Odds and ends

 

I enjoy this guy's channel. He is just a regular "dude" in Nepal who takes a LOT of video footage and posts it with minimal editing.

This video shows a woman harvesting a crop of garlic. Her "field" is probably about 150 square feet and I estimate that she pulled about 150 pounds of "wet" garlic out and will have about 25 pounds of salable bulbs.

The sound quality is pretty impressive. You can hear the roots snapping as she is pulling the plants.

I learn something from most of these kinds of videos. It never occurred to me that I could harvest my garlic when the tops were still 50% green.

Other tidbits: She pulls weeds (maybe chickweed and some dill) and she feeds it to her goats. She is wearing "western" style clothing that was probably channeled through Goodwill or similar charities and resold in 3rd world countries like Nepal. It is impressive how they are able to shoe-horn productive patches of garden into small and oddly-shaped bits of available, level ground.

It is difficult for me to imagine a culture that is so accepting of a stranger showing up and being allowed to take intensive and personal video footage like this.

New phone

I purchased a new phone and Belladonna, saint that she is, did all of the button-pushing to port the service to the new device.

I have a learning curve to go through. I struggle to turn the darned thing on which may be a combination of my fat thumb and the protective case that guards the "Home" key.

Another feature that sucks is that it takes enormous photos (like 24 megapixels) which will blow-up my email. So I need an app to shrink them down to 1200 pixels on a side, max. Nor am I wild about having them stored on "the cloud".

It bothers me that NOBODY who does not clean their lens with fanatical frequency and surgical care benefits from that kind of pixelation. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Touching the "Wet Paint"

So, after pissing on the nurses for eating Carrot Cake I went and made one.

One, 9 ounce package of Jiffy Yellow Cake mix 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1/4 tsp nutmeg mixed dry.

One egg, 1/2 cup applesauce and 2 Tbl spoons molasses (mixed together)

1.5 cups of grated carrots, 1/4 cup of raisins, dried cherries and chopped walnuts, each.

As if making muffins, mix liquids (line 2) with dry cake mix (line 1). Be gentle and just mix until all ingredients are wet and most dry clumps are broken.

Fold in carrots, raisins, cherries and nuts. Mix until well-wetted by the batter.

Place into an 8" square pan (I used Pyrex) and cook at 325 F for 25 minutes. Turn off heat and leave in oven for an additional 10 minutes.

I frosted with cream-cheese frosting but I think it was better without the frosting.

I got good reviews from the family on the effort.

Grafting

I made a trip to the property I am managing.

I planned to graft, mow and spray herbicide.

Today was cool, wet and windy.

That made mowing and spraying non-starters. So I grafted. The highlight is that I grafted four Selber Shelbark Hickory scion to some Shagbark Hickory seedlings. Thanks to Lucky-in-Kentucky for the original scion. I also grafted some more mulberry trees.

BOLO Chestnuts

Somehow I misplaced about 10 pounds of chestnuts that I intended to use for seed nuts. I will probably find them in July, all dried out and dead.

I looked in all of the likely places, now I have to look in the unlikely ones.

Target planting date for late-cabbage seeds is May 15. That is the next major "tombstone date".

At least the handwriting is legible

Not Home-schooled