Our Land and Home, permaculture

Before Site Prep: The Orchard

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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-before-2008planfromhouse500.jpg   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.

orchard-before-20080planview500.jpg

The kitchen bay window is at my back as I took this photograph on the same orientation as the plan.  This looks west.

orchard-before-2008fromwoods500.jpg

This  is the opposite orientation from the photograph above, looking east from the access road toward the house.

Politics

Starve the Beast

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 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.”

Garden

Moving–Logs, Day Lilies

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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.

Garden, permaculture

A Splitting Morning

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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.

Friends

The Judgment of the Universe

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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.

Then.  Continue reading The Judgment of the Universe →

Faith and Spirituality, Myth and Story, permaculture

Angels in the Dark

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70  bar falls 29.98  0mph S dew-point 58  sunrise 6:57  set 7:17

Waning Gibbous Harvest Moon rise  8:32  set 11:01

On Thursday nights I watch Supernatural on the CW.  My lifelong fascination with gothic tales, especially ones involving demons makes this irresistible to me, even more so than Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I also enjoy.  I mention it here because it took a very interesting twist tonight.  An angel appeared.  This is not at all like touched by an angel, this is more like grabbed by an angel.  Anyhow, the entry into the program of the divine element in the supernatural separates Supernatural from everything that’s gone before on TV.  At least as far I can recall.  Should be interesting.

When I went out on the deck tonight, the smell of the dead trees was everywhere.  It’s not an unpleasant smell.  Sort of a green tobacco drying odor.  When it hit my nose though, I rethought my earlier comments.  About not missing the trees.   It feels important to me to do a ritual on Saturday, before we chip them.  They lived with us and we with them for 14 years.  They never asked anything of us and in return offered shade, their presence.  Their passing should not go unnoticed.

Garden, Our Land and Home, permaculture

Peace and Calm

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64  bar steady 30.16  0mph NW dew-point 56  sunrise 6:56  set 7:17  Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Harvest Moon  rise 8:32  set 11:01

September will be a full out garden and landscaping month.  I have bulbs coming from White Flower Farms, a tree to finish cutting up, then two trees to mulch.  Then I’ll be working with Eco-Gardens to plant and install our new orchard and near kitchen window plantings.

Again, on the economy.  Peace and calm.  Fear kills.

permaculture

The Lumberjack at Home

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73  bar steady  30.18  1mph N  dew-point 47  sunrise 6:54  set 7:19  Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Harvest Moon  rise 8:02  set 9:41

cuttingacacia500.jpg

Got this one down without hitting the house, the fence or the glass table on the deck.  My merit badge is secure.

This work prepares the area for the orchard and fruit bushes.  Lindsay and Paula came today.  Lindsay’s plan fit our needs to a tee and moves us forward.  I’ll give you a detailed version of it later, but it includes cherries, apples, pears, plums, currants, gooseberries, serviceberries and other fruiting shrubs.  The orchard and the fruiting shrubs will extend from the kitchen bay window all the way to the edge of the woods.

Remember this one from Monty Python?

Oh, I’m a lumberjack, and I’m okay, I sleep all night and I work all day.

CHORUS: He’s a lumberjack, and he’s okay, He sleeps all night and he works all day.

I cut down trees, I eat my lunch, I go to the lava-try.

On Wednesdays I go shoppin’ And have buttered scones for tea.

Mounties: He cuts down trees, he eats his lunch, He goes to the lava-try. On Wednesdays ‘e goes shoppin’ And has buttered scones for tea.

Garden, Our Land and Home, Politics

Lumberjack: The Home Reality Show

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57  bar rises 30.17  2mph NNE dew-point 51  sunrise 6:54 set 7:19  Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Harvest Moon  rise 8:02  set 9:41

Enough ranting.  The fiscal world will go about its business; Kate and I made our decisions and have commitments that make sense to us.  In the political realm Obama has gone from looking like the candidate for change to staging a disappearing act in the media.  Will the economy help him re-emerge?  Don’t know.  Neither candidate seem compelling on financial matters.  Obama’s good luck is that he’s a Democrat with a tanking economy run by Republicans.  Sometimes luck is all that matters.  Napoleon famously wanted to know if his officers had good luck.  He promoted those who did.

Another episode in Lumberjack:  The Home Reality Show today.  The second acacia has to come down and I have to drop it in a narrow space.  I’m feeling confident.  I’ll let you know how it goes down.