When your wife figures out how to manage what shows up in your Youtube feed....

 

I am not sure how she managed it.

Thank goodness I will not be seventy for another three years. 

Clark Dwarfs, Galarina apples and Water Locust

The package of orchard trees that I purchased from a commercial orchard showed up at 4:12 p.m. today.

By 6:00 p.m. I had four of them planted and three of them converted to "Clark" dwarfs.

A "Clark" dwarf is where the roots and the stem are full-sized (or nearly full-sized) apple varieties. In my case the roots are MM-111 and the stem is an apple variety called Galarina.

The 4-1/2" interstem that I inserted.

Then, just below where the branches spring from the trunk, a short length, often 4" to 8" of a dwarfing apple variety is inserted. Longer interstems produce more dwarfing and more suckering. Shorter interstems produce less dwarfing and less suckering.

The method has its issues. It is labor intensive. The dwarfing variety must be very cold-hardy because it is always above the snow-line. The stem below the interstem (as it is called in the trade) is prone to throwing out suckers that want to outgrow the top and need to be pruned out (more labor).

From roots-to-top, MM-111, Galarina, dwarfing interstem, Galarina top

Advantages are that you can take any random seedling growing in a fence-row and turn it into a semi-dwarf apple tree...if you have the skills to perform the surgery and the patience to provide the after-care. 

The only reason I am fiddling with it is because the variety I wanted, Galarina*, was not offered on a rootstock I wanted. MM-111 is very robust in terms of soils but it is not very dwarfing. By cutting the stem and inserting an interstem and then topping the interstem with the top that I cut off, I can get the robustness of the MM-111 roots in a package that will fit the "hole" in the orchard.

90 minutes time-on-task to dig the holes, plant the trees and to do the grafting. 

Water Locust

About a quarter of the seeds I scarified and then stratified survived the process. If I do this again, I will plant the seeds in potting soil immediately after scarifying. Water locust is one of those rare, niche trees with limited ranges. Man cannot live by willow alone.

*I talked to a commercial apple grower about this variety. His feedback was that "Good apple. Too small to command premium prices." The apples run closer to 100 grams (4 ounces) than to 150-200 grams (6 ounces to 8 ounces) which is what the market demands.

There are three apple varieties that are very similar in terms of where they fit in the home orchard: Liberty, Galarina and Crimson Crisp. Liberty's major flaws are that it over-sets fruit, tends to drop a lot of the crop before it is ripe and the flesh browns when cut. Galarina's flaws are that it is small. Crimson Crisp's flaws are that it can be shy about coming into bearing and it is vulnerable to fireblight. It is a case of "pick-your-poison". I am a big fan of Liberty but it breaks my heart to see 1/3 of the crop on the ground...even if it still out-yields every other variety in my orchard.

Blame: Signal or Noise

A commenter from Muskegon (maybe PP-51?) observed in an earlier post

"...until they (young adults) realize that blaming parents doesn’t get them anywhere, they’ll never realize they need to push themselves to improvement necessary to succeed in the world." 

What I like about his observation is that it bypasses all of the cheesy, amateur-psychology and the dubious chains of cause-and-effect. It focuses on what is effective.

The commenter boils it down to a simple, binary choice:

1. Blame external forces, like the choices your parents or other boomers made, and stay stuck because you cannot change them
2. Respond to the challenge, change your actions and succeed

Choose the outcome you want and then modify your actions accordingly. 

You can

1. Focus on past injustices (which  you cannot change)
2. or you can focus on changing the outcomes 

Worth sharing

I thought this was worth sharing. Yes, it is "AI" generated, but then so is a Google search. I agree with about 80% of the material. Where I differ is that I believe that we have to treat the people closest to us differently than friends and acquaintances.

Today's musical piece for Quicksilver

 

Intimacy is built by revealing small vulnerabilities and seeing how the other party respects or abuses that information. If the vulnerability is respected, then they are trusted with a more revealing and potentially more damaging vulnerability.

Intimacy requires maintenance and it is not possible to be emotionally intimate with a large number of people, hence the need for boundaries. 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Konrad Hübscher was born in 1858 in Switzerland and died in 1941.

Many of his paintings have a smoggy-foggy quality that is off-putting to modern buyers. "Where is the color? Where is the clarity?" 

It is worth considering that most of his paintings were made during a period in history when COAL was the primary fossil fuel. There were no fly-ash collectors or scrubbers. That hazy overcast was exactly what he saw...and breathed, just like nearly everybody else in densely populated areas during that era.

On the other hand, maybe he had cataracts.

A tip of the old fedora to the tireless Lucas Machias for suggesting this artist. 

Adagio by Albinoni, Copernicus Chamber Orchestra

Part of Quicksilver's morning routine is to listen to a short piece of music at the very beginning. It is usually an instrumental piece and I try to have something "iconic" lined up.

This is the piece we listened to this morning. It was twice as long as a typical selection.

I think the acoustics and ambience of where they were playing captured the essence of Albinoni's Adagio in G minor. 

One characteristic of this recording is that the musician plucking his cello is barely captured in the recording (you can see him at the 0:25-0:34 mark). His play is more of a subconscious heartbeat that runs in the background rather than an in-your-face part of the recording.

Just remember, if it isn't baroque then it cannot be fixed. 

The Iggle has Landed

 

A smashed up, shapeless greenish ball

The blackberry plants that had been "lost" for 10 days in a Tennessee mail facility landed.

The package weighed 493 grams. The plugs were small, probably 72-cell trays and they were very moist.

I was going to plant them directly into the row but decided  to put them into the hospital instead.

No surprise: They look yellow and all balled-up

I moved them into a 50-cell tray and left an empty cell on every side for improved air flow and light penetration. I will give them a few days of this and then, on a cloudy day, give them some exposure to the sun/UV.

Considering the abuse at the hands of the US Post Office, I am very pleased at how they look. It will take a few days to see if they suffered permanent trauma, but at this point I am very optimistic.

Heartbreaking

Heartbreaking if true. One minute run-time.

"Magic" Johnson's child wishes his parents were dead.

Mr. Johnson and I are the same age. We both grew up in Lansing...I lived almost exactly one mile north of where he lived. He went to MSU 1977-79. I attended 1979-1981.

He has a net worth in the neighborhood of $3B. My net worth is significantly lower.

I pity him and would not trade places with him. 

"For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?"