Trying to take care of my little piece of the planet
When I started all this a couple of years ago, I came clean with the concept that one purpose of this blog was simply to help me keep track of stuff. So after it took me a couple of hours this past snowy weekend to track down some orchard records of what varieties I planted [...]
Posted on February 2nd, 2010 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Gardening | 3 Comments »
Over the last thirty years, I remember a number of early December snowfalls; pretty serious combinations of rain moving up from the Gulf and cold air sliding down from the Arctic during the first few days of this month. Then, for whatever reason, we’d have pretty quiet weather until the second half of January at [...]
Posted on December 5th, 2009 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Gardening | No Comments »
A few minutes ago when I checked the rain gauge we’d picked up four inches from Tropical Storm Ida, and we filled the 5000 gallon tanks to overflowing several hours ago, probably about noon. So, last night’s filter tweaking was in plenty of time. As they say, ‘when it rains, it ….’ Well, you know. [...]
Posted on November 11th, 2009 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Gardening | No Comments »
This is Fall Break week at the university, which means that my work schedule is more flexible than usual. So, since today was supposed to include nice weather, I planned on taking the day off to work outside. And gorgeous it was: sunny and chilly this morning gave way to mid seventies by sunset. Perfect [...]
Posted on October 21st, 2009 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Gardening, Meat, Eggs, etc. | 5 Comments »
In a comment on my previous post, Alan suggested that I return to talking about microbes (rather than welding or beer-brewing). So, in an attempt to be a responsive blogger, here goes:
Turns out that the Center for Science in the Public Interest today released its “Ten Riskiest Foods List“. The list is generated based on [...]
Posted on October 6th, 2009 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Gardening, Meat, Eggs, etc. | 7 Comments »
Apologies to a former high school student of mine for the title of this post, since it’s a takeoff on his satirical column entitled: “My New Filing System is Unstoppable“. Warning: his cartoons are replete with F-bombs and not for the sensitive or politically correct. Some of his other work routinely appears in Rolling Stone, [...]
Posted on July 27th, 2009 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Gardening | 4 Comments »
I’m enjoying a day off, helping to get the place ready for the arrival of my out-of-state brother for a couple of days. But for those of you chained to desks in the city, here are a couple of life in the country shots.
These are a couple of the many honeybees that are working the [...]
Posted on July 23rd, 2009 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Gardening | 2 Comments »
Sometime last summer, we were watching a show on public television about a man named Bill Best and the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center. His mission was to collect and preserve the numerous varieties of vegetables grown in the valleys around Haywood County, NC. His particular concern was a type of pole bean known as [...]
Posted on July 16th, 2009 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Gardening | 12 Comments »
After the last couple of years, we both agreed that this year the garden would be smaller. We lied.
Our best intentions were thwarted by giving in to the urge to try something new (without substantially cutting back on the old). This year the ‘new’ was potatoes, more sunflowers, buckwheat as a cover crop, watermelons and [...]
Posted on July 15th, 2009 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Gardening | 6 Comments »
A wonderfully informative and nostalgic post on compost on ‘Milkweed Diaries’. We’ve been worm composting for years and I recently harvested the finished product below.
Based on what goes into our compost bin, I can only assume that caffeine and capsaicin are OK for worms. Come to think of it. I’ve never seen them sleep……
Posted on November 7th, 2008 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Books/Movies/Podcasts, etc., Gardening | 4 Comments »