Fine Art Tuesday

Robert McLellen Bateman was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1930 and is still living in Canada.

 

Famous for his paintings of wildlife which are done in amazing detail and in with believable backgrounds.

It is an unwritten rule among the better artists that seagulls always be painted in pairs. As the old saw goes, "One good tern deserves another"

 

Another tip of the hat to 10x25mm for recommending this artist

 

Note to reader, posting will be light. The power cord for my laptop is dying. A new one is ordered and is expected Monday.

Low expectations

 

I painted the roof of the duck-jail white to reduce temperatures under it. The jail is a re-purposed truck cap that was free on Craigslist. 

I tilled Southern Belle's gardens this morning and took some measurements. She assigned me the task of putting up another pole on the perimeter of her deck so she can put up another 12' square of shade-cloth.

One 8', 4-by-4 and hardware was purchased. Receipts were saved and I will be reimbursed.

I tilled up about 20 feet of row that had been planted to beets but none of them survived. I planted half to cucumbers (approximately 60 days from seed-to-first cucumbers) and half to Daikon radish.

I set up the sprinkler on the west end of the potato patch and turned it on at 8:00 p.m. to minimize evaporation and my electric bill. Michigan allows utilities to charge 24 cents a kW-hr between 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. I will run the sprinkler overnight.

Coasting

Mrs ERJ and I are coasting through this hot spell. We cut our usual 40 minute walk short at 35 minutes.

We bought a rotisserie chicken and a bagged salad for dinner.

I am not getting much done but I am not standing still, either. 

Tomorrow's work-ticket

Install the new post on Southern Belle's deck.

Spot-water some newly grafted trees.

Walk with Mrs ERJ.

Go fishing with Shotgun (first time this season!!!)

Stretch target: Pick up a half-yard of sawdust.

Random B.S.

Ya know, throwing a bunch of Zebra Mussels into the Washington D.C. cement-pond would reduce the algae problems. Another alternative would be to plant Silver Carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix). That would drive the E.P.A. bonkers because ZM and SC are not a native species.  Maybe there are native, North American species that is an analogs of the ZM and SC. Perhaps the native species can be genetically modified so they have red, white and blue shells.

Another approach would be to allow year-round duck hunting to reduce the amount of "nutrients" deposited by visiting ducks. But I cannot see D.C. allowing hunters toting 3-1/2", 12 gauge, semi-automatic long-guns free access to the city's core.

An alternative to human hunters would be to import alligators from Florida for the warmer months. There are many patriots from Florida, Louisiana and Texas who would consider it a privilege to plant dozens of 4' (and longer) gators and gar into the waters around the US Capitol every May.

To quote the tree-huggers, "Mother Nature will heal if we just lend her a helping hand."

Margin

I was conversing with a friend who had a family member take a tumble.

The family member is a serious athlete. Maybe not an Olympic level athlete but somebody who can ride a bicycle at 30 miles per hour for an extended period of time kind of athlete.

The aforementioned athlete ingested a bee via the neck of their shirt. While distracted, things happened and suddenly they were no longer riding their bike.

Key points:

While the proximal cause was the bee, the underlying enablers were the kinetic energy and the modest margin-of-error tolerated by the bicycle.

When things go sideways, the energy has to dump to somewhere and land on someone.

If you are of a certain age and the overall, ambient, potential energy of the environment increases...it behooves you to avoid situations where tiny errors trigger catastrophic failures.

For those who are interested, the athlete did not suffer any major CNS damage but they did increase the number of discrete, osseous entities in their body by about 5%.

Speaking of low expectations

Latin must be an exceptionally difficult language to master.

My youngest brother took Latin in high-school and his instructor returned the final exam to him with a large "C" written at the top.

My brother was SO excited...to get a C...as if it was the best thing he could aspire to.

Context matters. 

One sign of intelligence is the ability to change your plans

Red dots denote peak heat-index. Note that the dew point (the green line) remains in the mid-70s. That means that wearing a wet tee-shirt will offer a lot of relief from the heat

My plan to beat the heat by working in the early morning died on the shoals of reality.

A shower shortly before sunrise made the humidity at ground-level 100% and the mosquitoes are ferocious. The wind-speeds are currently zero and don't pick up until 8:30 a.m. 

So...it looks like I will be working later in the morning and wearing a wetted tee-shirt. I dislike wearing damp shorts, so I will pin the hem up to hold the bottom of it above my belt-line.

A few photos

A no-till bean field with a very low plant-count. I walked the field and it looked like several things interacted to cause this failure.

Looking up the rows. You can see some places where everything worked and some bands where nothing worked.

The network of veins left behind suggest snails or Japanese Beetle damage.

• 30" rows, so he started with a low seed count per acre
• Seeder could not handle damp, clay soil and struggled to cover seeds after placing them in the furrows
• Snail damage on the seedlings that did emerge.

I have a lot of sympathy for this farmer. It looked like he attempted to reseed the areas where there were skips. I think he is a young guy and this will be a painful lesson. He isn't going to make any money on this field.

Posted for future reference. Makes 12 muffins

Every bit as good as McDeath's Sausage McDDNuffins.

Snails gang-tackling a velvetleaf weed (Abution theophrasti) I pulled out of the garden and tossed into the grass.

I suspect that snails emit pheromones when they are feasting. Either that, or they are attracted by the smell of drying/dying/fermenting weeds.

A problem in practical hydrology

Springs (water) occur when the earth's surface dips below the top of the ambient water table. 

In wet areas, springs are commonly found at the base of the cliffs that bound the stream's valley and bubbling up in the back-swamp. Rains charge the aquifier in the uplands above the cliffs and the inward-angle of the intersection of the flood-plain and the cliff is the feature that cuts into the water-table.

My friend

I have a friend who purchased a property with the intention of it providing much of the food he will need as a retired person.

Unfortunately, only half of it is well enough drained to grow most food plants and even that is impaired by shade, Black Walnuts, buildings and driveways.

The other half is saturated for most of the growing season.

For scale, the plot measures approximately 250 feet in the east-west direction.

Here is a topographical map of the wet half. I added a green "springs here" feature and white arrows to illustrate direction of seepage.

I also noted the berm left by the channalizing spoils left behind after the county drain commission "improved" the stream.

To summarize, my friend is first penalized by the topography. He has a massive spring along the west side of his property that floods the north half of it. He is next penalized by the berm left by the drain commission that impairs the free-flow of that water toward the (natural) stream.

The wet-half of his property is dominated by willow, dogwood, buttonbush, silver maple, ash, brambles, jewelweed and other wetland species.

The good news is that the parcel was cheap.

I have been mulling-over my friend's challenges.

Yesterday, a friend sent me this video. It is slightly longer than one minute long.

It quickly occurred to me that my friend could create similar, though more gently sloped, raised beds using the back-blade of a tractor. As long as the bottoms of the canals are continuously sloped, then minnows from the stream can forage on mosquito larvae in the standing water. 

The spoils from the canals will raise the area he cultivates. The raised beds in the video look like they are only 18" above the surface of the water, so he doesn't need a lot of elevation. The canals will also breach the berm left behind by the drainage commission.

Issues include the EPA getting pissy about him landscaping "wet-lands" even though those wetlands are (partially) due to the drain commissions handling of the dredging spoils. Another issue is the effect of seasonal flooding eroding the features so he would have a maintenance issue.

The upside is that he would gain almost an acre of prime, well-drained, bottomland garden. Literally, fifty times more than he has now.

Vaya con Dios to Father Dwight and "The Eyes have-it"

Today is the last Mass that will be celebrated by Father Dwight as the pastor of St Mary (Charlotte) and St Ann (Bellevue) parish. He served here for ten years and has been moved to a parish on the west side of Metro Lansing. In return, we are getting their pastor.

Unlike many other Christian denominations where the pastor is hired-and-fired at the discretion of a Board of Elders, Roman Catholic priests are moved at the sole discretion of the Bishop. The Bishop in Lansing has 72 players on the chessboard and, alas, every one of those individuals are men who are good at some things but weak in other areas.

The general strategy seems to be following a pastor who is weak in one area (finance for example) by a pastor who is strong in that area. Over time, though the path may wobble, it is on average it will be in a good direction.

Other factors come into play. Sometimes a bishop will move a priest to a parish closer to his ailing parents so he can also fulfill his duties as a son as well as his duties as a priest. Or he might move a priest closer to a university where the priest is pursuing an advanced degree. Those moves displace the resident priest and he must be put somewhere.

Regardless of the pastor's relative strengths and weaknesses, there are always a bunch of people who feel exceptionally bonded to him and grieve deeply when he moves on.

My outlook is more optimistic. Priests are like St Paul. They move around. If the new priest preaches from the Bible then I will be fine.

A little bit of Scripture for you Sunday

Intro material:

The Sermon of the Mount from Matthew Chapters 5, 6, and 7 jumps around and can feel like a montage of Christ's greatest-hits. I am going to take the liberty of underlining some words that thread a few of the ideas together.

Jesus leads off with the Beatitudes "Blessed are the..." sequence but then at 5:13 he starts talking about salt and light:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."   (all quotes are taken from the New American Bible translation)

Then Jesus jumps into a series of very short vignettes where he teaches that we are sinning when we knowingly expose ourselves to overwhelming temptation to sin. Two examples of those vignettes follow:

5:22 

“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment,  and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna."

 and 5:27

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’

But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna"

Then, after preaching about a half-dozen other topics, Jesus inserts a two verses that, if read in isolation, seem way out in left field. From Matt 6:22:

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be."

The common thread of these verses are "eye" and "light". 

 

One way to apply this to modern life is to look at sources of temptation or titillation that we might find ourselves subjected to. For me, that would be the content on the internet that I allow my eyes to see and my ears to listen to. (If somebody in 32 A.D. were to describe a computer monitor on a desk, he would probably call it "a lamp", no?)

 

Porn is everywhere. It creeps into innocent searches for information. It sneaks into videos.

 

At this point there are millions of videos available on streaming platforms that will jack-up your dopamine and adrenaline levels. Not just sexually explicit material, but non-stop shoot-em ups, revenge/karma videos and so on.

 

Video games (not something I am a consumer of, but I know they exist) can fall into the porn/dopamine addicting material.

 

On-line gambling is a huge dopamine jack for many people.

 

Some uses of social media where gossip is passed along. Some theologians think that "...false witness..." in the Ten Commandments was intended to control gossip (the retelling of material that is not provable as true) as much as censure the telling of lies. 

 

Some people self-sooth by shopping on-line. That is not a problem until they are buying stuff they don't need and not able to pay to fix their car when it breaks down or they cannot make their rent payment.

 

From one standpoint, it is absolutely incredible that a book that was written 2000 years ago can advise us about the perils of the internet. From another standpoint, the fact that humans haven't changed during those 2000 years tells us that we should not be surprised at all. 

 

Selling

I was blessed during my career to function at various times as an in-house consultant. I had no real authority and the only way I could add value was to "sell" my advice to the people who did have authority.

Since being an in-house consultant is a great gig, I made a study of "selling". Not just so I could add more value but because I realized that the product that I sold the most often was the idea that "Joe is a great employee who always adds value when he is hired".

Who holds the switch?

I quickly realized that the organization chart only represents the flow of authority. It does not tell you who is the pivot man when it comes to "who makes the decision" regarding some aspect of a project.

The pivot person could be the boss, the boss's boss, a trusted worker, the bean-counter, a supplier, the trucker who delivers items, some times is was a maintenance person who could just make it happen... Any sales pitch you make must address their needs or your product will not be accepted.

The sales points that I consider most compelling might be unimportant to the decision-maker. My job as a consultant was to learn what attributes mattered most to the pivot person and customize the solution so it also addresses their priorities.

What is in it for me

If you are a boss and you are selling a change-in-behavior, then you could just say "I will discipline you if you don't do it the way I tell you to do it". 

That only ensures compliance when they think you are watching.

A more effective way is to also paint a word-picture, a scenario, where a generic employee does it the wrong way and there is a bad outcome.

"We need to stay within the lines of the pathways when traveling across the factory floor. I know that sometimes people are might overstay their break and take shortcuts through the material stacks to get back to their workstation when the line starts. The problem is that the material delivery people use the break-times to take material to the lines and they cannot stop if you suddenly pop-out from between two stacks of pallets."

If you ever worked in an automobile factory, you know exactly the scenario I am talking about.

Key points in the scenario: Most people can relate to the story. Marc wanted to finish a joke in the smokers shed outside. You need to get back to the line (which is a virtue). There is a very strong temptation to cut through the material stacks and you tell yourself "Just this time won't hurt"...

Your audience can visualize themself as the person in the story.

That meme

Decisionmaker: The mother carrying that child is the decision-maker and she is getting pummeled with advice. Sometimes it is the father of that child. Sometimes it is the mother of that father (yeah, actually happens all the time). Often it is from the "cool girls" in her posse. It is difficult to resist getting swept away by the waves of advice.

Visualization potential: Most of us avoid visualizing situations where we are powerless; in a cave, in a submarine, in a sleeping-bag with a broken zipper...in a womb. Attempting to create empathy for her unborn child is an uphill push if you try to create an empathy bond and your model is something she actively resists.

However, most young woman can relate to getting on an airplane and flying to Cancun or Hawaii. Those are aspirational goals. She can also envision some amoral lunatic blowing up that plane (the aluminum womb in the sky) and is horrified by the prospect.

A lot of moral behavior is driven by "Yes, except for the grace of God, that could have been me."

Is the meme sticky?

The image that serves as the background for the meme is memorable. We see planes every time we look upward on a clear day. Only time will tell us if the meme is sticky and provides another frame-of-reference to mothers confronted with circumstances that pressure them to kill their baby.

Buckets and the cost of polyethylene

 

I was using one of these seven gallon water jugs to hold the water I use to mix herbicides.

Nope, I don't just run a hose to fill my sprayers. For one thing, the outside faucets are plumbed into the line before the water softener so the water contains lots of calcium and a bit of dissolved iron.

Since some herbicides combine with calcium and iron, I am throwing money away because the expensive herbicide I bought is busy dancing with Ca++, Fe++ or Fe+++ rather than being available to enter the plant.

The "water" still has some dissolved minerals. I deal with that by adding ammonium sulfate to the water. The sulfate scavenges the ++ minerals by tightly bonding with them. The ammonium sulfate also reduces the pH of the spray mix which for some reason makes the active ingredients pass through the surface of the leaf more quickly.

A secondary advantage of lowering the pH is that it can extend the tank-life of the active ingredient. 

Finally, I add a wetting agent. Many leaves are covered with fine hairs or with a waxy texture that causes water to bead up and run off of them. The wetting agent defeats that and causes the enter surface of the leaf to be exposed to the active ingredients.

I dispense the prepared water into the sprayer, add my active ingredient and the am off to the races. 

Not only do I save money by fiddling with my spray water but I end up spraying far less active ingredient into the environment to achieve the desired end.

I had one of these in the back of my truck. It is a very convenient place to have it when I am spraying.

I went for a drive and another item rolled into it and put a star-burst into its top.

I think I paid $7.99 for the original jug. Do you want to guess what they cost now?

 Do you see the number that was crossed off? $28.00!

Much of that is probably due to the increase in the price of blow-molding grade polyethylene. Prices doubled due to the issues in the Persian Gulf.

The situation with the Persian Gulf is very dynamic and the prices seesaw dramatically. Manufacturers and retailers have to cover their costs but they don't want to lose business by over-price. Consequently, consumers get whiplash trying to catch a sale or bite the bullet and just pay the spot price when we need something. 

I will probably buy another one but will wince when I do it. I hate spending money.

Buckets

I splurged and bought to new 5 gallon buckets for "humping" water in the orchard.

The hand protector is circled in red

The weak link in the buckets are the plastic hand-protectors on the bucket's bail. I suspect UV damage.

I wrapped the hand-protector with tape. Maybe I can increase their life-span. 

Weather, work-notes and planning ahead

I got off to a slow start today. For some reason I have a lot of sore muscles.

The big news is that starting Monday, the weather-guessers are predicting peak heat-indexes over a hundred degrees (F) for four days in a row. I know my readers in TX, OK, LA, AZ etc. are chortling. For you guys, that is a balmy day in April.

Heat indexes over 95(F) get my attention and I plan my work to avoid them.

That means that Joe is a busy-beaver this weekend.

I watered the new trees in the Upper Orchard today. They don't need it now but the models predict that the heat-dome event will suck 1.5" out of the upper soil levels. So, I gave each new tree a 4 gallon drink of water with 300 PPM of nitrogen fertilizer.

I put out some new 110 body-grip traps to let them rust and to get the squirrels used to them. I smeared some peanut butter on the posts where they are mounted. The traps were mounted but not armed. 

I will be pulling weeds in the potato patch tomorrow. I am keeping a close eye on the soil moisture and may till tomorrow afternoon.

I will be erecting a cattle panel for the cucumbers to climb on.

If I get exceptionally motivated I will cut some grass. I really need to take a break from physically demanding work to recover.

I am thinking of watering the gardens on Sunday. The heat-dome will stress the power grid and there is no point in putting it off.

On the plus side, the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melons, squash and cucumbers should explode in size. They all love heat.

Grafting notes

The TB hazelnut grafts are already pushing buds but the Grand Traverse are not.

The Stearn mulberries I grafted above the Upper Orchard are not pushing buds. The Silk Hope I grafted in Eaton Rapids are.

The peaches (Indian Free) grafts are not breaking bud. The scion I got from (name of nursery redacted) were puny.

Most of my walnut grafts are sulking or dead. The first successful walnut graft I ever made didn't break-bud until July, an honest six weeks after I made it. I was very surprised!.

The pear trees (and the grafts on them) on the bottom-half of the Hill Orchard died. I suspect walnut toxicity. 

The quince that were planted in the rows with the pears seem to be alive, so that warrants attention. Quince is very late blooming and avoids frosts. It is way too soon to make any generalizations, but it would be valuable to have a late-blooming fruit tree that is tolerant of walnuts and produces fruit that stores well. I read somewhere that in some places it was common to put a quince (fruit) in the closet or dresser drawers to make the clothes smell nice. Also, one thin slice of quince in an apple pie adds an interesting dimension to its aroma. 

All of the Golden Russet I grafted on Liberty for pollination have at least 8" of shoot extension. King David on Hazen has 6" of shoot extension.

Only one of the plums I grafted rootstock purchased from (name redacted) is alive. I suspect the rootstock is dead since they aren't pushing shoots from the root collar. 

  

Fake News Friday: Dallas Cowboys edition

"Come on, guys. I just need two more yards"

Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys Football team vehemently denied that they were engaged in serious negotiations with Kamala Harris as the replacement for current head coach Brian Schottenheimer.

"Lookit," Mr. Jones said "the Cowboys organization is results-oriented and we don't accept excuses. Our next coach will be a PROVEN winner and will be the kind of coach who motivates players and generates passion in our fans. He or she will have the deepest and most detailed understanding of everything related to American football."

"I mean, VP Harris is like a perfect fit but she is more of a lacrosse or soccer head-coach than a football coach." 

Polymarket is currently listing Harris as the leading contender as the next Cowboy's coach with 6:13 odds of securing the job. 

Miss Daisy report and "What is a gallon of gas worth?"

Driving Miss Daisy went fine.

I was able to negotiate the hazards of East Lansing traffic and I killed some of the time in the bagel shop next to the PT shop. I ate a chocolate-cheesecake muffin and people-watched while waiting.

Miss Daisy is very pleased with the intake session and with her PT person. The PT person was overwhelmingly positive. "Oh! You have excellent muscle tone." and "Very good baseline range-of-motion".

It is awesome when a patient goes into PT and they are not starting from 200 yards behind the starting-line.

Oil

I got to thinking about what five gallons of gasoline or diesel fuel is worth.

Back in the middle-1980s, automotive engines that had BSFC numbers of 0.40 pound of fuel consumption per horsepower-hour were as common as house-flies. Small engines are inherently less efficient because they lose more heat to heads and cylinder walls relative to engines with larger cylinders. The "adiabatic" i.e., no heat loss, expansion of the heated gasses in the cylinder are less-adiabatic.

Since I am too time-stressed to research BSFC numbers for small engines, let's assume that the best you can do is about 0.60 pounds of fuel per horse-power hour.

A gallon of gas weighs about six pounds.  Six divided by 0.60 gives you an upper-limit of 10 horsepower-hours of work. 

A gallon of diesel weights seven pounds and the engines are potentially more efficient because their greater compression ratio can squeeze more "adiabatic expansion" out of each cycle.

This is not a traditional BSFC map. It charts thermodynamic efficiency. Most efficient region is the gray plateau on the upper-right portion of the surface. Idling and partial load are the narrow strips in the lower-center portion.

Matching the load to the engine's output is a major issue. Peak efficiency is only achieved at relatively high loading. That is, near open throttle at medium-to-high RPM. 

A motor powering a generator that has little load will not give you 10 hp-hr per gallon of gas! A motor running an irrigation-pump (continuous duty) that is intelligently sized for the application will come close to giving you 10 hp-hr per gallon. Most other applications will fall somewhere in the middle.

Food/gardening

The decal on the engine that drives my rototiller claims to be a 6.5hp engine.

It rarely takes all 6.5hp to move the tines of the tiller through the soil. Consequently, I am not going to get the work of one-horse cultivating soil for ten hours out of one gallon of gas.

However, I might get the equivalent amount of work of a horse working for three hours cultivating. An added bonus of the tiller is that it takes less space to maneuver it at the ends of the rows. That is a big deal when you have to fence your garden against wildlife.

And that jibes fairly closely to what I see in terms of how often I have to fill the gas tank. I need to refill the gallon tank after every three times I use it for weed-control where it is a quick, shallow pass and the soil is not laced with mature, woody, plant roots.

Five gallons of fuel, if dedicated to running a tiller, would be more than enough to keep a very large garden mostly weed-free for the growing season. How large? 

If two gallons of gas is enough for six passes with the tiller over 6000 square feet of midwestern loam, then five gallons of gas would suffice for 15,000 square-feet or 1/3 of an acre. That should be more than enough to keep a family of six in vegetables even if the rains were not-the-best.

If the rains ARE good, there will also be a surplus that can be shared with family or traded for other items that are needed. 

Presented without comment

 

Tired. And when it happens a second time, it is called "re-tired"

 

A rare (very rare) picture of Eaton Rapids Joe in action

Yesterday's adventure was disassembling and transporting a combination swing-set and playhouse. There were several complications.

One of those complications was that a real, live princess was in the play house performing the sound-tracks of Moana and Zootopia 2  the entire time it was being disassembled. Who needs a radio when they have a four-year-old entertaining them.

Another complication was that Southern Belle, the buyer of the playhouse, struggled to find a vehicle that could pull the trailer she had borrowed.

First she was going to use her van, but then the owner of the trailer nixed that idea. Her minivan can pull 2000 pounds. The trailer, dry, weighed 2400 pounds.

Then we were going to use my truck but I couldn't get the cover off of the connector for the trailer harness.

At that point, I figured the mission was scrubbed for the day and went back home to work.

An hour later I got a call. Southern Belle had driven to Handsome Hombre's place of employment, found his truck in the parking lot and swapped vehicles.

"Persistence" is one of Southern Belle's super-powers. 

Since there are only two seats in HH's truck and since there were three of us, Southern Belle, Quicksilver and me, we took two vehicles.

Quicksilver was enchanted with the structure. Within seconds she was had climbed inside and was acting out Moana's swinging from the mast of her catamaran while belting out the song that went with that scene. She sang the entire time we were working.

"Able to entertain herself" is one of Quicksilver's super-powers. 

Disassembling the structure required a specific sequence and many awkward positions. Some of the bolts required an Allen wrench on one end and a 9/16" hex on the other. Southern Belle wanted to leave the structure in modules, so we split the two-story structure into its two, separate towers and lugged them up-grade from the back-yard to the road.

Not to belabor the point, but the yard was landscaped with pine trees and shrubberies and a red maple, all of which impeded our progress.

I am only guessing, but I suspect my end of the towers (the roof ends) was in the neighborhood of 125 pounds and SB and Justin's end was heavier. 

Justin is the son of the home owner and a recent college grad. He was awesome. He ran and found us tools we had not thought to bring...like a shovel. He helped carry the towers to the road. He even chuckled at some pretty awful "Dad jokes".

The swing-set, slide and other frippery and one tower went into the trailer.

The other tower went into the back of my truck. I had to put a flag on it because 36" stuck out of the back end of the 8' bed.

The home-owner gave us juice boxes to celebrate the sale of the structure and he gave Quicksilver a new-in-box mermaid doll!

The drive to Southern Belle's house was uneventful. We took back-roads and stayed below 50 mph.

Today's work ticket

Today's work ticket involves Driving Miss Daisy.

The family friend who had surgery last week needs to be driven to an assessment. Since the friend is not cleared for driving and since her husband needs to work...I got the job.

I can use a day of light-duty. 

When you gave the regulators EXACTLY what they asked for and nothing more

Lowell commented on the Copper Toxicity post:

"Switching to another polymer would force EPA emissions recertification of every vehicle line."

So was the problem really a lack of a material, or a government regulation? 

In the current environment, it is not enough to meet the written letter of the regulations.

In one instance, the test (which specifies that it is to be run on a dynamometer) passed with flying colors. The vehicle also proved to be suprisingly peppy and responsive on public roads in the hands of the consumers.

The customers LOVED it.

One of the calibration "coders" noticed that the powertrain control module knew if the hood was up or if it was closed and the primary latch was engaged. The calibration may have accidentally installed two sets of software, one to run when the hood is up...like when it is on a dynamometer, and another set of software to run when the hood was closed.

Some busybody within the organization ratted out the quirk to the EPA and the SHTF.

In another case, VW calibration engineers noted that the European emissions test had a rigorously defined "path" and that there were no wide-open accelerations anywhere in it. From there, it was observed that if the customer had a sudden need for speed...say while passing somebody on a twisting, two-lane road, it would be really spiffy if the exhaust-gas recirculation was shut-off and the injection volume deviated from the Euro-emissions map.

From there, it was a few short steps to the realization that there are very few labs that are certified to perform EU emissions testing and the vehicles, by that point, all had GPS. And by the letter of the law, the data validating compliance to EU emissions regulations had to be collected at the certified labs.

That clever bit of engineering and careful reading of the regulations ended up in a massive recall...even though the vehicles met the law as-written. 

Clearly, my sympathies are with the manufacturers. Regulators have to actually request what they want otherwise it becomes an endless guessing game and countless Mother-May-I requests.

Secondary containers

Mrs ERJ was taken aback by my choice of water bottles.

She suggested that I label them in case I get stopped by the local police while traveling to one of my off-site workplaces.

That seemed like a good idea. 

Making progress, Fauci, Iran and Currants

The chestnut trees are pollinating locally. 1050 b50 Growing degree days.

American Elderberries are just past peak bloom. 

I toured my potato patch this morning and could not find any CPB larva. I looked specifically at the plants where I took pictures the day before.

I fertilized Southern Belle and Handsome Hombre's potato and sweet corn patch. I saw one adult CPB and squished it.

0.4" of rain is predicted for tomorrow. That will move the fertilizer to soil around the corn and potato's roots.

I got the new engine installed on the old mower. I opted for the 5/16" Grade 5, through bolts with nuts, lock washers and regular washers. I had to drill one more hole through the deck to access a through-hole on the engine casting. Next time I will make a template using brown paper and a crayon for rubbing to more precisely locate the hole. 

Now I need to install the old blade and adaptor, add oil and gas and see if it starts.

The other big news is that I assisted my buddy in pumping out his in-ground oil tank. It was quite a learning curve. I was a minor hero when I showed him how to use a flour-and-water dough to seal leaks around the fitting on the suction side of the pump. The barbed-fitting was some weird metric diameter and the closest Imperial tubing didn't crush down with the heater-hose clamp.

It took us at least 40 minutes to suck the first five gallons out of the tank, lug it to the storage barrel and pour it in. By the time we ran out of light, we were down to less than 10 minutes per five-gallon jug.

"But why didn't you just pump it into the barrel?" you might ask?

Limited access, bumpy terrain, short hoses. Also the guy who was doing most of the work was strong, stubborn and not very bright. Definitely my kind of people.

There comes a time in every project when it is time to shoot the engineers and go into production.

Fauci

Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci for all Federal crimes he may have committed prior to January 20, 2025.

A presidential pardon carries no legal weight in state courts. State courts  try people accused of breaking state laws. Ergo, Fauci can still be tried at the state level. Reckless endangerment, anybody?

And if the plane Fauci is flying on lands in a foreign country, he can be tried in those countries. As many sailors have learned, Spanish, French and Italian Polize have no obligation to extend the presumption of innocence we take for granted in the Untied States.

Iran

If I look at no information other than a chronological stream of verifiable events, I would have to conclude that Iran no longer has a functioning government but had devolved to the level of war-lords.

The media portrays Iran as a cohesive, functioning government but the disjointed, working-at-cross-purposes cascade of chaos suggests that there is no viable chain-of-command and every imam, mullah and general is gunning for the pole position in the race to become the new leader.

That is a risk when you employ "Decapitation" tactics. There are advantages in terms of leverage and lower risk to our troops. But there are also downsides. 

Black Currant Leaves for Herbal Teas

The earliest red currants are just starting to ripen. Red currants are purdy when they are ripe.

According to Coon's Berry Farm near Midland, Michigan, this is prime time to collect and dry Black Currant leaves for use in herbal and flavored "black pekoe" based teas.

If you like herbal teas now is the best time to collect black currant leaves. The leaves are quite tender due to the abundance of rain we have had this season, with a high content of aromatic oils which gives them that distinct earthy black currant fragrance. We will be open for black currant leaf picking this week, Thursday through Sunday (June 25-28) 9 am to 3 pm. 

I wouldn't have chosen "earthy" as an adjective. To me they smell like "spruce needles" with a "fruity under-tone".

If drying Black Currant leaves sounds like too much work, Impra tea makes a yummy blend you can buy on Amazon. It might seem expensive at first glance, but you get 200 cups of tea for the price of three cups of foo-foo coffee at Stellabux.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Michael R. Nelson was born in Sacramento, California in 1949 and is still alive.

His artwork can be purchased at Nelson Fine Arts. 

If Mr. Nelson objects to my posting low-resolution copies of his paintings, then leave a comment and I will take this post down. 

 

Copper toxicity

 

Kayser-Fleischer Rings

Markshere2 called me out in the comments of the last post.

Max out credit cards? Really?

Nothing short of bigass comet heading to wipe us out would make me max out credit cards.

Collapse in Egypt will crash the dollar / economy / international supply lines?

I'm missing something here. 

The thing is, I mostly agree with him and perhaps I did get carried away and resorted to hyperbole. However...

Background

One thing you will hear from old farmers who handled a lot of different kinds of livestock is that many types of farm animals can seem perfectly fine and then, out of nowhere, fall to the ground and die in a matter of minutes or hours.

One example of this is copper toxicity in sheep. Using trace-mineralized salt that is formulated for cattle can be a death sentence for sheep and you will never see it coming.

Sheep tend to accumulate copper. They are not very efficient at excreting excess-to-need. Perhaps they evolved in landscapes where copper is either rare or other mineral out-compete the copper absorbtion pathways.

Regardless of cause, the sheep's liver starts storing that excess copper and there is no safety relief-valve. Little-by-little the amount of copper in each liver cell increases until one cell dies due to copper toxicity. The cell autolyses (digests itself and releases its contents) and the surround cells absorb most of those nutrients...including the copper.

Those cells were already red-lining their capacity to absorb copper. The incoming jolt kills most of them. They, in turn, release their contents and neighboring cells absorb the copper they just dumped.

The number of cells dying increases as the sphere-of-death expands outward. In time, the copper overload is killing cells that are distant neighbors and tissue that is not in the liver.

The first cell that died had no impact on the sheep's brain but it triggered an avalanche of dying cells that eventually results in the brain dying...often in a stunningly short time.

Back to Egypt

If Egypt (population 120 million) tumbles into hyper-inflation (for food prices), there will be mass, outbound migration. They will not go south into Africa. They will not go west. Some might go to Syria (population 26M and getting bombed by Israel), Iraq (48M) and Turkey (87M) since they are culturally similar...but those countries are akin to the liver cells that are already red-lined with copper. They have the same issues. They cannot take any more. 

That leaves Europe and the US. Sentiment in Europe is starting to swing to the right, but at the current time the EU will welcome them with open arms even if the first wave is a million.

Perhaps the fabric of Europe will hold. But it is likely that the wave of Egyptians will trigger waves of Syrians, Iraqi and Turks + chain migration of additional waves of Egyptians.

It easy to scoff at Europe's economy as too dependent  on "culture, tourism and status apparel", but Europe produces many things that are vital to the US economy, chemicals, drugs, pigments and dyes, catalysts, machine tools, hybrid seeds, niche farm equipment (like aquaculture) and so on.

For example, in 2012 there was a fire in a German chemical plant that was the only supplier in the world of an exotic polyamide*  (plastic) that was used by every US auto manufacturer for fuel system components. Switching to another polymer would force EPA emissions recertification of every vehicle line. Buyers were scavenging the world, calling warehouses looking for stray pallet loads of that polyamide so they could keep the auto plants running.

So one product of one chemical plant going off-line had the potential for shutting down the entire US auto industry.

The previous essay fingers Egypt as a good candidate for the place where the cascading failure will start. 

Economics

Mathematically, it is defensible if you can borrow money at an interest rate that is lower than the rate at which prices are going up. Scarcity drives up prices.

*My memory isn't what it used to be but I think it was marketed as "Nylon 18". 

Eclectic Grab-bag

Surveying my gardens this morning I saw a little flash of orange. It was the same orange as the cheapest basketballs you could buy when I was a kid. Not at all like a snail.

Colorado Potato Beetle larva!!!

Not on every plant, but enough to know that it was time to address the issue.

Colorado Potato Beetles tend to lay eggs on adjacent plants. When the distance between rows is large in comparison to the distance between plants within a row, it is common to have streaks of between three and ten plants in the row populated with larva and then gaps where the plants are "clean".

If a fellow were trying to conserve his supply of insecticides, it is possible to walk the rows and when larva are spotted to spray the infected plant and then to spray two (or three) plants to either side of it in the row on the assumption that the mother laid eggs on those plants as well.

It comes down to "What is the bottleneck resource?". If it is labor, then it is much faster to spray the entire potato patch. If the limiting factor is availability of effective pesticides, then using some intelligence can really stretch that supply.

Boring details 

Same water-prep as before. This time I used 3 ounces of 13.3% Permethrin per gallon of water. The plants are bigger now than they were on June 8. I went through two gallons of spray over 650' of row.

Permethrin is non-polar and is absorbed by the waxy cells in the leaf's outer layer. Pemethrin has a very low vapor-pressure and is persists in the leaf for a long time. It is not very mobile in the plant since it is not water soluble. 

Southern Belle reports that there are no larva visible on her potatoes...yet.

One nice thing about CPB larvae is that they like to eat the tops of the plants. That makes them easy to see and pretty much ensures that the parts of the plants that are most at risk get good coverage.

I assume the tops taste better than lower leaves. Maybe they are sweeter. Or maybe it is because the lower leaves are older and might retain toxicity from the earlier spraying.

Another consideration (for organic control) is that these larva might be beyond the easy reach of ducks. I estimate that the plants are currently  18"-to-24" high and that would be quite a stretch for the ducks. I could train them to follow me and I could shake the plants. CPB larva drop out of the canopy when stressed in that way. That would put them within easy feeding-range of ducks.

Chipmunks

Something is appreciating my trapping efforts, and it is not the chipmunks.

This is what I found this morning. It is the front 1/4 of a chipmunk. The rest of the animal was a midnight snack for some animal. It reminds me of the stories of people fishing off-shore of Galveston, Texas. Lots of sharks out there in the Gulf of America.

Mowers

I am fiddling around with changing the motor on one of my dead push-mowers.

The diameter of the through-holes in the engine-block for mounting the engine to the deck are 8.6mm which is the minor diameter for M10-1.25 bolts. A 5/16" bolt will fit with a tiny bit of play. That is, 8.6mm is a bit larger than the major diameter of the threads. A 1/4" bolt simply swims in the hole and requires some stacking of washers to ensure that they don't fall through the hole.

It may be counter-intuitive, but a nut-and-bolt with the bolt being smaller than the hole and torqued-to-yield is usually more resistant to dynamic side-loads than a bolt threaded into a tapped hole. The long, skinny shank of the bolt is stretchy (like a bungee cord) and loss of stack-height due to fretting or material creep is absorbed and forgiven by that bolt stretch.

I will probably opt for SAE Grade 5, 1/4" bolts (less risk of hydrogen embrittlement than Grade 8) and Grade 3 nuts with Grade 8 lock-washers and washers. Cast aluminum is not very forgiving of being over-stressed by bolts.

Plumbing

I am tinker-toying together a bunch of tubing and fittings with the intention of helping a friend salvage some heating oil (virtually identical to diesel fuel, except the color) from an in-ground tank.

I have a love-hate relationship with this kind of work. It is frustrating and time-consuming. I don't consider myself particularly gifted at it but that might be because I know several people who are absolute geniuses at that kind of work.

Keep your eyes on Egypt

Egypt is a flash-point along several different axis. Food insecurity and food-inflation in Egypt are in the top five world-wide. Food inflation is currently running at about 7% per MONTH in terms of typical wages. Furthermore, from a geopolitical standpoint, Egypt is near the center of a very explosive region.

Egypt was in the vanguard of the "Arab Spring" uprisings. History rhymes. 

Much of Egypt's irrigated agricultural land grows wheat and barley to make bread, the staff-of-life. They are very dependent on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer (#3 in the world in pounds-per-acre at 400 pounds per acre per year  applied to agricultural land) to grow that grain. They were monkey-hammered by the Uke-Rus war that stopped shipment of wheat through the Black Sea. The US/Israel/Iran conflict put a cork in the Persian Gulf and blocked Nitrogen fertilizer shipments.

If/when Egypt blows up, drop whatever you are doing and drive to your favorite big-box store and max out your credit card. Rice, beans, motor oil, solar panels, pool sanitizer (chlorine), water softener salt, nails, screws, tarps, seeds, soap... Whatever strikes your fancy. I am not sure it will matter in the sense that nearly everything will become hard to get.

The sample paragraph revisited

“…I had a generally happy childhood. Then, in 2016, they (my parents) started going further and further to the right (coincidentally(?) the year Trump was elected the first time) and getting drawn into conspiracies until they finally moved to a different state completely for ‘freedom,’” shares a Reddit user, “We simply no longer have the same values or beliefs. I will not let my own children be around them unsupervised once I heard them call COVID a Chinese conspiracy.”  Source

A cynic would read between the lines and recognize that the narrator constructed a Karpman Drama Triangle with their children cast as the victims, their parents as the aggressor/oppressor and themselves as the virtuous rescuer/enabler. 

Furthermore, the cynic would ask "Cui bono?" (Who benefits?).

Is it possible that the narrator is hiding their anger and venom behind a curtain of righteous indignation? Is it possible that the narrator is angry that they were deprived of free babysitting? Is it possible that the narrator's energy is due to having their fantasy shattered when their parents valued saving themselves thousands of dollars in taxes every year more than saving the narrator hundreds of dollars in the cost of babysitting?

The crocodile tears on social media absolves them of having cost and bother of transporting their children all-the-way to a Red State in the summer. They can enroll them in the city's free youth programs and let the kids walk.

The narrative allows the parent(s) to project virtue to all of their friends rather than projecting "I am cheap". 

A few pictures from the potato patch

We picked up about a half-inch of rain overnight.

Yesterday was my big opportunity for tilling and mowing. There have not been many three-day windows without rain so it was either till on Sunday or wait an unknown amount of time before I could do it.

I still have hand-weeding to catch up on.

From the potato patch

Picture taken after tilling at about 8:30 in the morning.

One quarter of the potato patch is dedicated to vegetables that are not potatoes. Approximately 50' east/west and 20' north/south

I call this composition "A gardener and his loyal companions: Fence-post, man and Preying Mantis". Warning: ALWAYS feed your Preying Mantis before removing from cage.

Rows from left-to-right: Rutabaga, rutabaga, mangel that needs weeding, carrots with beans planted every 2' for makers, misc peppers and eggplant, beets.

The fenced garden was also tilled. Total elapsed time of 90 minutes.