looks like my winter is already planned out

There are scion exchanges coming up this month, in the SF bay area.  Now, if they'd have one in Contra Costa County I'd be mucho pleased, but at least a couple are easily accessible.

 

I wish I had tree cuttings to share, but nothing in the yard is fit for sharing.  Maybe next year, if I can rehabilitate the pomegranate further, get the grapes better established, etc.  I'll probably bring my seed catalogs and donate more than the entrance fee at one of these to make up for that.  I order seeds online anyway, so no big whoop.  Ideally, if and when I do get more seeds, I'll hit the seed bank (which is literally housed in an old bank) run by Baker Creek.  They just opened that up in Petaluma last year, and for the record, they are closed on weekends this time of year.  I learned that the hard way when we tried to get a two-fer by going to get feed at Hunt & Behrens and then picking up some melon sees.  Argh.  But Petaluma's a lovely place to visit, and sort of reminds me of a slightly less entitled Berkeley.  But I was talking about cuttings and such...

 

Because I'm in no position to graft anything (lacking apple or stone fruit trees), I'll try my hand at a couple figs and hopefully a couple kiwis and some pomegranate.  Kiwis get freaking huge over a few years, and the nice folks up at Occidental use that to their advantage by growing kiwi against a building for cooling purposes in the summer ('course, that means I'll have to learn to really really like kiwi...).  I think we could do figs in the front easy peasy.  Good southern exposure, and people tend to not eat their figs in this neighborhood (I've counted four trees that were loaded with fruit and no one unburdened them), so no one's going to rob the trees ('course, this means I'll have to learn to like fresh figs just like I'll learn some renewed enthusiasm for kiwi - but they grow well even neglected and thus seem fool-proof and doable).  These fruits just require that one plant a healthy stem in some good soil, and they'll root and grow, generally. 

 

But if I want to plant these, I need to roll back the cat-poo riddled and weed-studded turf in the front yard.  Indeed, if it weren't for the high concentration of cat leavings in the front yard, I'd take the girls on field trips to the front and have them weeding for me, because they have a real fondness in their little poultry hearts for dandelions and crab grass.  Argh.  The dood has been pondering how to persuade the cats to crap and piss elsewhere.  If I get mulch from a tree-trimmer, they'll dig in it like litter.  If we do a desert landscape for part of the yard (drought-resistent aromatics like lavenders and sages, etc), the cats will dig in the sandy soil.  Indeed, when we dig in the backyard, we try to cover that up with branches and sticks we've saved, just so none of the usual suspects like Orange Julius or Tallulah view that freshly turned dirt like Picasso would an empty canvas.

 

I guess that's #18.  Participate in a scion exchange and plant the tree starts in a reasonable amount of time. 

 

Today we're getting 2x12s for constructing the raised beds in the back, so that's a fairly painless start to the marathon.  And yes, the hens will supervise every aspect of that project, from their run and from the sidelines, I'm sure.

Gratuitous Mid-week Tallulah Shot

She looks like she's part sheep, doesn't she?

The Supervisor

This is Geraldine, inspecting the shovel. Inspecting the dirt being turned, inspecting the quality of worms and bugs being turned out of the muddy depths while her dad works on breaking up the weed clumps and turning them under.

Big job she's got. Between the time it took me to snap this pic, and a few more, she had sucked down about eight worms.

Georgina, the red just above her, likes to work independently. You can see how much scratching she's been doing in the patch where we had some padron peppers growing. And then Mildred and Norma are just being opportunists-, I mean keeping an eye on everyone's progress.

since I don't do 'resolutions'...

Goals for 2010:

 

1.  Grow enough fruits/veggies to do more than merely freeze the few extras.

2.  Improve the coop and run, by putting up a real roof instead of just the plastic corrugated stuff (save the plastic corrugated stuff for our little patio enclosure that'll replace the crappily constructed and leaky 'roof' which doesn't really shelter it now and just serves as a kitty latrine - I shit you not).  *Possibly* add to the flock, bringing it up to 8 crazed hens.  I think we need to make the run into a bi-level for that to work well, so they don't go fucknuts.  At least the coop is a perfectly good size for up to 8.

3.  Dig another couple compost piles for storage of compost during various stages of decomposition.

4.  Construct green house.

5.  Demo the brick barbecue thing and clean up those bricks for use in other projects (like raised beds).

6.  Construct shelters for raised beds, out of the rebar supports we'll be using at the corners and middles, and reusing this past summer's burlap (otherwise the young plants will fry like bacon again).

7.  Plant elderberry bushes.  Plant blueberry bushes.  Plant a Rosa rugosa for the hips.  Plant a hawthorn, possibly.

8.  Cultivate the front yard and plant the corn and majority of sunflowers out there, in successive plantings.

9.  Get a bee hive (and hopefully get a swarm from someone local).  Construct little bumblebee and carpenter bee boxes to be placed on our side of the fence in hidden spots.  -  We are hoping for increased yields with better pollination.

10. Learn to cook and enjoy nopales, seeing as the Grandmother Cactus has come back from the stump, as it were. 

11. Get the drip irrigation and graywater down so we don't have to sweat it.

12. Get the solar stuff squared away in full, finally.

13. Knock the garage into shape, with workshops on opposite sides: soap, and mechanic/construction; and with special hanging out/play space for the furkids.  The goal is to feed the girls in the kitchen but have one litterbox in the garage, and then one in the front bathroom, and there'll be a kitty door in the door between the garage and kitchen for ease of access.

14. Speaking of the girls, the plan is to build a cat run outside my office windows, a ledge that goes around the corner with screening and shelves for them to hang out on, which has a roof on it.

15. And then somewhere in there will fall: get new jobs, the both of us. 

 

Ha!  Thing is though, a lot of these things are related to one another.  It's really not that hard to do any of these after what we did last year.  The worst work is done already.

 

We already had the happy discovery this past weekend that we won't need to buy any planting mix.  All we need to do is dig up the stuff we added to the trenches last year, shovel coop and run litter into the dirt beneath, and then start working last year's mix into that.  Bam, there's the filling for a raised bed.  Part of why we didn't do raised beds last year was to save $$ on wood for the framing, but a nice by-product is we reinvigorated the worm population in the dirt, planting directly into the dirt mixed with planting mix (and the chickens can attest to that, having scratched up and gobbled their weight in worms over the weekend when I was yanking up the frost-bitten and dead summer plants).

this just in, I still don't like FOs

Why do I do this to myself. I ordered product that stood a brief chance of being scented with some EOs, but wasn't.

It is quarantined in the closet in my office. I have friends at work who will take it off my hands (it was primarily for them that I ordered anyway...), but man oh man.

I can understand why, but ...

... when someone goes through and sanitizes their blog, in some effort at damage control, because they're realizing belatedly that they gave away far too much, I don't feel as sorry as I suppose they would like me to.

 

It's the nature of an online journal which is accessed by everyone and their mama, this tendency to forget where one is writing and that a few thousand of one's closest acquaintances and non-acquaintances are always reading.  If you don't want them reading, or if you are afraid you'll not be credited for your labors (remember, when it's a sharing exercise, there's a tendency for people to take that literally - 'sharing' doesn't necessarily imply credit for more than an idea at times), maybe it's not such a hot idea to post some things.  If this is stuff you'd eventually like to profit on in some fashion, or stuff that you are afraid will become stolen content in another place, don't post it.  It really is that simple.

 

Violating copyright and lifting content is one thing.  That's a crime.  And yes, the blogger has every right to get hopping mad and do something about it.

 

But wringing your hands and going through some grieving process of realizing ya shared way too much and now it can't be called back?  I'd be more inclined to just close a blog than sanitize the heck out of it and remove every instructional post.

 

This is a tough one to ponder, but I think every single blogger who has ever posted something even remotely helpful or instructional at some point should think on it seriously, and just keep the greater picture in mind.  Don't assume your readership is comprised of a couple long-suffering friends.  Assume everyone is reading.  Because they probably are if your blog turns up in search engines when people research various topics.

 

And don't forget that discussion boards were fodder for this kind of info-mining before the blogs came along and basically presented infoseekers with menus after seating them quickly at a comfortable table.  One of the worst behaviors I see in crafters online, for example, is "Hey, I just got this great idea for my business and it goes like ____" and then a month later there are posts whingeing that "so-and-so stole my idea, now what do I do?"  How about not sharing so enthusiastically, next time. 

the thankful grouch

It is always a bit marginal when I find myself thanking my lucky stars that I am who I am, rather than someone I'm bugged by, and that's just to get through the day without throttling anyone.

 

But, here we go.

 

I am thankful to be the even-tempered weirdo I am, to be the protector of 6 surly hens and 2 fuzzy-bottomed felines, and to be the supportive oddball to another oddball.

I am thankful to have my wits about me, a sense of humor, and an ability to land on my feet like one of the aforementioned fuzzy-bottomed felines, and to be able to think on my feet and actually come up with good ideas when put into trying situations.  I am thankful to not be an insecure people-pleaser, which means that life is very good indeed.

 

Okay, back to the regularly scheduled programming.

 

This episode of Sesame Blog was brought to you by the letters P, A, T, I, E, N, C, and E again.

okay, so which is it?

Is your product cruelty free because you say so, and you don't realize that every manufactured compound you are using in it was tested on animals at some point in time... or are you using synthetic ingredients that have never been tested on anything. The latter is impossible, btw, so it's sort of a rhetorical question.

It comes down to the ingredients, not just the finished product. I know a couple crafters who actually 'get it' on the cruelty free thing, and they had to jump through serious hoops to get the leaping bunny certification. They're not using a bunch of manufactured raw materials, for starters.

I really need to not check out what other businesses are doing, especially the ones I've known of for eons from the bulletin boards; I found one on Facebook and now my brain needs sanitizing after the hefty load of snark and BS. Natural is not just a marketing ploy, saying that everything originates in nature is semantic word salad, and (wait for it...) a marketing ploy.

On that note, I'm going to feed the cats and heat up some tamales for dinner. And swear off the internets for awhile other than for blogging and communicating.