International edible gardening

My family has begun watching your videos on a monitor that's as large as a flat screen TV. This last one was deadpan-terrifying; It does seem like you're utterly comfortable in the Great Round, edible gardening- forsooth! We are enthralled with the Big Picture portrayed here. I find your thoughts on the matter intriguing, and your life pretty amazing.

 

warning TLDR

My life is not amazing but sort of tranquilized rather. I take a tablet for a bit of neural damage which makes me suffer from a decrease in normal, healthy, anxiety and any sense of imperative as a byproduct. So things are mostly very OK - I am just content to go out and prune a bit here, go shopping for some old plants, some nice fresh fruit or something pleasant for dinner - fish a bit casually, muck about with a shovel, do some things for the chickens, go in and read some Roman history (I am on Claudius in Britain now),( or as I just was, medieval history -I love Frankish law especially), and always hang out with the 4 dogs - and put off work. Although when I finally force myself to do some work enjoy that sort of too.


The snag is the days just absolutely flash by. I find myself punctuating my days by the twice daily dog feeding - and they seem to come about one on the back of another, the day having slid past painlessly. Then I read in bed a couple hours (after making a 3-4 course meal) and before any time I am up brewing coffee in the morning as the dogs dance about and I put their bowls in a line on the floor - each going to the correct place in the lineup. Then I potter about, read and have coffee, go outside and muck about, do the chickens - some work, potter about - come in at dusk and cook/feed the dogs, eat with a movie, read a couple hours...........and close my eyes and snap - it is time to feed the dogs, brew coffee...............

And the months are streaming past, I often lament my lack of drive to do big things, to try moving to somewhere new, but it is so easy to just not bother.

The place here is quite beautiful, the locals friendly and very polite (deep South, politeness is just required, even of the roughest people) crime is almost non-existent, and it is kind of like Dorothy in the poppy fields, but not harmful, just soporific. I was seeing my doctor yesterday and told him I do not like the contentment this drug gives me because I have no proper drive and life is sliding away - he told he be happy my neural pain is controlled and gave me a drug to boost my brain anxiety and activity - to also take. I did not get them because my pharmacist wanted to check if the prescriptions were really true and is waiting to hear back from the doctor. Alice and the two mushrooms in a manner, but all is good, no problems, just some fine tuning.
Jack and Flora help me decide which book to read, Jack goes for the enlightening one, I would have picked one of the PG Wodehouse in the top row.

 

I'm about the same age as you Colne and used to wonder why the days flashed by, it's because we are slowing down. I can remember re-decorating a room in a couple of days when I was younger. Now it will take me the best part of a week! I don't mind the slower place now and what doesn't get done today will wait until tomorrow.

I read a lot of history, from after the Romans up to the Tudors and have a preference for Scottish history. Do you buy all your books new? I was bought a Kindle a few years ago and haven't looked back since, e-books are so much cheaper on Amazon and quite a number are free.

 

I use the library where I am one of the notorious customers - but I bought a kindle and never once used it - tried once but never could force my self to do so again.........And I have vast numbers of used books.

I am a good part Hebridean Scotts by ancestry but not so interested in the history; an aggravating history of being independent and ornery and so not really living up to potential - like a James Dean movie.

So speaking of time flashing by I have another video, one that really annoyed me, it plays fast for some reason - possibly I was trying to shrink down the time by speeding up - but what ever...

I spray the weasel dog, toss a chick in the air, and get my legs scratched - but need to slow it down. Also need to learn to edit films of the bad bits. Smaller screen shows more detail.




OOps - said 18 foot for max lifting water, 33 foot actually, my pump only does 20 foot max, but the water table is 3 foot( although the aquifer is 45 foot) so only a short lift - still it would be impossible without a prime so any air is a problem. When I say can you hear the pump I mean the sound when it gets pumping - a deeper sound than when it is just spinning.

 

It's funny that the act of erasure is what's permanent, "not all your piety or wit can bring back a line of it."
What do you think about The Rubiat in general? I wonder, his being a mathematician and all that, could one say that the quatrains are algebraic equations used to isolate the value of "X" (the meaning of life the universe and everything)?
Anyway, I think time is your medium. I tune in to your posts to see all of the growing things, all of the changes, the chicks breaking out, a snake devouring two, -being quickly dispatched, berry syrup recipes, pavlovas from the eggs, more raised beds, ponds from the well, fruits and veg and flowers all proliferating in leaps. Nature is this riot of change-- in the bayou anyway. You juggle it, manage it, celebrate it all. Very cool!

 

H, Ses - I had to delete the last video. I have an overly developed sense of the ludicrous and the last video got away from me when I started by picking up a tiny fluffy chick to demonstrate how they can fly at an amazingly young age - so tossed it into the air and it plummeted like a rock. Then the hen tried to harry me by puffing up to a huge size as they do but Orphingtons are totally docile so it was as ridiculous as being threatened with a feather duster.

Next I showed the irrigation system and the hose driven by the well and weasel dog was lying under a table with his hind end facing me snoozing as I held the hose - so I blasted him, I just instinctively did it before thinking........next told the totally wrong amount for 1 atmosphere making sucking water impossible (I said 18 foot, should be 33.9) and knew I was wrong - but could not summon up the right amount,,18?, 28? so just kept going - and it went downhill as I tried to show the forest and the chicken foraging signs........ and I seemed a bit too giddy by it all as I kept going with all that silliness - I was trying to keep serious, but could not help the feeling it all was gotten away, as it was.

I hope London goes well. Next time I am back I would like to go to Regents Park zoo - but heard it was fifteen pounds now. I would like to see the Serpentine again, especially to talk to the fishermen as I have very fond memories from it. I would just like to ride the train in and see the cows in the fields between Hanger Lane and Action (if I remember it properly) - amazing! I wonder how long they will be able to resist building there. The Wallace Collection is my favorite place in London, I could spend hours there, then stop at Selfridges food court for some game pie. I would go to the Harrods food court too - I heard they no longer sell pets at Harrods from last year. Do you remember the ocelot and agouti and all the menagerie they had in the late 60's? And the famous lion? (Christian the Lion, 1969) Have you visited the roof top flamingos and ducks?

last night I was reading about the Icini burning Londinium and how the fires burned so hot that the clay was fired and was found when building The Barbican, and how that was Cripplegate nineteenth century, then flattened totally in the blitz, Barbican estate twentieth century, architectural style 'Brutal' - 2000 flats, now the center with some original Roman wall standing....... Small two bedroom flat one million pounds, no car parking.........

It can feel so, well - simple here. Obviously here is in full blown society; I live in the town limits, but so utterly outside all mans development. Everything is here; fine surgeons and hospitals, shopping, good schools, OK colleges and small universities, everything one needs but large history and culture. Here in town we now have a tiny symphony and theatre group! A great book store/coffee shop overlooking the harbor and sea, good library, but one can never get London out of you once having lived there. Nothing else can ever even be the palest shadow in comparison. Not that I could live there again, but it is always there in my mind, I still compare most things by those years and place.

 

Taken yesterday evening

 

I have not walked in your shoes, so there's no way I can imagine how a person can dislike contentment -- for me it's been hard won and I might never stop savouring it. But it does not seem to me that your mind is inactive. Maybe being less active physically than previously is feeling strange to you. Do you think maybe you miss your pain?

I have often heard people speak about New York City the way you speak of London, that there is no place like it.

 

Hi MrsK

What was your hard win against? I have nerve damage which causes pain and take a strong anti-depressant because it is amazingly effective for minimizing the ghost pain which is so annoying. This medication was developed for depression but then found to be the best at what I use it for, which is to calm down the neurons which are firing inappropriately. I find that I am suffering a contentment which de-motivates because I enjoy this really petty life of gardening, cooking, bit of work but not much, and therefor not either making extra money or doing bigger things.

""
soma
""A drug used in Huxley's futuristic utopian novel "Brave New World." The substance is supposed to have the affect of modern drugs, yet no side-effects. Could describe bliss, oblivion, pure love, or pure utopia."" Soma is Latin for sleep I think.

I get no high from it, but I was not designed for content pottering - I was always up to something, going somewhere. I am uncomfortable in the thought that I will just finish out here puttering about contentedly like the movie WALL-E but on a shorter scale. I think what I would like for my time here - If I am going to just do this, is to cultivate a bit of like minded group, I think I have a bit of nostalgia for the 60-70's commune thing. I lived in one for a bit in Corvallis Oregon at the late 70's and we all loved it - 5 of us in a huge, falling down, house set in a disused orchard with an extended clique. We all were desperately poor, there was a terrible recession going on there with no chance of a job so we all did odds and ends. I wish I had appreciated it more, the group were worthwhile.

One guy was really big and would just throw people around when he would get into fights, which would be too often, I cannot name him but he was called the word for a dangerous animal, but was laying low for a very unusual - and interesting - reason. He had been part of a action taking counter culture group in California. Then we had a full Hippy girl who worked at an organic seed shop and was the only one of us with a job. Then a student of art who was pretty lost and just did art classes, bicycled all over, and was designing posters, of all things, in her head - we never saw her work - me, who was in my 'road freak' phase (a very small subculture of that period - I hitch hiked over 50,000 miles of map distance and lived mostly out of my pack) And some lumber jack kind of guy who was plain working class but was drawn to counter culture and out of work because the local mills had closed and a black guy who was also kind of laying low who had done small team professional football and was very interesting - he was quite intelligent and had had some unique life experiences. He mostly stayed elsewhere though.

Sorry to have wandered off...... And I am even posting a picture of those times. I used to live out of small open boats a lot - here is one I manhauled around quite a bit of the canal system in England. An interesting way to travel, sleeping under bridges or where ever, hanging with the canal folk, pulling the boat on a bow and stern rope so you have steerage - working hundreds of locks.

 

My situation was nothing unusual: jacked-up family, jacked-up inlaws, a thin and rapidly eroding veneer of civilisation... and everyone so surprised that I didn't like it. Without going off the philosophical deep end here, I used to feel drawn to greater things, to more, as you seem to. I'm the type who will keep asking why, until I understand. Now I rarely need to ask. A person will have as much peace as he can stand. Our individual tolerances for peace naturally vary. This idea alone answered a lot of my questions.

Your life has been (still is) more real than most, empirically rich, many horizons, doing and being instead of just having and getting. I can see how it could keep expectations nagging at you. Staying in one place is a different kind of challenge, one that these times don't favour.

The only thing I know of that gets Southerners to pretend they are of like mind is religion. While in the tent, they'll say Amen. The politeness you mentioned is a necessary emollient (one of the few things I miss). The odds of finding like minds are better with the internet than without it.

 

Well that has made it all less clear. What can you mean by a person will have as much peace as he can stand?

It is. The Southerners were people who had to carve a hard life out of bare nature and basic civilization. To keep them from wasting their energies in endless squabbles, politeness became part of the ways. A tough, bad, ignorant man will always hold the door for anyone - will always greet the checkout person at a store and say thankyou. Their mother beat that into them because she would be ashamed it he was rude - it would reflect poorly on their family - even though he has a serious criminal record and is a psycho. You do not see fights here, or shouting, public displays of showing drunkenness are virtually unheard of. This is a society where one is always aware of the potential for violence and the society decided long ago to stop pointless things bringing that out.

Take our police as a difference in our societies. They are tough, really tough. If the British louts ran into them they would get a lesson they would never forget. I live in a small Southern town and one can almost never go out and not see a policeman, I have called them a couple times and they come in a minute. The people here are tough, but the cops.....they are mostly big men who lift weights. They have to keep muscles developed, it is part of their job - not the little women in their stupid high viz jackets and pepper spray like England. Try dealing with a cop here without politeness and you will have a unhappy time of it indeed; they know they are a thin blue line and that if they took disrespect at all they would all be in a bad position. Politeness is a needed emollient here.



But the garden - We have chopped out the fruiting canes of the blackberries and tied the primocanes up to bamboos and wires - looks good and next year should be excellent.

 

Many of us are unaware that we don't want peace, can't stand it, will do anything to avoid it. Something else is chosen instead -- something more exciting or gratifying, or something that seems nobler. I have several acquaintances who derive much gratification from outrage, or excessive sentimentality, or a good long wallow in whatever misery is encountered. This is only an itch they keep scratching; they are not spurred to any action, they merely enjoy the sharp sensation and it's a habit now. Or, we all know someone who had a really good thing going and just couldn't settle for it, couldn't take yes for an answer and frittered it all away for no reason.

Lots of peace goes begging out there and anyone who wants it can have some if s/he will do what it takes to get next to it. Not the easiest choice to make. Some are frightened of peace: not sure they deserve it, or sure that they don't (as if deserve is a useful concept), and afraid of backlash, feeling that human happiness is a zero-sum game (any pleasure one has is pleasure denied someone else) or an attractive nuisance (the nail that sticks up gets hammered down).

My feeling was that human society could easily be so much better than it is, that a greatly improved life was well within our grasp. I was dismayed at how many fellow beings found my attitude almost intolerable, until it dawned on me that many of us are solemnly committed to being peace-averse. But such resolve leaves the available peace undiminished, and our potential for improvement unchanged. These things are possible to individuals whether groups can manage it (or tolerate it) or not.

And that may seem selfish, or lonely.

 

We are just really smart plants, blue-green algae really, that with the benefit of time and genetic variations have become us; so best to not ask too much of humans as a whole group. Still not sure about the peace thing you mention there MrsK.

Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word,
By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,
Have thrice disturbed the quiet of our streets
And made Verona’s ancient citizens
Cast by their grave-beseeming ornaments,
To wield old partisans in hands as old,
Cankered with peace, to part your cankered hate.
If ever you disturb our streets again,
Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.
For this time, all the rest depart away.
You, Capulet, shall go along with me,
And, Montague, come you this afternoon
To know our farther pleasure in this case,
To old Free-town, our common judgment-place.
Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.

So a quick walkthrough - I am thinking of doing it weekly, just need to get better at it, doing a bit of film is not that easy - but the changes are so fast in the garden.

 

Let's try it this way then:

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.

 

So, I get from your post that one should look to our mundane selves for answers rather than any ultimate other.

And that our dullness is what holds us back from finding that answer.

But what is the point of any life answer if it is merely inside all the time, and then dies with us anyway? May as well say 42.

But back on topic (note I put algae in my previous post, a gardening qualifier.) of life and gardening - I have lost another 2 chicks, two of the biggest ones, the Ameracana ones. Then one of my hens has become an egg pecker; And once that spreads through the flock it is all over.

Every day for the last week an egg has a hole pecked in it, and another has been broken and half eaten - and it is not happening at night. So tonight I begin the laborious process of caging one bird to see if that stops the egg pecking. I have my suspicions that it is my Rhode Island Red, they are a mean and ornery chicken. But then it will end up being the least likely.

So 12 chicks originally and now down to 7. It always goes like that for me - 1/3 surviving being a good score. (and 1/2 hatch - so with great care only 1 in 6 makes it!) It is the complete freedom they get, everything will kill a chicken, often each other. Keeping the things caged is the only way to really produce. Then one can limit them to pure 24%, or 26% protein feeds and they will bulk up to a young, tender, meaty bird instead of the scrawny things mine are. (layer feed is 16% - so you see meat production is completely artificial. Corn is 8%)

I did a roof repair this morning. My first time on a roof holding shingles and tar in a long time. I actually enjoyed it - very hot though, and I knew that all the roofing I needed to do was this one job. I was a few miles from here below a huge radio transmission tower that had one of those massive osprey nests on it right at the top. And the whole time 3 ospreys were wheeling about - and squeaking, ospreys are the most vocal of all the raptors, always talking.

So what is going on MrsK, how is the gardening - it looks like this is jenny, sometimes Sheal, you and my thread. I do not think I have made a good impression on the locals.

Cinnamon, are you about at all? Would like to hear of some vegetable or fruit I should be growing.