Spaniels

Spaniels are a class of dog that were initially developed in Spain (hence the "Spanish dogs" becoming "Spaniels") and later refined in England.

Spaniels were one of the first classes of dogs developed to complement the hunting of small game with rudimentary firearms. Given the limitations of the weapon, the hunter had to be close to the game before it flushed.

Spaniels are bonded to their human(s) by a very short distance. They have been selected over hundreds of generations to be happy when they are no farther away from their human than a scant 20-to-25 paces. Some call that "needy" or "clingy". While descriptive, those terms put a perjorative spin on the bond. In the beginning, the bond was functional and it only became pathological when puppy-mills churned out puppies.

Springerpoos and Cockapoos are on the list of dogs we will consider when the time comes. We are both in the last quarter of our lives. Chasing after a dog holds no joy or glory for us any more.

It would be delightful if we could take our dog out to the garden, tell him/her to sit in a shady corner while we pulled weeds and have them stay. Hunting-drive is nice but having a switch to turn it on-and-off is nicer. 

Springerpoos tend toward a little larger than our optimum size. A "Standard" SP is 30-to-60 pounds with the bitches being lighter than the males.

Cockapoos tend to be a little smaller than our optimum size. A "Standard" CP runs 25-to-35 pounds. The males tend to be larger and would be more likely to hit our 30lb-to-40lb sweet-spot.

A cladogram of some common dog breeds. The farther the breeds are apart the greater the potential hybrid advantage.

Red highlight are the common spaniels. The magenta highlight shows poodles. The aqua colored dot is for chihauhau (used in a lot of designer crosses) The tangerine colored dots are "Asian" dogs, also used in a lot of designer crosses.

One random fact is that different places took their local dogs and selected for specific purposes. For instance, many British Isle terriers which LOOK like German Schnauzers are in fact are very different genetically...while Boston Terriers were selected from Boxer-like dogs and so on. 

Brittany Spaniels are really not spaniels. They are pointing-dogs and don't have the same invisible leash holding them close to their humans. 

Both crosses will be magnets for burdock burs. 

Grafting notes, Fine Art, Pride Week and Peak-pollen

Grafting notes 

Two pecan seedlings near the road grafted to Kanza.

Five Black Walnut seedlings and one "Carpathian" Walnut were grafted to Howard Persian Walnut. "Howard" is a big stretch for our climate. There are growers in New York State who are growing seedlings of Howard crossed with an undocumented pollen parent and they are observing acceptable winter-hardiness.

Howard is a variety out of the University of California breeding program and is planted commercially. It has excellent nut quality, blight resistance, is late-leafing and shows lateral bud "fruiting".

It was not selected for cold-hardiness but sometimes you get more than you expect. 

The trees grafted to "Howard" are marked with blue surveyor's tape.

If anybody knows of a grafted tree of "Howard" planted near a tree of "Broadview", I am very interested in purchasing walnuts for seed nuts from either tree.

Las Vegas

I don't have to buy lottery tickets or travel to Las Vegas or load an app on my phone to get the thrill of beating the odds. I plant seeds and graft trees. 

Fine Art Tuesday, sort of

It started. Quicksilver's artwork is now being featured on our refrigerator door.

"My grandparents are SO OLD that they have paper with dinosaur tracks done its sides."

This gallery is titled "Spooky Monsters"

A large number of Quicksilver's subjects show unequal dilation of their pupils suggesting brain trauma. I suspect that I was one of her models.

Pride Month events

It has been very quiet out there. It has been nothing like the circus of the last 12 years where you couldn't turn around without tripping over an LGBT-ellomennopeepeedeeque flag. It had been as reliable as the rising sun, even "Christian" churches displayed infinitely more "rainbow" flags in June than the number of "crosses" they displayed during Holy Week.

I think that there are many corporations who were relieved to have a graceful way to stop pushing-the-rope. They were able to say "Trump made us do it" and abandon policies that (potentially) alienated 96% of their customer-base. That excuse freed those corporations and mom-and-pop shops to make adjustments based on what the majority of what the paying customers want.

Peak pollen = Low energy

Hugh Scott, an engineer I used to work with, once observed that the difference between people who changed the world for the better and the people who were forgotten is that the Mother Theresas and Thomas Edisons kept slogging. They got SOMETHING done every day even when they were running at 40%. The people who have been forgotten...they decided to tread-water on those days.

I consider anything I get done during peak-pollen to be a major win. Meds make me sleepy. Not taking meds makes me sleepy and I itch so I cannot sleep. Rain predicted for Saturday, so I hope to break out through the other side by then.

Presented without comment

 

Birds, beans, squash and marimbas

Gray Catbirds

We have a Gray Catbird building a nest near the garden. It is probably in the filbert hedge but it could be in the over-grown raspberry bushes.

Catbirds mimic other birds, are an even slate-gray except for a slightly darker region on the top of his/her head. Their tail is long for their body size and they often position it in jaunty, expressive angles...sort of like some people communicating with their eyebrows. They are a bit larger than a starling and their regular call sounds something like a cat. 

Snail vs Duck Damage 

These two bean plants were on the duck side of the fence.

I stretched a temporary fence to exclude the ducks from where Quicksilver and I had planted the pole beans. Due to the geometry of where there were already posts driven into the ground, four beans popped up outside of the enclosure. The ducks ignored them.

Leaves that have been attacked by snails (Gee, officer...it happened so fast...) have a luffa-sponge look. The slugs and snails eat the thin parts of the leaves but don't eat the veins.

I opened up the fence to let the ducks in to where the beans are planted.

Four young Khaki Campbell to the right of the post and two adult Rouen and one adult Khaki Campbell on the left.

They quickly investigated the area and were actively foraging while I took this picture.

 

Snails and slugs have distinct preferences for food. They prefer dandelions to grass, for instance. 

 

Squash and watermelons

Roughly 25' by 25'. 26 "hills" of C. maxima and 9 of watermelons

The squash seeds were saved from a squash that I purchased at the store. It was a Golden Hubbard or Red Kuri type squash.

Quicksilver music selection

Polish Nationwide Music Schools' Symphonic Orchestras Dance Macrabre by Saint Saens. 

Selected because she can watch young ladies playing music.. Also selected because it has marimbas, one of the musical instruments commonly used in Central American music.

Red, clay soils

Note: This essay is what I think I know about growing plants in the south. Hopefully, Lucky will chime in and correct my errors.

Early studies of nutrient cycling in moist tropical forests describes productive forests rich in nutrients in which the rates of primary production (photosynthesis) and amounts of nutrients cycled clearly exceeded those in temperate zone forests. Reviews of global-scale patterns in biomass, production and nutrients cycling reported these results as representative of tropical forests.

At the same time, tropical forest soils were described as acide, infertile clay that hardens irreversibly to “laterite” when cleared or to bleached, quartz sands low in mineral nutrients. This apparent paradox was crystalized by Whittaker in the statement “The tropical rain forest thus has a relatively rich nutrient economy perched on a nutrient-poor substrate.” P.M. Vitousek and R.L. Sanford, 1986

The forest floor in the tropics teem with termites, ants, terrestrial crabs, centipedes, snails, slugs and similar scavengers. A piece of snake feces falling from the canopy and hitting the ground is cleaned up within minutes. A leaf or twig might be gone in a day or a week.

Due to the heat and humidity, organic material quickly decays and release their nutrients. The dense webbing of feeder roots just below the surface are in a life-or-death battle to grab those nutrients before some other tree does or (unlikely) the nutrient is leached out of the reach of the roots.

The red, clay soils in the southeastern United States have many similarities with the soils in the tropics. 

How to manage gardens in red, clay soils

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Mimic what works in nature. Red, clay soils are very similar to the soils under tropical forests.

That is easier than you think because you have probably been fighting it. 

Stop being anal about eliminating "weeds", at least in the places where you haven't planted yet. That mat of Crabgrass (in the summer), Dead-nettles, Chickweed and volunteer turnips (in the cooler months) are busy keeping the nutrients in the biosphere. And since you cannot effectively bank it in the soil as humus, then that is really you only alternative.

Nutrient cycling as "an economy"

Economists look at two numbers when assessing the health of an economy: The money supply (the number of dollars in circulation) and the velocity-of-money.

Injecting funds into the economy by giving benefits to poor people has more POP! than giving it to wealthy people. Poor people don't hoard the money. They run out and spend it. Wealthy people are much more likely to park their money in bank accounts or bonds which doesn't keep the money in the high-velocity parts of the economy.

As a gardener or orchardist living in places with red, clay soils or blow-sand, you need to stop thinking of yourself as a banker but as a scheduler who makes sure that there is always a line of customers waiting to grab those nutrients before they leach away. 

ADHD and time-blindness

Russel Barkley (no relation to Brigid's dog) is a person who researches ADHD. He is the guy who linked ADHD and many of their struggles for their inability to conceptualize time and to use it to guide their actions.

A comparison between how a "normal adult" and somebody with ADHD respond to deadlines (called "Event" on the graph).

I see this in ADHD kids. They are totally binary in the sense that there is NOW and NOT-NOW. The deadline could be tomorrow or next week or twenty years from now. It is all the same to them...meaningless.

Many of the people in prison have ADHD. They grew up without consequences in the sense that a consequence tomorrow had no meaning for them, even when it was an almost certainty.

In the dry language of one criminal justice scholar "Most felons are not capable of appropriately discounting the probability of future consequences to their current actions."

An example of a profoundly ADHD kid

Smedley had a son named Earl.

Earl had ADHD.

In an effort to train Earl on the benefits of deferring gratification, Smedley made Earl a deal. 

"Earl, I will give you a dollar on Sunday. You can go out and spend it, but if you have that dollar I will give you two dollars on Monday."

On Monday, Earl had the dollar bill that Smedley had marked with his pen in the corner of the bill.

So, on Monday, Smedley traded that dollar bill for two one dollar bills and told Earl "If you have those two dollars tomorrow, then I will trade them for four dollars on Tuesday." 

Since Smedley had proven as good-as-his-word regarding the two dollars for one, Earl was able to produce the two bills on Tuesday and Smedley faithfully produced four...

On Wednesday Earl traded his four bills for eight.

On Thursday Earl traded his eight bills for sixteen.

On Friday Earl traded his sixteen bills for thirty-two. And still, Smedley was willing to offer a 100% "interest rate" if Earl hung onto them for another day. That is, he was willing to give Earl sixty-four dollars on Saturday if Earl still had all thirty-two dollars.

On Saturday, Earl didn't have any money. Smedley was dumbfounded. Earl didn't seem concerned.

Later, Sissy told her dad "Earl played your game until he had enough to buy seven-grams of weed."

Still confused, Smedley asked "But if he had waited one more day he would have had enough money to buy TWO baggies of weed! What is the matter with him?" 

Mr Smedley, your son has ADHD. It was binary in his head. "Not enough money to buy seven-grams was the equivalent of zero, of no-value. Once he had $30 he had enough to buy that baggie (with enough left over for a bag of skittles) and two baggies tomorrow did not compute in his head because the concept of "tomorrow" is a foreign country." 

Back to the video

The narrator describes a very simple experiment to sort ADHD from "normal".

The person performing the test turns on a light bulb and leaves it on for a predetermined amount of time. For the sake of example, let's say it is on for twenty-five seconds.

Then, after a short bit of conversation, the person giving the test hands the switch to the person being tested and tells them, "Turn on the light and turn it off when it has been on as long as I had it on."

A "normal person will likely fall within some range...again, for the sake of argument, let's say between 20 seconds and 30 seconds. An ADHD will turn it off in five-to-fifteen seconds or leave it on for minutes. 

IQ or ADHD

Granted, there will be a huge amount of overlap. A person with ADHD cannot sit through an IQ test so we really cannot measure their "intelligence".

But I propose that time-blindness has such grave consequences that there would be value, and profit, in finding ways to train-the-brain to compensate for that inability. 

First harvests, gardening fail and simple garden tools

First Harvests

The first broccoli florets, harvested May 29, 2026!

 

First potato harvest of 2026. Uncovered while tilling. Still sound!

 

Gardening fail

I had cucumber transplants die!

I had grown them in water-bottles that I had cut the tops off of. Since the bottles are wasp-waisted, I rolled up strips of newspaper to hold the soil, thinking it would be easier to remove the root-ball from the plastic container.

A cucumber plant still in its paper sleeve

That part worked like a charm

What I did not realize was that the paper was almost impenetrable to the cucumber roots. The baby plants were not able to access the moisture in the soil around them because I had planted them paper-sleeve and all.

Transplant with the paper sleeve unrolled showing roots

I replanted with the same batch of plants but unrolled the paper sleeve from the root-ball. That took about 4 seconds and there roots were well enough developed to hold the soil together.

Then I gave the plants a large drink of water to settle the soil and melt the tiny clods into the roots that had been exposed when I unrolled the sleeve.

Simple tools

You can see water ponding where I stepped

The simplest and cheapest tool is to change your gardening practices.

Walking across garden soil compacts it. That limits water being able to soak in. It also hampers root growth thereby limiting the plants' access to nutrients and moisture.

The picture shown above isn't quite what you think it is. My practice is to place my feet in the same place every time I walk up-or-down a garden path. The footsteps you see are the result of ten or fifteen round-trips up that path. What I want you to see is the area in the path where the water IS NOT ponding.

No flag stones. No boards (which can shelter insect pests). No gravel. Just a simple change in practice.

Actual tools

Repurposed items are inexpensive because you didn't have to drive somewhere to buy it. They are fast because you didn't have to wait for deliver.

 

This might LOOK like a common leaf rake. But it is not. It is a Border Collie!

This is the rake that I use to herd my ducks into their enclosure to keep them safe at night.

Ducks are terrified by raptors like hawks. It is in their DNA.

When I raise this rake and rotate the handle +/-30 degrees, the visual effect (to the ducks) are the beating of wings.

If I want the ducks to go to the left, I raise the rake in my right hand and give it a wiggle.

If I want them to go right, I shift the rake over to my left hand, raise it up and give it a wiggle.

I can move that "hawk" 15' between the length of the handle and the span of my arms. No need to run or hurry. I don't need to move my body. 

If the ducks are moving in the direction I want them to go, I lower the rake.

And guess where those ducks want to be when they start seeing "hawks" flying over-head? You guessed it. They want to be in their safe-space.

Information is a tool

This is a simple, plastic cereal bowl that was purchased at a garage sale

Two of these go into a bucket for the ducks to eat. This bowl lives in the open bag of duck food.

Do you see to dashed line on this jug? That is how much water I add to the duck feet to make a mash that they don't waste. The jug is a tool.

This jug lives on the stack of kindling in the breeze-way.

This is a simple 3-by-5 inch index card that I laminated with packing tape. This card is a tool...a device that helps me work more quickly and/or perform higher-quality work.

 

Rather than recalculate the dilution rate every time I need to do it, I wrote it down. This card lives in the open bag of urea fertilizer. I even did it in metric so I don't have to change the mode on Mrs ERJ's kitchen scale (it defaults to metric).