I managed four hours time-on-task work today.
I spent three hours planting 75 White Pine seedlings and 25 Norway Spruce seedlings. Of the two, the Norway Spruce went into the ground much more quickly.
I was planting the White Pine into pucker-brush that had been brush-hogged. No above-ground brush to fight with but I still had to contend with many roots.
The Norway Spruce was planted into sod. The Norway Spruce have a smaller, less expansive root system that goes into the hole without argument and drama.
The trees were planted on 8' centers. The White Pine were planted in multiple rows (windbreak) with the centers off-set. My customer was downcast when I told her that we need to put cages around the White Pine to protect them from the deer and rabbits.
I spent another hour grafting pears. Grafting is not high-calorie burn work.
Tomorrow's work-ticket looks like planting another 25 White Pine and more grafting.
I wonder if the mental health crisis that Gen Z is experiencing would disappear if they performed 3 hours of hard, physical labor six days a week. Our bodies were not only designed for arduous labor, we NEED work to stay regulated.
I wonder if the mental health crisis that Gen Z is experiencing would disappear if they performed 3 hours of hard, physical labor six days a week. Our bodies were not only designed for arduous labor, we NEED work to stay regulated.
ReplyDeleteMost folks' mental status is reset with a few hours of real meaningful work. Searching the internet for "likes" clearly doesn't fulfill that need to be meaningful.
Look at how "I RETIRED" so soon follows with "Now what" and WORSE WHO AM I. And bad momentary pleasures replace the "annoyance of coworkers" and often we fall apart. How many fancy cruises can you do before you have to amp it up with exotic cruises and so on to keep distracting yourself.
Most successful retirees I know are VERY BUSY with their second (or third or..) career doing grafting and land management for other folks. Or staying in part time EMS or otherwise DOING something aside from internet and pleasure experiences.
Oddly that dusty old book has a lot to say about that:
1 Thessalonians 4:11-12
New International Version
11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
God gave us "pain" so we would pull our hand out of the fire before we were too badly burned.
Delete"Anxiety" is a kind of pain that tells us "we are on the wrong track" and that we should make changes in our lives.
Modern life is immersive and it demands that we deny the evidence before our lives. It demands that we believe at least six impossible things before breakfast. Girls and young women are most desperate to be seen as cool and in-the-right-group. They are the ones who most slavishly bend their brains to believe the unbelievable.
They are the ones with the highest level of crazy...and most often it is depression and anxiety.
I’ve got 100 Norway Spruce trees arriving soon. Any planting tips you can share? I hear wood ash is helpful to put in the hole before the tree. These will be 4 year old trees/seedlings. I’ve never planted them before and I am not sure what compelled me to get so many.
ReplyDeleteI really like Norway Spruce. It transplants easily and resists most of the common stresses in my area. Most of what I plant is 2-0 and 10" to 18" tall (less the roots). I have planted them in dry, well drained soils, medium soils and "wet" soils and they outperformed every other species I planted.
DeleteI don't know if you are planting bare-root or plugs or containers. One challenge of plugs and containers is getting good hydraulic conductivity (not sure that is a real term) between the root ball and the surrounding soil. The textbook fix is to give the plants a good drink about once-a-week for the first summer. If you get an inch of rain that week, you get a break, otherwise, protect your investment by making sure the tree doesn't dry out.
If you are not adverse to herbicides, killing the weeds in a six-foot patch before you plant is advantageous. So is mulch.
Nearly all evergreens (Eastern Hemlock being an exception) love sun. They sulk in the shade and then die.
Valuable advice thanks so much. OP here. Your experience I trust more than me just wading through the muck online.
Delete