Yeppers, went and bought vegytable seeds, to plant so that we'll have veggies for the table... too late, I already quit my day job.
Anyway, got some bush peas, stringless string beans which wants poles, carrots, lettuce, Butternut squash and zucchini; I realize that even though the packet has many seeds, one only plants one zucchini seed, any more and it'll feed the precinct. Especially since I don't happen to like zucchini, but mom likes it, so I got some.
I know what I'm going to use with the string beans, gonna use a bunch of them apple tree branches I pruned last year for them to climb up, knew there was a reason I was saving them!
It'll still be a while until I plant, we're still getting below freezing weather at night, but I figure this way I've got the seeds, and once it gets safe to plant I can plant.
It seems very strange, my preparing to plant a garden. I've never voluntarily been involved with a garden before, it's always been something I've been made to do as part of my "family obligation", you know the thing, parents not being up front and saying "because I told you to" but instead trying to lay a guilt trip on you so you'll feel guilty about not working on it even though you can't conceive of any rational reason they should expect you to care about a garden, or whatever their laying the guilt trip about. "Because I told you to" is a lot more honest, and had much less negative feeling on my part; don't try no Jedi mind tricks on me, be up front about it, and the most twisty you need to be is to mention that there's a lot done for you by your parents and maybe, just maybe, some help from you when possible might be nice, and give it the thought that they might have a better idea of what you can do to help than you do; not that parents are all knowing and infallible, far from it, they're making this up as they go along, but humour them, OK?
Anyway, got stuff for planting, did just realize that I'll still need to get tomaters and potaters, but those'll wait until closer to planting, too chill for tomaters just yet, and need to read up on potaters as well as the other plants.
Like I'm lacking in reference materials, no sirry bob, got lots of gardening books I've picked up over the years, self-defense 'cause mom would ask me gardening questions and my response would be a quite truthful "How the *bleep* should I know" followed by purchasing books to answer the questions, this is a patron-driven collection development policy, no high-falutin ideals, no sir, we get what the patrons are asking us for; to some in libraryland a strange concept, to me it makes sense, especially for my own library!
2009-03-11
2009-03-09
Snow, again?!?!?
Come on, it's March 9th already!
Don't tell me about Global Warming, so far this winter is more of an advert for "Enter Ice Age Four" as it were, in a mild Pacific Northwest kinda way.
No accumulation at this elevation, but it was coming down fast and furious for a bit an hour ago.
Definitely not planting vegetables anytime soon, the ground is too cold and we keep having snow.
But in regard to veggies, thinking along the line of peas, beans, lettuce, spinach, squash, carrots, taters, tomaters, you know, the staples, stuff that can be put up for the winter if in excess of current needs.
Quick! Alert the media! John's talking about vegetable gardening in a favorable manner! Sure sign that the apocalypse is upon us!
Or maybe it's that I feel a need to justify the huge yard by doing something productive with it? As well as truck gardens make economic sense. Yeah, that's it, the Scot's parsimonious nature, something never before seen in me, finally breeding true?
Dunno. Whatever. Just hope it keeps going, and sparks my interest enough to set up proper soaker hose watering and such like so that economical watering of said garden occurs.
Well, off to find something of interest to do. Wish me luck!
Don't tell me about Global Warming, so far this winter is more of an advert for "Enter Ice Age Four" as it were, in a mild Pacific Northwest kinda way.
No accumulation at this elevation, but it was coming down fast and furious for a bit an hour ago.
Definitely not planting vegetables anytime soon, the ground is too cold and we keep having snow.
But in regard to veggies, thinking along the line of peas, beans, lettuce, spinach, squash, carrots, taters, tomaters, you know, the staples, stuff that can be put up for the winter if in excess of current needs.
Quick! Alert the media! John's talking about vegetable gardening in a favorable manner! Sure sign that the apocalypse is upon us!
Or maybe it's that I feel a need to justify the huge yard by doing something productive with it? As well as truck gardens make economic sense. Yeah, that's it, the Scot's parsimonious nature, something never before seen in me, finally breeding true?
Dunno. Whatever. Just hope it keeps going, and sparks my interest enough to set up proper soaker hose watering and such like so that economical watering of said garden occurs.
Well, off to find something of interest to do. Wish me luck!
2009-03-08
Hibernating Bumble Bees
Bumble Bees are solitary critters, don't live in swarms or hives, hang out all on their lonesome, and when the weather gets cold and their food goes away they creep down through the upper layers of soil and settle down to hibernate, staying below the roots of the grass until it warms up enough that plants start to flower when they perk up and crawl back out and merrily buzz around gathering pollen and nectar to build up their reserves for the next winter. I've no idea how long they can live, how many turns of the season they can have.
So, like, I know this about Bumble Bees partially through reading, but also partially through personal experience, to wit: No *bleep*, there I was, merrily pealing away the top layer of soil, that which the grass had put down roots in, and what do I come across in the cold, damp soil, underneath the roots, but a Bumble Bee! And the shine doth sun, um, the Sun doth Shine upon said Bumble, warming it slightly, and it doth look up, say "no way Jose!", and burrow down through the soil some more until it can return to hibernating, for indeed, it is still far too chill for a Bumble Bee to be a-bumbling about.
Also came across a big old grub, several worms, and the knowledge that grass does surface roots, and various other plants come up from under the grass and stay behind if you are pealing away the grass. Like onions. Of which we have a-many, descendants of onions planted five plus years agone and never harvested, and some other plants which I'm not sure what they are, not aware of having seen them afore, but which are popping up all over in the wake of the unlamented Clematis and Blackberries, said viney types having held done and sorely oppressed many other plant species who are now putting forth greens and announcing to the world, "We are here!" and daring me to name them Weed, daring me to identify them as useful or non, being full healthy already and even bringing forth flowers, some of them. And the onions grow forth, quitely sending up their green tubes in some areas, and slightly different, more leeklike growths in other parts of the yard where I peeled back grass last fall whilst hunting out the Ivy which had snuck in under cover of the Clematis.
And no, I have seen no Clematis, for truly it seems to be gone, vanished, iradicated like the vile verminous viney vamp that it is, not root nor branch to be seen these several months agone. It, and the Blackberries and Ivy are gone, to appear no longer in this yard, slain by "clearcut" Mead himself, removed, banished, repudiated, evicted and exterminated, no more to annoy me with their ne'er ceasing shouts of "neener neener neener" as they creep out from yet another hiding place, gone they art!
[following a quick expedition to the back yard] Yep, still gone.
So, last fall was getting rid of stuff, this year may actually see vegetable gardening occur.
Well, enough, the focus it goeth and the writing thus becomes blurry of topic, hmm?
So, like, I know this about Bumble Bees partially through reading, but also partially through personal experience, to wit: No *bleep*, there I was, merrily pealing away the top layer of soil, that which the grass had put down roots in, and what do I come across in the cold, damp soil, underneath the roots, but a Bumble Bee! And the shine doth sun, um, the Sun doth Shine upon said Bumble, warming it slightly, and it doth look up, say "no way Jose!", and burrow down through the soil some more until it can return to hibernating, for indeed, it is still far too chill for a Bumble Bee to be a-bumbling about.
Also came across a big old grub, several worms, and the knowledge that grass does surface roots, and various other plants come up from under the grass and stay behind if you are pealing away the grass. Like onions. Of which we have a-many, descendants of onions planted five plus years agone and never harvested, and some other plants which I'm not sure what they are, not aware of having seen them afore, but which are popping up all over in the wake of the unlamented Clematis and Blackberries, said viney types having held done and sorely oppressed many other plant species who are now putting forth greens and announcing to the world, "We are here!" and daring me to name them Weed, daring me to identify them as useful or non, being full healthy already and even bringing forth flowers, some of them. And the onions grow forth, quitely sending up their green tubes in some areas, and slightly different, more leeklike growths in other parts of the yard where I peeled back grass last fall whilst hunting out the Ivy which had snuck in under cover of the Clematis.
And no, I have seen no Clematis, for truly it seems to be gone, vanished, iradicated like the vile verminous viney vamp that it is, not root nor branch to be seen these several months agone. It, and the Blackberries and Ivy are gone, to appear no longer in this yard, slain by "clearcut" Mead himself, removed, banished, repudiated, evicted and exterminated, no more to annoy me with their ne'er ceasing shouts of "neener neener neener" as they creep out from yet another hiding place, gone they art!
[following a quick expedition to the back yard] Yep, still gone.
So, last fall was getting rid of stuff, this year may actually see vegetable gardening occur.
Well, enough, the focus it goeth and the writing thus becomes blurry of topic, hmm?
2009-02-26
Yet more snow... and whistling
Yep, this is a record winter. Another snowfall today, no accumulation on concrete at this elevation, but outside the main metro area there is.
Not since my mother was young have we had snow this late in the season here in Portland. Of course, in my mother's youth the casting pool in Moreland Park would freeze over enough for ice skating in April, which goes to show you how much of a climate change we've had in the last 70 years.
"Casting Pool?" I hear you ask, "What's a casting pool?" A Casting Pool is used for practising fly fishing casting. Big puppy, over 100' each side, with piers projecting into it to provide a place for the fly fisher to stand whilst practicing. Couple of yards deep, takes a lot of water to fill, and to freeze over enough for skating calls for an extended period of very cold weather. Don't know if it's been used for practicing casting in my lifetime, I have seen it used for RC model boats, and also for milk carton boat races. Clearly, when they built the park, fly fishing was much more popular than today.
And now to whistling. Finally, at 48 years of age, I've suddenly learned how to whistle, not very well mind you, but still the ability to whistle at all, and repeatedly verified over a 20 minute period so it wasn't just a fluke, well, it just made my day enough that I had to post about it! Already figured out how to whistle on the inhale as well as exhale, and to do a wolf whistle, and some controlled changing around between notes. Don't expect to hear the national anthem anytime soon. Not sure what my range of notes is just yet, and I whistle in the Soprano range, no deep notes, not that I know that anyone can whistle in deep notes.
So, there you have it, snow, history, and whistling.
Guess I'll just post this puppy now.
Not since my mother was young have we had snow this late in the season here in Portland. Of course, in my mother's youth the casting pool in Moreland Park would freeze over enough for ice skating in April, which goes to show you how much of a climate change we've had in the last 70 years.
"Casting Pool?" I hear you ask, "What's a casting pool?" A Casting Pool is used for practising fly fishing casting. Big puppy, over 100' each side, with piers projecting into it to provide a place for the fly fisher to stand whilst practicing. Couple of yards deep, takes a lot of water to fill, and to freeze over enough for skating calls for an extended period of very cold weather. Don't know if it's been used for practicing casting in my lifetime, I have seen it used for RC model boats, and also for milk carton boat races. Clearly, when they built the park, fly fishing was much more popular than today.
And now to whistling. Finally, at 48 years of age, I've suddenly learned how to whistle, not very well mind you, but still the ability to whistle at all, and repeatedly verified over a 20 minute period so it wasn't just a fluke, well, it just made my day enough that I had to post about it! Already figured out how to whistle on the inhale as well as exhale, and to do a wolf whistle, and some controlled changing around between notes. Don't expect to hear the national anthem anytime soon. Not sure what my range of notes is just yet, and I whistle in the Soprano range, no deep notes, not that I know that anyone can whistle in deep notes.
So, there you have it, snow, history, and whistling.
Guess I'll just post this puppy now.
2009-02-09
Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail
So...
Decisions, finally, have been made about the oft proposed SE light rail, or at least the first installment. trimet.org/pm for full details, will run from PSU, through OMSI, stops at 17th & Holgate and then SE Bybee & McLoughlin, various other stops finally ending in Oak Grove. Scheduled to be complete in 2015.
We're right inside the 5 minute walk radius of the 17th & Holgate stop, which TriMet's project folks see as being the most heavily impacted, the 5 minute walk radius around each stop, that is.
The one for sure thing is that property values will go up. And the demand for housing in this area will go up.
If you pull up the TriMet site and then look at their brochure about the 17th & Holgate stop, you can see our property on their aerial photo, not on page one, but on the other pages, Milwaukie Ave is the angled street running north/south and from the west toward the east as you look down the map, positioned partway between where 14th & 13th are further north and south; Mall street is one block north of Holgate, the east/west white rectangle in the SE corner of that intersection, with the really tiny white rectangle snuggled up below it, that's us, and Bill's old truck before we got it hauled away; the incredible dark green foliage in the lot to the east of the building is the blackberry, etc., brambles which I've written about clearing out.
We're grandfathered as mixed use residential/commercial, due to the various businesses which have operated out of this building over the years, and we've got a double lot, so I foresee developers being interested in this location.
Interesting times ahead, interesting times.
2009-02-08
Fear
Fear is the great disabler.
Fear requires no basis in reality, or it may have a basis so long removed that it no longer has relevance to current affairs.
Fear can control your life, preventing you from trying new things.
All of these presume that the reaction to fear is to pull in, to hide, to retreat, to entrench, to shield oneself from imagined harm.
I am far too intimately familiar with these forms of fear reactions, they have controlled me for all of my life. The most overwhelming has been the fear of the negative reaction of those whom I know and respect, in situations where the fact that I know them should show the fear to be with no basis, for the fear presupposes their being negative, judgmental, and self-centered, all of which I knew to be false images, yet still the fear would hold me back.
There are times when it is right to fear, but where possible one should strive to work through the fear to the underlying reality, and then take considered action to deal with the rational basis for the fear, to be advised by your fear but to not be mindlessly driven by your fear. Devise ways of testing that which you fear so that you can find out if it is rational to fear, and if it is, then work to define the factual dimensions of rational fear so that it may guide you, not blind you.
It is rational to fear fire, but we have learned to harness fire, answering our fear by learning about that which we fear, and through that knowledge, reducing the threat posed by fire; never eradicating the threat, for it is real, but devising safeguards such that with a healthy fear we can use fire to our benefit. Without fire, flint was as far as we could progress in tool making; with fire, we could eventually progress to building computers.
And I read over this, and fear that it is too fragmented, that too many different forms of fear are dealt with without proper exposition or transitional writing, that maybe its not perfect.
It isn't perfect, but it may spark useful thinking anyway, so I'll post it, in despite of my fear.
Fear requires no basis in reality, or it may have a basis so long removed that it no longer has relevance to current affairs.
Fear can control your life, preventing you from trying new things.
All of these presume that the reaction to fear is to pull in, to hide, to retreat, to entrench, to shield oneself from imagined harm.
I am far too intimately familiar with these forms of fear reactions, they have controlled me for all of my life. The most overwhelming has been the fear of the negative reaction of those whom I know and respect, in situations where the fact that I know them should show the fear to be with no basis, for the fear presupposes their being negative, judgmental, and self-centered, all of which I knew to be false images, yet still the fear would hold me back.
There are times when it is right to fear, but where possible one should strive to work through the fear to the underlying reality, and then take considered action to deal with the rational basis for the fear, to be advised by your fear but to not be mindlessly driven by your fear. Devise ways of testing that which you fear so that you can find out if it is rational to fear, and if it is, then work to define the factual dimensions of rational fear so that it may guide you, not blind you.
It is rational to fear fire, but we have learned to harness fire, answering our fear by learning about that which we fear, and through that knowledge, reducing the threat posed by fire; never eradicating the threat, for it is real, but devising safeguards such that with a healthy fear we can use fire to our benefit. Without fire, flint was as far as we could progress in tool making; with fire, we could eventually progress to building computers.
And I read over this, and fear that it is too fragmented, that too many different forms of fear are dealt with without proper exposition or transitional writing, that maybe its not perfect.
It isn't perfect, but it may spark useful thinking anyway, so I'll post it, in despite of my fear.
2009-02-01
Once a Librarian...
Now, over the years I've done some pretty geeky librarian things, such as assigning Dewey Decimal Classification call numbers to the non-fiction in my library, several thousand volumes worth, and ordering book jackets to protect the dust jackets, but I think I'm now starting on an übergeek undertaking, to wit, creating a bibliography for a book I'm reading. We'll see how long I keep this project up, n'est ce pas? [And as a former Spanish student, I've no clue if I either spelled or used that French phrase properly, so there, nyah!]
The book: Leonard Lee, The Complete Guide To Sharpening, The Taunton Press, Newtown, CT 1995. And yes, Leonard Lee is Founder and President of Lee Valley Tools, which right off gives him some street cred, added to by the very scholarly technique used in the research for the book. One of the things he did in researching the book was work with one of Canada's foremost electron microscopy technicians in analyzing the tools and the impact various sharpening techniques had on them, and where possible using tools from the same production run to as nearly as possible present the results of different sharpening techniques on the same tool while still having different tools to physically compare, to remove as many variables as possible from the project. In other words, the scientific method lives!
But the book lacks one thing, a bibliography. Works are mentioned as they are come across, but not in full bib format. While the first item mentioned, being a publication of The Taunton Press, is easily tracked down, the second item is a dissertation published in 1950 in Finland, and while the Author is given, I suspect that the True name of the publishing entity is not Finland Institute of Technology, but rather something akin to that in Finnish, and that, to those of you who know me, is what got me interested in making a bibliography for the work.
So, we'll see how long this obsession lasts, and how far I actually get on this project. The spreadsheet has been created, the first two items entered, and I'm about to start searching for a certain Finnish Dissertation from 1950...
The frustrating thing is that there are so many other, more practical things I should be doing, but this demonstrates precisely how irritating my disability is; I can't control what grabs my attention, and if it doesn't grab my attention I'm not able to force myself to work on it. This has resulted in short term brilliance throughout my life, followed by substandard performance once the obsession is appeased; in many classes I was doing A work up until a certain point, that point being when I'd gotten from the course what I was interested in, and then my work would plummet such that I'd come out with a B; this is how I know that my mind really does mesh with COBOL, I got an A in that class, well deserved too as I came out of it understanding the language better than the GTF teaching the course, but enough, off to Finland!
[Later...]
Well, that was easy! Searching Google under Eero Kivimaa, the sixth item was a patent application which provided the bibliographic information required. Seems he's gone on the great things, numerous patents over the years, numerous publications; good street cred.
Didn't even get to try to locate an appropriate Finnish repository and track it down that way, just searching his name was enough. Could not have done it this easily ten years ago, twenty years ago it would have been well nigh impossible without the resources of a major research library and for pay online searching. How the world has changed! Of course, properly I'll need to verify this with another source, to confirm the validity of the posted information.
The book: Leonard Lee, The Complete Guide To Sharpening, The Taunton Press, Newtown, CT 1995. And yes, Leonard Lee is Founder and President of Lee Valley Tools, which right off gives him some street cred, added to by the very scholarly technique used in the research for the book. One of the things he did in researching the book was work with one of Canada's foremost electron microscopy technicians in analyzing the tools and the impact various sharpening techniques had on them, and where possible using tools from the same production run to as nearly as possible present the results of different sharpening techniques on the same tool while still having different tools to physically compare, to remove as many variables as possible from the project. In other words, the scientific method lives!
But the book lacks one thing, a bibliography. Works are mentioned as they are come across, but not in full bib format. While the first item mentioned, being a publication of The Taunton Press, is easily tracked down, the second item is a dissertation published in 1950 in Finland, and while the Author is given, I suspect that the True name of the publishing entity is not Finland Institute of Technology, but rather something akin to that in Finnish, and that, to those of you who know me, is what got me interested in making a bibliography for the work.
So, we'll see how long this obsession lasts, and how far I actually get on this project. The spreadsheet has been created, the first two items entered, and I'm about to start searching for a certain Finnish Dissertation from 1950...
The frustrating thing is that there are so many other, more practical things I should be doing, but this demonstrates precisely how irritating my disability is; I can't control what grabs my attention, and if it doesn't grab my attention I'm not able to force myself to work on it. This has resulted in short term brilliance throughout my life, followed by substandard performance once the obsession is appeased; in many classes I was doing A work up until a certain point, that point being when I'd gotten from the course what I was interested in, and then my work would plummet such that I'd come out with a B; this is how I know that my mind really does mesh with COBOL, I got an A in that class, well deserved too as I came out of it understanding the language better than the GTF teaching the course, but enough, off to Finland!
[Later...]
Well, that was easy! Searching Google under Eero Kivimaa, the sixth item was a patent application which provided the bibliographic information required. Seems he's gone on the great things, numerous patents over the years, numerous publications; good street cred.
Didn't even get to try to locate an appropriate Finnish repository and track it down that way, just searching his name was enough. Could not have done it this easily ten years ago, twenty years ago it would have been well nigh impossible without the resources of a major research library and for pay online searching. How the world has changed! Of course, properly I'll need to verify this with another source, to confirm the validity of the posted information.
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