Dreams take Flight

If you visit the Al!ve Fitness Center on the west side of Charlotte, Michigan, there is a very good chance that the first person that you will meet will be Tammy Hernandez. She is the receptionist/greeter.

It is very likely that she will be sitting at a table and immersed in some project before she stands up to greet you as you come through the sliding glass doors.

For example:

Her last project was a three-dimensional mural. The silhouette of a small girl is on the left. An ever=expanding and increasingly dense swirl of butterflies sweep from left-to-right. The girl appears to be holding a Kindle or other, similar reading device. The title reads "Dreams Take Flight".

Since this mural borders the walking track that winds through the facility, I get to study it 18 times during our 40 minute walk. I started to notice details. The wings of the butterflies move! The background that the little girl is standing on is a slightly out-of-focus, monochromatic cityscape or mountainscape (like Dickens' London or Tolkein's Mordor).

Tammy researched the subject, look at other artists work and she decided that she could do better. She cut out the girl and every butterfly out of construction paper and glued them in place. She sponge-painted the cityscape. 

It is a heck of an advertisement for reading in general and Kindle type devices in particular.  

"Have you experienced shortness of breath in the last month?"

Two of the decisions that I have to make as a blogger are to decide how much information that I share and how "heroic" I make myself look.

I tend to "under-share" the first. On the second point I am fully aware that people whose narrative always paints them as the hero are guilty of two sins. The first sin is that they are liars. That sin is (usually) forgivable if the lie is highly entertaining and they aren't doing it for personal gain. Sadly, most of those kinds of liars are insufferable boors. And that is the second sin, to be a boor.

How my day went

The contractor showed up at 10:00 a.m. on-the-dot. 

He performed a meticulous site inspection. Things started going sideways when he was attempting to ascertain the size, depth and location of a certain underground feature. He was stymied by the dry clay fill on the site and the abundance of rock. The chore was further complicated by the object not being close to the surface.

His visit was complicated by the fact that he had another job-site to visit at 1:00 p.m. in another part of the state. After two hours of unsuccessfully attempting to locate the underground object, he punted. He authorized me to look for it.

It was like a game of Battleship.

I had it wrapped up by 5:00 p.m. And frankly, I was whipped. I am not used to that kind of heavy digging. Several times I found myself out-of-breath, usually after loosening up a layer of soil with a mattock prior to shoveling it out of the hole.

The rest of the story

I dug a row of deep divots on a 2' grid  across the region the contractor had determined was the most likely place for the object.

I filled the holes with water and then went to eat lunch and take a nap.

I woke up at 3:00 p.m. and started driving a 4' piece of sharpened rebar into the muddy bottom of the divots. The top of the object proved to be 36" below grade!

Once I had determined 0-0-x-x-x-x-0-0, I dug a trench between the 0-x on each end and filled the trench with water. I goofed around for about a half-hour (OK, I caught my breath and drank Gatorade, that that doesn't sound as cool). 

I walked the rebar along the length of the trench on 3" increments until I found, approximately, the outline of the object.

I took some photos. Then I took a shower. Then I emailed the information to the contractor so he can write an intelligent quote. Boom! 5:00 p.m.

But if you knew this would cost you money...

You might ask, "If you knew that this information might increase the price of the quote, why didn't you fudge the info in your favor?"

Good question, Smedley.

Suppose that I told him that the object's dimensions were smaller than it actually is. He shows up with a crew and equipment and they cannot knock it out in one day. Furthermore, suppose the equipment he hauled in from halfway across the state is not adequate to the task.

As a businessman, the the contractor will include contingencies in the quote. For example, he might quote based on the assumption of one day, in-and-out. He will quote based on standard hourly rates for different types of equipment. 

So it is entirely possible that fudging the numbers could more than double my final cost of this part of the project. If he cannot get it done in one day. If he has to come back the second day with more capable equipment with higher standard hourly rates.

For what it is worth, the contractor offered me a job. I think he was half-kidding. And I think he was half serious. He spends 20% of his time in a vehicle driving around the state, gathering info and making quotes. I could save him a butt-load of time driving (which is not productive) and gathering the site information.

Shortness of breath

That question has to be one of the dumbest question in a medical intake. It is absolutely devoid of context. 

There is a world of difference between being short-of-breath if it happens walking down the driveway to pick up your mail or if it happens because you are dragging a deer out of the woods or burying the body of somebody's ex-boyfriend in heavy, rocky soil.

Presented with minimal comment

...is what the doctors are saying

Work party After-Action-Report

Time-on-task

My helper showed up! Five hours time-on-task in the Upper and Hill Orchards.

Some of the time was invested in getting my helper started. Once he got going and he knew what to do, he didn't slow down. He was not even deterred by Poison Ivy.

He kept feeding the two burn barrels with branches pulled out of the unmowed area immediately beneath the apple trees.

I "humped" water with 300 PPM nitrogen to the newly planted trees. 

A thunderstorm blew through about two-and-a-half hours into the gig, so we broke for lunch. We picked up a whopping 0.1" of rain, barely enough to wet the dust. 

After lunch we worked another 2-1/2 hours

He kept burning branches. He was unfazed by the heat and humidity.

I humped more water (about 230 gallons, in-total). I broadcast clover seed, limestone and potassium chloride at a rate of approximately one pound/75 pounds/25 pounds respectively over 5000 square feet of ground.

I sprayed a half-dozen apple trees with 1% calcium chloride to improve fruit quality. Some varieties such as Honeycrisp (which I don't grow) and its parent Keepsake are unsalable without an aggressive calcium program. When I say "sprayed...apple trees", what I really mean is I made sure that I thoroughly covered the FRUIT with the spray. Calcium is not very mobile within the tree. You actually need to put the spray on the outside of the fruit and it will suck it in and absorb it. 

On a dry afternoon you can watch the droplets shrink and disappear as the fruit absorb the liquid over a time period of ten seconds. It is pretty amazing to watch something you think of as solid act like a thirsty sponge.

Looking ahead

I didn't get water to all of the baby trees. So I need to finish that.

The ten-day look-ahead by the weather-guessers has no significant amount of rain predicted. That means I get to do it again in a week. The good news is that all of the new trees are still actively growing. Their twigs have not set terminal buds. That bodes well for hitting or exceeding my target of 24" of shoot extension.

The not-great news is that several of the trees with a good fruit load need a boost because their shoot extension runted-out. A 1% spray of urea solution is the quickest way to kick them in the dupa. A tree with inadequate leafs to ripen the fruit produce too much insipid fruit and then tend to relapse into alternate bearing. I want to avoid that if I can.

My current plan is to spend tomorrow morning at the homestead. I am expecting a contractor to do a site-visit and make a quote. I can pull weeds before he comes.

Afterward, I can return to the Hill Orchard and finish humping water and bless some trees with a foliar application of urea solution.

Duck update

Yesterday morning our largest "hen" duck was even less mobile than she was the night before. She struggled to move on the flat-and-level. She stopped every few "hops" and rested for minutes.

Last night when I went to put the ducks into jail she was running with the other girls like nothing had happened. I attribute the miraculous recovery to St Cuthbert, the patron saint of ducks.

Random information

Many species of butterflies crave salt...good, old sodium chloride.

The males need sodium for sperm motility and the "gift" of the sodium from the males improves the female's flight efficiency and her ability to find prime larval food sources and then lay the fertilized eggs on them.

High quality research on the topic is scarce but from what is available, an educated guess of 1000 PPM sodium (roughly a one-and-a-half teaspoons of salt per gallon of water or 2.5 grams of salt per liter of water) is a conservative starting point. 

The solution can be put in a traditional "bird bath" and some kind of drinking platforms installed.

Those platforms can be a mound of sand or some rafts of wooden clothes pins or some foam packing-peanuts can be floated in the bath. The butterflies need something solid to stand on while they imbibe their fix of sodium. 

Wheat harvest started

Two hours time-on-task yesterday

Tilling. Hand weeding. Nothing glamorous. The basic blocking-and-tackling of gardening.

Lame duck

Our biggest duck was lame when I put them in jail last night. I was later than usual. I wonder if she had an encounter with a young predator that was learning to hunt?

On the way back to the house I turned off my head-lamp. Turning it off is a multi-stage process. Pressing the button the first time turns it on to BRIGHT. The second press of the button is DIM. The third press of the button is STROBE. The final press of the button is OFF.

After turning it off, I noticed about a million fireflies strobing. I read that they do that to inform the other fireflies that they are sexually available. That is, they are flirting. It is also a communal activity. When one firefly starts doing it, then the other, nearby fireflies start flirting.

I wondered if the strobing function on my headlamp had triggered a frenzy of firefly flirting.

I repeated the process. Another avalanche of firefly strobing resulted. 

Technology is a wonderful thing. It can make an old man an alpha-male, even if it only impresses the insects.

I will not let the ducks out this morning until it is fully light, just in case "Junior" is waiting around for another crack at Lucky Ducky. 

Today's work-tickets

Lift at the gym. 

Get my helper started with burning limbs and woody-trash in the upper orchard. Yes, I have a volunteer. Happy days are here again.

Spread ground limestone, potash and white clover seed over 5000 square-feet of the Hill Orchard that was not mowed last year and has no clover growing in it...yet.

I think "Ladino" clover is a bit of a scam. It sucks in the deer hunters who are trying to concoct the most awesome food-plot.

In my limited experience, Ladino clover, which is a giant form of white clover, doesn't self-seed as aggressively as the medium leaf forms of white clover and the stand quickly reverts back to the mean.

If you plant any locally-adapted strain of medium-leaf white clover and if you mow the grass when it gets taller than six-inches tall...you will have a significant percentage of the sward in clover. Certain caveats apply. Grass out-competes clover for potassium and phosphorous, so you need to make sure those are available. Clover struggles with low pH soils, so limestone is a good move.Clover is shallow-rooted, so you will rarely see much of it in dry areas or in sandy soils. Clover is not very tolerant of shade, so it is difficult to establish in a forest or under an over-grown orchard.

But if you can honor her restraints, you can plant it once and count on it being there forever. It even self-seeds with "time activated" seeds that can outlast a five-year drought and re-establish when the rains come back. 

Wheat harvest

One of my local farmers started harvesting yesterday.

One thing the "survival" and the "homesteading" communities often gloss over is the time-lag between planting and the harvest of any significant number of calories.

The history books tell us that the American Indians called late winter "The Hungry Time" but I think they miss the point that unless you live near water where large numbers of fatty fish spawn shortly after ice-out, The Hungry Time lasts much longer than the last month of winter. 

An early sweet corn hybrid might provide you with decent ears 65 days after the soil temperature hits 60 degrees F.

The earliest strains of potatoes can beat that because you can trick the tubers by holding them in a warm cellar for a few weeks before planting them.

Winter wheat and rye might even be a bit before that.

The point is that if you haven't been paying attention and are guided by "I feel like...", then you probably assume that food, calories, become available when things turn green in the spring. Around here, that might be April 15.

The reality is that in a subsistence environment (like Ukraine) unless you want to graze vast volumes of high-fiber greens, then you better have a safety net of redundant food sources:

• Stored grain, oils and fats
• Milk from a cow, goat, sheep other ruminant 
• Winter grains planted in late-Autumn the previous year
• Early potatoes and (maybe) turnips
• Some roots stored in a cellar, clamp or heavily mulched and left in the garden row. 

 In Eaton County, Michigan, the food situation starts to flip right-side up the second week of July. That is almost three months after the landscape turns green.

Fine Art Thursday

 

Renee Charles Edmond His was born in a suburb west of Paris in 1877. He died in 1960.

He made his reputation as a young man painting enormous, epic paintings. Then he spent the rest of his life capitalizing on that reputation.

Famous for landscapes featuring fertile-looking rivers.

One school of evolutionary biologists claim that our DNA is hardwired to seek places where multiple ecosystems converge and provide food, transportation and trade.  Your mileage may vary.

Office building rehab as apartments: FAIL

The former headquarters of Pfizer in Manhattan (NYC, New York) was being remodeled into 1600 residential units.

Workers noticed that the beams that support several floors more than twenty stories above ground-level were starting to buckle due to excessive compressive loads.

Authorities in NYC assured us today that everything is under-control and that all the steps required to mitigate the risk have been executed. 

Structural failures due to "mission creep" are not a new phenomena. The Quebec Bridge collapsed TWICE during its construction. Those failures became the impetus that led many Canadian engineers to wear iron rings:

The Iron Ring is a ring worn by many Canadian engineers as a symbol and reminder of the obligations and ethics associated with their profession. The ring is presented in a private ceremony known as the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer.

The text of the calling was written by English poet Rudyard Kipling, at the request of Haultain. Haultain asked Kipling to author the calling partly because of Kipling's poem The Sons of Martha, which paid tribute to an engineer.^[7] Kipling's calling sought to emphasize the responsibilities of an engineer, affirming their responsibility to "not henceforward suffer or pass, or be privy to the passing of, Bad Workmanship or Faulty Material."^[7] Kipling's calling also affirmed that an engineer must not compromise their work, in spite of external pressures; and was a call for professional unity between engineers