Rain!

We received a little bit more than 2" of rain in the last 24 hours.

It looked like we were only going to get about a 1/4". A gap in the lines of storms marching through the area opened up and we only got nipped by the first wave.

Several hours later, another wave of storms came through and it looked like we were going to get missed again. The storms were lined up like so many cigars pointing northnortheast and sweeping northeast as the traveled.

The storm that looked like it was going to pass west of us did an amazing thing. On the radar it looked like a high-jumper arching over the bar with his body flowing across top like a slinky. And our little patch of heaven would have been 8" above the bar.

By my estimates, that was just a bit less than 2" and we picked up another half-inch during the night.

"Mustard Greens" report

In the race to germinate Mizuna and Buttercrunch Lettuce are leading with Mallow a nose behind. Callaloo is trailing the pack but might be a strong finisher. Jute greens were a non-starter and the Basil fizzled after coming out of the gates quick...maybe due to damping off. In the second flight, Carlton, Red Giant and Amara in the starting box, chomping at the bit with Florida Broadleaf being a last second addition. 

By now you are scratching your head and thinking..."Those are not all mustard greens?" and you would be completely right.

Handsome Hombre likes greens. There is still a language barrier. Sometimes the word(s) he comes up with are serviceable but not exactly what he wants to communicate. Maybe the kind of greens he likes best are not mustard greens but some other kind of green.

My approach to a lot of problems is to scattergun at the beginning to "span the universe" of options. Then to perform a more refined search in the most promising regions of the universe. If he likes actual mustard greens then it is a matter of figuring out "how spicy" and "which ones grow best on my plot of land".

If he likes milder greens, or a mix of mustard greens and milder greens, does he like them snotty (Mallow or Jute) or not-snotty?

Other vegetables

The first flight of radishes are in the ground (very late!!!)

Pickling cukes are germinating. My first set of seeds did not germinate but the inexpensive, Livingstone Seeds Boston Pickles exceeded expectations by a wide margin. Due to predation by rabbits I intend to plant them as seedlings with protective collars around them. Pictures to follow.

Cabbage seedlings are sizing up.

The last major planting dates are July 4 for root crops like turnips and rutabagas and seeding Chinese Cabbage.

The property I am managing

Raccoons (probably) pulled up two of the tomato plants I had planted. I replaced those.

Ed, over at River Bend Journal blog posted this image of "Donna's Trick" for keeping tomato cages from falling over. I saw some cages in the pole barn at the property and will do something similar.

Somehow a few plants of Cherokee Purple tomato ended up in my truck and were added to the ad hoc tomato plantation. At fifty-cents a plant, it is a pretty cheap itch to scratch.

Raspberries

The first raspberries are starting to turn red. It seems exceptionally early for them.

About that 1.5 C Existential-Threat Benchmark...

The number that is internationally agreed upon is 1.5 degrees Celsius. To prevent worsening and potentially irreversible effects of climate change, the world’s average temperature should not exceed that of preindustrial times by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).  Source

 

Topaz Solar Farm, California

If asphalt pavement raises ambient temperatures because it is dark and converts much of the incident solar radiation into heat, then what happens when you cover the landscape with solar panels?

Red trace reports temperature in PV farm as deviation from ambient. Blue trace is urban parking lot. Scale is degrees C. Horizontal axis is by hour-of-day

At least one study reported data that showed a 2-to-4 degree C increase in the air temperatures in large photovoltaic farms above ambient temperatures during the months of July and August. In fact, the temperatures were uniformly higher in the PV farms than they measured over urban parking lots.

One study at one location doesn't make this "Good Science" but it does make me wonder why there are not more studies. If +1.5 degrees C is an "existential threat" then what is +4 degrees C. Answer: A business opportunity.

Cowboy wisdom

I want to look at this bit of cowboy wisdom from a slightly different perspective.

We all know people who keep making the same mistake over-and-over-and-over again. Most vexing are the ones where people break up with their romantic partner and then take up with another person who is a virtual clone of the one they broke up with. Of course, that relationship is also doomed for for some reason he-or-she cannot see that.

From the movie Groundhog Day where Bill Murray keeps reliving the day over-and-over again.

On a slightly less obvious note, consider couples who keep having the same fight over-and-over again.

More often than we care to admit, the energy driving the fight is caused by pain from an event upstream of the proximal cause (trigger) for the fight. The action(s) that triggered the fight ripped the scab off of an injury. The injured party probably lacks self-awareness to realize that their reaction is not a response to what their partner did but to the (ancient) association of cause=>effect from the previous injury and the fear of being hurt again.

AND...many times the person who inflicted that injury is not the person they are with now. So the hapless partner is being punished for deeds he/she didn't do or has not done.

SPOILER: Dissecting the proximal causes will not stop the fights. The couple needs to travel upstream and make amends or come-to-grips and get closure over the upstream event(s).

Wednesday Fishing Report

Shotgun finally broke his streak of not-catching-fish.

By my figuring, this dogfish/bowfin is $4.28 long. Note to those who care, we marked the handle of the net to capture the length of the fish and then measured the length from the handle. Clerks (and dancers ;-) ) look at you funny if you hand them a slimy dollar bill.

I caught two fish that were much, much smaller.

Bluegills are in shallow, on the beds. The predators know where the easy meals are.

Shotgun favors big baits and big hooks. He likes to use cut-bait and thinks the front 1/3 of a 6" bluegill is about perfect.

Random observation

The sensation one gets when a tick is navigating upward along one's leg is a tickle. Do you suppose that is where the word came from?

The Iggles are in the Nest (Cumberland Saga)

Lliam was an avid reader and his favorite author by a very wide margin was Patrick McManus.

Like many young men, Lliam lamented that he had been born in the wrong century. If only he had been born when men like young Patrick and Rancid Crabtree and Retch Sweeney roamed the earth, the sky was full of “iggles” and every rivulet was choked with rainbow trout...then he would have been a square peg in a square hole.

And like every young man who harbored such thoughts, he was 100% wrong.

Lliam had never heard his mother and Blain have what he would call a “heated discussion”. At least, not until last night.

Blain approached him in the morning and suggested that they take a walk before breakfast.

“Do you know what a “Senior Class Trip” is?” Blain queried Lliam.

“Never heard of it but it sounds like something old people do” Lliam replied.

“Not quite” Blain replied with a chuckle. “Many high-school students take a trip during their last year of high school to make memories. Usually they go to a tourist place and party...a lot of them don’t remember much because they partied a little too hard.”

“Did you go on one?” Lliam asked.

“Yep” Blain replied. He wasn’t going to elaborate. Thank God the gift he caught from that girl from Pennsylvania could be cured with a stout dose of Augmentin!

“The way I figure it, you are almost done with your formal education and I want to suggest a Senior Class Trip for you and one of your friends” Blain tested the waters.

“Where would we go?” Lliam asked, practically.

“It would be an extended camping trip. You and your buddy wouldn’t have to do any chores. Just spend your time fishing, and snaring rabbits and one other thing…” Blain said.

“Sounds like a vacation” Lliam said, thinking of all the wood he wouldn’t have to cut and all of the construction he was doing and chickens that needed plucking. “What is the one other thing?”

***

Sally dropped the two boys off a quarter-mile west of where Chapel road crossed Soddy Creek. From there, Eddie and Lliam bushwhacked south sticking to the woods that rimed the lip of the Soddy Creek canyon. They over-shot their mark and had to backtrack to insert along the gully that defined the east edge of Bob’s 30 acre food-plot. They found a knot of young pine trees sixty yards north of where the drive entering the property elbowed from east to south in direction.

Both young men were outfitted with 3 pounds of dry biscuit mix, a pound of grits, a small jar of peanut butter, a repurposed ketchup bottle filled with lard, a wrist-watch and a small walkie-talkie. They brought their choice of fishing gear and ten snares, each. Lliam reluctantly left his pellet gun at home.

One of the newcomers had donated a small, multifuel camp-stove that burned unleaded gasoline. The blue flame was invisible in the daylight.

They expected to be in-the-field for seven days before resupply became necessary. They were 12 miles by road from Copperhead Cove and 8 miles as-the-crow-flies.

Looking out over the deer-battered portion of the field that had been planted to kale, turnips and clover the year before, Lliam saw unwary small game foraging for food. There were five small ponds of about an acre each within a quarter-mile of their outpost and if they weren’t swarming with bullheads and bream then Lliam would eat his hat.

***

Samson invested a half-day with Shannon constructing the training facility. It consisted of little more than poles laid on the ground defining the walls and hallways. Short, straight sticks with bricks at both ends defined the location of doors.

Most of the morning involved getting the distances and orientation just right. He did that by having Shannon close her eyes and pretending it was night-time and having her walk from the outside door that opened into the kitchen to the door that led to the dining room...and so on. He had her repeat this multiple time, moving the bricks to fine-tune where the “doors” were in the actual house.

In that way he established the locations of the dining-room/parlor, the three bedrooms and the two bathrooms. From there, he had Shannon guestimate the distance and orientation of each room’s walls. It quickly became clear that it was going to be impossible to “clear” the dining-room/parlor without having the bedrooms on the left side of the hall being “downrange” so the raid would have to be ever-so-slightly staggered in time.

After lunch, Samson brought the team to the training site two-by-two starting with the men who had been in the military and actually been in the Sandbox. Samson relied heavily on them. They would be the ones tasked with clearing the bedrooms on the left. Those were the most dangerous jobs because they would be cleared AFTER the dining-room and any goblins would (likely) be alerted.

Samson first walked them through it dry. Then he had them carrying sticks to simulate weapons. The men did not comment on the rude props. They had done dumber things while in the services.

The first two men gave Samson a short critique at the end of their hour-long session.

Only one of the second group had been in the military but he had been a mechanic.

None of the remaining men had been in the service and while they had not commented on the “weapons” Samson had noted some raised eyebrows.

Sig wasn’t thrilled about losing the men for the training. While the introductory round was only an hour each it would go up to two hours each in the run-up to the actual raid. He did have a little bit of heartburn on the men being relieved of heavy-duty as at least two of them had minor sprains that needed to heal before they were 100%.

Meanwhile, the women were working nonstop turning chickens into canned meat.

A video showing prime Cumberland Plateau landscape

I found this video (12 minute run-time) that might give readers a better "picture" of what the Cumberland Plateau looks like. This video was recorded about the time-of-year that the current segments would be happening. The North Chickamauga canyon is a few miles southeast of where "Miss Shannon's" farm exists.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Francisco Goya (Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes) born 1746 in Spain, died 1828.

As he approached the age of fifty, an illness left him deaf and afterward his painting and prints became progressively took on a bleaker and more pessimistic tone. Worth noting, the onset of his deafness was close in time to the French Revolution and its excesses which may have bent the trajectory of his disposition.

While many of his paintings were commissioned by influential people (and those paid the bills), Goya also created paintings and prints that chronicled significant events of the times...

Civilian women resisting soldiers

The full epigraph for Capricho No. 43 reads; "Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her [reason], she [fantasy] is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels."

And the masterpiece!!!! (An attempt at humor)