need reserves and stores of wealth we once had. Not 5 years ago but 55. Those are gone, nobody started the 'garden'. The Medium age for the US is at a record high. Without immigration, both legal and illegal, our population is shrinking. Also shrinking is our middle class. Our debt to GDP ratio, our ability to finance that debt are both insane and precarious. To assume a continuation of your life as you've known it is balanced squarely on your own shoulders. Resilience is simply a decision to have enough to get through the change we have already passed into.
Because this blog focuses on small gardens and small government I will say start your garden, vote for small government. Will that be enough I don't know. Is that all you should do? Should you get your health and finances in shape? I will remember the movie line of the judge sentencing a man to 30 years. The man exclaims "I can't do 30 years!" To which the judge retorts - "Do as much as you can." It is your life. It's not changing it has changed. Do as much as you can. Start 5 years ago, 55 years ago or start now. Doug A.
Let's call this Part II. Behind the scene of this brilliant work is a crazy old Uncle Doug person. Sometimes, I put a piece down after writing it, edit, or just dump the piece in the trash. Upon finishing this blog I had what we'll have to call a crisis of conscience.
I was struggling through Ken Fisher's book The Only Three Questions That Count. Mr Fisher is provably smarter than I am and has the resources and experience to call BS on most of what I know to be 'true'. He's smarter but I'm no idiot. An idiot is a person who doesn't from time to time challenge what he knows to be true. I'm not a big Socratic fan but a little self reflection on life is worth both the time and effort.
Meanwhile, as Ken's book was acting as a shovel to the face, I am living an unmitigatedly happy happy life. As a person who has worried about 42 of the last 3 financial crisises during my lifetime, I'm a bit off balance. I'm really not an unpleasant person to be around unless you mistakenly ask my thoughts on the future. I've wondered in the past if the apocalyptic zeitgeist of myself and many of my generation is a function of growing old and our own mortality approaching. For myself, I started too young for this to be the logical case. Travis has claimed that boomers only talk about the end of the world and life extension. I think it is more of a twist for myself and many in my boomer generation searching for a road less traveled. Some of those roads are simply less traveled for a reason. Some are damned interesting!
On the damned interesting side of the ledger sheet I'll offer first this link. Ok - tough sell to call a 3 hour video of the FDIC Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee interesting but on multiple levels it is. I first met this less traveled trail with an internet blogger who was offering his thoughts on the most recent (is it 6th or 7th?) bank failure. He showed a tiny (and perhaps misleading) snip of this video - which you can approximate if you view the piece from about 1:24 (to I'd suggest 1:40). The blogger's view I can dismiss, although I do see the spate of bank failures as significant. Unlike some of the views expressed in the committee meeting I see it as something that should be 'made' important to average Joe's. 'course I also believe schools do very little to prepare people for real life so.... Worrying or succeeding in life is strictly self study. That is just one level. On another level this is a group of people, just humans, who have been asked to plan D-Day or perhaps plan for 911. I'm kinda glad someone is looking at the what ifs. (consider 1:57 to about 2:00). That last snip was somewhat prescient thinking from 9 months ago to regional bank failures playing out now.
This was a long boring meeting from 9 months ago. I didn't watch it till now. I was too busy worrying about Fed implementation of CBDCs, BRICS implementation of a gold back common currency, and Blackrock's possible ETF for Bitcoin. Anyone of these could have profound effects that average Joe won't see coming. Me I was worrying about will a little fig tree be able to root in our 'soil on stone' backyard, not some bank failure.
Yeah I got a little Violette De Bordeaux fig tree on close out at Loews. As I've previously mentioned Loews is good for close out bargains but not advice. Thus while I'd researched Chicago Hardy figs as being able to grow locally the VDB is a crapshoot from multiple angles. Like most things if you can keep your loses in gardening on the low side the upside is worth the risk. At 7 bucks I doubt even Ken Fisher would fault my playing an unknown chance. The fig tree along with a buck and a half tomato planted in a pot confirmed for me that I'm a garden junkie jonsing to get in the game. I'm still trying to use this time on the sidelines as a chance to ask questions, learn and acclimate. Last night we supped upon eggplant parm that Deb had grown and a neighbor's fresh tomato. There is life behind these privacy fences!
Apropos nothing, but also on the damned interesting side of the YouTube long tail waste an hour here.
Till I write again I'll leave you with the old saw - Think globally act locally. Try changing a few words around and 'Think about the really big hard to keep up on unfathomable things that could destroy your happy happy life in a blink and plant a garden.' Just a small garden. - Doug A.
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