4 August 09
Watermelons Everywhere
Part of the trouble with growing things like watermelons is that each plant only produces one or two (unlike butternut squashes, which are breeding faster than the rabbits that live in the ground under them), you plant them at the start of the season, they take up loads of room (though nowhere near as much as our one Hubbard squash, which is by now halfway to Dixon), and then they all ripen at once.
You can store ordinary melons after they’ve been picked for quite a while. But watermelons are best eaten, like corn, shortly after they’ve been picked.
One of the long grays burst open on Saturday. Before it became food for ground squirrels (one is pictured above, eating its way through a watermelon bowl) and ants, we picked it and took it over to a friend’s for dessert. More watermelons are looming in our immediate future….
2 August 09
Aerial Mayhem
At eight this morning all chaos was going on overhead. First the whooossh of the propane burner of a balloon floating nearby, and then the persistent buzzing of motorized paragliders. I looked outside — there were at least three balloons in the neighborhood, with a couple of paragliders zooming around to inspect. (The paragliders take off from southeast of Davis, the balloons launch from somewhere near Woodland.) One of the balloons then landed right by the levee to the north of the house, and the several vans of the balloon ground crew were parked by the side of the road, the crew running out to take down the balloon. I kept the cats inside until the mayhem subsided.
All we needed to add to the scene was a dragon and the confusion would be total.
28 July 09
Demiamputation
The nectarine tree, burdened by fruit, cracks in half. A Nuttall’s woodpecker drills into not-quite-ripe fruit. The lavender is crushed.
(Submitted for the 38th Festival of the Trees.)
24 July 09
Minding The Field
Oblivious to the approaching balloons, Charlie keeps the field safe from the ravages of the gophers.
18 July 09
Spinning
I spent the day at Meridian Jacobs farm near Dixon today, learning how to spin on a wheel. I had a blast and spun lots of yarn and even plied some. Hoping to do a lot more tomorrow. The instructor lent me a wheel to bring home but I haven’t done much tonight, I’m tired.
Charlie’s tired too.
We carded, learned to draw out the fibers from the roving or batt, learned how to spin them tightly and let the spin travel up the drawing-out. I tried two different wheels and hope to try a third tomorrow. The hardest part is to spin a consistent width, and especially to keep that small. I am doing better with this next round and will try and post a photo of the finished product tomorrow. At right is the first attempt. I know it looks like a giant squid. Hoping for better…
15 July 09
East College
I’m back from my vacation to Brunswick, Maine and Greencastle, Indiana. Here’s a sketch of East College at DePauw University in Greencastle. The cornerstone of the building was laid down in 1870.
9 July 09
Two Weeks
It’s been a fortnight since I arrived in Maine. I didn’t quite make it to mum’s hospital the night I arrived, the plane was delayed, but got in the following morning as early as possible, to find her alert despite narcotics, positive, and with various tubal protrusions.
Tonight, she had a glass of Coppola claret with me, here at home, picking up pens she’s dropped off the floor with a miraculous contraption known as a “grabber” and laughing.
There are other journeys ahead, but I think we’re ready to take them. The knowledge of this, in itself, was plenty reason to come. There have been many others, like making sweet potato ravioli with Simon (aged 8) last night, the song of the wood thrush in the morning, the feeling of rain on my face. Small miracles.
I am ready to go home and back to the drought of California and fiscal emergency and two purring cats. See you back there.
4 July 09
Trying Not To Kill The Peppers
I’ve been looking after the garden while Pica is in Maine. Most of the squashes seem happy (it’s pretty hard to do in a zucchini) and I have been faithfully watering the peppers bed and the buckwheat ground cover that Pica put in alongside the ditch. Last weekend it was very hot, but this week it has been cooling down in the evenings with a good Delta breeze setting up. I think the plants have been happier as a result.
28 June 09
Wet and Humid
I’m in Maine, where my mother is recovering from surgery. Posts will be sporadic from here so I’m going to leave you in the hands of Numenius for a while.
Singing, now, outside this window, are birds I used to know well and which I now need to really pay attention to identify. They include the Maine dialect of song sparrow, a winter wren, thrasher — I’ll try and sketch some for Bird by Bird as I get more time. A pair of ospreys was flying over the trees outside the hospital window yesterday…
24 June 09
Consequences 13
“This was only one solution for the present,” Ellers sniped.
McMason fidgeted. He knew all the funding for the Institute for Computational
History was at stake here.
“But, look at the correlations,” he replied. “The model correctly predicted that the Russians would move into South Ossetia during the time of the Beijing Olympics, and that Chris Hoy would be the first Brit to win three golds at the Games in a hundred years.”
“Did it predict he would be knighted for his efforts?”
“Uh, no…”
“Lookit, how many free parameters does your model have?”
“Five hundred and sixty-seven.”
“And I probably can tweak any ten of them and come up with different solutions giving Hoy and Ossetia. Mr. McMason, your model is underdetermined. To say the least.”
“Ms. Ellers, I just want to remind you of the opportunity you have here. Here is
what the model predicts. The Azerbaijanis will up the rate of water injection in the Baku fields. Overly so, it turns out. In three years, this will induce a massive earthquake just off the coast of Baku. That, the resulting tsunami, and the fires will devastate the oil and gas infrastructure, but more importantly cause a cultural phase transition.”
“Howzzat?”
McMason grew animated. “Fire! In a land with a small but vibrant Zoroastrian community. It won’t be so small after that. People convert in droves. The religious movement spreads south, into Iran…”
Ellers sighed. She now knew the butterfly effect could produce a loon in her office.
(This was the thirteenth post in an online game of Consequences. The series started at Hydragenic. The previous post was at Ivy is here, and the next post shall appear soon at Velveteen Rabbi.)