Low expectations

 

I painted the roof of the duck-jail white to reduce temperatures under it. The jail is a re-purposed truck cap that was free on Craigslist. 

I tilled Southern Belle's gardens this morning and took some measurements. She assigned me the task of putting up another pole on the perimeter of her deck so she can put up another 12' square of shade-cloth.

One 8', 4-by-4 and hardware was purchased. Receipts were saved and I will be reimbursed.

I tilled up about 20 feet of row that had been planted to beets but none of them survived. I planted half to cucumbers (approximately 60 days from seed-to-first cucumbers) and half to Daikon radish.

I set up the sprinkler on the west end of the potato patch and turned it on at 8:00 p.m. to minimize evaporation and my electric bill. Michigan allows utilities to charge 24 cents a kW-hr between 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. I will run the sprinkler overnight.

Coasting

Mrs ERJ and I are coasting through this hot spell. We cut our usual 40 minute walk short at 35 minutes.

We bought a rotisserie chicken and a bagged salad for dinner.

I am not getting much done but I am not standing still, either. 

Tomorrow's work-ticket

Install the new post on Southern Belle's deck.

Spot-water some newly grafted trees.

Walk with Mrs ERJ.

Go fishing with Shotgun (first time this season!!!)

Stretch target: Pick up a half-yard of sawdust.

Random B.S.

Ya know, throwing a bunch of Zebra Mussels into the Washington D.C. cement-pond would reduce the algae problems. Another alternative would be to plant Silver Carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix). That would drive the E.P.A. bonkers because ZM and SC are not a native species.  Maybe there are native, North American species that is an analogs of the ZM and SC. Perhaps the native species can be genetically modified so they have red, white and blue shells.

Another approach would be to allow year-round duck hunting to reduce the amount of "nutrients" deposited by visiting ducks. But I cannot see D.C. allowing hunters toting 3-1/2", 12 gauge, semi-automatic long-guns free access to the city's core.

An alternative to human hunters would be to import alligators from Florida for the warmer months. There are many patriots from Florida, Louisiana and Texas who would consider it a privilege to plant dozens of 4' (and longer) gators and gar into the waters around the US Capitol every May.

To quote the tree-huggers, "Mother Nature will heal if we just lend her a helping hand."

Margin

I was conversing with a friend who had a family member take a tumble.

The family member is a serious athlete. Maybe not an Olympic level athlete but somebody who can ride a bicycle at 30 miles per hour for an extended period of time kind of athlete.

The aforementioned athlete ingested a bee via the neck of their shirt. While distracted, things happened and suddenly they were no longer riding their bike.

Key points:

While the proximal cause was the bee, the underlying enablers were the kinetic energy and the modest margin-of-error tolerated by the bicycle.

When things go sideways, the energy has to dump to somewhere and land on someone.

If you are of a certain age and the overall, ambient, potential energy of the environment increases...it behooves you to avoid situations where tiny errors trigger catastrophic failures.

For those who are interested, the athlete did not suffer any major CNS damage but they did increase the number of discrete, osseous entities in their body by about 5%.

Speaking of low expectations

Latin must be an exceptionally difficult language to master.

My youngest brother took Latin in high-school and his instructor returned the final exam to him with a large "C" written at the top.

My brother was SO excited...to get a C...as if it was the best thing he could aspire to.

Context matters. 

One sign of intelligence is the ability to change your plans

Red dots denote peak heat-index. Note that the dew point (the green line) remains in the mid-70s. That means that wearing a wet tee-shirt will offer a lot of relief from the heat

My plan to beat the heat by working in the early morning died on the shoals of reality.

A shower shortly before sunrise made the humidity at ground-level 100% and the mosquitoes are ferocious. The wind-speeds are currently zero and don't pick up until 8:30 a.m. 

So...it looks like I will be working later in the morning and wearing a wetted tee-shirt. I dislike wearing damp shorts, so I will pin the hem up to hold the bottom of it above my belt-line.

A few photos

A no-till bean field with a very low plant-count. I walked the field and it looked like several things interacted to cause this failure.

Looking up the rows. You can see some places where everything worked and some bands where nothing worked.

The network of veins left behind suggest snails or Japanese Beetle damage.

• 30" rows, so he started with a low seed count per acre
• Seeder could not handle damp, clay soil and struggled to cover seeds after placing them in the furrows
• Snail damage on the seedlings that did emerge.

I have a lot of sympathy for this farmer. It looked like he attempted to reseed the areas where there were skips. I think he is a young guy and this will be a painful lesson. He isn't going to make any money on this field.

Posted for future reference. Makes 12 muffins

Every bit as good as McDeath's Sausage McDDNuffins.

Snails gang-tackling a velvetleaf weed (Abution theophrasti) I pulled out of the garden and tossed into the grass.

I suspect that snails emit pheromones when they are feasting. Either that, or they are attracted by the smell of drying/dying/fermenting weeds.

A problem in practical hydrology

Springs (water) occur when the earth's surface dips below the top of the ambient water table. 

In wet areas, springs are commonly found at the base of the cliffs that bound the stream's valley and bubbling up in the back-swamp. Rains charge the aquifier in the uplands above the cliffs and the inward-angle of the intersection of the flood-plain and the cliff is the feature that cuts into the water-table.

My friend

I have a friend who purchased a property with the intention of it providing much of the food he will need as a retired person.

Unfortunately, only half of it is well enough drained to grow most food plants and even that is impaired by shade, Black Walnuts, buildings and driveways.

The other half is saturated for most of the growing season.

For scale, the plot measures approximately 250 feet in the east-west direction.

Here is a topographical map of the wet half. I added a green "springs here" feature and white arrows to illustrate direction of seepage.

I also noted the berm left by the channalizing spoils left behind after the county drain commission "improved" the stream.

To summarize, my friend is first penalized by the topography. He has a massive spring along the west side of his property that floods the north half of it. He is next penalized by the berm left by the drain commission that impairs the free-flow of that water toward the (natural) stream.

The wet-half of his property is dominated by willow, dogwood, buttonbush, silver maple, ash, brambles, jewelweed and other wetland species.

The good news is that the parcel was cheap.

I have been mulling-over my friend's challenges.

Yesterday, a friend sent me this video. It is slightly longer than one minute long.

It quickly occurred to me that my friend could create similar, though more gently sloped, raised beds using the back-blade of a tractor. As long as the bottoms of the canals are continuously sloped, then minnows from the stream can forage on mosquito larvae in the standing water. 

The spoils from the canals will raise the area he cultivates. The raised beds in the video look like they are only 18" above the surface of the water, so he doesn't need a lot of elevation. The canals will also breach the berm left behind by the drainage commission.

Issues include the EPA getting pissy about him landscaping "wet-lands" even though those wetlands are (partially) due to the drain commissions handling of the dredging spoils. Another issue is the effect of seasonal flooding eroding the features so he would have a maintenance issue.

The upside is that he would gain almost an acre of prime, well-drained, bottomland garden. Literally, fifty times more than he has now.

Vaya con Dios to Father Dwight and "The Eyes have-it"

Today is the last Mass that will be celebrated by Father Dwight as the pastor of St Mary (Charlotte) and St Ann (Bellevue) parish. He served here for ten years and has been moved to a parish on the west side of Metro Lansing. In return, we are getting their pastor.

Unlike many other Christian denominations where the pastor is hired-and-fired at the discretion of a Board of Elders, Roman Catholic priests are moved at the sole discretion of the Bishop. The Bishop in Lansing has 72 players on the chessboard and, alas, every one of those individuals are men who are good at some things but weak in other areas.

The general strategy seems to be following a pastor who is weak in one area (finance for example) by a pastor who is strong in that area. Over time, though the path may wobble, it is on average it will be in a good direction.

Other factors come into play. Sometimes a bishop will move a priest to a parish closer to his ailing parents so he can also fulfill his duties as a son as well as his duties as a priest. Or he might move a priest closer to a university where the priest is pursuing an advanced degree. Those moves displace the resident priest and he must be put somewhere.

Regardless of the pastor's relative strengths and weaknesses, there are always a bunch of people who feel exceptionally bonded to him and grieve deeply when he moves on.

My outlook is more optimistic. Priests are like St Paul. They move around. If the new priest preaches from the Bible then I will be fine.

A little bit of Scripture for you Sunday

Intro material:

The Sermon of the Mount from Matthew Chapters 5, 6, and 7 jumps around and can feel like a montage of Christ's greatest-hits. I am going to take the liberty of underlining some words that thread a few of the ideas together.

Jesus leads off with the Beatitudes "Blessed are the..." sequence but then at 5:13 he starts talking about salt and light:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."   (all quotes are taken from the New American Bible translation)

Then Jesus jumps into a series of very short vignettes where he teaches that we are sinning when we knowingly expose ourselves to overwhelming temptation to sin. Two examples of those vignettes follow:

5:22 

“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment,  and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna."

 and 5:27

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’

But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna"

Then, after preaching about a half-dozen other topics, Jesus inserts a two verses that, if read in isolation, seem way out in left field. From Matt 6:22:

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be."

The common thread of these verses are "eye" and "light". 

 

One way to apply this to modern life is to look at sources of temptation or titillation that we might find ourselves subjected to. For me, that would be the content on the internet that I allow my eyes to see and my ears to listen to. (If somebody in 32 A.D. were to describe a computer monitor on a desk, he would probably call it "a lamp", no?)

 

Porn is everywhere. It creeps into innocent searches for information. It sneaks into videos.

 

At this point there are millions of videos available on streaming platforms that will jack-up your dopamine and adrenaline levels. Not just sexually explicit material, but non-stop shoot-em ups, revenge/karma videos and so on.

 

Video games (not something I am a consumer of, but I know they exist) can fall into the porn/dopamine addicting material.

 

On-line gambling is a huge dopamine jack for many people.

 

Some uses of social media where gossip is passed along. Some theologians think that "...false witness..." in the Ten Commandments was intended to control gossip (the retelling of material that is not provable as true) as much as censure the telling of lies. 

 

Some people self-sooth by shopping on-line. That is not a problem until they are buying stuff they don't need and not able to pay to fix their car when it breaks down or they cannot make their rent payment.

 

From one standpoint, it is absolutely incredible that a book that was written 2000 years ago can advise us about the perils of the internet. From another standpoint, the fact that humans haven't changed during those 2000 years tells us that we should not be surprised at all. 

 

Selling

I was blessed during my career to function at various times as an in-house consultant. I had no real authority and the only way I could add value was to "sell" my advice to the people who did have authority.

Since being an in-house consultant is a great gig, I made a study of "selling". Not just so I could add more value but because I realized that the product that I sold the most often was the idea that "Joe is a great employee who always adds value when he is hired".

Who holds the switch?

I quickly realized that the organization chart only represents the flow of authority. It does not tell you who is the pivot man when it comes to "who makes the decision" regarding some aspect of a project.

The pivot person could be the boss, the boss's boss, a trusted worker, the bean-counter, a supplier, the trucker who delivers items, some times is was a maintenance person who could just make it happen... Any sales pitch you make must address their needs or your product will not be accepted.

The sales points that I consider most compelling might be unimportant to the decision-maker. My job as a consultant was to learn what attributes mattered most to the pivot person and customize the solution so it also addresses their priorities.

What is in it for me

If you are a boss and you are selling a change-in-behavior, then you could just say "I will discipline you if you don't do it the way I tell you to do it". 

That only ensures compliance when they think you are watching.

A more effective way is to also paint a word-picture, a scenario, where a generic employee does it the wrong way and there is a bad outcome.

"We need to stay within the lines of the pathways when traveling across the factory floor. I know that sometimes people are might overstay their break and take shortcuts through the material stacks to get back to their workstation when the line starts. The problem is that the material delivery people use the break-times to take material to the lines and they cannot stop if you suddenly pop-out from between two stacks of pallets."

If you ever worked in an automobile factory, you know exactly the scenario I am talking about.

Key points in the scenario: Most people can relate to the story. Marc wanted to finish a joke in the smokers shed outside. You need to get back to the line (which is a virtue). There is a very strong temptation to cut through the material stacks and you tell yourself "Just this time won't hurt"...

Your audience can visualize themself as the person in the story.

That meme

Decisionmaker: The mother carrying that child is the decision-maker and she is getting pummeled with advice. Sometimes it is the father of that child. Sometimes it is the mother of that father (yeah, actually happens all the time). Often it is from the "cool girls" in her posse. It is difficult to resist getting swept away by the waves of advice.

Visualization potential: Most of us avoid visualizing situations where we are powerless; in a cave, in a submarine, in a sleeping-bag with a broken zipper...in a womb. Attempting to create empathy for her unborn child is an uphill push if you try to create an empathy bond and your model is something she actively resists.

However, most young woman can relate to getting on an airplane and flying to Cancun or Hawaii. Those are aspirational goals. She can also envision some amoral lunatic blowing up that plane (the aluminum womb in the sky) and is horrified by the prospect.

A lot of moral behavior is driven by "Yes, except for the grace of God, that could have been me."

Is the meme sticky?

The image that serves as the background for the meme is memorable. We see planes every time we look upward on a clear day. Only time will tell us if the meme is sticky and provides another frame-of-reference to mothers confronted with circumstances that pressure them to kill their baby.

Buckets and the cost of polyethylene

 

I was using one of these seven gallon water jugs to hold the water I use to mix herbicides.

Nope, I don't just run a hose to fill my sprayers. For one thing, the outside faucets are plumbed into the line before the water softener so the water contains lots of calcium and a bit of dissolved iron.

Since some herbicides combine with calcium and iron, I am throwing money away because the expensive herbicide I bought is busy dancing with Ca++, Fe++ or Fe+++ rather than being available to enter the plant.

The "water" still has some dissolved minerals. I deal with that by adding ammonium sulfate to the water. The sulfate scavenges the ++ minerals by tightly bonding with them. The ammonium sulfate also reduces the pH of the spray mix which for some reason makes the active ingredients pass through the surface of the leaf more quickly.

A secondary advantage of lowering the pH is that it can extend the tank-life of the active ingredient. 

Finally, I add a wetting agent. Many leaves are covered with fine hairs or with a waxy texture that causes water to bead up and run off of them. The wetting agent defeats that and causes the enter surface of the leaf to be exposed to the active ingredients.

I dispense the prepared water into the sprayer, add my active ingredient and the am off to the races. 

Not only do I save money by fiddling with my spray water but I end up spraying far less active ingredient into the environment to achieve the desired end.

I had one of these in the back of my truck. It is a very convenient place to have it when I am spraying.

I went for a drive and another item rolled into it and put a star-burst into its top.

I think I paid $7.99 for the original jug. Do you want to guess what they cost now?

 Do you see the number that was crossed off? $28.00!

Much of that is probably due to the increase in the price of blow-molding grade polyethylene. Prices doubled due to the issues in the Persian Gulf.

The situation with the Persian Gulf is very dynamic and the prices seesaw dramatically. Manufacturers and retailers have to cover their costs but they don't want to lose business by over-price. Consequently, consumers get whiplash trying to catch a sale or bite the bullet and just pay the spot price when we need something. 

I will probably buy another one but will wince when I do it. I hate spending money.

Buckets

I splurged and bought to new 5 gallon buckets for "humping" water in the orchard.

The hand protector is circled in red

The weak link in the buckets are the plastic hand-protectors on the bucket's bail. I suspect UV damage.

I wrapped the hand-protector with tape. Maybe I can increase their life-span. 

Weather, work-notes and planning ahead

I got off to a slow start today. For some reason I have a lot of sore muscles.

The big news is that starting Monday, the weather-guessers are predicting peak heat-indexes over a hundred degrees (F) for four days in a row. I know my readers in TX, OK, LA, AZ etc. are chortling. For you guys, that is a balmy day in April.

Heat indexes over 95(F) get my attention and I plan my work to avoid them.

That means that Joe is a busy-beaver this weekend.

I watered the new trees in the Upper Orchard today. They don't need it now but the models predict that the heat-dome event will suck 1.5" out of the upper soil levels. So, I gave each new tree a 4 gallon drink of water with 300 PPM of nitrogen fertilizer.

I put out some new 110 body-grip traps to let them rust and to get the squirrels used to them. I smeared some peanut butter on the posts where they are mounted. The traps were mounted but not armed. 

I will be pulling weeds in the potato patch tomorrow. I am keeping a close eye on the soil moisture and may till tomorrow afternoon.

I will be erecting a cattle panel for the cucumbers to climb on.

If I get exceptionally motivated I will cut some grass. I really need to take a break from physically demanding work to recover.

I am thinking of watering the gardens on Sunday. The heat-dome will stress the power grid and there is no point in putting it off.

On the plus side, the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melons, squash and cucumbers should explode in size. They all love heat.

Grafting notes

The TB hazelnut grafts are already pushing buds but the Grand Traverse are not.

The Stearn mulberries I grafted above the Upper Orchard are not pushing buds. The Silk Hope I grafted in Eaton Rapids are.

The peaches (Indian Free) grafts are not breaking bud. The scion I got from (name of nursery redacted) were puny.

Most of my walnut grafts are sulking or dead. The first successful walnut graft I ever made didn't break-bud until July, an honest six weeks after I made it. I was very surprised!.

The pear trees (and the grafts on them) on the bottom-half of the Hill Orchard died. I suspect walnut toxicity. 

The quince that were planted in the rows with the pears seem to be alive, so that warrants attention. Quince is very late blooming and avoids frosts. It is way too soon to make any generalizations, but it would be valuable to have a late-blooming fruit tree that is tolerant of walnuts and produces fruit that stores well. I read somewhere that in some places it was common to put a quince (fruit) in the closet or dresser drawers to make the clothes smell nice. Also, one thin slice of quince in an apple pie adds an interesting dimension to its aroma. 

All of the Golden Russet I grafted on Liberty for pollination have at least 8" of shoot extension. King David on Hazen has 6" of shoot extension.

Only one of the plums I grafted rootstock purchased from (name redacted) is alive. I suspect the rootstock is dead since they aren't pushing shoots from the root collar.