Helen Castor...

Watching Medieval Lives Birth, Marriage, Death on Youtube...and *seriously* crushing on Helen Castor right now!

Garden Update

Taters are looking good; setting flowers so they should be making tubers too! Some of the hybrid toms were big enough they needed to be strung up to keep from running horizontally.


Summer squash; need to replant a few mounds this evening that failed to come up (or were eaten...)


Onions are simply looking spectacular! The peas and interplanted cabbage on the left however is noticeably smaller than the right side :shrug:


Lettuce


The Asparagus needed to be strung up, too.


6/16: Planted sunflowers...we'll see how they do this late!

6/17:  Started picking snap peas in the AM on the way down the driveway to eat at work.

Time begain with Man...

I was reading Moby Dick this morning, when this line struck me:

When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebrae, all characterized by partial resemblances to the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to that wondrous period, [before] time itself can be said to have begun; for time began with man.

Moby Dick was published in 1851; for reference Origin of Species in 1859.

This was a time in the U.S. that the northern protestant traditions were grappling with how to deal with advancements in science. They would go towards a philosophy of the Bible is allegory, in contrast to southern protestant traditions which double-downed on the Bible being literal.

This passage bemused me for the way it split the difference -- a 6,000 year old earth could well be literally true, if one presumed time (and thus the ability to measure in years) only began with Adam. Dinosaurs, and mega-whales of the past, existed before man but in a timeless age.

There was also a significant "pre-Adamite" philosophy of the time regarding the races. Against the increasing power of the Abolitionists (themselves largely organized by northern tradition churches, especially the Congregationalist and their Unitarian splinter) and the context of "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," that while Adam was the first *man*, other races had been created before him and thus only whites were descendants of the first man himself.

The Descent of Man would come out in 1871, but Darwin was not firing the first salvo in the debate with that book -- rather Descent was the culmination of the debate raging in social, political, religious, and scientific circles of the first two-thirds of the 19th century.

If time did not start with the creation of Adam, but man evolved, then time itself must trace itself back through the whole sequence of events that led to the birth of that first man.

Pepperoni & Green Bean Pizza

That actually came out pretty good! Got 8 pints of canned beans from last year to use up before this year's crop comes in.

Tiling and Salading...

Had some broken tiles I took out and replaced today.

Many that were just cracked are actually pretty well set in, so I ended up after working to break a few of them out to just replace ones actually missing parts. I'd probably crack even more tiles breaking out broken ones!





For dinner, I made an "American - Mediterranean Fusion" -- my garden lettuce, with apples, cucumber, grapes, olives, croutons, feta cheese, and an oil and vinegar dressing.

Garden Update...

Taters are looking great!


And so are the onions!


Met a guy at the town dump dumping his grass clippings...he dumps them at my place now and I then mulch the garden with them :) It'll be awesome if this keeps up all summer!

You might be a bachelor if...

You can take a picture with a crockpot and a cordless drill charger in it.

Corn chowder :)

Painted the Bedroom

Eddie Bauer "Lakeside Cottage Collection"
Walls: "Summer Walls"
Trim: "Sunwash Trim"

Ferdinand and Marie Doyen

My grandfather's parents -- Fernand & Marie Doyen:


And them with Serge & Raymond back in New York:


Clearly I inherited my receding hairline from his side of the family, but the rocking moustache is on a gene I didn't get :(

First lettuce of 2014

First lettuce, with raisins and an oil and vinegar dressing. Left over steak and cottage cheese. Had some strawberries to use up, so I'm trying the infuser tube in the pitcher too.

Jordan's Widow Maker...

Jordan had a tree break off at the top, ironically just after he had a tree service in to remove a tree endangering the house.


The broken top was nestled in the branches of a maple, but was confident I could take the tree down safely:


I used the "stick method" (an arm long stick held at arms length at 90 degrees) to determine the height of the tree, so I knew it would fall well clear of the service lines to the house (the wedge on the ground is the point I wanted to land the top). There was a lamp pole in the way though...


So we dug up the lamp pole, took the globe and other fragile stuff off the top, and laid it down with logs on the side:


I used my pole saw to cut off the lower limbs, which we stacked along with some other brush over the lamp pole:


A couple branches I left longer stubs, so I could toss over a sand bag and haul my tow straps. I was concerned the widow maker might keep the tree from falling normally, and I didn't want to be mucking under there with wedges to force the tree over. So I rigged up the tow straps and chains to a come-a-long to a tree stump in the yard. There was no tension on the tree when I cut it -- after tensioning the system to make sure everything was tight with no extra slack, I loosened it a smidge so the tree wasn't being pulled on.


I planned to do the bulk of the pulling, if needed, with my wire rope come-a-long. My web come-a-long was also rigged up so I could use it to hold tension if I needed to reset the wire rope one during the pull. I was pretty sure the tree would come over as expected, but if needed you couldn't have setup the come-a-long system safely after making the face and back cuts so it needed to be done first.


At the point in my back cut I began to consider if I should set a wedge, it became clear the tree was going over on it's own. I looked how the widow maker was moving, liked what I saw, and just gunned the saw while watching the widow maker and one foot ready to jump off into an escape run if needed. Couldn't have asked for it to go better.


My height estimate was perfect, my aim not so. I'm going to attribute half the error to not quite getting the face cut aligned right (I could've taken a minute more and aligned it just a bit better, and double checked the off side of the cut), and half of it to not compensating for the pull the widow maker exerted (which could've done by leaving a fatter hinge opposite it as I made the back cut, but it wasn't something I thought of till after).




Not my prettiest stump, not the worst. You could see the effect of the side pull from the widow maker with the trunk pulled off the stump a bit towards the widow maker side.

Memorial Day Weekend Garden Update

Saturday:

Weeded.

Planted beans (green and yellow), summer squash, and winter squash.
Had something pull up about 18 plants -- didn't eat them, just pull up and leave them. I seemed to save them in time. Sunday morning found one more, not sure if I missed it before or not.

Hauled lots of grass from the dump, plus I met a guy dumping a truck load of bags full of grass who offered to come over and dump them at my place :) Hopefully he'll make regular drop offs this summer!

Cheesy Asparagus and Flounder, with Strawberries.

Was based on a Facebook post by Janet about Aunt Eleanor making asparagus with cheese (she uses cheddar soup):

Garden Update

Tomato, Eggplant, and Sweet Pepper six-packs went in today. Potatoes got their first hilling.



My kale and lettuce from seed is still quite small (so need to finish the cold frame for next spring!) so I sprung for some six packs of those too as a supplement:


Onions are looking absolutely fabulous!


Prepped the bed for the beans along the fence. Later this week or next I'll plant the bean and squash seeds.

Not exactly my skinny jeans but...

Well, the couple year old pair of jeans I was using for yard work finally blew out a seam from overwork yesterday.

Went into a bureau drawer and pulled out an older pair -- just a smidge tight, enough if buying new I might bump up a size to be safe, by they fit. The pair that finally wore out were 54/30. The ones I'm wearing right now, 50/30.

Edited to add: And I tore a massive rip in them. I'm going to have to check the mower, I'm wondering if there is something sharp by the seat I'm catching the pants on?!

About flirting...

A mid-May picture dump...

I'm in the process of a garage re-organization. I rolled Papu's old work bench out, painted it with Rustoleum (brush on, not can...well spray can for the vise), got it back in and put an exercise mat on top to help protect it.


Didn't that little bread come out great? Remembered to mix in Carraway seed this time, 2 cups bread flour, 1 cup rye.


Vegetarian dinner -- my asparagus.


The Tulips I bought last May down in North Stonington:


And I went and got some more (also stopped at Agway for some more plants; I bought my main batch of Tomatoes at a little stand on the Pomfret/Putnam town line; looks like the person I went to last year in Plainfield is no longer starting their own :( )


Made a rhubarb-strawberry crumble. I think the sauce I did a real good job on -- cooking it on low-medium on the stove top let me use a sieve to drain out the water so there was no need for thickening. I think cooked a little more and drained like that it will make great pie filling.




Before the topping...I managed to eat half of that last night. Unfortunately I remembered this morning Rhubarb is a great laxative :D