Steev's stuff

[flowerbug]

i would like to just be buried in a garden, here down a few feet would be good enough, heavy clay doesn't let much bother whatever else i bury down about that deep. even a full grown wild turkey was not bothered down two feet. i have no problem feeding the worms when it is my time - they have fed me i can surely return the favor/flavor.

i don't want to be cremated.

i thought the native practice of hoisting you up in a tree wrapped up with all your favorite toys and ornaments was rather interesting. then you would weather and fall apart and become food for the trees through time. i'd be ok with that too.

being pumped full of preservatives and buried in something that doesn't rot just strikes me as so wrong... ah well, as you write, life does go on, except for the raiders of the peas/pea sprouts. i'm sure i will have some of that here this season too.

a nice fence is all i can count on for the vegetable gardens. anything outside those fences is fair game and often munched on.

i have to use the air rifle to thin the rabbit, chipmunk and groundhog populations as it is. not something i want to do, i'd much rather have fences up, but Mom will not allow me to fence the entire area i'd like - so i have to waste time hunting instead of gardening.

right now it is crocus and early flower season. daffodils not out yet, but soon i should start seeing some of those along with the hyacynths poking up. we have thousands of daffodils.

[steev]

Damn! We're like two peas in a pod, attitude-wise, on all those points. It's prohibited to plant me OTF and my nephews won't agree to my plan of how to do it undetected; wusses. I don't want to be pickled, canned, and put in a vault. While I have no animus toward the rabbits and ground squirrels, any that I find in the veggie corral are fair game for my pellet gun.

[flowerbug]

it is always nice to meet people who have similar ideas. gardeners are my kind of people and especially those who keep their eyes open and keep learning.

[reed]

Some of my earliest memories are playing in the sand beside the Ohio River. I'd like to be tossed in it to the benefit of the snapping turtles and catfish.

[12540dumont]

Gee, You guys quit talking about dying. It'll be here soon enough. Go plant something.

[flowerbug]

lol

[steev]

We were talking about getting planted.

[steev]

Fixed a nice Spring weed broth-based soup: chicken broth with cleavers, mustard, and plantain, plus onion, potato, and beef (after straining out the weeds; those went into the freezer, to be put into an omelette, another week). I need to do another with chickweed and milk thistle. Spring is a fun time. While the patience dock is good, I should make some dolmades. The cardoon is also primo now, to braise with onion in bacon grease. While I enjoy gardening, have I mentioned how much I enjoy being a hunter-gatherer? So many people have no idea how much free, healthful food there is out there. Oh, well, more for me. I look forward to when I can can nature's free bounty for use in soups or whatever (my landlady doesn't want me canning). "Live free or borrow". that's my motto.

[steev]

My Yemeny mechanic/manager has carried my debt from replacing my truck's blown engine for months while I've scrounged the money to pay for it (he just fronted me a new set of tires for my truck). Besides paying the bill as I can, I'll provide his family with produce when it comes in, starting with patience dock this week. Community is better than commercial relations. This thing of dealing with one another through exchange of cash rather than personal relationships is bogus; it estranges us from each other, leading us to fail to grasp how much we are dependent on each other. The current Covid crisis may remind us of this, how closely we are related, how much we need the cooperation of others, one hopes.

The silver lining in the Covid cloud is that traffic and parking are great! It's an ill wind that blows no good.

[flowerbug]

we always have extra to give away, but being a bit aways from others makes it harder to find people who want it when it is ready. this year might be tougher in that regards too. gotta stay flexible and roll with what you can when it happens.

[steev]

Having failed to enlist my nephews to give me a natural burial OTF (eventually, I'm not in a rush), my will stipulates cremation, which I don't much like; I'm an organ/tissue donar, although I expect to perk along until there isn't much not worn out, maybe some cadaver bone for dental socket filler; I've got some of that; I mean, they can send me to a soup kitchen, for all I'll care; recently learned about alkaline hydrolysis, legal here in Cali; I think that's how I'll go; it avoids what I most dislike about cremation: the energy waste, CO2 emission; dental mercury emission, and price.

I'd really prefer to build my own pine coffin in anticipation of the inevitable and have family and friends write goodbyes on it with colored sharpies (won't care, prolly prefer, if they're profane, that's the kind of family and friends I've got), be dropped in a hole OTF, and let the "guests" (who wants to have mourners?; it should be a celebration that I lived at all, unlikely as it is) shovel soil into the hole, planting an olive tree on the grave, and then go have a feed and party on my dime because they're still alive.

Coming from three generations of florists, I'm really very unimpressed with the funeral industry. Feh, to think my corpse a resource for someone's profit.

[steev]

Sukie seems anemic; got to get her to the vet/mechanic; need her for Spring planting: something has eaten all my peas; with any luck, I'll be out of panic financial mode next month; rain has been just sprinkles, nothing really wetting; looks like another drought year coming; took a bunch of patience dock to my mechanic; want to keep him patient with my slow-pay for replacing the engine; I'll give him cardoon next week. Something is eating the coyote I left out; fine, I just want the skull. My helper was to go to school next month, but it looks like that's put off until August, Covid and all; fine, works for me. Grapes are sprouting. Narcissus are past.

[steev]

Got a re-sod job; he's got a grandchild coming; wants a good lawn, a great help to me; I'm short on cash these days; he's a maintenance client that had no idea I did all that; I'm not just an outdoor janitor; I'd installed his backyard landscaping a decade ago, irrigation and all, for previous owners who also had rugrats coming. My own ex went out and hoed off the crappy "lawn" behind our house when she was a week overdue, so I re-sodded it, building in a hill and a fish tank. So much landscaping relates to family.

Looks like another weekend of sprinkles OTF; wish it would RAIN; this just screws me out of good work without giving me good water. It's still looking like a coming drought year.

[reed]

I'm in a dispute at home over some old truck bed liners we have. The woman uses them for "holding pens" for plants that she sells at the flea market. They work well for that but there isn't going to be any flea markets for some time.

I have plenty of locust posts I can use for the frames and I want to cut those truck liners up to make the sides of nice tall raised beds that she can use for her herbs and salad crops, would be a lot easier for her and get her out of my garden. I could easily set posts about 6 feet tall making it easy to trellis her cucumbers and runner beans or to put up shade cloth when needed. Also one of them would make a nice roof for a new small duck coop I want to build.

But she can be contrary, generally don't know what's good for her. I may have to just go ahead and do it when she isn't looking.

[flowerbug]

early on during being possibly holed up together for a long period of time may not be a great time to "just do it anyways" perhaps some compromise could be found? just thinking ahead... gl to you and to everyone...