Yearly Archives: 2009

Garden, GeekWorld

Gremlins or Demons or Bugs, oh my

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Summer                    Waxing Summer Moon

This morning the temperature has fallen back to 65.  Good garden weather for moving mulch and repairing netaphim.

Electronic gremlins have given me fits for weeks now.  Not strong fits, but sure annoying.  A while ago my computer refused to recognize my disk drives.  On a day to day basis this is not a problem, but on those days when I want to play a CD or reload software or look at photographs saved to disc, on those days it’s a total frustration.

Then, sometime after returning from the trip to South Carolina, Georgia and Florida my photoshop elements photo organizer seized up.  It opens with a large rectangle in the upper left of the screen and a smaller slice vertically to the far right.  Nothing happens after that.   Again, on a day to day basis, not a big problem, but when I want to manipulate photographs, something I do often, particularly to make them smaller so they’ll fit on this website, I’m shut out completely.

In all these cases and the one below I try to sort stuff out myself.  I have a pretty good, but not perfect track record at this.  I never could figure out how to set up our wireless router, for example.  Geek Squad.  I may have to take my computer over to best buy.

The last couple of days, too, I’ve been bothered by a diminished stream.  No, nothing that Flomax could cure.  I’m talking about irrigation system.  I’m very familiar with the amount of water that comes out of a given spray head.  When it comes out in a weak flow, something is wrong.  It happened last week and I called the well guy to check the well reservoir.  Works fine and he did not charge me.  Whoa.  Again, this morning a weak flow.  Hmmm.

Kate said, “I know why it’s weak.  The front sprinkler is on.” Now that’s just strange.  This should never happen, two zones on at the same time, unless two different programs are scheduled for the same time.  Nope.  I checked that, not the problem.  Zones run in sequence.  1 runs, shuts off, then 2 runs, shuts off, then 3 runs and so on.  Why this should happen, I don’t know, but I hope the folks at Rainbird can explain it to me.

Art and Culture, Family, Garden, Politics, Writing

What Do You Do Well?

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Summer                      Waxing Summer Moon

“We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.” – William Hazlitt

What do you do well?  No false modesty, please, just a clear honest look at yourself with an assessment of your skills and abilities.  Each of us has something that we have forgotten the how of in the midst of performing the act.

Typing is one such skill for me.  I long ago broke with the eyes to the keyboard, careful typing of the uncertain.  I’ve used a keyboard since turning 17 and it is now a tool about which I think little.  Perennial flower gardening is the same.  Vegetables not so much, since I still have to think about growing season, water and food preferences, sun and varities.

Politics comes naturally to me now, but only because my dad and I started watching political conventions when I was 5.  Weighing the political possibilities in a given situation is like typing.  I no longer look at the keys.

Writing, too, has begun to come into that category, too, though the longer pieces, like novels, still require a good deal of careful planning and thought.

Parenting and child-rearing, also, seem to have become second nature to me.  I can think about it, but I don’t much.  I just do.  In the same vein caring for dogs now has experience and attentiveness to guide me, not conscious thought so much.

Cooking, too.  I’m not confident in my cooking skills when it comes to cooking for others, but for Kate and me, I work in the kitchen with interest and experience.

Touring at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts has gone through peaks and valleys, with my comfort level and confidence now beginning to rise again.  This one will take a while to pass into something I do well consistently.

OK, that’s my list.  What about yours?

Garden, permaculture

Sharpening. Mulching.

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Summer            Waxing Summer Moon

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”- Bertrand Russell

Hmmm.  I wonder if that’s true?

Laid down some more straw, weeded a bit in the perennial garden.  After that I went out to the hardware store and bought a diamond file to sharpen my Felcro pruners,  often used garden tools.  A clerk had take me back into the tool aisles.  When asked why they roped them off, she gave me the expected answer, “People have been stealing tools.”  Tough economic times.

Then over to Anoka Feed and Seed where I ordered 6 cubic yards of shredded wood mulch.  Gotta cover up the netaphim and refresh the mulch all around the orchard.

Art and Culture, Family

New Puppies Make Selves at Home

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Summer                          Waxing Summer Moon

So I spent a couple of hours this morning lining the base of the chain link fence with used wooden fence railing, then wiring those rails to the bottom of the chain link.  This is in an attempt to prove that I am human, Vega dog.  Me smarter.

Tonight Vega looked around the living room, hopped in the Stickley arm chair, made herself small and occupied the same space usually taken by a whippet about a third of her size.  Quite a performance.  No wonder she can slither under the fence.  Later, Vega hopped up on the couch and plopped herself down, just like the whippets.  I used to have a firm no dogs on the furniture policy, but it went by the wayside long ago.  They like a good chair as much as I do and the couch, well, hey, that’s for all of us, right?

Research today on the pre-Raphaelite show.  The more I learn the more I respect the work and thought of these guys as it pertained to the purpose of art and the craft of art-making.

Great Work, Politics

Accepting a New Position

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Summer                      Waxing Summer Moon

The escape artists of our local pen had to remain outside when I drove into the Sierra Club meeting.  They did not break out again.  In this case they need an incentive to escape.  That usually consists of a human in a place not immediately accessible to them.  I was gone; Kate was gone; ergo, no incentive.

This was the baton passing moment for the legislative committee.  Josh introduced me as the person taking over from Dan Endreson, who had filled the job for the last four years.  I enjoy politics, enjoy talking politics and enjoy the strategy and execution.  This position will be a lot of work, but a type of work that energizes me.

The heat which sat on us for a couple of days has modulated a bit downwards and the night is pleasant.

The waxing summer moon is the slimmest of slivers, a nursery rhyme moon in need of a cow.

Our Land and Home

Houdini Inhabits a Canine

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Summer                 Waxing Summer Moon

Each penitentiary or prison warden fears the convict who can identify a weakness in the multiple barriers to escape.  So do dog owners.   Our puppy Rigel wiggled under the gate leading down to our perennial garden, an impressive feat considering the narrowness of the opening and the size of her body.  When I blocked this one, she wriggled through a slat in the gate as far her rear hips which just would not fit.  I had to pry the gate apart to free her.  I nailed another slat diagonally across the gate and she quit trying.

Now, however, we have a dog of a similar color, Vega, but different strategy.  A good strategy.  Good for Vega, that is, but bad for us.  I went outside this afternoon to work in the perennial garden in back, overlooked by the deck where our dogs spend much of their time when relaxing.  I looked up there.  All five dogs up there.  Rigel did not try the gate.  Ah.

Oh. I turned, walked around the side of the house and suddenly, standing beside me, Hello!  Hello! I’m here!  Look at me! was Vega.  At first I thought she might have vaulted the gate.  I had put a concrete block down and inadvertently left the solid side up.  I had to know how she did it.

After 13 dogs I have some window into the canine mind.  After finally coaxing Vega  back onto the deck inside the fenced in part of our yard, I left her out there, let the rest of the dogs out and returned to the perennial beds.  Sure enough, only 3 minutes passed and I caught sight of Vega, not on the concrete block, which I had guessed, but near the fence that borders the perennial garden about 100 feet or so from the deck.

The fence is chain link and has contained all of our dogs except for the occasional whippet who follows out some animal that dug to get in the yard.  I have a regular routine of walking the fenceline, checking for breaches and filling them with old tree trunks, fence rails I no longer use, rocks.

Back to Vega and the fence.  She looked at me, looked down at the area where the fence met the ground, crouched with her doggy butt up in the air, tail wagging and dug.  At first I thought it was just a feint, that she had really jumped as I imagined.  Nope.  She got up, then crouched down again, put her nose under the fence, then squeezed her 70 pound puppy (a really big puppy) body under the fence and Hello!

Sigh.  Now I’m going to have to harden all the fence line that borders the perennial garden against these escape attempts.  Instead of the bird man of Alcatraz we have the man dog of Andover.

Bees

Late June Hive Inspection

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Summer                        Waxing Summer Moon

Mark and Elise came over today.  We wandered through the garden and the orchard, followed by Rigel and Vega.  They licked and pressed and jumped.  New people!  New people!  Oh, boy!  Oh, boy!  New people!  Rigel and Vega found Leif and Tate and Tate’s twin really, really interesting.  Baby head!  Baby head!  Oh, boy!  Oh, boy!

Mark and I went out to the hive and popped the lid after suiting up.  The smoker worked better today, but I’ve still not got it down.  There are a lot of bees.  I thought so, but Mark confirmed it.  There are lots of brood, plenty of honey and a few uninhabited queen cells.  We scraped and checked each of the 20 frames, leaving two frames out to insert into the new box we put on top.  The hive is now three boxes high, its maximum.

Next week or so, the honey supers go on the third box.  About half the size of a hive box the supers fill up with honey.  They are the work product that goes into the centrifuge for extraction.  A typical super has about 30 pounds of honey.  Seems like a lot to me.

Mark finds the bees fascinating per se, the honey a bonus that sometimes pays for the bees and the equipment in a given year.  I agree.  The hive construction project alone interests me.  The six sided cells, the propolis, drone, worker and queen cells, the making of honey and its storage reveal a life way and a life form unlike any we contact in the usual day to day.  There is more, too: the queen and her squadron of drones, hopeful suitors, all but one of whom will live and die unfulfilled, the solitary life of the queen, moving from cell to cell squeezing out egg after fertilized egg, the workers who build the cells and scout out food, coming back to communicate in a well known  complicated dance.

Many bee keepers work without suits and gloves.  Honey bees that survive our winters have a docile temperament and are not as defensive as the ordinary person would imagine, though Mark says they get more protective in the fall when the beekeeper begins to take the honey.   This might seem a bit cruel, but in fact the bulk of the honey, say 80-90 pounds, remains in the hive boxes and has enough nourishment for the hives to over winter.

Garden, GeekWorld, permaculture

Take That Hose And Grab It

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Summer                              New Moon

A bit of a disconnected afternoon.  A long nap followed by working for a while in the heat trying to figure which zone on our irrigation clock corresponded to which actual sprinklers.  This was necessary because we got a new clock and the guy joined the wires in roughly the same order as the old one.  Roughly.

The stimulus for this work came from Kate’s discovery that our new puppies get excited when the water comes through the netaphim line we just had put in our orchard.   By excited I mean grab the netaphim and run with it, chewing all the while.  Netaphim is a plastic tube about half the size of a garden hose through water drips onto plants rather than sprays.  It works great, but better without teeth marks.

Tomorrow I’ll put all the netaphim lines on a schedule separate from the rest of the sprinklers and start them early enough in the morning that their work will be done before the puppies get up.  That should solve it.

Bees, Garden, Great Work, permaculture

Smoke Gets In Your Bees

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Waning Days of Beltane                   Waning Dyan Moon

We near midsummer; it’s only 15 hours away.  The Summer Solstice, the hot sister of my favorite holiday, the Winter Solstice, comes to Minnesota at 12:47 am tomorrow, the early hours of father’s day.

To celebrate I plan to work outside in the garden and do some pre-Raphaelite reading, maybe look for a PRB take on midsommer.

To start, this morning I checked on the bees.  There are many, many more bees than came in the small wire and wood box in April.  They come and go, searching the area for nectar and finding plenty at this time of year with the bumper crops still ahead.  Nectar flow precedes honey flow and we are hind leg deep in pollen and nectar.

The bees did not meet the threshold of 8 sides substantially covered with brood that indicates the need for another hive box.  Maybe next week.

There must be a trick to getting the smoker lit and working.  It has challenged my bee-keeping more than the bees so far.  In order to use it  you have to a fuel burning, then smother it, but not put out the coals so the fuel will continue to smolder, producing smoke for the duration of your hive check.

Like many learning curves this one imposes a double penalty.  While taking time to keep the smoker lit and producing, I can not work the hives.  Once in the hives, which I work slowly anyway because I’m still learning, the smoker punking out (pun!) puts me at risk from angry bees.  Meanwhile back to the smoker which means I’m not checking the hive.  Normal learning process.  Frustrating and exhilirating.

Now for some deadheading, trellis building and potato and beet mounding.  Check you on the flipside.

Art and Culture, GeekWorld

Decipher Hunt

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Beltane                      Waning Dyan Moon

My e-mail accounts have slimmed down after post-vacation bloat.  It always takes me a while to delete and save e-mails after a time away from the main computer.  Done now and feels good.

The whole pre-Raph show work has begun to heat up and I plan to do some library time on the paintings I plan to feature on my tour.  Not sure yet, but I’m leaning toward:  Awakening Conscience,  Sheep,  Mary Virgin, La Dolce,  Afterglow, Finding the Savior, Light of the World and Lady of Shallot.  As to theme, not sure yet, but something to do with sight, like New Sight, Clear Sight seems possible or symbol, Decoding the PRB, or Decipher Hunt.

Right now I’m trying to kick my weather console and its data-logger (internet link) back into consciousness.  Gonna  try it again right now.  Looks like its back.  I missed its linking to the national weather observer network.  Now it will get back on in a bit.

I have finally learned my cell-phone number.  My sons will be so proud.