Etymology of the word "frick"

Source

Clearing Blackberry scrub

Before.  A tangle of thorny blackberries.  This plot consists of Illini Hardy thorny and Triple Crown not-thorny.

After.  We left the thornless ones and a persimmon tree.  I plan to plant some chestnut trees in this strip over the next few years.

Kubota and I shed clothes as we worked.  We got warm. These "Tee" posts were well placed to act as coat racks.

There were two jobs:  Cutter and Stuffer.  Kubota liked cutting better than stuffing which was fine by me.  Chippers can be dangerous if your attention wanders.  Both of us ended up with dozens of scratches and thorn pokes.

Pit Bulls

This morning I learned that one of our sometimes coffee drinking guys had been chewed up by a pit bull.

Ralph works as a framing carpenter and business is slow now.  He was on the front porch enjoying a cigarette when he heard a woman screaming.  He was wearing flip-flops.  They were found in the yard.

He placed himself between the woman and the dog.  At some point he flung his cell phone at the dog and it butt-dialed.

The pit bull ripped the meat off both of his forearms.  Tendons and nerves were severed.  He lost the use of two of his fingers.  The guys were not sure if they were bitten off, amputated or due to nerve damage.

It seems likely that Ralph will never be able to throw hammers at nails for a livelihood.

The woman suffered broken bones and a severely lacerated scalp and face.

Black Locust Inventory

A list of numbers rarely tells a compelling story.

Professional foresters use sampling techniques to estimate the age and species composition of forests.

My "forest" is small enough that I can take a census.  Accurate measurement is the first step toward being able to manage anything.

Accurate is a relative term.  You don't use a micrometer to measure a pile of manure.  You don't use a yardstick to measure turbine blades. I used a cloth measuring tape to measure the circumference of the trees at approximately chest height.  I rounded down to the nearest inch and tried to not measure anything less than three inches in diameter.

Circumference of stem on horizontal axis broken into "cohorts" binned by 5" increments.  Blue line is the number of stems in each cohort.  The red line is an estimate of the cubic feet of wood in each cohort. 

Based on these measurements, the greatest amount of wood, by volume, is in the first flush of suckers that arose around the mother trees.  The volume was crudely estimated by multiplying the cross-section at 48" by twenty feet.  Twenty feet was chosen as that is the height where most of the stems bushed-out.  Clearly,  more wood could be collected from the larger trees if more effort were expended.

The largest number of stems is in the smallest circumference recorded which is not surprising.  Then there is a large step down and then fairly linear decrease in each cohort.  The reason that there is a large step down at the start is that the 3.5"-to-5" diameter is ideal for posts and suitable for burning without splitting.

Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) posts make outstanding fence posts due to the rot resistance of the heartwood.  The tree also fixes nitrogen and the flowers are a prime nectar source for bees.  Other than that, the tree is weedy---it suckers, thrives in poor soils, is thorny and is difficult to eradicate--- and usually displays poor "form".  I consider Black Locust to be one of my social peers.

Factoid of the day
The heartwood of Black Locust fluoresces under ultraviolet light.

And here is a short monograph on Black Locust lumber and its properties.
 

Fake news is not new

Thou shall not bear false witness  Exodus circa 1500 BC

Why would there be a commandment against this activity unless it were a problem?

If you remove from your midst oppression,
false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
Then light shall rise for you in the darkness...  Isaiah circa 800 BC

Still a problem seven hundred years later

...ships: even though they are so large and driven by fierce winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot’s inclination wishes. In the same way the tongue is a small member and yet has great pretensions. 

Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze. The tongue is also a fire. It exists among our members as a world of malice, defiling the whole body and setting the entire course of our lives on fire, itself set on fire by Gehenna.  

For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. This need not be so, my brothers. Does a spring gush forth from the same opening both pure and brackish water?  James circa 100 AD

Still a problem after Christ.

My guess is that "Fake News" is part of the human condition.

Orchard notes for 2018 growing season

This is a histogram of when I expect the fruit on my apple and pear trees to ripen.  Each count is a tree.

This is a good time of year to take inventories for the upcoming growing season.

This is an approximate inventory of the "serious" orchard south of the old barn:

15 Quince: asst cultivars
5 Enterprise apples
5 Shenandoah pears
3 Chojuro Asian pears
3 Liberty apples
3 Goldrush apples
3 Novaspy apples
3 Crimson Crisp apples
2 Korean Giant Asian pears
1 Shinko Asian pear
1 NY 65707-19
1 Spigold apple
1 Winecrisp apple
1 Jonafree apple
1 Keepsake seedling apple
1 Schlarbaum chestnut

The entries that are shaded are changes for 2018.  I am flipping one pear from Atlantic Queen to Chojuro and grafting a couple of apples to Spigold and an obsolete variety called NY 65707-19.

I made a conscious decision to bias toward later ripening varieties so I can store them in a root cellar or even the garage.  That gives me a great deal more operational flexibility.  Later ripening fruit tend to hang on the tree without degrading, unlike fruit that ripens when the weather is warmer.  That gives me a longer picking window.

Zeus-cicles

Feet.  You can click on the pictures to embiggen.

Thigh

Chest

The temperature dropped from mid 40s to mid-20s yesterday.   Zeus looked like he was covered with rock candy when he came in.  He must have been carrying ten pounds of icicles on his belly.  He did not seem the least bit uncomfortable, a testament to the insulating ability of a German Shepherd's fur.

Belladonna gave him a bath before he melted.