Little bits and pieces

Back when I was a working-stiff, I tried Loratadine (the active ingredient in Claratin) for my seasonal allergies. It left me feeling spaced-out so I abandoned it after a few days as not working for me.

The drug keeps getting very solid reviews. It lasts for 24 hours and is (mostly) non-drowsy. One downside is that it does not kick-in very rapidly. One source says it takes three hours after taking before it is effective. But if you are taking it once every day, that washes out.

I decided to give it another try. So far, I have not felt spaced-out. I wonder if I had an ear or sinus infection that caused the feeling-weird. Those are common comorbidities during seasonal allergies and it is very possible that it wasn't the drug that was causing the side-effect.

Air Quality

Fires in Alberta are impacting 2.5PM levels in the air over a swath of states from North Dakota to Kansas. 

Tomorrow's forecast for 2.5PM levels

More of an issue for me is that the Orchard Grass (Dactylis glomerata) is on the verge of pollinating. Orchard Grass pollen is my kryptonite.

Another trial run at lugging buckets scheduled for Monday morning

"Dad, I am at a yard sale and this guy is selling 5 gallon buckets. Do you want me to buy some?" Southern Belle asked.

I asked the price and it was less than half the price of new. "Sure, buy four of them for me" I told her.

The picture in my head is that I will drill hole(s) in the bottom and decant my 4 gallons/tree into the bucket, then go back for another load. Repeat but with the second set of two. With a median (improved) round-trip of 200 feet, the first set of buckets will need about two minutes to drain...which is the bogey I will use for selecting hole size/number.

The first set of buckets will bet "caterpillared" forward to trees five-and-six and so on.

A job delayed

A job delayed is a job made more difficult...usually.

I have a nursery row that needs to be hand-weeded. Not my favorite chore.

It is overgrown.

I am watering it in the hopes that wet dirt will make it easier to pull up the weeds, root and all. 

AI, then first hit from a common search engine

It is safe to assume that the results you get from AI is "filtered" to favor answers that are convenient for the sources funding the programming and hosting.

Cicadas are reputed to taste like asparagus

According to the internet, cicadas taste like asparagus...or nuts...or shellfish.

There are eleven species of cicadas that are common in Michigan. They all have distinct preferences in terms of foods that they eat as larvae.

Some species feast on oak roots. Others prefer pine. Some favor sycamore roots. Still others prefer cottonwood or willow...or perennial weeds.

I think I will pass on the air-fried cicadas this year, again.

Millimeter-by-millimeter, seed-by-seed, graft-by-graft...

For some reason, many of my readers somehow reached the conclusion that I am accident prone.

Therefore, I have a responsibility to post something every day to save you vultures from wasting your time combing the obituaries searching for the details of my demise.

Getting older, sigh!

I am resigned to the fact that one "heavy" work-day or work-out now requires two days of recovery. That does not mean inactivity. It means two "light" days in terms of physical activity.

Planting

Two Somerset hazelnut bushes and two Clematis montana cv "Mayleen" in the linear brush-pile.

Grafting

Four Illinois Everbearing Mulberry grafted on to four seedlings that are located in areas where they will not be mowed down.

Two Illinois Everbearing Mulberry grafted on to large seedlings in the windbreak west of the Upper Orchard.

That pretty much burns out the supply of graftable mulberry seedlings for this year.

Spraying herbicide

The very best way to conserve soil moisture is to eliminate "weeds". It also conserves soil fertility in the sense that the nutrients that the weeds do NOT vacuum up are available for the growing trees.

I used a bottomless, 5-gallon bucket that is split from top-to-bottom as a shield around the smaller grafted trees. I want to kill the grass, not the tiny trees that are what I WANT to grow.

First pecan seedlings

The pecan seedling in lower third of frame, slightly biased to the right.

One of my readers told me about making enclosed structures covered with hardware cloth to protect nuts from rodents and squirrels.

I decided it was worth a shot, although I did it on a much more modest scale than he does.

It works!!! At least three nuts overwintered and have broken through the soil and are growing! Thanks, Unnameable Benefactor in dry state. God willing, I will have ten or more seedlings to move to other places while leaving the strongest seedling in-place.

Garden Cart

Poking around behind the barn at The Property, I recognized the tongue of the kind of cart that can be dragged around behind a garden tractor.

One tire was flat.

The other wheel was missing.

Part One and Part Two are ordered.

Broke a boot-lace

I HATE when that happened.

Looking from the bottom toward the top

I dislike the open "speed-lacing" system where the laces are dragged across the raw edges of bent, metal stampings.

I am not the only person who dislikes this system.

It is easy enough to fix. I ordered some small "D" rings that I will place into the hooks and then smash the hooks down. It will not be as fast to lace my boots but my laces will last longer.

And while I was on the DeNile website, I ordered some cut-resistant bootlaces. They are a little bit pricey but your footwear is where the rubber-hits-the-road.

I would rather be driving a $5000 vehicle riding on $250 tires than driving a $150k vehicle on $100 tires. But that is just me.

From the comments

From the comments on the post about White, South African farmers being fast-tracked for legal immigration to the US:

(My objection to Trump's Administration fast-tracking White, South African farmers) Has nothing to do with the risk to SA farmers which is tenable given the exploitive history they created but the hypocrisy of the Trump regime trying to have it both ways does.  Laying out the carpet for white farmers and  excluding others sends a clear message while mouthing that the policy is non discriminatory is hilarious.  

I agree with Lucas on this point. Very bad optics.

Based on the collapse of Rhodesia and what recently happened in Afghanistan, we can speculate with very high certainty that the Blacks who worked for the White farmers are/were targeted as "collaborators". Lacking the resources of the farmers, they were even easier targets to rape and exterminate.

The motivation for the Blacks who worked for the White farmers is pretty simple. They were treated well and often supplied with on-farm housing. They were paid more than the prevailing wages. The White farmers employed them during slack-times for on-farm infrastructure improvements. The Black employees could learn modern farming techniques and the fundamentals of fertilizing and disease prevention and scientific breeding.

The motives of the Blacks evicting/murdering the Whites and their Black "collaborators" was pretty simple. Dead people cannot push back.

It is deeply immoral and fundamentally wrong to abandon one's allies and "locals" who assisted you.

I am not sure all of the blame can be laid at the feet of Trump. Consider the difficulties in identifying surviving "collaborators". Consider the logistics of getting them documentation (especially if the country's political structure is deeply hostile towards them). Where is the money for the plane tickets for the families of the "collaborators" going to come from? All of these complications may have stymied any of the "collaborators" being in the first wave of South African farmers to come to the US. 

Bonus images

Zimbabwe maze production per ha

 

U.S. corn yield over a similar time period.

Look at the trends. The graphs are in different units so they are not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Lugging water: After Action Report

One of the neighbors next to The Property graciously gave me permission to hook up a hose to one of her outside spigots.

I filled a 110 gallon stock watering tank and a couple of 30 gallon tubs. Then I lugged the water in two, five gallon buckets. Because of losses due to sloshing, I only carried eight gallons per trip which noodles out to twenty round-trips (160/8).

The median distance I carried them was a round trip of a bit over 400 feet. If I get another 100 feet of hose I can shorten that median distance by a hundred feet on each leg. 200 feet times 20 round trips is 0.8 miles or about fifteen minutes of walking time that I can eliminate with another $30 worth of hose.

Elevation plot of the outbound leg I had to walk to reach the median tree.

Even more exciting, I can shave 12 feet of elevation that  I have to climb if I add another 100 feet of hose. It wasn't too bad today because the temperature is in the mid-50s (F). But that is really going to suck the life out of me when the temperatures are in the 80s.

There were trees I didn't get to. So I probably need 200 gallons. The entire sequence of events took 2-1/2 hours for the 160 gallons so I better plan on three hours for 200 gallons.

I am resigned to executing this evolution every week until September first if that is what it takes. The weeks that it rains enough so I don't have to do it will be a bonus. I am in the market for another 110 gallon stock tank.

Time to start dragging hose

Time to drag hose and start humping water to the baby trees! The roots of newly planted trees don't plunge very deeply so they quickly feel the effects of a dry spell. According to the MSU IPM site, we are dead-even for May rainfall and evaporative potential and the EP will pull ahead at 0.2" per day from now and for the next ten days.

To get maximum canopy growth through the summer, I don't want the trees to "set" terminal buds on their shoots until late August. If they feel water stress, they will stop growing earlier than that.

Noted for future reference: 8 ounces of urea per 100 gallons is about 300 PPM nitrogen.

 

Property taxes, Work, Gardening and Walking

In Michigan's Upper Peninsula (near Marquette if memory serves) a large building saw a HUGE jump in its assessed value and property taxes after it was leased to Menard's, a big-box store that sells mostly building supplies (a competitor of Lowes and Home Despot).

The owners of the building appealed the assessment and were denied. They took it to the Michigan State Supreme Court and the landlord's case was validated. Assessors cannot change the value of the assessment based on the name of the tenant, the number of vehicles in the parking lot nor the value of the merchandise stored within the walls of the property.

The Michigan State Supreme Court also agreed that the municipality had to make the property owners whole. They had to return the excessive taxes they extracted. Of course, the municipality had already spent the money on things like music festivals and hiring underprivileged summer workers.

The magnificent thing about this ruling is that it disincentivized "aggressive" assessments because it is MUCH more painful to municiapalities to over-tax and then have to make the victims whole than to move in smaller, more defensible steps along the way.

At one time, the size/value of a property was a reasonable proxy for the income that could be generated from the property. A 40 acre farm could be reasonably expected to produce significantly more disposable income than a 20 acre farm.

Today that relationship is warped because the only way that income can be generated is if the property is sold which unhomes the occupants. And unless the property is put on the market and sold, all guesses about its value are purely speculative.

Work

"Work smarter, not harder" is a phrase that irks me.

Taken to the extreme, it implies that if you are smart enough that you will never have to work. That morphs into "Only stupid people work."

Gardening notes

Most of Southern Belle's garden is in. This is her first garden in Michigan. She wanted tomatoes, zucchini squash, green beans, cucumbers, Romaine lettuce, mustard greens and potatoes. She also wanted purple corn but her 600 square feet of garden makes that tough.

Most of Mrs ERJ's "salad garden" is in. Sweet Baby Girl tomato, zucchini, Super Sugar Snap peas, green onions, cucumbers and green onions.

None of the gardens look very impressive. Lots of dirt. Some stakes. A few, spindly plants poking up here-and-there. 

The Upper Orchard. The mound of green on the right side of the frame is Lemon Balm which seems to be very happy here. It must be very resistant to browsing by deer and rabbits.

We ran across this guy while walking the orchard. Probably not much older than a day-old. He had that awkward figuring-it-all-out gallop.

I walked the Upper Orchard with a gentleman who owns a bush-hog. I tied surveyor's tape to trees I did not want shredded. He put flags by items (like stumps) that were too big for his brush hog to digest.

Metrics

We tend to get more of what we measure. A well thought-out measurement system tends to manage itself. A stupid measurement system sows chaos and discontent.

Last year, I had a goal of walking 65 miles during the month of June. This year I am considering counting time in the garden/orchard toward that goal (66 miles this year).

I can walk about three miles in one hour, but time in the garden and orchard are not that aerobic. On the simple basis of incremental calorie burn, two or three hours in the garden might be the equivalent of one hour walking. However, there are some tasks like dragging brush or pulling hoses that are MORE aerobic than simply walking.

I am currently leaning toward counting an hour of "heavy gardening" as three miles of walking: pushing a mower, running a tiller, digging, carrying water, dragging brush or hose 1-for-1 in terms of time. For "light gardening": Mowing while riding a tractor, weeding, using a sprayer I am contemplating two hours of "light gardening" counting as three miles.

Gardening and walking goals do not have to be in direct competition. They are similar enough that they can be complimentary.

Any thoughts from my readers?

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Berndt Lindholm born in Finland to parents who spoke Swedish in 1841. He died in 1914.

Prolific painter of landscapes.

 

Hat-tip to the still tire-less Lucas.

Some headlines from the morning "paper"

Dishonest professor at harvard. Lower-case "h" intentional.

 

Use of "Monster" in a headline is usually hyperbole. In this case...not so.

Florida man. I popped open the article and checked.

I assume the costumes were "comped" by the designers. I cannot imagine anybody paying money for any of those outfits

I did NOT pop this one open but I assume the local government is using power of Eminent Domain to condemn the property for...pickleball courts. New Jersey

Believed to have been perpetrated by "...a white British male from Liverpool..." Would have been Hate-Speech if they had published any other demographic

 

Click-bait bull shit. RUN any time somebody claims to be an investment adviser claims to be able to predict the future prices of anything.

Memorial Day, 2025

 

Remember

More garden went into the ground today

Not much heat in the 10-day look-ahead

The west side of my "serious" garden has rows that are 32 feet long. The reason is that feedlot panels are 16 feet long. Two panels are 32 feet long. Feedlot panels make fine supports for semi-determinate tomato vines. I am using a default distance between rows of 42 inches this year but for the tomatoes I went with 60" between rows.

32 feet of Provider green bean seeds went into the ground today.

32 plants of Rustica Limonka tobacco on 24" centers went into the ground. I will let the two leafiest plants set seed.

17 plants of Stupice tomato and 17 plants of Ace 55 tomato.

I ran short of sweet peppers and Mrs ERJ made a commando shopping trip to make up the shortfall. Consequently, I was able to plant 17 sweet pepper plants today. The ones she bought were interesting because they had extremely short internodes. I think they were grown under LEDs with lots of blue light content.

All told, I planted about 750 square feet of garden today after Mass. That is about 75 square-Manitobas for those of you who can visualize Montreal units.

I have room to plant some pickling cucumbers and then the west side of the "serious" garden is planted with the first rotation of vegetables. I am seriously considering planting them on feed-lot panels as well.

A lady at church

One of the widows where I attend church is opinionated and enjoys sharing those opinions. Me, being mostly polite, is often the benefit of those opinions.

Today she shared that she cans tomato "soup stock" for five families. She supplies each of the four elderly families and one overwhelmed young mother with 48 quarts of tomatoes canned with the Cajun Trinity (green peppers, onions and celery).

Two of those families asked Mrs Opinionated if it would be possible to add 12 more quarts. She wasn't very happy with that until they said that they relied on soup to stretch the grocery dollar. And that dollar wasn't going as far as it used to. It is now very possible to pay over $8 for a three pound bag of grapes, for instance.

One of Mrs Opinionated's frustrations is that she cannot hire help. She ended up tilling her garden with her hand tiller when in previous years she was able to find somebody to do it for cash.

I guess I will cut her a little bit of slack. She is doing her bit to honor Matt 25:37 and 25:40-42.

A change of pace

A change of pace as we enter Memorial Day weekend.

The Touch of the Master's Hand as sung by Sally Rogers.

Stinky apartment update

There are two places where Pelé is bothered by the stink: His bathroom and one of his closets.  

Our breakthrough came when Pelé told me that one of his under-sink vanities stank while the other wasn't nearly as bad.

So, we took a look-and-see.

Stinky

 

Not-stinky

A little bit of background on the economics of apartments: It is economical to make apartments "mirror images" of adjacent units so they can share common waste-water, feed-water and power feeds. So if "sum dude" goes into the bathroom (figuring there is a ventilation fan) of one unit to smoke weed, then there is almost a clear-line-of-sight into the adjacent unit's bathroom via plumbing feeds.

We took down the light fixture and Pelé put tape over the electrical pass-through hole.

We stuffed foam-rubber strips between the mirror and the wall. Pelé thought "stink" also came from behind the mirror.

We stuffed open-cell air-conditioning foam into the hole through the drywall for the toilet feed.

We put die-cut, foam gaskets on the wall cover plates for his power outlets.

There was a plastic door over an access hole to the back of the valves for the tub. The door was in a closet. Same smell issues. We sealed up the gaps in the cobbled-together door and then we taped the edges to the wall with the aluminum foil tape. Neither of us were very confident about the tape but it had excellent "conformal" characteristics. Smoothing it out caused it to contour to the rough, textured plaster.

The only item left on his to-do list is to buy some Great Stuff expanding urethane foam and to "fill" the gaps between the holes in the drywall and the feeds-and-drain plumbing for the one basin to make it identical to the "not stinky" vanity.

Managing negative pressure

His fireplace is a gas fireplace and the pilot is lit, so there is no possibility of sealing off the chimney or closing the damper until the maintenance team shuts off the gas.

Pelé has a washer-dryer in his apartment (an amenity that he likes). I suggested that he open an outdoor window (if the weather is good) and close the bathroom door when he is running the dryer.

Conversely, when running the bathroom ventilation fan to leave the bathroom door open so make-up air from all of the apartment's HVAC ducts can flow in thereby minimizing the negative pressure in the bathroom.

Smells are subjective

Things like "smells" and "noise" are subjective. I might like the 1812 Overture really loud but find (c)rap music objectionably loud at exactly the same decibel level.

Part of what was twisting Pelé around the axle is that he had no control over the smell. He specified a non-smoking apartment in a non-smoking block. Weed is legal in Michigan and his neighbor indulges.

It is almost impossible to "control" the behavior of other people. Hence, control-issues.

Walking Pelé through the simple steps of finding and eliminating direct-air paths between his apartment and his neighbors is empowering. He can influence outcomes without depending on other people. Empowerment changes the dynamics of "subjective".

---Added a bit later--- 

"Coons in the Henhouse"

Well, I woke to a mess in the old barnyard,
Feathers on the ground, my heart broke hard.
Four of my hens, they were stolen away,
By them sneaky ol’ coons ‘fore the break of the day.
Spring traps failed me, they slipped every one,
Them bandits just laughed like they’d already won.
But I got me a cage trap, some chili to spare,
And waited in the moonlight for those coons to get there.

Coons in the henhouse, stealin’ my flock,
Rippin’ through my chickens, now the hammer’s cocked.
Chili in the cage, I laid down the bait,
Sent ‘em to the henhouse in the sky, sealed their fate.
They ate my chickens, but I’m grinnin’ with pride,
‘Cause I’m eatin’ their jerky with my .22 mag by my side.

Two coons in two days, they fell for my scheme,
That chili was callin’, stole their thievin’ dream.
With my Heritage revolver, that .22 mag,
I sent ‘em up yonder with a thunderous brag.
Now my smoker’s hummin’, got that jerky just right,
Spiced up and chewy, it’s my victory bite.
They thought they’d outsmart me, but I turned the game,
Now I’m chewin’ their fate while my hens cluck again.

Coons in the henhouse, stealin’ my flock,
Rippin’ through my chickens, now the hammer’s cocked.
Chili in the cage, I laid down the bait,
Sent ‘em to the henhouse in the sky, sealed their fate.
They ate my chickens, but I’m grinnin’ with pride,
‘Cause I’m eatin’ their jerky with my .22 mag by my side.

My hens are safe now, roostin’ peaceful and free,
No more raccoon shadows sneakin’ up on me.
With my smoker and my pistol, I’ve settled the score,
Them coons fed my chickens, now I’m eatin’ much more.

Coons in the henhouse, stealin’ my flock,
Rippin’ through my chickens, now the hammer’s cocked.
Chili in the cage, I laid down the bait,
Sent ‘em to the henhouse in the sky, sealed their fate.
They ate my chickens, but I’m grinnin’ with pride,
‘Cause I’m eatin’ their jerky with my .22 mag by my side.

So here’s to my farm, my coop, and my land,
I’ll guard it forever with this gun in my hand.
Them coons learned their lesson, now they’re jerky, it’s true,
This country boy’s justice tastes mighty fine too

MPat70 on 24hourcampfire

The Black Locust is starting to bloom

Black Locust are starting to bloom. 450 Growing Degree Days, base 50.

Chickens

Chickens are magnets for predators. Southern Belle lost a few pullets last night. I volunteered to set some traps.

I put out four bucket sets with 160 body-grip traps and two dog-proof raccoon sets. I bought a rotisserie chicken...after all, I already know they like chicken. I pulled off the wings and the bones out of the legs and thighs to use as bait.

A tip of the hat to my reader in Southern New Hampshire who tipped me off on using chicken bones for bait!

One big advantage that a newbie has when they have a mentor in the neighborhood is that the mentor is likely to have $90 worth of traps sitting around and setting them for a few weeks to put a dent* in the local varmint population doesn't cause them to depreciate much.

Most newbies start out on a shoe-string and losing critters and/or having to purchase traps can be a hard-ship. That goes for all kinds of other odd-ball tools like peavey logging tools, chains, tow-straps, tillers, shovels, hoes, bang-sticks, rakes and so on. 

*The current thinking is that you cannot depend solely on suppressing varmint populations to protect your livestock. Critters flow in from the surround area. Visualize sticking a straw into a milk-shake and sucking. The shape of the surface becomes somewhat "whirl-pool" in shape. That is what the population density looks like if only one small-holder is knocking back varmints.

However....if the population is locally lower, then that reduces the chances of a system failure like the electric fence going in-op or somebody leaving a gate open resulting in the flock/herd being mowed down. Part of that is that by knocking back the number of predators, it brings it more in-line with local resources so they are not as-pressured by hunger.

---added later based on a comment asking for pictures---

Dog-proof raccoon traps. I have one of these tied to a wooden structural element of the chicken run. The other is on a drag.

 Not feral cat or squirrel-proof.

A "bucket set". Stakes securing body-grip trap in an "A" configuration. Bail of bucket slid over stakes and tied in upright position. Square or rectangular bucket preferred. Varmint pushes through trigger-wires to get to bait in the bucket and trips the trap. Dried dog-food works almost as well as anything and keeps well.

Marshmallows, over-ripe bananas, Concord grapes, hotdogs, frozen sweet corn, canned mackeral, bluegills, chunks of carp...raccoons and possum are not fussy eaters. Protein in the spring and fruit in the fall.

Stinky apartment

Tomorrow's project involves going over to Pelé's apartment and dealing with smells infiltrating into it.

Pelé really likes his apartment. He likes the location. He likes the rent. He likes the amenities

He does NOT like the smells that infiltrate through the south wall of his apartment. According to him, the smells are coming in through the recessed lighting fixture and the electrical outlets. It could be a neighbor smoking or it could be dead rodents in the walls.

My plan is to seal the wall outlet and switches with foam gaskets beneath the wall-plates (covers). 

The openings in the recessed light "cans" will get high-temperature, foil tape. He uses LEDS, so cooling is less of an issue than if he used incandescent bulbs. If there are holes lanced in the can where we cannot reach them, the back-up plan is to pack the space behind the bulb socket with fiberglass

Did I mention the amenities?

Pelé observed that the smell is sporadic. His apartment has a fireplace. I suspect that the chimney pulls a vacuum when the wind blows from certain directions and creates a negative pressure in his apartment that pulls the stenchy air from the walls. I am going to make sure the damper is closed and show him how to check for drafts. That involves closing the glass doors and applying a sheet of "Saran Wrap". If it gets sucked into the seams, he has a drafty chimney issue.

As a renter, he can tape some plastic film over the glass doors and seams and drape a decorative cover over the doors when he is not using it. Not an elegant solution because he will have to deal with tape residue in late-autumn when he wants to start using it again, but it will reduce the unwanted air being pulled into his apartment.

Mega-droughts

The rainfall in the American West is highly dependent on surface temperatures of the Pacific Ocean. There is more rainfall in the American west during El Niño years and less during La Niña years. The two ocean temperatures oscillate with El Niño dominating some decades and La Niña other decades.

Periodically...every ten-to-fifteen decades or so, La Niña dominates and we experience a mega-drought. We had a mega-drought in the 1930s, 1855-1865 and tree rings inform us that we had western "mega-droughts" 1265-1300, 1125-1160, 975-1010, 810-840.

What is notable about this medieval series of droughts is that they were all approximately three decades long and had approximately 100 good years between the end of one and the start of the next. The interval between the last two mega-droughts was only 65 years.

Approximately 7 million people lived in California in 1940. At that time, very little water was used by humans for amenities like lawns, golf courses, swimming pools, car washes...or flush toilets. Today there are approximately 40 million people living in California today and the per-capita water use is estimated at 100 gallons per day for non-industrial, non-ag uses.

Things might get sporty when the next La Niña dominance cycle starts.

Mulberries as fish bait

 

Mulberry trees sometimes grow beside the river. Chasing the light, they lean out, over the water.

Little known fact: There are "boy" mulberry trees and "girl" mulberry trees. When a "girl" leans out over the water there are herds of fish beneath her when she is dropping fruit.

Sadly, mulberries are a soft, squishy fruit that is not well suited for threading onto a hook in pursuit of a fish dinner.

Tiny Cabin Life

 

 

A change of pace for those of you who need a mini-vacation. 30 minute run-time.

Not city life.

Hat-tip to CoyoteKen.

Grafting Hawthorns

Hawthorns grafted at Southern Belle's:

Crataegus mexicana Manzanilla Chapas just east of the driveway near middle row of orchard. Used in traditional, hot, fruit punch served at Christmas and New Years. Link

Crataegus azarolus Red Azarole just west of the driveway. Link Bonus Link

Crataegus opaca Big Red Mayhaw 40 feet west of Red Azarole Link Bonus Link

Crataegus pinnatifida Red Sun approximately 40' south of Big Red Mayhaw Link Bonus Link

The scion came from Cliff England in eastern Kentucky, so they survived Zone 6a. In a test winter I might be 10F colder than that. We will see how Chapas and Azarole and Mayhaws handle Michigan weather.

Why Crataegus?

They are incredibly tough. Like barbed wire, broken glass and junk-yard dog tough.

There are Crataegus species native to Alberta and Saskatchewan. Crataegus grows down into Central America. Some species grow in super-dry environments. Some species grow in boggy-muck just a touch drier than skunk cabbage.

They have thorns that fend off herbivores. Those thorns punch through the soles of athletic shoes and tires with ease. They make GREAT hedges.

The downsides are that the fruit is small and the quality is so-so. While Chinese herbalists made use of hawthorn fruit and leaves...is there any plant that grows in China that they didn't use? Another downside is that they are subject to many leaf diseases and appear to be particularly vulnerable to cedar-apple rust.

Grafting hawthorn is not for the faint-of-heart.

The thing about grafting hawthorns is that the ideal shoots for grafting is always thickly guarded by a thicket of stout, thorny branches. I had to cut my way in to get to the shoot. Then I had to remove taller branches that shaded the graft. I got a bunch of minor puncture wounds and one moderate puncture wound. The moderate puncture wound occurred when I stepped on a branch I had just cut off of the tree. It went through the sole of my shoe and stung me in the arch of my foot.

Not That Kind of Good Guy

John Ringo's newest book Not That Kind of Good Guy has a very large sub-plot  on the foster-care system in the United States. In the book, one of the characters quotes some astonishingly large statistics about sexual abuse rates that happen in the foster-care system. I won't quote the number, that is not the most important thing.

I thought I would dip into what the published literature says about the sexual abuse rate in foster care 

Foster care is a long-running and relatively commonplace system in the US: however, in 2019 there were an estimated 400,000 children in foster care, leaving the system overwhelmed and at its peak capacity. Of those children, it is estimated that up to 40% of them had experienced some type of abuse within the system... The lasting effects of sexual abuse for children in foster care have critical implications for their futures, including heightened risk factors for teen pregnancy, drug use, and mental health disorders.  Source

We investigated the 2010 year prevalence of child sexual abuse (CSA) in residential and foster care...248  per 1,000 (25%) adolescents reported having experienced CSA...We found that 3.5  per 1,000 (0.4%) children had been victims of CSA based on (professional's working in residential or foster care) reports.  Source Presumably "year prevalence" is the rate for the previous 365 days

Factor in two additional items: If 2/3rds of the assaults are against girls and if the ratio of girls:boys is equal then the 40% estimate becomes 53% for the girls.

Additionally, consider that 80% of sexual criminal conduct is not reported by ADULT victims. Kids in foster care face the ultimate power inequality and are threatened with extremely dire consequences if they tell anyone, ever. If adolescents still in the foster-care system are reporting 25% victimization rate (even in supposedly confidential surveys) you can bet the rate is much, much higher. And if I read the "units" correctly, that was just for the previous year and those kids (12-through-17) have not aged-out.

Extrapolating, most girl foster kids are likely to be victimized multiple times in foster-care if they are not scooped up and adopted in the first few years. Likely half of the boys have similar experiences.

Yah, I know "BULLSHIT!!! I would have heard about it..." 

OK, Warren, let me address that with a symmetry argument.

How many college coeds did your wife tell about your Erectile Dysfunction and Hemorrhoids? Zero? Well, of course it was zero. People don't talk about those kinds of things.

Being sexually assaulted is far more invasive and dehumanizing than needing a little-purple-pill or pooping Red Velvet cake batter. There is a lot of stuff that happens that doesn't get passed around in casual conversation.

So if the "professional's working in residential or foster care" aren't talking about it or reporting it (underestimating by at least a factor of 62 (Not 62%. 62X)) then what are the chances of you hearing about it when you dine with your golf buddies at Applebee's?  Well, of course it was zero.

 

Fencing in Southern Belle and Handsome Hombre's garden

Southern Belle gave me a list of tasks that would be helpful to her family.

So, yesterday I purchased some tomato plants:

• Sweet Baby Girl hybrid cherry tomato. Mrs ERJ's favorite by a wide margin. Lots of delicious cherry tomatoes all season long. Two plants should be plenty.
• Big Beef hybrid mainseason-red. Beef-steak type tomato. Uniform. Productive. Disease resistant. Uncomplicated, tomato taste. Three plants.
• Golden Jubilee, large, open-pollinated yellow tomato. Novelty. Considered "low-acid' by some gardeners. A beautiful tomato with a gorgeous color. One plant should be enough. If they like it then they can plant more next year.

Handsome Hombre had taken down the fence around the old garden site (now in the shade) and dragged the posts and fabric over to the new site. He even found a roll of unused fabric in the weeds that had been left by the previous owner (or the one before that). 

Also, a big shout-out to him because he helped me load the tiller into the truck, first at my house, then again over at his. The tiller isn't that heavy but it is an awkward shape to grab a hold of and lift.

I installed fence posts, stretched fabric and tied it to the posts at the top so that it "draped" in place. And I was 10' short of fabric even after using the roll of fence. That is not a real big deal because I have a couple rolls of 5', welded wire fence fabric at home and can supply the missing 10'.

I can already see that I need to relax and let the kids make their own mistakes do things their own way, otherwise I will be sucking all of the joy out of the venture. Backing off will not be easy because I am very invested in growing food.

Tallying up their "enterprises", they have 20ish young pullets, two female "meat-rabbits", a ten fruit-tree orchard and several feral fruit trees scattered on the property, four young hazelnut bushes, four gooseberry bushes (from a previous owner), five raspberry bushes and a 400 square-foot garden. Not exactly dipping the tip of a toe into the water to check the temperature but also not quite diving in head-first.

They will be busy.

Presented without comment

 

A Couple of riffs on "I've Been Moved"

The grandeur of leaving an epic legacy seems to be one of the prime motivators in the Progressive Movement

Being known as the Court that was so corrupt and out-of-touch that it was necessary to reduce the entire Federal Court system to pilgrim status would certainly be an epic legacy for the John Roberts court. Perhaps it would provide enough motivation to actually LEAD it.

But, but, but...the infrastructure!!!! 

...early in the morning he (Jesus) came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst.  

They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?

She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.        John, Chapter 8 KJV

Whether you are a Christian or not, it is an indisputable fact that the founders of our nation were largely practicing Christians with intimate knowledge of both Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

Even though Jesus was in the Temple, this incident could have just as easily played out alongside any dusty road upon which he traveled.

Jesus demonstrated that lofty, marble buildings are not required for justice and mercy. Any dusty road will suffice if the judge(s) are of sufficient caliber.

Not sure how he will close the hood

 A lot of engine. I wonder if his Mrs knows he borrowed the drier vent.

I've Been Moved!

In the 1960s and 1970s it was fashionable for large corporations to only offer promotions to employees who were willing to relocate. The joke was that "I.B.M. meant I've Been Moved."

The stated intention was that the employees would remain loyal to the company because they never had time to grow local roots. Furthermore, there was the possibility that they might transfer good ideas and practices from one location to the next.

Given that an unfortunate number of Federal judges give evidence of misplaced loyalties, I think that 1960's strategy should be unleashed on them. They certainly have earned it.

I propose that 20% of the judges on every lower Federal court be transferred every year. The assignment will be random and made by drawing numbered balls from spinning container while broadcasting on live-TV.

If the courts insist on turning the execution of law into a circus, at least learn how to make it entertaining.

I also propose that the US Supreme Court be relocated in its entirety every ten years with all cities within 60 miles of Washington D.C. be disqualified for the next 100 years. Every metropolitan region will be entered into a lottery similar to the one described above. I am going to pull rank and the first non-D.C. placement to be Springfield/Branson, Missouri.

It is not that I have anything against Springfield or the great State of Missouri, but that area is emphatically NOT Washington D.C. and it is centrally located.

If any of my readers want to suggest other places to relocate the US Supreme Court, please chime in.

If anybody has a clue about the legal mechanism required to make that happen (Congress ==> Executive Branch?), let me know.

Carpenter Ants

Yesterday was advertised as "no rain". What we got was intermittent mist.

My usual routine is to check the varmint traps. If necessary, I dispatch the catch. The remains are then thrown the into the Eaton County Bald Iggle Viewing area (corn field).

Then I do a walk-around/overview.

Yesterday my big project was to mow.

I mowed at The Property for two hours. The grass kept clogging the discharge of the mower so it was "Stop the mower. Get off. Pull out the clippings. Get back on the mower and mow until it clogged again."

This old body doesn't jump on and off of a mower as it did when I was young and limber.

Between the gymnastic dismounts and the head-whipping over rough ground, my neck and shoulders are sore.

Carpenter ants

My second project was to cut up the trunks of apple trees that had been culled. The largest ones were riddled with Carpenter ants. I suspect they might have been involved in the trees' decline.

Carpenter ants don't really "eat" wood but they will tunnel through it and they can digest some of the fungi that grows in punky wood. The tunnels, on the the hand, are breaches to the weather that accelerate the decay of the trunk. Being INSIDE the trunk of the tree, there are relatively few options to control them.

One tactic is to put out bait that is poison. Ideally, the poison is very slow acting so the worker ants will take it back to the colony and it will be dispersed to the larvae and even the queen. Then it is game over.

A simple borax-sugar solution is often suggested for this purpose.

Another option is to lace the bait with an Insect Growth Regulator.

Insects typically pass through multiple, very different stages of life from egg, to larvae, to pupae, to adult. The most common IGRs lock the larvae into that stage of life. They never graduate from a nearly-immobile, economic dead-weight juvenile to a mobile, productive adult worker. The number of larvae balloons while the number of worker ants to support them declines. The colony collapses.

Bait placement requires some thought because IGR will also impact honeybee and bumblebee colonies. One option is to not use a syrup-based bait but use something like "Pate" canned catfood as a base. A second advantage of catfood is that larvae need a lot of protein and will likely get a whacking big dose of IGR if you deliver it in catfood.

If you still want to go with a syrup-based bait due to convenience, then it needs to be not-visible to flying bees. For example, you can soak bits of sponge or cottonballs in molasses + a bit of IGR and put them in old tin-cans and squish the top of the can mostly-shut. Ants will quickly find it if it is anywhere near the colony. In my case, near the piles of wood and near trees that appear to be in decline.

Dilution rate is a bit of a crap-shoot. The standard dilution for a water-based spray is about 1% Martin's IGR Insect Growth Regulator concentrate in water. One percent in bait would be about six drops per ounce (roughly 30ml) or 24 drops of concentrate for four ounces of molasses or 33 drops in a 5.5 ounce can of cat food.

Metric is even easier. One ml from a small syringe body is perfect for 100ml (3.5 oz) or 1.5ml for the 5.5 oz can of cat food. 

If you are worried that the petroleum carrier in the IGR will deter the ants, you can train them with unlaced molasses (or whatever) and then switch to the bait with IGR after they are hitting the unlaced bait.

Incidentally, one source suggested using sweetened, smooth peanut butter as a bait. That might work well inside but I would probably lose most of my bait to mice and squirrels when placed outside.

Yellow jackets

It occurred to me as I was preparing this blog-post that the cat food formulation might be a great thing as yellow jacket numbers explode in August.

Yellow jackets love meat and fish

Yellow jacket populations grow exponentially through the summer and early fall and make fruit-picking and chicken slaughtering a spicy adventure.

Truth be told, I liked yellow jackets when I had livestock. They ate lots of flies that bothered my critters. But they are overwhelming in September and October.

If the yellow jackets were attracted to the cat food bait, then the IGR would stop the recruitment of adults from the growing numbers of larvae. The trick will be to remember to start doing it in early August while the numbers are tolerable.

No plan survives first contact with the enemy. Nor the last contact.

I read somewhere that one of the most difficult military maneuvers to execute is to retreat in an orderly fashion from a superior force while taking fire and casualties. I believe it.

Fear and panic are baying at the retreating force's heels. Elements have to leap-frog with the rear position providing covering fire for the moving element. The moving element has to turn their back on the incoming fire and trust their buddies to do their job. Then, when the moving element reaches agreed-upon defensive positions, they must stop and provide covering fire for the buddies that had just previously done the same for them.

The overwhelming emotion is to depart from the field of battle as quickly as possible. It is an un-natural act to stop while still within range of the enemy, turn and return-fire while your buddies skedaddle.

There are a multitude of ways for the maneuver to turn to chaos and route. The primary fear is that you will be pinned-down and rolled-over by the enemy.

Planting season

Getting pinned-down and rolled-over is an apt description for late-planting season.

The grass needs mowing twice a week. Seeds are sprouting. Weeds are growing. Bamboo is invading. Bugs are swarming. Graduations. Weddings. Birthdays. Baby animals...

It is good to have a Go-to-Hell plan (i.e. Orderly Retreat under fire plan) that you activate when, well, things become overwhelming.

If you can hire a kid or an old-geezer, that is grand but good luck finding one.

The "Hardy Da Jang" citrus seeds I got are looking a little bit like Trifoliate Orange.

I am at the point where I am planting MANY seeds per pot and will let Darwin help me out.

In the garden, the usual progression is to carefully plant the potatoes and tomatoes and beans and corn and cucumbers...

Then, in a controlled panic to fill in the empty spaces with sprawling plants like winter squash and melons. That works because the sprawling vines can be planted June 10th (in Eaton County) and still have plenty of time to ripen.

Another Plan B is to plant root crops like beets, turnips, rutabagas as late as July 4th. The laziest of us broadcast turnip seeds over the squash vines where the plants will "smolder" until the frost kills the squash vines and they get full sunlight.

This next week looks like we will see our last risk of a killing frost with Tuesday and Friday mornings being worst.

Plan C is to broadcast Red Clover seeds in the unplanted areas of the garden after hitting-the-wall. Red Clover fixes nitrogen, can be dried down for hay for livestock, adds organic matter to the soil and bumps up numbers of "good" bacteria in the soil. Oh, and if it blooms it feeds the pollinating insects.

Plans never survive first contact with the enemy. Their value is that they give you the bones or outline that you can modify on-the-fly without having to synthesize all of the supporting details.

Sometimes "helping" our kids cripples them

New College Graduates not ready for the work world

"Most students graduate with little exposure to professional environments, so when they arrive at their first job, they’re often learning basic workplace norms for the first time."

“A lot of professors have no work experience beyond teaching, they grow up in academia and stay there, but all of those degrees and certificates are not going to replace work experience.”

 

One of the things I think we did "right" as parents was to run-lean in terms of the financial support we offered during their transition from "child" to "adult'.

Let me lead off by saying every kid is different.  Some are going to need more repetitions. Some are going to make more "mistakes" and learn less from those mistakes than others. 

As an example

Belladonna was a waitress while in college. She worked for three different restaurants. The first was a small mom-and-pop. The second was a corporation with a robust training program. The third was a local sports bar. She learned different things from each environment. For example, she learned from the corporate restaurant that there is an optimum time to check with your customers for feedback. Most customers will have had time to look their food over and take a bite or two if you check back in EXACTLY two minutes (science, don't you know). If the order is wrong, or cold, or not what they expected...there is still time to fix it. Belladonna saw a dramatic jump in her tips when she started doing that.

While at school, she "worked events" like conventions and catered weddings where she helped set-up and break-down. The hours worked with her class schedule. She learned about networking and how a great boss doesn't just pay by the hour, they pay for productivity.

Then she got credentials to be a phlebotomist. She worked at a plasma center for a while. Then she worked for a hospital chain. One minor thing she learned from the chain is that you can negotiate win-win scenarios with powerful people when they need you. She was working in a local facility one Friday night when her boss approached her and said that the facility in Ionia was on-its-dupa for a phlebotomist. That was a VERY BIG DEAL. After mulling over the situation, Belladonna said that she could bridge the 12:00AM-to-6:00AM gap as long as they paid her drive time (easily 40 minutes, one way). The boss agreed in a heart-beat.

Belladonna didn't tell them she planned to spend the weekend in Grand Rapids and the "company" was paying her to drive half-way there. The fact that the boss "adjusted the time-clock" to pay for her an additional 40 minute to drive BACK home (total of 80 minutes drive time) was a bonus.

When she graduated from her nursing program, she was already in several hospital systems. She had multiple offers, partially because she was a known, proven worker. For her, the transition to shift-work, coworkers, stress, hospital smells...unfortunate outcomes...they were not punches in the gut. She had been there and seen most of it.

And while she might have been more comfortable if we had been able to do more for her financially, she would be less of the rock-star than she is now.