Near end of day 1. Leveling and moving soil.
At the end of day 2 we had mounds of soil and plants placed.
At the beginning of day 3 Paula Westmoreland gives direction to the crew.
Kate cut more carpet today for path underlayment. This is still the start of day 3.
63 bar falls 30.15 0mph NNE dew-point 60 sunrise 7:04 set 7:04
Waning Crescent of the Harvest Moon rise 2:44 set 5:23
What a guy night and day. Last night I relieved Kate after the trailer blew its tire. The truck and the speeding vehicles on 10 kept me company until the night driver from Pomps (would I make this up?) showed up to tell me I needed not only a new tire, but a new wheel, too. A Jungian would ask (and I am one, so I will) if this uniformed man with a third eye, a battery powered lamp, came out of the night as a psychopomp, ready to carry me into another realm.
He did. After he left, I went home for five hours of sleep, then up again to find a tire and wheel. It was easier, but not straight forward. The folks who made the trailer went out of business a year ago (natch) and the new folks no longer stocked this tire. But, “Northern Tool or Discount Tire might have it.” Northern Tool, “We have every trailer tire, but that one.” (again, natch) At Discount Tire I discovered why, “Oh, that’s an automobile tire, not a trailer tire.” Soooo. “Yes, we have it. But Continue reading Permaculture Side Quests
Today I have had many opportunities to learn about melding with the movement of the universe. I missed the first lesson when the dumptruck driver put the load of compost in the middle of the truck gate. I could have accepted it and began to work around it, but it made me mad.
When the site prep guy broke the irrigation main, I knew I had failed to figure the irrigation stuff out before hand, so I accepted my responsibility and felt calm.
Seemed like I had it down. Then, Kate called at 10:10 PM tonight. “I blew a tire on the trailer.” Oh. Well, another opportunity to flow with the movement of the universe. After a call to a specialty tire service–not cheap–, the guy came, an hour + after I initiated contact. “Hmmm. The wheels no good.” This at 11:45 PM. Swell.
What could I do? You can’t get a wheel at 11:45 pm. So, I called the Sheriff’s office. They’re closed. I had to call 911. The Sheriff’s message told me to call them. I reported the trailer as not going to get fixed until the morning. Kicked it off the trailer hitch and drove home.
Where I am now. Hungry. Gonna have something to eat, then go to bed.
65 bar rises 30.02 omph NW dew-point 64 sunrise 7:03 set 7:07
Last Quarter Harvest Moon rise 12:10 set 4:24
Pouring rain. Thunder and lightning. Good for the crops, but if it lasts into tomorrow, not so good for site prep. That’s what’s on deck. Guy with bobcat moving earth, creating berms, leveling. That sort of thing.
The weather forecasts look ok, still some chance of thunderstorm on Thursday morning. 20% Good odds.
Finished all the candidate research this morning. Sierra club political committee tomorrow night. Might be the last meeting until after the election. From this point forward it will be retail political work, tactics not strategy.
I have no tours until a week from Friday. That one is an On Dragon’s Wings tour for an esl group. They have asked us to use modified language. Not sure what that means. Guess we’ll find out.
We’re ready to do this.
66 bar steady 30.00 0mph WNW dew-point 65 sunrise 7:02 set 7:07 Autumn
Last Quarter of the Harvest Moon rise 12:10 set 4:34
Orchard schematic from same orientation as photograph below. The large circles are trees, the smaller crenallated figures are shrubs and the small circles are perennial plants.
The kitchen bay window is at my back as I took this photograph on the same orientation as the plan. This looks west.
This is the opposite orientation from the photograph above, looking east from the access road toward the house.
The last day of our site prep. Raking pea gravel, taking up the chain link laid down to protect the yard and moving paving blocks. Tomorrow I plant bulbs. Then, on Wednesday get compost. Thursday and Friday plant and install. Get mulch.
62 bar rises 30.11 2mph N dew-point 54 sunrise 6:59 set 7:13
Waning Gibbous Harvest Moon rise 9:58 set 1:37
Starving The Beast By Jennifer Moses
Washington Post
Tuesday, November 29, 2005; Page A21
BATON ROUGE, La. —
“A primary goal of many Republicans is to “starve the beast” of federal government, the theory being that states and private enterprise, better equipped to respond to local needs than Washington ever could be, will at the very least take up the slack.”
This concept seems to have come into political parlance around the time of Ronald Reagan. Remember David Stockman?
As I read a New York Times piece on the bailout engineered by former Goldman-Sachs Exec, Henry Paulson, this phrase rose to the surface. Why? GW and his crowd have run up the deficit through spending on Iraq and counter-terrorism while cutting taxes for the wealthy and for corporations. At the same time they pursued a dogged anti-regulatory policy. After having been in office for 8 years, responsibility for this current mess lands on the Bush doorstep, even if its roots are in the Reagan and George Bush the 1st eras.
Here’s the connection. The bail-out will raise the Federal deficit somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 trillion dollars. Old Everett Dirksen comes to mind. “A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” That means that the next President’s capacity to enact new policy will be sharply curtailed by the extraordinary level of government financial involvement. This is the moral equivalent of starving the beast.
It gets worse. Who will benefit directly from the bail-out? The rich white oligarchs who created it in the first place. This is such a stunning piece of irony it is difficult to credit outside a fictional scenario.
Is the bailout necessary? It may well be. The alternative of an economy headed toward a crash would have dire consequences for everyone. Even so, the beneficiaries and the losers seem peculiarly weighted toward the Republican side of the aisle.
As the Chinese said, “May you live in interesting times.”
75 bar falls 30.07 2mph E dew-point 59 sunrise 6:58 set 7:13 Lughnasa
Waning Gibbous Harvest Moon rise 9:58 set 1:37
Couldn’t get chipper this morning, so I spent some time moving logs, then went on to plant daffodils. After the nap Kate and I worked on transferring day lilies to a front bed. She wants them to block out weeds and they should do a good job. That took most of the afternoon. Tomorrow I can get the chipper so we’ll do that AM. After, I’ll plant more bulbs and more lilies.
63 bar rises 30.11 2mph NW dew-point 54 sunrise 6:58 set 7:13 Lughnasa
Waning Gibbous Harvest Moon rise 9:58 set 1:37
A crisp morning, tending toward a warm afternoon. Great for outdoor work. Have to split logs so I can use the chipper on them Monday. Then, plant bulbs and move hemerocallis. Plenty outside labor for the crew here at Vineland Place.
Check in later.
There are times when the judgment of the universe becomes inscrutable. At best. The complex interplay among our nature, our nurture and the actual facts muddies the whys of life. Always. It is no wonder that humans seek answers, we are pattern seekers, probers, wonderers, wanderers. Yet, there may be no answers.
I know a family, a small nuclear family. A man, a woman, a daughter. Since January the full weight of heaven has fallen on their home. The man, in his fifties, a government employee, a sailor, an astronomer, a fixer. The woman, also in her fifties, a quirky domestic with an honesty and unflinchingness that marks her as unusual. The daughter, bright, also quirky, a maker of angel wings. A student of costume. A lover of the
Renaissance. Finished college early with a degree in history.
In January the man had a spell, a stroke they thought at first. Some improvement. Another spell. An MRI. Neurological. Holes appeared. Demylenation, a stripping away of the insulating layer of the nerve fibers. At first, a guarded diagnosis. After a second and third episode. MS Multiple Sclerosis.
Various treatments, but none working very well. Then, again some improvement physically. With the realization though that work had come to an end and life as he knew had vanished over night. The man has become sad, angry, depressed. He hits the dog with his cane. The dog will go to a new home this week. He wakes up at 4 in the morning and wants to argue. Considers suicide. Has gone from a detail guy, a traveler and friend to an invalid and a miserable invalid.