Quick note.
We’ve decided to stay the course with our portfolio. We have decided to cut spending and increase our cash holdings by putting most of Kate’s quarterly adjustments in savings. This will all have the effect of letting us extend the time before we have to withdraw any money from our various retirement accounts.
The hope is that by that time the market will have recovered enough to cover our needs with Kate retired. As is so often the case, we’ll see.
A quick note. Did phone calling for the Sierra Club tonight. This represents both a signal of my commitment and a raging contradiction for me. A phone call from a stranger, pitching something in which I have marginal to no interest or may find abhorrent irritates the hell out of me. Tonight I was the stranger.
Some calls I made to other Sierra Club members who might volunteer to call swing voters. The rest of the calls were persuasion calls to swing voters in a Minnesota House of Representatives district in the general area of Shoreview. Most of these folks didn’t want to talk. I’m not good at making nice with people who’d rather be left alone, since I’m such a person myself and respect the inclination.
Oh well, only one more night of calls. The last phoning I’ll do will be on election day, get out the vote calls. Those will be easy, straightforward.
I did say these calls were a signal of my commitment. I felt a need to push myself out of my comfort zone. These calls do it. My relationship with mother earth makes it clear to me that irritating some people in order to create a more favorable climate for eco-friendly legislation is worth it.
Kate says she’s feeling sick. She gets exposed to everything new. Sometimes the new stuff slips by her otherwise amped up immune system.
63 bar steady 29.96 1mph S dew-point 55 sunrise 7:17 set 6:45
First Quarter of the Blood Moon rise 2:49 pm set 11:08 pm
The Woollies met tonight at the Red Stag Inn. The financial crunch was a topic of conversation. Scott talked about national currencies and local currencies as stable economies. One of us couldn’t take the ride and sold out last week into treasury certificates. Not me.
We had an interesting conversation of what would happen if things go from bad to worse. We realized we could provide mutual aid. Minnesota has a great tradition of co-operative ventures and I think our commonweal could make the shift to barebones style of living. It wouldn’t be easy, but it might surprise us.
Perhaps I’m too easily lulled to sleep by the people who think they know something, but so far I have not thought about jumping off even our deck. In fact, I will not. The money does not matter to me. Living with Kate I have had access to a far richer life-style, both financially and emotionally, than I ever imagined I could have. I’ve lived with little and a lot. I can do either one and be happy.
We’ll see.
55 bar falls 30.08 0mph NE dew-point 30 sunrise 7:12 set 6:51
Waxing Crescent of the Blood Moon
A brilliant day. One with all the wonderful marks of fall: cool, blue sky, sun, falling leaves. October is my favorite month. Right now.
So the bail-out has passed. The market continues to slump.
Sarah Palin, they say, is the GOP’s gal in 2012. OMG
More bulbs in the ground. Many hemerocallis lifted. Next is the Friday night workout.
65 bar steep drop 29.80 2mph W dew-point 45 sunrise 7:12 set 6:51 Autumn
Waxing Crescent of the Blood Moon rise 11:04 AM CDT set 8:00 PM CDT
Before
Ecological Gardens
“What is permaculture?
Permaculture (Permanent Culture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems that have the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other needs in a sustainable way (Mollison, Bill. Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual. Tyalgum: Tagari Publications, 1988.). Ecological gardening is an attempt to apply these design principles to backyard ecosystems.”
We had the post-installation walk through in which Paula began to explain the plants, their particular needs and uses. Lindsay came, too. The plant guilds (see a post a bit ago) around the fruit trees fix nitrogen, fight off predators, attract beneficial insects and help build soil nutrients. The clover sown among the fruit tree mounds and their guilds will further fix nitrogen and add a flash of white to the orchard. 
Right now the primary thing is to provide the whole with adequate water. The blueberries need some straw to hold in moisture. In preparation for next spring I will clear and smother a belt 15 feet back from the truck access way, creating a place to plant a forest edge. The edge plants will be shrubs which birds and other animals prefer to the fruits in the orchard. That’s a permaculture strategy for reducing animal feeding on human edibles. It also attracts wildlife, which we do to some extent now anyway.
Over the winter Paula and Lindsay will complete a site design that will begin to integrate the features of permaculture even more tightly into our overall landscape. As years go by, a great virture of permaculture is that it requires less and less maintenance because it mimics or recreates natural ecological balance through plant diversity.
What we will do after January 20th? Somewhere in Texas a village will get back their idiot.
“It’s very important for us to be able to pass this piece of legislation so as to stabilize the situation so it doesn’t get worse and that our fellow citizens lose wealth and work,” Bush said during a brief appearance in the Oval Office with a NATO official.
52 bar rises 30.15 omph N dew-point 43 sunrise 7:11 set 6:52 Autumn
New Moon (Blood)
The orchard installation completed. Here are some photographs of the finished result in its earliest moments. Next spring we should have some very expensive apples. Later the cost will amortize over more and more years and more and more fruit.
Feels good to have this as our view out the kitchen window.
Cherry, Plum, Pear and Apple trees in their mounds. The colorful bush is a sandcherry. Mulch is down and the clover seeded.
Hazelnuts, coral bells, currants, gooseberries and lead plants.
One of two blueberry patches.
55 bar rises 30.09 0mph NEE dew-point 54 sunrise 7:09 set 6:58 Autumn
New Moon (Blood)
More mulch. Two more loads. 3 cubic yards. 4.5 total. This is a lotta mulch, 3 trailer fulls. The good news is the trailer has not exploded a tire since Wednesday.
The pitchfork is a useful tool and I’m glad to have occasion to use one.
My chicken noodle soup always has a slightly different recipe, but the result tastes good. Today I left out the carrots and peas (we didn’t have any) and added garlic. This is a hearty soup, great for cool weather.
Swapped out the nutrient in the hydroponics while watching the Vikings under perform. It’s weird to me that so many different combinations of players and coaches can yield similar results.
Kate had a busy, tough weekend. But she’s on the flipside now.
60 bar rises 30.07 2mph N dew-point 59 sunrise 7:06 set 7:00 Autumn
Waning Crescent of the Harvest Moon rise 5:12 set 6:05
Today and tomorrow will be full gardening days. There are bulbs to plant: daffodils, hyacinths, snow drops, many tulips and garlic. Sprinkler heads need coaxing. Mulch sits over at the Anoka County Landfill. Some of it has to come here in the trailer.
While documenting the orchard installation, I also took some shots of the vegetable garden in late September. This photograph has our heirloom Cherokee Purple tomatoes in their senescence. The asiatic lilies with the tall tan stems of wilted leaves look much the same in terms of their life cycle, but in fact are different.
As annuals, the Cherokee Purples put all their effort into fruit, then the plant dies. As a result, we have had a bumper crop of tomatoes, all raised from four seeds planted in April of this year under the lights of the hydroponic system. Continue reading Senescence
Plants in position. This is a fruit tree with a guild of plants that will support it. Guilds are a permaculture concept that I will explain later.
Paula Westmoreland, a principal in Ecological Gardens, at Day 3 start.
More trees and guilds with Christa in the background.
Lindsay Rebhan (kneeling) is another principal in Ecological Gardens. Sean (back to photo), Reid (red hat) and Sara complete the crew that worked today and most of yesterday.
Kona and Emma inspect what the strangers have done to their yard.
At this point almost all the plants are in. Remaining work involves putting down mulch, seeding clover and deciding on work we need to do yet this fall to get ready for the next push in the spring. I’m watering the whole thing now and wrestling with uncooperative sprinkler heads. Another learning opportunity.