June 9, 2020

The expectation I felt as I planted the various types of vegetables in my garden shifted to excitement today.  I check on the plants once or twice a day.  This lets me see if they need additional water and clean up the grass that seems to be able to grow through the straw I laid down as mulch.  I have had flowers on many of the plants and even a few small beginnings of tomatoes and peppers.  The hot spell over the weekend followed by the cooling rains left over from Cristobal (and dare I say my pruning?) have caused an explosion of growth.

I noticed this first on my strawberries, as two pink berries have arrived seemingly from nowhere.  I know for them to be there, and about a half inch in size, means I have not been paying as much attention as I might.  When I planted it was estimated the first berries would be ready to pick around July 1.  This is still three weeks away.  I realize it will take time for these small berries to be ready to pick, but it is still exciting to know they will soon be sitting on top of a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

The rapid growth of the peppers and tomatoes is what has surprised me the most.  While my Mammoth Jalapenos are not quite mammoth yet, they are getting close to eating size.  The Roma’s have taken off after the rude treatment of several days ago and the Big Boys are coming along nicely.  We have been eating a lot of Jalapenos lately and when I went to the store yesterday, I eyed the bin and wondered if I should get more.  Then I realized, hopefully I will not have to buy them for a long time.  When I checked online it said they will grow well into the fall and I should get 25-30 pods from each of my three pepper plants.  I hope my friends are ready to share the bounty.

THOUGHTS:  I have found even when I check my plants daily it is easy to miss the change that is happening.  I have marveled at how I am trained as an observer/archaeologist and still fail to see or recognize the obvious changes in my garden.  We live in a time when changes are happening in our society as well.  The pandemic has shown how quickly the earth can recover from our abuse when we stop the pollution.  The unrest has shown us abuse of others has consequences.  Some refuse to notice these changes while others deny anything is different.  I hope you can see the difference and work to insure change.  If you venture out, stay safe.

June 8, 2020

I did something yesterday I never even knew was a practice.  I pruned my tomato plants.  Melissa had come across a YouTube video of a lady on a vegetable farm that explained how and why to do this.  She sent me the link two weeks ago as an Instant Message.  I checked the note and saw it was a picture of someone I did not know and then scrolled down to another message she had posted.  On Saturday Melissa asked if I had watched the link she sent.  That was when I learned the picture had “additional content.”  She went on to say another friend she had sent the video to had pruned, and her tomatoes were doing great.

When I watched the video, it told me to prune when the plants were about two feet high.  So much for that as mine were approaching three feet and had filled out nicely with leaves and branches.  Later the video mentioned she allowed two plants to grow higher to demonstrate how to prune an older plant.  Pruning the lower leaves and removing the young “suckers” that grow between the branches and the main stem allows air to circulate and reduces disease and pests.  Removing the excess leaves and stems also allows the plant to focus on producing fruit rather than feeding foliage.  This made sense to me, so I sat next to my plants and trimmed away the excess.

When Melissa learned I was going to grow tomatoes she went online and purchased these cool little finger cutters.  One side was a rubber cup that fit over the thumb that had a sharp steel nub on the end.  There were two other choices for the fore finger.  Either a cloth fingertip or a rubber tip without the cutting nub.  By pinching your thumb and forefinger together it will cut the stem cleanly to remove the fruit and not damage the plant.  Pruning seemed like the perfect time to test how well they work.  The problem I had was the plants were so bushy, it was hard to get the nub positioned correctly.  I ended up cutting my middle finger several times before I gave up.  Maybe I will try again when it is time to pick tomatoes.

THOUGHTS:  I am constantly amazed by what I do not know.  Or rather, at how many other people know about something I do not know.  One of the sidelines to the presidential debates was Elizabeth Warren’s oft heard response, “I have a plan for that.”  It was not that she did not have a plan, it was instead that she literally had one posted on her web site providing details and how it would be implemented.  I find the same to be true concerning online videos.  If you have a question, just type it into your browser and a page full of different answers will appear.  The problem is not finding someone who knows the answer, it is deciding which voice to listen to.  If you venture out, stay safe.

June 6, 2020

Melissa and I have been married for just over 10 years.  We were married the first weekend of December and Melissa moved to Wichita right before Christmas.  That meant we needed to immediately figure out how to embrace our different family traditions for the season.  This was further complicated by having to incorporate different religious and social traditions.  I was surprised how easily this worked out.  My family focused on Christmas Eve and Day so those were spent in Wichita.  Due to extended family commitments, Melissa’s family gathering took place later in the week.  That allowed us to travel to Arkansas and participate in her traditions as well.  Since we spent Christmas in Wichita, the next year we decided to always spend Thanksgiving in Arkansas.  This is the way we have celebrated since.

We recognized we needed to not only participate in larger family celebrations, but to create new traditions of our own.  I have mentioned one of the Christmas traditions we have started is attending an IMAX movie on Christmas Day.  This allows us to be with the family on Christmas morning but provides a transition into our own time.  Being purposeful is important.  We can purposefully join with both extended families while still purposefully creating time together.

While figuring how to manage the big holidays, we both realized we needed to be purposeful the rest of the year as well.  We have devised two specific ways to accomplish this end.  The first is to commit to stop what we are doing to listen when one of us has an issue or concern.  We try to do this at least once a week, even if there is not a pressing issue.  The second is a weekly Date Night.  Because of our various work schedules, Thursday night seems to be the best.  We have not always been able to achieve this goal, but we have found if we are not purposeful about it, it does not happen.

THOUGHTS:  We have struggled with Date Night during the pandemic.  We usually go out to eat on this evening.  Between the restaurants being closed and the pressure of new jobs we have slipped.  This changed last week as we purposefully ate a special meal at home (Dungeness Crab, one of our favorites).  It is important to not allow distractions to move you from your focus.  We need to decide what is important in our life, community, nation, and world.  Then we need to be purposeful in working toward solutions that can bring systemic change.  If you venture out, stay safe.

June 5, 2020

As I sat at my computer on the kitchen table this morning, I heard a loud bang near my house.  Then the power went out for the entire neighborhood.  I know transformers can blow when they get struck by lightning, but there were no clouds in the sky.  I have also known them to blow when it gets hot and everyone decides to kick on the air conditioning at once, but this was 9:00 am.  I guess it just blew because it was its time.

I checked the outage map and it assured me the power would be restored by 1:00 pm.  One pm!  That was four hours, what was I supposed to do without power for four hours?  I read my paper and worked the crossword as I sipped my coffee.   I went back to the Keurig for my usual second cup, and it was dead.  No problem.  Since I had a charged battery on my computer, I could surf the internet.  I fired up the laptop and tried to get online.  Whoops, the router ran off electricity so the WiFi was down.  I loaded the dishwasher with the plates from last night’s dinner and turned it on.  No power.  I went outside and checked my garden.  We had a big rain last night so there was no need to water.  I came back inside and checked the clock.  It was 9:30. Only three and a half hours to go.

In my despair I realized my iPhone was a hotspot.  I went to settings and turned it on and tried to connect.  It immediately told me I needed to update some software which I did.   The phone still would not connect.  “Trouble finding server.”  I got the USB cable and plugged my phone into the computer.  It worked!  I surfed for another 30 minutes and then figured I should get to work.  I went into my office, connected my phone to the office computer and this time it automatically detected and brought up the hotspot.  I could not believe how hot and stuffy it was in the office without the air on.  As I began to work my printer came on.  Unbelievably, I had survived a whole hour without power.

THOUGHTS:  Electricity is something we take for granted, yet our lives revolve around the gadgets for which it provides power.  When it went out, I initially continued to do what I normally do.  I found that one task after another was unavailable without this power.  Before I realized my batteries allowed me to circumvent the electrical grid, I became anxious wondering what to do for four hours without any “connections.”  It is hard to believe but 940 million people, or 13% of the world, do not have access to electricity.  Perhaps I should reevaluate how privileged I am.  If you venture out, stay safe.

June 4, 2020

Today I Zoomed out.  I had heard about this phenomenon but had yet to experience it.  Most of us who work from home spend a lot of time on the computer, but not so much in meetings.  Over the last months I have had three standing calls a week.  The time spent varies but most calls last from an hour to an hour and a half.  I had two calls scheduled for today, but I did not make them.  On the call I hosted I IM’d everyone, and it was agreed we would skip a week.  One of the participants messaged they had heard of more people becoming weary of online calls.  My other call was voluntary.  I intended to join the call, but when the time came, I worked through it on another task.

The first I heard of becoming Zoomed out was with elementary students.  When the schools closed, they were forced to stay at home, but that did not let them out of completing their class work.  I figured it would not be too different for most of them.  I was a substitute teacher in Arkansas this last year.  I subbed for grades from fourth to eighth in seven different schools and two different school districts.  My job each time was to watch the students work online.  Everyone had their own laptop and they were all adept at getting online, even if the sites they visited were not the ones mentioned in the lesson plan.  Now that they no longer had someone like me redirecting them back to their work, many were opting not to complete the tasks.

Another reaction to the Zooms came from the students who did complete their work.  I heard from several people who were providing zoom calls to keep their kids together who said they were finding a reluctance on the part of the kids to join.  The parents were telling the educators that after spending six hours online everyday doing schoolwork, the last thing they wanted was to join another hour online call at night.  I can sympathize with them.  I am looking forward to my six-hour Zoom meeting this Saturday.

THOUGHTS:  When we first discover something new it can be exciting as we spend time figuring out what to do and how to do it.   Once the newness has worn off, we realize even with it being different, it is still the same work.  As a substitute I saw some students who went right to work, finished their task, and then were eager to have additional opportunities to learn.  I found others who found it a struggle to get their name on the top of the handout.  The difference seemed to be whether they were enjoying what they were doing.  I think the same than can be said about adults.  I hope you have found something that you enjoy doing.  If you venture out, stay safe.

June 3, 2020

When I went to check on my garden yesterday, I found a dead rat floating in the pool.  Since we have a field behind us that is often too wet to mow it did not surprise me, but I had never seen a rat around our house before.  We did have a mouse when we cleared the flower beds the first year that decided to come into the house, but he was dispatched quickly.  Rats are a different story and harder to get rid of.  Frankly, I was glad it was dead, and I did not have to decide how to deal with it.  I strained it from the pool and threw it in the ditch.

I have had several encounters with rats in my life and none of them have been pleasant.  When I lived in Salt Lake City, we had a stretch of unusually wet weather.  The generally small creeks overran their banks and they literally decided to sandbag Seventh Street and let the water run down as a new stream.  I was into playing golf at the time and went to the course with a friend of mine.  My shots are not always the truest, and on one of the holes my ball went into a grove of trees surrounding a culvert drain.  I knew the ball had gone into the middle and there was no chance to play it, but I hate losing balls.  I pushed back the tall grass and started into the area when I noticed 20-30 rats jumping and frolicking where I thought my ball might be.  I left the ball.

My other encounter with rats occurred when I lived at the camp in Hesston.  We were letting the grass grow to create a Tall Grass Prairie ecosystem and it seems I got more than I hoped for.  I went out to my truck one morning and it would not start.  I towed it to my mechanic, and he told me the distributor wires had been chewed through.  He replaced the cap and I thought nothing more about it.  The next summer my truck would not start again, and I returned it to the shop and asked him for a repair.  The more he looked the more he found and since I had given the go ahead, I was committed for the repair.  The rat had chewed my entire electrical system and it cost over $750 to replace the wiring.  When he opened the hood to check, the rat was sitting on top the engine block glaring at him.  He decided to come back later.

THOUGHTS:  I have heard on the news that the rats that infest New Your City are experiencing a crisis.  The garbage from restaurants is no longer available and they are forced to find new sources of food.  In some areas this is driving the rats indoors to confront the residents.  While rats can be destructive, they are only doing what they need to do to survive.   In contrast, toxic people make a choice.  We can behave badly or as Spike Lee said, Do the Right Thing. Do not choose to be a rat.  If you venture out, stay safe.

June 2, 2020

We are moving into the warm season and I will have to check my vegetables more often.  Warmth brings pests, but it also dries the plant soil more rapidly.  This is especially true with containers.  I had checked my containers yesterday morning but got busy and had not checked them later.  The result was obvious when I checked them this morning as several of the plants had droopy leaves.  I recall when I worked at a nursery in college we watered early in the morning and before we left at night.  Both watering’s were enough to soak the soil but not enough to leave standing water in the pots.  This kept the soil moist but avoided over watering.

We have had a couple of watering incidents during the last month.  We had purchased two hibiscus and put them on the porch until we could get them into the ground, then we sort of forgot about them.  We do not use our front door very often (except to accept shipments of succulents of course) and instead go out through the garage.  By the time I noticed them again they were wilted, and the leaves were falling off the plants.  I put them in the planter anyway hoping they might survive.  I watered them and set them in the sun to see what would happen.  They are thriving again and making new leaves to replace the ones lost.

The other incident was over watering.  I am not sure how it happened but the plant we received from the veterinarian’s office for Bella was dying.  Melissa checked and found the pan beneath it was full and the pot itself had standing water.  I took it outside to the front porch to dry out in the sun and see if it could be saved.  It has been two weeks and it does not seem any better.  I guess there is more of an art to watering than I realized.

THOUGHTS:  With gardening and with life we need to pay attention to the details. There are times when even a few days of neglect can lead to serious harm.  I found this true with my plants.  Our country is finding this true as well.  We have developed a culture of neglecting the plight of the poor and minorities.  During the pandemic, these are the people hit hardest.  They have lost jobs, wages, and dignity while being forced to bear much of the burden for our wanting to “open up.”  The death of George Floyd may have been the spark, but there were centuries of neglected embers lying beneath the surface. Throwing water on the fire will not put it out, but merely reduce it too embers again.  We need to address the underlying systemic problems now rather than later.  If you venture out, stay safe.

June 1, 2020

I had no idea potato plants produced flowers.   I probably should not be surprised, as most plants that bear fruit produce flowers during the process.  Still, I was surprised to be watering my garden and see these beautiful purple flowers with what looked like yellow stamen on the biggest of the eight plants.  The potato is a tuber and not a fruit on the vine.  I know, technically the potatoes are not a fruit either, but the online resource I checked says what can be produced by the flower is a fruit that resembles a small green tomato.  While potatoes flowering is normal, the flowers usually dry up and fall off without producing fruit.  I hope I get some tiny “green tomatoes.”

My resource went on to say the flowering is a sign of nearing maturity and harvest.   This part surprises me even more as the projected harvest is around the 25^th of July and it is only the first of June.  This plant did grow fastest and is tallest and it might be I just put an older plant in the ground to begin with.  Whatever the reason, I will need to keep a close eye on it to make sure it is acting “normally.”

One of the fun things about raising a garden is seeing new things I have never paid attention to before.  I have never tried to grow potatoes, and now I am watching and learning how they go from an eye in the side of a shriveled-up spud to a plant reaching over 30” tall.  None of the plants are the same height.  The smallest are only about two feet and two of the larger ones are pushing past 30”.  The other four vary somewhere in between.  I have mentioned the expectation of harvest, but even with my flowers I am determined to let them run the course of their life.  I guess if the plant begins to die, I will have to change my approach.

THOUGHTS:  The longer I live the more I find life continues to bring unexpected wonder.  When I was in High School, I thought I knew everything that needed to be known.   When I went to college, I found a breadth to the world I never knew existed.  Then in graduate School I realized it was no longer about knowing, it was about knowing where to “look it up.”  Too often we find people stuck in the first stage of understanding.  We know everything we need to know.  I am glad I was able to get to the point where I realized I did not know it all.  I hope you find yourself at that stage as well.  If you venture out, stay safe.

May 30, 2020

After letting the bags of mulch sit in my front yard for over a week, I decided it was time to spread it on my flower beds.  I do have a disclaimer.  I put down the first bag of mulch when I brought it home.  Then Melissa asked me to wait for her to decide which of two beds she was going to use for the outdoor succulent garden.   She made the decision last week and it still did not spur me into action.  I mentioned earlier how much easier it was to weed when I prepared the garden plots this year.  Melissa and I even weeded the flower beds several weeks ago, but I did not put down the mulch and I will have to do it all over again.  To be honest, it is a lot of work.

Weeding the beds would be a lot easier if it were only weeds that infested them.  Weeds tend to put down shallow root systems.  This allows the weeds to put all their energy into growth, and ultimately seed production, to propagate a new series of plants.  By growing quickly, they can spread seeds several times a growing season and maximize their chance of survival.  The bigger problem is the invasive grass.  Grass takes the opposite approach and first puts down deep root systems.  The deeper the roots the more likely the plant will survive both drought and cold.  This makes the grass much harder to pull from the flower bed.

I spent the morning on various work task but after lunch I was ready to tackle the yard.  I weeded the front planter and about half of the flower bed in the front of the house.  I always throw the weeds in the yard to keep from having to figure out what to do with them.  I dutifully used my weed eater to trim around the yard features and then jumped on the mower to finish the job.  I was pleased to note the lawn had dried out from the rains and I was able to cut the entire lawn for the first time in weeks.  With this preparation I was ready to lay down the mulch.  The good thing about only mulching half the beds, is that I get to finish the job on another day.

THOUGHTS:  Grass and weeds take two different approaches to insure survival.  This difference comes from the weeds being an annual and the grass being a perennial.  Basically, the weeds quickly grow, shed their seeds, and die.  The same grass grows every year, and rather than dying, it goes dormant in the hot and cold months of the year.  Both approaches work as evidenced by each type of invasive plant returning annually.  There does not seem to be a “better way,” they are simply different approaches.  Countries have tried different approaches to combat the virus.  Some have tried to “slow the curve” and others to quickly develop “herd immunity.”  It is yet unclear whether one approach will be better than the other.  Hopefully, we will learn from these experiences and be better prepared next year.  If you venture out, stay safe.

May 29, 2020

I have mentioned one of my go to baits for fishing is worms.  They are relatively inexpensive and last a long time if you put them in the refrigerator.  I mostly used Canadian Night Crawlers which are stocked at several local stores.  Last summer I began to have problems with these worms.  The hot days beside the pond would kill most of my crawlers no matter how hard I tried to keep them out of the sun.  That is when I switch to red worms.  Red worms survive in temperatures up to 90 degrees, but these tend to be small, skinny worms that are hard to get on the hook.  I finally hit on the chartreuse worms, which are heat resistant but grow to be a fatter worm, and easier to hook.  They are a greenish color due to the fluid inside of their bodies.  The fish love them.

During the last several months I have noticed the presence of long tubes in our pool/pond.  This surprised me because we did not have this problem last year.  At first, I thought the tubes might be old stocks from the Naked Lady Lilies that proliferate along the back of the house.  The problem is these stocks do not appear until mid-August and are gone by winter.  My other thought were the Hibiscus stocks (no, I have not cut them down yet), but again this did not seem to be right either.  My suspicions grew that I had somehow created a breeding ground for some sort of nasty tube worm.  If so, this could be a problem I need to tend to immediately.

As I was leaving the house this morning, I discovered what was causing the problem.  On the walk leading to the driveway was an earth worm that was over one foot long and very fat.  It even had the lighter heart line detail I could make out on the tubes floating in the pool.  Apparently, the wetter weather has been driving the worms out of the ground and some are falling into the pool and drowning.  I have noticed the Robins and Jays have also been feasting on these worms before they make it to the pool.  I was happy to know it was not a serious problem for me, but I doubt the worms would say the same.

THOUGHTS:  What we see as a problem in our life is often dependent on our perspective.  Melissa found one of these large worms under the trash can and assumed it was one of the small snakes that live in the garden beds.  She had me remove it even after I explained it was a worm.  I was afraid we had a tuber worm problem in the pool that I did not know how to take care of.  Both instances caused alarm and even some fear because we did not know what it was.  When I saw the worm on the sidewalk, I knew exactly what it was and even watched as it crawled into the grass.  The fear that arises during our pandemic is similar.  The aggressiveness of the virus is real, but our anxiety is raised from not knowing what the virus is or having a treatment protocol.  We already know some practices that work, we should continue to use them.  If you venture out, stay safe.