Many small chores. Little feeling of having accomplished anything

I have at least one small rabbit in the enclosed garden. It has been eating my pole beans.

Baited with a bit of apple with a few small chunks scattered nearby

Two rat-traps were deployed and I hung the netting for the pole beans.

Not a rabbit

I checked them yesterday evening when I put the ducks in jail. Not a rabbit. I rebaited and reset the trap.

I probably need to replant the beans...again.

Opportunistic meso-predators

That is what the smart kids in graduate school call raccoons, 'possum, skunks, coatimundi and monkeys. Most of their calories don't come from meat but they will consume it when they find it.

One characteristic of opportunistic feeders is that unlike obligate carnivores their population does not follow the boom-bust cycle of their prey.

The top of the duck jail had prints on top of it. I had not noticed them before, so I assume they are less than 24 hours old.

It could be either small raccoon or possum. If I had to guess, it was a raccoon that got his paws wet when he checked out the duck's swimming pool and then walked on top of the dewy truck-cap. That means it was an early morning foray.

Raccoon

Possum

It looks like I will be carrying the 20 gauge with me when I go out to open the duck-jail in the morning. I will also be freshening up the bait in the dog-proof raccoon traps; scrambled egg in the trap inside the enclosure and marshmallows in the outside trap. I will fry up the egg fresh this evening.

Burning brush

I was planning to mow but the brush-pile had gotten out of control. We have been cutting bamboo.

So I spent a couple of hours supervising the fire. I did not get around to mowing.

There is a small Carpathian walnut growing in the ashes just outside of the burn area. 

Vines and Thatch

I spent about a half-hour pulling vines out of fruit trees. 

I also spent about fifteen minutes raking the thatch off of the area I set up to capture mulberry seeds. I want to expose as much mineral-dirt as possible. Seeds that land on top of thatch are unlikely to germinate.

Those two tasks will make an interesting set of muscles hurt.

I have a doctor's appointment scheduled for the middle of next week. One of the standard questions is "Do you have any new aches and pains?". I now interpret that question as "Do you have any unexpected pains of unusual intensity?"

Potatoes

I did not add any fertilizer to my potato patch this year. The site had been fallow for at least two years and had heavy vegetation on it.

I hired Kubota to drive the garden tractor over it to smash it down.

Then I shredded it with the push-mower followed by tilling.

So, how is that experiment going?

Glad you asked. In previous years I would fertilize with between 100 and 200 pounds of Nitrogen. The potatoes grew so fast that I had to be Johnny-On-It to get them hilled before they canopied over the space between the rows. I had, perhaps, two weeks between the vines at 6" tall and then sprawled out across the 40" rows.

Photo taken at 6:25 a.m., June 20, 2026. In previous years you would not see any dirt in a photo taken this time of year.

This year...no sprawling. Like nearly all things, there are some good sides to that and some bad sides.

On the good sides, the plot is drying down more quickly than it would be if it was congested with vegetation. Sunlight falling on soil dries it out quickly and, in turn, the humidity of air in the potatoes' canopy drops quickly after a rain or dew. That is good for snail control and for slower leaf disease development. Given how wet this June has been, that is a very good thing.

The downside is that there will be a smaller harvest. Less sunlight is capture by the leaves. Less CO2 is turned into sugar, moved down to the roots (stolons for the nit-picky) and turned into potatoes. Since about 2/3 of the sunlight is falling on dirt, it is reasonable to estimate that my harvest will be somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of what I get when I fertilize.

I am sure I could throw fertilizer around and get a bump in top-growth but I don't anticipate need more potatoes than I am likely to harvest. If I needed to feed people, aka SHTF times, I would fertilize in a heart-beat. 

Shamelessly stolen from Midwest Chick

I think I will pre-print the "My Name is..." stickers for the next family reunion with various "Topics I don't discuss in polite company"

Texting in cursive

So there I was, dropping Quicksilver off at her play-date.

The mother of a different child was also doing a drop-off.

She was sitting and texting and it wasn't like any other kind of texting I had ever seen before.

She was holding the phone in "landscape mode" and her thumbs skated across the virtual keyboard and she rarely lifted them.

I week or so later I worked up the courage to ask her about what she had been doing. There is something creepy about people who are watching other people text and I didn't want to come across as "that guy".

She gladly told me that if you tweak-in the dwell-time required for your phone to register a letter, you can glide your thumbs across the screen without lifting them. The time it takes a thumb to reverse or change direction is enough to make the device "read" that character. 

She also pointed out that, like touch-typing, it pays to not look at the keys but to watch the "auto correct" or suggestions at the top. When the work you are keying out appears, glide up there and tag it.

She seemed to think that the cursive method of texting (a made-up term) worked better on some phones than other. It may be because of differences in operating systems and the amount of control they offer the user in setting dwell times, or maybe it relates to the quality of the screens.

And now you know. 

Gloating

 

The leaks are fixed. The hot water is back on. The plumber left three valves in the event that we spring a leak in any of the other three feed-lines.

I took a shower. While I did not dally beneath the wonderful stream of hot water, I did enjoy it immensely.

Three minutes from turning on the shower until grabbing my towel at the end of it.

Mowing Southern Belle's orchard

Before/After

Before/After

Lots of goldenrod still trying to over-top the grass. Many blackberry bushes popping up. The key seems to be to mow them while the stems are juicy and before they get woody.

Random pictures of Southern Belle's garden

'Taters

Second planting of sweet corn

Third planting of sweet corn

Broccoli ready to harvest

Socializing

I spent a couple of hours socializing with some guys I used to work with in the 1982-1992 time-frame.

It was a great time to be alive. We were worker-bees and (mostly) oblivious to the company politics that swirled around us. We were young, courting and starting families.

The guy sitting next to me was conversing with the guy across the table. They were both back-packers and they both took their kids back-packing. One of the stories was when one family hiked the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim. One half started on the South Rim while the other half drove around to the North Rim (4-1/2 hour drive) and started hiking from there. When the two halves met, the keys to the vehicle were handed over to the north-bound party...and they just kept walking. 

The elevation change for the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim hike is approximately 6,000 feet, as you descend from the North Rim to the Colorado River and then ascend back up to the South Rim. The hike typically involves a descent of about 14.3 miles and a climb of 9.6 miles back out    -AI content

They did it in one day! Oh, to be young again. 

P.S. Both of those guys still mow their lawns with (powered) push mowers. 

Things flipping right-side up and SURPRISE!

Three of the four issues that complicated my life are flipping right-side-up.

The patient who had surgery is doing well. In fact, the resolution of their chronic pain, or at least the promise of its resolution, seems to have made them happy and optimistic.

The issue that tangled us up on Monday is on the mend.

I got my truck back at 7:30 p.m. yesterday. It still had more than 3/4 of a tank of gas.

Those are the good parts.

The not so great part is that I called the plumber when he missed the 3:00 p.m. appointment. "Things came up. I will try to make it between 5:00 and 6:00."

I replied "OK. No problem."

Then he missed that window. I called him up. "Hey, what is going on? I am going to be away from the house for an hour and a half."

"I am in the hospital" was his reply. Then he gave me some details which I am not going to share.

The bucket is still under the sink. I am going to take a shower at the gym today. A HOT shower.

Air Layering

I still had a few scion of a hazelnut that I want more copies of. 

I also had a shortage of plants to graft them onto.

So I found a shoot that split into three stems that were of appropriate size and I grafted all three stems. Then I slid an empty milk jug over the stem and filled it with potting soil. I also ran baling twine through the handle and tied it to a branch in the mother tree.

  

Newspaper is stuffed in the hole that I cut in the bottom of the jug so I could slide it down the stems. (Pro-tip: position the jug over the mother stem BEFORE grafting)

So, I want you to picture in your head a craftsman hyper-focusing on his task. He is handling very sharp blades and is attempting a procedure more complicated that his normal job. 

The gallon jug holds quite a bit of potting soil and it has to be carefully tucked into every corner and care must be take that it doesn't leave the jug through the hole in the bottom.

Now I want you to visualize this refined gentleman reaching into his bag of potting soil to fill the milk jug and pulling out a 15" long snake.

Yep. A snake. A very dead, very stinky snake. I am not sure how he got there or even what species he was. 

Schizophrenia

There was a time when a person who believed that they were a woman trapped in a man's body or a man trapped in a woman's body would have been diagnosed as Schizophrenic. The cynic in me says that the medical industry decided it was more profitable to call it "gender dysphoria" and to chop off their junk at $100k a pop.

The internet claims that people who are diagnosed as schizophrenic and who are meds-compliant with an effective anti-psychotic drug commit violence at rates that are no higher than the general population. Peer-reviewed research that uses meta-data (combining a multitude of studies that are similar to produce a very large sample-size) states that the mean rate of meds noncompliance among people with schizophrenia is 52%.

The other fly-in-the-ointment is that drugs will suddenly stop working. There will be no warning. The brain will go off-the-reservation. So it is disingenuous to qualify the phrase "meds-compliant" with the term "an effective anti-psychotic drug" when the effectiveness of any drug might be years...it might be months...it might be weeks. It is a circular logic: They aren't any more violent than the general population (IF) they are taking the drugs that (by random chance) are making them no more violent than the general population.

Schizophrenia symptoms

• Delusions (often paranoia)
• Hallucinations (often hearing voices)
• Disorganized speech and thinking
• Unusual motor behaviors, agitation
• Flat affect, unable to show emotion (dead-eyes), poor hygiene
• Withdrawal from friends and family
• Doing poorly at school or work
• Sleep irregularities
• Irritable, depressed
• Listless
• Much higher risk of suicide...as many as 5% of people with schizophrenia commit suicide. 

Note: early use of cannabis is liked to higher risk of Schizophrenia

Side effects of Clozapine

Clozapine is the last-resort drug that is the go-to when everything else fails.

More common side effects

blurred vision

confusion

constipation

dizziness, faintness, or lightheadedness when getting up suddenly from a lying or sitting position

fainting

fast, pounding, or irregular heartbeat or pulse

fever

nausea

shakiness in the legs, arms, hands, or feet

sleepiness or unusual drowsiness

sweating

trembling or shaking of the hands or feet

unusual tiredness or weakness

vomiting

Less common side effects

absence of or decrease in movement

change in appetite

dark urine

decreased sexual ability

difficult or fast breathing or sudden shortness of breath

increased sweating

increased thirst

increased urination

lip smacking or puckering

muscle stiffness (severe)

puffing of the cheeks

rapid or worm-like movements of the tongue

swelling or pain in the leg

uncontrolled chewing movements

uncontrolled movements of the arms and legs

unusual bleeding or bruising

unusually pale skin

weakness

yellow eyes or skin

Gee, I wonder why people go meds-noncompliant. 

Invigorating!

I took a cold shower this morning.

I have our water-heater turned off due to a leak in the hot-water, 1/4 valve beneath one of our wash basins. This is the second 1/4 valve that split.

I have both valves at the water-heater turned off, both the feed and the outgoing. And I have the 1/4 open and the valve at the faucet turned on...and there is still enough pressure to have it drip at a rate of about one drop every two seconds.

I was a coward. I wet a little bit of my body. Scrubbed with a tiny bit of soap (the more you put on, the more water you need to rinse it off) and then rinsed of the scrubbed area. I started with my scalp and worked my way down.

We have a membership at a gym. I will be visiting just to take a shower if we don't get this resolved quickly.

Economics

The cheapest push-mower at the local big-box stores runs about $200. The big-wheeled version of that same mower runs about $250.

I have several "dead" mowers around.

A new made-in-Asia motor from Amazon costs $135.

The reviews say that the bolt-holes are not tapped. It is easy enough to use a slightly under-diameter nut-and-bolt and over-sized washers. Or, I can tap the holes.

I will start with the dead big-wheeled mower. I am willing to invest $135 if I can avoid spending $250.

Not having my truck to cart around my push-mower made me aware of how useful it is to have some basic equipment at the various locations I maintain.

Pecan buds on grafts are pushing

This tree will get a bamboo pole set next to it. Starlings, Red-wing Blackbirds and King Birds love to perch on emerging shoots and they get broken off.

Grafted June 1.

Moments like this renew my faith in my ability to graft.

Sometimes the scion was mishandled and is already dead when you graft it.

Sometimes the tree you are grafting it to has been girdled by mice at ground level.

Nut trees are considered moderately-difficult to very-difficult to graft so it is nice to get some wins in this category. 

Some days are diamonds, others...

Today's plans were a wash-out all the way around.

Plans changed and then changed again.

The most important thing is that the surgery was successful. The important body-parts that were shredded like old wicker-furniture were stitched back together and rehab starts next week.

The current plan is to deliver the lasagna (less a few pieces ;-) ) tomorrow.

My truck comes back, tomorrow.

The plumber who was scheduled to fix our (major) hot-water leak today is now rescheduled for...tomorrow.

As Scarlet O'Hara said "Tomorrow is another day." 

A question for the medical people

I finally popped open one of "Nurse Jen's" videos that have been populating my Youtube feed.

She has a lot of content that addresses navigating aging, whether in your parents (should you still be blessed with them) or in yourself and/or your spouse.

She doesn't have a very big footprint on the internet. She isn't beautiful and her presentation isn't slick and polished. That is fine. I am more interested in content. IS IT ACCURATE?

As a layman, I was impressed by the balance of her content. She stresses that you cannot pay attention to just one thing if you want to age gracefully. The implied message is that we need to intentionally work on those aspects we like to do least. For example, I like exploring new ideas and new things and am "burnt-out on people". Ergo, I need to make a conscious effort to maintain and expand my circle of social contacts...because my old network is dying off.

My problem is that I am not "calibrated" in the field she claims to be an expert in. I will appreciate any feedback. Bullshit-or-mostly accurate?