small gardens & small government

  I'm enjoying a Zac Brown's song Toes. One of the refrains (can a song have multiple refrains?) in the song is " Life is good today !" That had to describe the feeling last night as Deb and I sat in our backyard. Yeah, yeah plenty of things to worry about but there we were in the cool of the evening watching the robin parents bring the last worms of the day to their hatchlings in our grape arbor. They had lost one of the eggs to a raid by grackles last week but had two hungry mouths to feed this night. Our own dinner was finished with the dishes stacked in the sink, a delicious salad from the garden and a salmon burger with a side of peas also from the garden. Some like worms, for me give me fresh peas with butter and salt, a cool late June evening, and my wife at my side - yeah, life is good today!   Our June has been a collection of 90° days with very little rain. After a reasonable snow pack this winter in the mountains a good portion of the state has slipped int...

 I've got Lena Horne on the stereo. I always thought, in interviews, her personality was too snooty but I'm following her with Sarah Vaughan. I never saw an interview with Sarah but she was nicknames "sassy" so I guess who cares. Both ladies could sing. Lena's singing Stormy Weather and that's as good a place as any to start. Just finished a cool early morning walk with Cooper around a very quiet Sunday neighborhood. The clouds to the west over Green Mountain look as grey and fat as the weatherman said they would. So I'm expecting today to be a good day of rain, inside music and maybe homemade pizza, later.   The pizza won't be quite the usual thrill as Deb is in Oklahoma for her sister's 70th birthday. I've told Deb and I don't know if she gets it, I enjoy cooking but only when I have her for an 'audience'. Now mind you I'm no chef but even something simple like pizza is fun to make, if you can share the little details like ...

  In silence the grey steel hatch slowly swung up. There was a bit of rust but no squeak as the hand on the, wheel like, 'dog' pushed into the morning air. It had rained and the air was fresh and cool. "That smells good", thought our intrepid prepper. As he rose out of the hatch he could hear the faint sounds of a vehicle far off on the county road. The silence was further disturbed by the Fee-beee, Fee-beee of a chickadee proclaiming his territory. It was the greenness though that overwhelmed him as he twisted and stretched unused muscles.  Ah look, the apple tree has ripe fruit on it. I'll pick some he thought and load them into the old truck to sell at the farmers market. The market was opening he'd heard on the CB radio. Ewww the truck, he'd have to attach back up the battery and check that brake fluid that had been low back when he had sheltered in. He smiled as he thought about the bumper sticker he'd put on the truck and sell at his little stan...

 The music is some solid Jazz. The weather outside is as the old song says, frightful. Oh, and there is a pandemic finishing up it's work somewhere out there. Generally not a real good day for gardening, at least outside. Our sunroom windows are however filled with 'pots' of tiny tomato starts and a few other seasonal early-birds.  I've generally resisted 'teching up' my gardening with grow lights, aquaponics, and the like. There is something peaceful about putting a seed in the ground and being a part of it's growing. Perhaps peaceful isn't the right word, more - straight forward. Use the best soil, sun, and water and step back as the seed does what it's created to do.  Thing is not all seeds want to grow in the natural soil sun and water that Colorado's front range provides. A more natural approach would be to go all hunter gatherer, accept the limits and benefits of what is and enjoy the wild spinach, and I have. At least I have once I learn...

The snow from yesterday is mostly melted as I write. The only thing left to be figured out is was there any serious damage. It was really little more than a simple spring storm with a bit of a hard freeze or near hard freeze last night. Possibly again tonight. The mizuna and arugula I had put out last week under a little row cover of plastic got an added bit of fleece for protection.  I'm sure they'll be fine, pretty cold hardy stuff. A bit more of a worry is some spinach and lettuce which I'd also put out. It was being killed off by some unknown thing on my window ledges indoors and thus was at least as safe outside. I had, knowing that the storm was coming, covered these with Wall O Waters. Wall O Waters are kind of the PPEs for plants in spring. A brilliant little invention which adds a good measure of protection from temporary light freezes. Hard freezes are something again and this is a bit early for my normal sowing of spinach and lettuce, so I'll hope. If I'm...

  If you want to find the most interesting things in my garden you have to go to the edges. It's the first full day of spring.  This being Denver, after a couple weeks of 60°s to finish off winter, I'm looking out at 3 or 4 inches of snow and ice. Highs today perhaps the 30°s. Nothing really unusual in that. My desk calendar might be printed in black and white "SPRING BEGINS" but any gardener knows that it's not that binary a world. Heck it's not even analog as in a smooth gradual transition. Weather at a mile high is predictable in the sense that winter will be colder than summer but not in the sense that you can't have an 80° day in February and a freeze in July. It's more a what are the chances thing.  That gamble is part of the joy of gardening. It's also why the heart of my garden is located in the best sun, in raised beds with the best soil and best access to water. Ya gotta stack the odds some years just to have a chance.   Ah but those ed...

Read any good books lately? I'd offer two that are on my mind. Atomic Habits by James Clear and Antifragile by Nassim Taleb.   Atomic Habits is essentially a how to book on getting rid of bad habits and making good habits easier to acquire. It's brain hacking to get you from "I have to" to "I get to". Like most how to books it is more something to practice. Thus while I read it from the library Deb is getting me two copies (let me know if you want to borrow one.) and I signed up for his free website. I have a few bad habits I should ditch and a few good ones I need to add. Perhaps you do also.   Antifragile is more a hm-mm thinking philosophic book. It's philosophy has some real connections to our current Corona virus world. Mr Taleb divides 'things' into three categories, fragile, resilient, and anti fragile. Fragile things break when they get impacted (think eggs being dropped). Resilient things absorb a shock and bounce back (think rubber...