Gaiters

I like draw string and straps better than Velcro. Velcro gets gummed up with lint.

Mrs ERJ has been encouraging me to get some knee-high gaiters.

She bases that on the number of socks that come back from my walk-abouts encrusted with burs of many different species.

She looks at the poison ivy and nettle-rash on my lower legs, "Tsks!" and shakes her head.

She is silent as she sees the cuts and puncture wounds.

She keeps an annual count of the ticks.

Frankly, I thought she was worried about my trade-in value. Wearing gaiters seemed like putting slip-covers on the new furniture and I ain't new.

I heard rumors about some people putting "sweat bands" around their ankles after impregnating them with insecticide. They wanted to deter ticks from crawling up their legs.

I caved. I ordered a couple of pairs of inexpensive ones from De Nile. I ordered two different brands: Frelaxy and TRIXES. I know nothing about them except that they are inexpensive (about $10 a pair) and had good ratings from customers.

Of course, maybe the reason I caved is I just got whacked on the calf by a bee and prudence dictates that I down a couple of diphenhydramine (Benadryl) and chill in the air conditioning.

Does anybody have any opinions about gaiters? I don't need them for snakes but some of my readers might.

Hold my beer

 

Squirrels told me it was time to pick filberts

 

The rat-bastards left evidence. They said the Jefferson Filberts are ripe.

I got a very honest gallon of nuts off the one bush/tree. It was closer to four gallons before I shucked off the husks.

It is nice to have enough nuts on a tree that the squirrels can take their tax and there are still plenty for me.

Lars Nordstrom in his book Making it Home writes about picking a bumper crop of almonds at his farm in Oregon. By his estimate, he had the better part of one day in picking and processing his crop (one tree). At the end of the day he had enough calories for one man, one day.

His take-home message was that while he was processing the almonds he was not weeding the garden, tying up branches in the vineyard, fixing holes in the hen-house and hundreds of other, routine maintenance jobs.

In a subsistence environment one-day's-calories-for-one-day's-work is a losing proposition.

The hazelnuts/filberts clobbered Lars' almonds for return on hour invested. I have less than 2 hours invested in picking and popping the nuts out of the husk. I could easily cut that in half if I let the nuts dry in the husks but I want to keep them viable for seed.

The commercial guys roll the floor of the nut orchard to make it flat. Then they mow the grass short. Because they do not have squirrels, the nuts fall out of the husks and they sweep or blow them them with power equipment.

Any filbert that is to be commercially viable must be round enough to roll and have a pellicle (the papery covering of the nutmeat) that is easily and reliably removed by blanching. Jefferson fits the bill.

According to Tom Molnar at Rutgers University, Jefferson is not completely resistant to all races of Eastern Filbert Blight. 

Presented without comment

 

The autumn vegetable garden

 

The east end of the autumn vegetable garden. The other end needs to be weeded before I take pictures. You can seed that rabbits (or something else) has been eating the plants that were close to the fence on the right side of the frame.

Two rows of "Winter Crisp" Chinese Cabbage on left side of frame. I seeded in flats on July 3. This is what I like to see, plants filling their allotted space and shading the ground. That goes a long way toward suppressing weeds.

This is what the plants looked like July 20 when I moved them into the garden. You can see that they had phenomenal growth in the last month.

The second flight of cabbage was launched 14 days later. This variety is named Hwi Mo Ri Hybrid (Korean, maybe?). If I had named it, I would have called it Ho Ri Chit Hybrid. The plant to the right was a weed in the next flat of seedlings.

Figaro Shallots planted in double-rows. Onions are a staple if you cook from simple, basic ingredients. They are one of the Cajun Unholy Trinity. Based on spacing and row length, I think I have about 200 of these seedlings planted.

I planted the onion seeds July 1 and should have moved them sooner.

China Gold Chinese Cabbage. Seeds planted the last week of July

The last six feet of garden was left-over. I broadcast a Duke's mixture of old seeds and then watered the garden to settle the newly transplanted seedlings into place.

It is critical to "melt" the clods and granules of soil into the exposed roots of the newly planted seedlings if they are going to be able to suck up water from the soil.

It is not too late

It is not too late to be planting for an autumn harvest even if you live in a northern state like Michigan.

Bonus pictures

Potatoes? Check.    Onions? Check.  Carrots? (will have to buy).  Gravy? I have a recipe.    What are we missing?

Joe Pye Weed. I didn't have a good picture for the Flowers of Late Summer post. 

Ignore Gilligan at your own peril

A funny thing happened to my 401-k plan in the past year.

I had a portion of my assets in "Inflation indexed" bonds. My thinking was that I could take a lower return today if they did index upward with inflation.

My assumption was that they sold derivatives...options...so they "won" the bet if the rate of inflation went up and that provided the bump.

The Trust company that holds my assets quietly eliminated the Inflation Indexed option. Truth be told, the fund is only as sound as the counterparties holding the derivatives. If inflation really lit off, the counterparties would vaporize and I would be gored.

The Trust company undoubtedly sent me literature, which I did not pay attention to.

They folded the assets I had in the Inflation Indexed fund and by default invested them in "Real Assets" as the closest fund, in principle, to Inflation Indexed bonds.

Real Assets, as you might guess from the title, invests heavily in real estate.

Hold that thought.

Tony the barber

When I was a wee sprout and first investing, I used to go to a barber beneath Frandor Shopping center (Lansing's first mall). He would cut my hair and talk non-stop.

Tony was my Gilligan. From an information systems standpoint, he was at the end of the pipe-line. He was the tip of the whip moving up as the handle was starting its downward arc.

I am not saying he was dumb. His problem was that his cliental were among the last to be chivvied into the slaughter house before the doors were slammed shut. They didn't have very much money and it was barely worth the effort for market-makers to chase every last dust-bunny. But indeed, it was marginally worth their effort, so when the toffs and punters and Tony's clients started talking about the joys of the market...grab your hat and run for the door.

Yesterday another person who fits the last-crumbs-on-the-floor took the big plunge and bought a duplex in a downtown area. She enthusiastically explained how the rent from the upstairs will pay for the downstairs where she intends to live.

Perhaps she is a genius. I don't have the stomach for rental property, especially since the United States Government protects tenants who decide they have better uses for their rent money than to pay the landlord.

Ignore Gilligan at your own peril.

I sold the Real Assets fund and plowed it into short-term bonds.

And no, I did not rain on the last person's parade. She might get lucky and do fabulously.

Le Mark Miley et Lloyd Austin Drapeau de la Honte

France's President, Emmanuel Marcon is the first (and only) world leader to call PPOTUS (Pretender President of the United States) Biden and congratulate him for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

NSA transcripts reveal that he said "Maybe that S.O.B. at Mostly Cajun will lay off the French with regard to our military prowess."

In related news, the Paris Flower Show announced that it will award a special medal to the yearly winner of the White Iris category. The medal will be known as Le Mark Miley et Lloyd Austin Drapeau de la Honte