A Day of Little Pieces

I woke up and sent Mrs ERJ, Belladonna and one of Bella's friends off to Individual States.

I went for 9 mile run.  My athletic sister gave me permission to count the distance my "cool down" walk in my run.  Her logic was that new marathoners will often run ten minutes and walk one minute.  People find that they can run about twice as far using this routine. From a physiological standpoint, the rapid contraction/relaxation of the muscles when running works at cross purposes for flushing the muscles with fresh blood and carrying off the waste products.  The moderate contraction/relaxation rate of walking is nearly optimum for helping the muscles assist in pumping the blood.

Too fast is bad.  Too slow is bad.  Try holding up a weight in a steady position sometime. Your muscles will be screaming in less than a minute.

Back to the story: Even the marathoners who walk one minute of every eleven can claim they "ran" 26.2 miles, they "ran" a marathon.

At the Lake

I took Kubota and one of his buddies out to the lake.  I had several opportunities to explain that the ERJ family treats family better than friends and treats friends better than strangers.  Kubota is apt to take liberties with friends and even bigger liberties with family.  I explained that family is forever, that bruised feelings become scar tissue.  And scar tissue lasts nearly forever.

So why would you treat family more shabbily than a stranger.  There is a good chance you might never see that stranger again in your life.  That person who is a sister or a cousin will still by your sister or your cousin four decades from now.

It is hard to tell if it sunk in.

While at the lake I did a little work in my Dad's orchard.  We experienced a "test winter".  Many trees that I had believed to be fully hardy in this part of Michigan experienced major, even complete winter kill.  Part of the issue was likely due to the very heavy crop loads last fall.  The fruit depletes the carbohydrate reserves...reserves that seem to function as antifreeze in the plant cells.

My batting average on the grafting was about 80%.  I would have been more successful but, in some cases, it looked like my scionwood was winterkilled and in other cases, the branches I was grafting on died out beneath my graft.

I have a boat load of dead branches to cut out of the trees and drag out of the orchard.  There is aso much poison ivy to contend with.

Back home

After driving home there was still enough light to graft some pecan trees.  It is mostly for bragging rights.  I am trying to upgrade the local population with some named cultivars.  The picture in my head is that the squirrels and blue jays will plant many of these pecans and we will establish a beachhead for Michigan pecans.  This year I am grafting Kanza and Canton pecans.  Who knows, maybe I will get a little help from Al Gore on this one.