Ain't nothin' nobody could do about it!

I don't know! Really, I don't know! My tomato starts are horribly small. That may be a comparative thing having seen the size and vigor of the local farm stores $1 tomato plants. Additionally, the local Master Gardener's sale is coming up, again, $1 beautiful plants. I've tried over the years to be more self-sufficient by growing and even selling my own starts along with growing heirloom varieties so the seeds would be true to type. I blame the soil for my lousy starts but.... In my Denver garden I was able to simply fill pots with some of my compost add the seeds and cover them with a 1/4 inch of commercial organic seed starting mix. Since moving here I've been busy terracing the south-side of our house with raised beds and filling them with anything that vaguely resembled soil. When time came to start seeds there wasn't even a smidge of half finished compost to be had. Yup, I admit it I bought a bag of that crap they sell at Lowes. Or in my best Clintonesque - Mistakes were made!

So I don't know that the Lowes soil was the proximate cause. Having just come off a Lenten 'fast' that kicked my cocky butt, I'm not sure I know anything. I do know there might be a deeper cause, Hubris not Humus. I spent 40 years in Denver gradually acquiring local knowledge and skills. I went from growing a few spindly garlics to a fairly extensive garden that gave us a fair bit of our food. Yes, some of that knowledge can be built upon here. Soil and local knowledge take time. Owning what you think you know has to be...

My Lenten 'fast' was hardly epic. No, to most of the crap on my phone, especially YouTube. No crap food and once a week 24 hours without food. The moment I settled on those goals I became like the Iranians, Israelis, and Americans discussing peace. I mean certainly the pretzels were already open. It would be wasteful to leave them and besides just a handful! Ah, the self-negotiations, asterisks, and rationalizations were - epic. I binged like a drunk going to rehab both before and after Lent. I picked up my phone a hundred times to "check the weather" put it down and found myself standing in the kitchen. Oh, and gosh I drank a lot of tea and read a dozen books. I did a couple of times manage to get lost in working in the garden. That was nice but mostly it was not.

I'm at a pretty comfortably time and place in my life. Thus it is easy to start thinking I know things. It's even easier to notice the stupid things other people do. (The stupid things I do are quirks, yours are flaws!) So going 15 rounds with a fairly simple personal commitment was a good reminder. At least shut my mouth. The world has flaws, work on my quirks. I don't know how long this Zen will last. How long before I'm serving chipped beef at the soup kitchen yelling "get a job" or some other motivational bon mot. Rumor has it these Catholics do this once a year. I don't know, we'll see!

In the world of zombie apocalypses Ben Davidson seems to be flinging the chipped beef - Dude that previous live stream! Meanwhile the Fourth Turning does seem to be, more quietly, checking a lot of it's boxes. I guess you could view that many ways. We live in the present but can hope, and perhaps prepare for the future. Maybe this season will be shortened with my generation turning the reins over to a younger one soon. Spring does come. I'm gonna have to read that book again!

Doug A.

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Bad Boys

The Buddhist monk Thicht Nat Han offers a mindfulness meditation using breathing. Like most things I've bastardized it to the point that I'd hate to have to tell him I got it from him as he might raise a skeptical eyebrow. While walking the dogs I try to take a deep breathes in and remind myself that I am receiving good from the world around me. Than I breathe out and try to remind myself that I give good to the world. Some days my sinuses are acting up and I don't breathe so well. Today is one of those days! The weather is heavy gray with a steady wet spring snow coming down. We need the moisture so intellectually I'm happy but my mood is as gray as the clouds. The locus of the funk is politics but I'm smart enough to know that the root is firmly sprouted from a compost of life's little detritus. I'm surrounded by sickness and poor health. I love my dogs. Thus Callie's showing her age is a little nibble at my psyche. On Deb's recent trip to visi...

Flash, Boom, Ow!

I think there are 3 major reasons to get out of bed in the morning. Our cat (Maisie) demonstrated the 3rd, fear. The storm last night gave us some cool relief and an open bedroom window. A close clap of thunder from the storm sent Maisie from warmly snuggling with Deb to rocketing out of the room. She used my, thankfully closed, eye as a launching pad from the bed to the door. I'm just glad 80# Cooper doesn't sleep on the bed! The #1 reason I get up in the morning I'll leave to your imagination. #2 is hope, excitement, I get to, or any of a thousand other names for having a purpose for the day. Sure the purpose can be as contrived as I've gotta walk the dogs or I gotta check see if there is a mouse in the live trap. If before my feet touch the floor I can change that "gotta" into "I get to..." it's usually a good day. In money matters purpose or motivation is usually boiled down to an essence of fear or greed. With fear considered to be...

Garden gets a C+ shows potential, but must live up to that potential!

It had to be about the smallest pear I've ever eaten, about 3 inches from nose to butt. It was delicious, a harbinger of things to come. I shared it with Deb. A nibble each. Our pear trees are about 2 years in the ground with us. One has struggled since it's arrival in the mail, a bit of a runt from Stark Bros. The other has progressed nicely but still I wasn't expecting fruit this year. In August half of the healthiest tree decided it was spring and time to bloom. I laughed at it's youthful confusion and admired the beautiful flowers. When I saw the tiny yellow Bartlett the other day I was impressed but knew not to expect much. First fruit on a tree can tend to be unflavored or even bitter. Nope this little guy was ripe and ready! When I last wrote I was awaiting a storm and wondering how much of the garden to pick or lose. The storm came the storm went. The weather was beautiful fall weather and last week or so was a week of rain. This weekend threatens a light fre...

Why Santa is fat, jolly and finished in one night!

There is a fog outside with something approaching rain falling. The soft gauzie nature of fog makes the world quiet, mysterious and beautiful. I'll take the dogs in a bit on our morning walk and enjoy that beauty but first to write. It's odd but I didn't notice either the rain or the fog till the sun was solidly up and Deb pointed it out. I was instead thinking how it gets dark so early and the sun rises so late. I lamented, how could it be that moving almost a whole garden zone closer to the equator and away from the towering Rockies to the west the sun could rise so late? Ah fog, hadn't thought of that! Ain't that life! There you are plumbing the deepest mysteries only to realize you forgot to carry the 1. While sipping my coffee and contemplating the darkness YouTube granted some distraction by offering up a Buddhist philosophy video. Sadly, it was likely AI generated, as so much of the content is these days. I was only half listening but in about the 4th r...

Three Little Birds

It's Saturday the day before Mother's day so I'll start with a little eye candy for the ladies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8nm_jvE_Xs Jake is essentially the MSNBC (vs say Fox) version of the youtube movie I shared last time "Back to Eden" which emphasizes wood chip based gardening. While the whole video is worth watching I especially liked his gardening philosophy which he touches on around the 10 minute mark. Got to jump off topic (quelle surprise!) Jimmy Cliff has me boogieing to Let Your Yeah Be Yeah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDp_7kSli0w Jake's 'just start making mistakes' philosophy is akin to my own. I can't tell you how many gardening books (Permaculture books are the worst) devote chapter after chapter to 'creating your plan'. Yeah I would have killed a lot fewer plants and my fruit trees would have been planted years ago not to mention a quality watering system. No doubt people with 5 year life plans ...

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 ...

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...

More cake and Christmas treats

In the forward to his book TALKING TO THE MOON, John Joseph Mathews' widow describes the book as his Walden. I wouldn't know as every time I tried to read Walden I gave up. Too dense, too deep, too flowery and poetic to read. Perhaps I'll have to try again as this morning I finished Mathews' book about the Osage. At about 5 this morning alone in the family room reading the penultimate chapter, I got it. Mathews had made me struggle for literal weeks on end through enough renewals that I was sure the library was going to say - no more! I struggled both because there were bits of prose that were inspired but also out of a sense of duty. You should know about where you live. A native seed sprouts when the time is right. I've transplanted myself to NE Oklahoma, the Osage, and thus have to dig a hole for my roots. With a little nurturing and time I'll grow beyond that hole. I thought it appropriate that I "got it" and finished as a storm wa...

Ah, but I knew his voice!

I had never met Michael Cloud in person. I was waiting for him, beside the Harry Browne for President table at the Colorado Libertarian convention. While I waited I neatly fanned out the brochures and other material Michael had sent. A short ugly little man started to rifle the items on the table. As the only volunteer near enough to protect these items I stepped forward and challenged him with a "HI!" Just to let him know he was being watched. It was of course Michael. Michael is a world class salesman, a beautiful human, and a fine looking man. Yeah, like many of us he packed himself a knapsack full of rocks to carry on this march through life. Of course, who but a masochist would create for themselves the job of teaching Libertarians to "let the nice people take the brochures - we're trying to give away"! I credit Michael, Joe Johnson and a few other wise souls with teaching me to sometimes, just sometimes, shut up and take yes for an answer. L...

Candace Owens and The Clash walk into a rationalization....

I started this morning in the usual way and the not usual way. Yeah I walked the dogs. Well actually the dog, just Cooper. Carrie, our youngest, was quite clear she didn't want to go. It was cold so hopefully that was it. Could have been, heck, I don't know! Coop and I had a nice normal walk around the neighborhood. Him marking everything and me picking up trash. Yesterday's wind had blown quite a bit into the woods along our path. I long ago decided that seeing trash on my walks harshes my mellow. As I go similar routes on my walks with the dogs, if I leave the trash there it will be there tomorrow and again and again. Picking it up is a minor hassle but future me will be happier. In addition to figuring this bit out about happiness I had a thought about what I'll have to call cause and effect. That's not the exact phrase but it will do for now! The wind causes trash to blow but cause and effect has something of a backflow valve intrinsic to it. More exactly m...

small gardens & small government

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