Presented without comment

 

Moving forward, sometimes slowly but moving nevertheless

I underperformed on work-tickets yesterday

The trip to the gym went well but left me wrung out. When I was in PT after an auto accident, the PT people informed me that the number of repetitions is less important than the time-under-tension.

Taking that into the weight room, I slowly float the weight off the floor, hold it for two or three breaths at lock-out and then I slowly float it down to gently kiss the floor before floating it back up. I figure about ten seconds per rep.

I was rushing a little bit through my last set because I could feel myself running out of gas.

Then we had a visitor who, it turned out, was camping at our house waiting for somebody to call them back.

I got the cabbage planted.

I got one hour of weeding done. And then I nicked my finger. I went into the house and scrubbed the cut and stopped the bleeding. By then, my behind had grown roots and I could not pull myself out of the recliner.

End result: Only half the goal for weeding and no wood cut and split.

Some days are like that.

Today's work-tickets

I have a volunteer to work in the Upper Orchard burning brush. That means I will be doing other things there.

I will lug water to the baby trees, move bigger wood to the side of the orchard where a neighbor will collect it for firewood. I might even get to mulching some of the trees and broadcasting turnip seeds beneath the trees.

If I am feeling peppy when I get home I will do some more weeding in the potato patch. 

Thigh Circumference and Overall Mortality

 

The relationship between thigh circumference and mortality of interest. The association of thigh circumference with all-cause mortality...shown after controlling for age, gender, body mass index, waist circumference, moderate activity, total cholesterol, anti-diabetic drugs, estimated glomerular filtration rate, smoking status, race, baseline cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases. The solid lines represented the hazard ratios of thigh circumference and the shadowed area represented the corresponding 95% confidence intervals  Source

The average thigh circumference was 52 cm or approximately 20.4". Increasing the thigh circumference by 10% (2") reduced the all-causes Hazard Ratio by approximately 15%.

Correlation does not prove causality but this is interesting. Increased muscle-mass is proven to smooth out blood-sugar spikes. In general, physical fitness is related to better cardio-vascular health and reduced risk of falling.

Ernest T. Bass

Yesterday's work-tickets

I humped water to the twelve newest trees in the Hill and Upper Orchard. I also watered an additional 17 trees that were planted last year. The grass on the orchard floor is turning brown in places.

I tore off one wall of a raised deer-blind and took measurements to prefab a stud-wall and cut some sheet metal.

Ernest T. Bass

Ernest T. Bass was a character in Mayberry RFD who was famous for throwing rocks.

Rocks are a weapon of last resort. They have more range than a stick but are less accurate.

A baseball is almost 3" in diameter weighs about five ounces. A typical rock that is 2-1/4" in diameter will weigh about 8 ounces while one that is 2-1/2" in diameter weighs about 12 ounces and one that is 2-3/4" weighs about 15 ounces.

A trained 12 year-old can throw a baseball at 50mph and a distance of 140 feet (Source) and reliably hit a man-sized target at 60 feet.

As a kid, I never played baseball. 

One of the items on yesterday's work-ticket list was to watch some Youtube videos and start throwing rocks. Speed is hard to measure but distance is not. 

I chucked about twenty rocks. They were all more than five ounces. Size-of-rock is one of the variables I need to sort out.

I have a long way to go to get to the skill level of a 12 year-old. I will never get as good as the rioters who were shattering hospital windows three-stories up during the "peaceful" Black Lives Matter demonstration.

There are always new skills to master. 

Today's work-tickets

Go to the gym and dead-lift.

Pull-or-cut weeds for two hours.

Put Chinese Cabbage seedlings outside in partial shade to harden off. Transplant into garden this evening.  

Tidy up the front porch.

Trim some of the branches hanging down and obscuring the view out of the living room window.

Cut and split wood for a half hour. 

Tree roots

 

In mid-November, 2025 I hired a gentleman to run a trenching tool between the walnut trees that were east and down-slope of the Hill Orchard.

Most of the roots he cut were not very big, between the thickness of 14-2 Romex and garden hose. I expected them to be thicker. The trench was 35 feet from the closest tree trunks.

A few of them were a bit thicker than that.

This picture was taken today. The walnut trees (and a swamp) are to the left of the image. The trench is the slightly lighter green strip diagonally through the center of the frame (top-to-bottom), Upslope of the trench, where you would expect it to be drier, is GREEN.

The walnut roots are still leaching toxins into the soil but they are not sucking moisture and nutrients out of the topsoil.

Frankly, I am surprised by how brown and stressed the grass on the left side of the image is compared to the left right side. Bottom-line, tree roots are devastatingly effective at extracting moisture and nutrients from the soil.

You can see this in farm country. Corn growing within 2X of the tree's height will be stunted and runty during dry summers. 

Note for TB: It isn't just the shade. You might consider raised beds with a barrier beneath them to prevent the tree roots from infiltrating the beds. Or, if they community garden managers allow it, trench around your plot...as an experiments...to see if it makes a difference. 

Good work is a gift to the worker

Some days were made for working.

God made yesterday to be exactly that kind of day.

Temperatures started out in the mid-50s and topped out in the mid-70s (Fahrenheit).

I got to everything on the list of work-tickets except weeding the potato patch and I have it on good authority that they are still patiently waiting for me. 

Good work. The right kind. The right amount.

I started at 7:00 and tapped-out at 3:00. The last two hours were spent cutting and splitting Honey Locust. I don't cut much wood during the growing season and was surprised by how sappy and sticky the wood felt as I carried the raw pieces to the wood pile.

Beets after deer ate their leaves.

Radish seeds popping up

Root suckers from a St Julien plum. I have a collar filled with potting soil around them in hopes of them throwing roots.

Yesterday's harvest of tomatoes. Total for the year is 177 grams. Still pretty rough looking. These fruit came from the bottom of the plants. They are still within range of slugs and duck bills.

Comic relief

 

The weeds of summer are outrunning me

Yesterday turned into a recovery day. I only did two things of note after the Paul the tree-guy left. 

I went to the gym and asked the trainer about options when the dead-lift platform was occupied. There have been a few times when other lifters are using it and I am not willing to wait. Darius suggested that I lower the bars on the squat-rack to the lowest position and use that. While I was fiddle-frogging with that Darius and Vlad volunteered to critique my form. Apparently, I am using too much of my knees and not hinging enough at the waist. Who knew?

The other productive thing I did was I tied and dropped lengths of twine between the bamboo poles that extend the height cattle panels I am using to support my tomato vines. That effectively results in a vertical support every 12 inches for 24 feet.

 

Because I goofed off yesterday, I have a very long list for today. To slightly paraphrase a farmer saying: One advantage of having an enormous pile of fertilizer to shovel is that you get to choose the side you shovel from.

• Run the hose to the drip irrigation in the (Eaton Rapids) orchard and turn it on.
• Mow the orchard
• Dig one hill of potatoes for the kitchen, pick peppers and eggplant 
• Pick Yamhill hazelnuts before the squirrels get all of them 
• Mow the weeds in the fenced garden and till*
• Pull or cut weeds in potato patch, 200 feet of row
• Start cutting, splitting and stacking the Honey Locust logs littering the yard
• Move the impulse sprinkler head for watering a different portion of the garden tonight. The MSU IPM site shows 12.3 inches of evaporation potential since May 1, 2026 versus 6.8 inches of rain for a deficit of 5.5". Very little rain is predicted for the next ten days.

*My plan is to have a horse-race between three varieties of spinach: Space, Flamingo Improved and Red Tabby. Mrs ERJ enjoys eating spinach.

The internet suggests that for my area, the prime time to plant spinach is between August 10 and August 20. It also informs me that keeping the soil moist is critical, probably because the seeds don't germinate well when they are warmer than 75 degrees F. I have twenty days to prepare the seed-bed for the 2026, Eaton Rapids spinach trials.

Guardian Angels

I recently learned that Matthew 18 is the basis for our concept of Guardian Angels. Matt 18:1-6, 10

At that time the disciples approached Jesus and said, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.  

See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.