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Brad's Blog
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May 2
Frost last night, frost for the next two nights predicted.
In the spring, frost seems less dire than the fall, when you know it's
the last chance for the tomatoes... In fact, everything seems less
dire in the spring, except perhaps the whine of mosquitoes (haven't heard
any yet).
I've made contact with a Spokane doumbek (Middle eastern
drum) player interested in expanding his musical experience, and may soon
expand my own horizons as well. Most of the music I make is not traditionally
played with percussion, but the times I've played with hand drums have
been fun...
May 3
May 4
I went back to the beaver area today, but there were
none. There was a boatload of people fishing nearby that might have been
the reason. I also went back to take another picture of my favorite
wildflower (since it's delicate and scarce). It always grows in the
deep woods where it's shaded. Any picture I take could always be
better, but this one from today is nice:
May 5
I glazed two kilnloads of pots today, and was hoping
to go get 3000 lbs of clay and glaze materials, but the truck didn't arrive
on time. There's still some question if the load made it on the truck,
so I'll await Monday eagerly, since I've only 50 lbs of clay left, which
lasts me about an hour on the wheel...
May 8
A classic N. Idaho spring day today--it started off all
cloudy, went to clear, then puffy clouds, at which point I drove off to
Sandpoint to get 3000 lbs. of clay, figuring it wouldn't rain today.
It's a sign of how recovered I am that I loaded the whole 3000 lbs. into
my van and trailer singlehanded. (At home my son helped get it in
the pottery). Anyway I was talking about a classic N. Idaho spring
day. It includes most of the basic elements of weather--those already
mentioned plus rain, snow, and hail. Okay, we didn't have any hail,
but a bit of wet snow on the windshield while driving back with the clay.
Also today my wife started on the new sales patio area--making
the area smooth before laying bricks in the sand to make a cobblestone
effect...
May 9
While baking some peanut butter cookies, I thought I'd
reflect on how photos can lie. I took this photo last week, of a
house about a block from ours in Spirit Lake. Wow, what an idyllic
location, you might think, a lone quaint house in the woods by the
mountains. The thing is, I took this photo from a ridge a mile away
using the wonderful telephoto lense which allows me to photograph birds
and other wildlife (far better than I can actually see them, in fact.)
This ridge, with a telescope, is the only place near the city of Spirit
Lake where you could see these mountains, which are 30 or more miles away...
If all the trees were stripped away, some of the many houses which you
can't see in the photo might have the mountain view... (The taller
trees, on the right edge in back, are actually on our property.)
What got me thinking about this is how I often have to
screen out the detritus of our society when photographing nature.
A bird might perch near a plastic bag stuck in a tree limb, or all kinds
of garbage might be floating in the lovely lake scene... There's
a major mining superfund site nearby which attracts migrating cranes, and
if they stop to feed much there they may never make the whole journey.
But a photo of them just says, "beautiful birds."
But if I only took pictures of trashed out campsites
and garbage in streams, even I wouldn't want to look at them. We
all prefer the lovely lies...
May 10
May 11
I finished the hardwood floor at the new house today.
Althea's working on the brick patio to expand the sales area... I
also delivered 250 mugs a camp had ordered, and fired another glaze kiln.
And everywhere I went today I wished I'd brought my camera.
A yellow warbler and rufous towhee were in the new house yard when I went
to move a sprinkler. Spring is bursting out all over...
May 12
Meanwhile, in Australia, Linda Lander writes:
G'Day Brad,
I like reading about the natural world in your part of
the world, we are the opposite to your season here. My apricot tree is
losing its leaves and is a pretty yellow, the columbine seeds my friend
gave me are shooting nicely, they are special because she cross pollinated
them herself by hand and came up with something different to what you could
buy in the shops but they have stayed true in the next generation of seeds.
I had to pick my capsicums before the frost starts in earnest and kills
off the bushes; and the pumpkins are looking good, most of them should
be mature enough to use when the frost kills off the plants.The temperature
here was min 02 and max 17 today so its getting pretty cold. On a cold
day the temps might be -4 to 12 celcius in the coldest part of winter.So
we have a longer growing season than you do if we can get the rain
we need. The drought I said before, that has been here for the last 5 years
looked like easing up this year but it does not look like it will now as
we have had about a 1/4 of our normal rainfall for this time of the year.
I've just been up to the north of our state where it
is green and lush but they are complaining about being dry too, even though
they had floods a few months ago. They have not seen what its like around
here. The highlight of the trip for me was visiting national parks and
seeing dolphins playing around with 2 blokes on surf boards and surfing
in the waves along the beach. I think there was about 8 of them. in the
shallow water only about 30 foot from shore. I also found some soft sea
sponges to bring home and cuttle fish for my cockie (cockatiel), she loves
to chew them up and its good for their beaks. My daughter also had
me picking out tiny shells for her to put in her artworks. At the Sydney
beaches they have signs up not to take shells from the beach or be fined.
Being a farming area we don't have a great deal of wildlife
around here. There is eastern grey kangaroos which come to the edges of
town , mostly seen on early foggy mornings and we have blue tongue and
bearded dragons which are my favourites and geckos and skinks of different
kinds. We have quite a few birds, though, around here. Some of the native
birds around here are top knot pigeons and peaceful doves, magpies and
currawongs, finches and lovely little wrens and willy wag tails, there
are also kookaburras, rosellas and green grass parrots, sulpur crested
cockatoos and galahs that get in the almond trees at first light and strip
them and wake us up. I love the Galahs they are the flying acrobats of
the bird world and when they, walk, run, bob along the ground they are
really comical.We have one that someone gave us they did not want anymore.
His name is cheeky. It loves my husband and climbs all over him but
he's also naughty and often bites hard without warning. I wanted to let
him out because I think he would get with the wild galahs and they would
teach him to live in the wild but Pete wouldn't let me. My dad used to
call them officer birds, being from an army background, a galah is also
slang for a silly or stupid person.
(Brad's note: For not having a great deal of
wildlife, I'd love to see any of those...)
May 13
It frosted last night. Today I saw some of the
first corn sticking up. So I'm hoping that was the last frost.
I also transplanted out about 60 brassicas (cabbage family) today in the
garden. They're frost hardy.
Considering one of our cars has over 200,000 miles, we've
had pretty good luck with them being reliable. Until now... The van
which we were recently given (but had to pay for a transmission overhaul)
had the transmission go out yesterday (hopefully covered by warranty).
Our older van developed a bad wheel bearing, and is awaiting repair locally.
Our remaining functional car is scheduled to have the air conditioning
replaced on Monday in a nearby town (not that the air conditioning is essential,
but without doing something some belts were wearing on one another...
So we asked to borrow our relatives' car, but we'll need to get it in Spokane
after the time the other car is scheduled for service. So we'll probably
have to borrow a second car to get the first borrowed car, so we have a
car to get the third car being repaired...
Then assuming the air conditioning is fixed by Wednesday,
my wife is driving across the country (2700 miles each way) later this
week. If I were an oracle studying the entrails, I'd say the auspices
are not auguring well... And if I were reading the last sentence,
I'd say oracles use weird words...
May 14
May 15
We spent most of the morning jockeying cars to their various repair facilities. But I stopped at Falls Park in Post Falls and saw cliff swallows building nests in the canyon, a marmot in the rocks, and this yellow warbler, which seems poised to bugle, in the yet to leaf out foliage of a locust tree. It only got to 80 degrees here today, but that was hot enough, especially since one repair person talked us out of getting the air conditioning replaced... Most cars today are not designed with adequate vents for cooling without the AC...
May 16
Some of my favorite juvenile fiction stories are the
Homer Price stories by Robert McCloskey. Tall tales set in Centerburg,
Ohio, the illustrations perfectly match the tone of the text. One
of the stories is about Miss Terwilliger competing in a ball of string
competition with two suitors, in which it is presumed the winner having
the longest yarn skein shall have her as the prize. Miss Terwilliger
wins the contest, by the crafty solution of sneakily unraveling the bottom
hem of her knit dress to make hers slightly longer than theirs.
The reason I mention this is that we're adding a brick
patio in front for a sales area, and in order to have enough bricks to
finish it, we were "robbing" them from an old patio in back, rather like
Miss Terwilliger. The old patio had gotten uneven from tree roots
pushing up on it. The new patio is built on over a foot of sand and
gravel, so hopefully tree roots won't be a problem for a long time...
We didn't quite finish the patio yet, but not for lack
of bricks...
May 17
A local potter put a notice on Craigslist for free clay.
Since it was the exact type of clay I use, I went and got it today--about
400 lbs of sloppy scrap clay. 300 lbs was in a large plastic garbage
can. This is a typical way potters put off recycling clay--waiting
till a large garbage can is full of wet scraps. It's also unpleasant
to have to dig the sloppy clay out all the way to the bottom. That's
one of the reasons why I switched to using 5 gallon buckets. The
other reason is that small buckets, besides being a lot more portable,
can have the clay at all stages, whether as dried bits, or soaking covered
with water, or drying out to a consistency where it can be spread on boards
for drying. (I know I describe my recycling on my pottery
tips page, if you're interested).
With the temperature in the high 80's clay is drying
rapidly. My son had to cancel a trip to hike and ski at Schweitzer,
since a mudslide took out the bottom of one of the condo developments in
the area where he would usually drive to hike in...
May 18
The wind is blowing for the first time in a week, marking
the beginning breakup of our record heat.
About 10 years ago I made up a tune based on the chickadee's
two note mating call. Today I figured out I could make a video combining
the original call with the music and some of my bird pictures. So
it's posted at this
link.
My wife drove over 800 miles today, to central South
Dakota, in 90 degree heat, with no air conditioning (I think using wet
towels to keep cool.) She said she was all going well.
May 19
The earth is like a clock, with every part clicking away
the seconds... I realized this today as I saw the tulips all faded,
the wildflowers changing to phlox from balsam root, the apple blossoms
already dropping from full bloom earlier this week. Those of us who
live with the seasons feel the clock's tick more than in the more static
environment of the always summer, but I don't doubt it happens there as
well... Now is also the moment of the lilac's blossom.
Only the locust trees have yet to check in with their leaves. I'm
already accustomed to seeing green everywhere I look, so the hour of Spring
is nearly past.
All this waxing ebullient on the seasons just means another
day of work and play went by, and is gone forever, and nothing more exciting
happened than the minute changes observable to the observant...
May 20
We got 3/4 inch of rain today, in typical N. Idaho spring
fashion--downpours followed by brief periods of sunshine... In the
respites I transplanted 30 tomato plants, leaving the greenhouse with only
a few test subjects to try surviving the summer. Between the earlier
heat and the several weeks without rain, things were beginning to look
droopy, so I'm happy for the rain.
May 21
May 22
A blah day, with the high point a brief shower that yielded
a quarter inch of rain, good for the seeds I planted yesterday. I
also started attacking the grass plot/corn patch. So here's a nice photo,
from the other day, of wild phlox..
May 23
May 24
Earlier today I was hoeing one of our gardens and thinking
about how I can't remember ever seeing my wife hoe in the garden, only
weed by hand. I was feeling a bit haughty, having been a professional
hoer in my early days, working summers at the Iowa State University Agronomy
farm.
So later I was working on converting a 20 foot diameter
circular patch of weeds into a corn patch.
This patch of weeds started as a hawkweed infestation,
hawkweed being a particularly spreadable invasive weed, which I controlled
last year by covering with newspaper and a thick layer of manure, and planting
it to flax (reminding me of the old days in S. Dakota, seeing flax fields
on the way to our lake cabin). I'm still watching like a hawk for
hawkweed, which is still popping up in places in the yard...
Meanwhile, last fall the wild grass that seems to grow
everywhere you don't want it, by sending out tons of underground runners,
took over the patch and made it back into turf. (I've never known
what this grass is called, but a neighbor yesterday referred to it as quackgrass,
and a quick Google confirms this is the beast).
Because this grass puts out all the underground runners,
hoeing it just upsets it and makes it mad, so the best way to remove it
is to dig it up by the shovelful and shake the dirt loose, and remove the
grass clump to nether regions (wooden stakes or silver bullets recommended)...
I've been spending a couple hours a day this week, shoveling up row after
row of the turf, rather like eating rows off a cob of corn, which is of
course the intended result. Since it's so tediously slow doing this,
I have way too much time to reflect on this activity. Besides the
"cob of corn" analogy, I thought about how, when it's done, with luck we'll
get about 100 ears of corn out of the patch, assuming I get it planted
this week. All farmers know if you wait to plant too long, you may
lose the whole crop to early frost... Although home grown fresh sweet
corn is priceless, commercial sweet corn is usually about 4 for a
dollar around here, so you could figure the crop value at $25.00.
It's looking like 10 hours of labor, at least, so the return is $2.50 an
hour, about what I was paid for hoeing when I started my illustrious career.
Looked at another way, gardening is a pastime, and a
means to exercise, of which I've been getting a good bit without buying
a fitness club membership.
The other thing I finally figured out is anybody who
spends 10 hours clearing turf by hand cannot look down on their spouse
who doesn't use a hoe when weeding...
May 25
The corn patch is planted--nearly 300 seeds, so it may
produce more than a hundred ears, but the chickens, so to speak, are not
yet hatched. And this evening it is raining, which is always nice
when you want seeds to germinate... Besides that, there's nothing
left to do but water, weed, pick, preserve, and enjoy summer. Sounds
like a plan...
May 26
I forgot to get the eggs yesterday. There are two
nests the six hens use, so I took the eggs from the empty nest and waited
for the speckled hen to leave the other nest. She didn't. Just
by forgetting to get the eggs for one day, it felt like enough eggs to
her (9), that she went broody and kept sitting. Since the eggs aren't
fertile, and even if they were we don't want more chickens currently, I
unburdened her and she can return to eating and laying. Nature is
pretty amazing. We take advantage of built in responses of bees,
cows, and hens to make them produce an excess for us. But in return
each of them requires nurturing on our part. The chickens cluck suggestively
whenever I walk by. Suggestive, as in, "how about some more food,
big boy..."
May 27
The big question tonight is, will it frost? In
the mountains to the east of us up to 18 inches of snow is predicted tonight...
I covered up a good share of the tomatoes and squash
hills, but not all. To go from record heat to record cold in a week
is typical of Idaho springs--after all--normal is just the average of the
wildly erratic... It only needs to drop 13 degrees by morning to
kill two plantings of corn and damage the cherry crop. Frost in the
Spring is a more depressing possibility than the first frosts of fall,
which seem appropriate, if a bit triste. The low temperature is partially
dependent on whether the clouds clear tonight, which allows greater cooling...
Tune in tomorrow for the exciting results...
May 28
The clouds held, so there was no frost. It's not
expected to be cold enough to freeze tonight, and I think that 18 inches
of snow they predicted must've evaporated en route...
Meanwhile my wife is stuck in Murdo, South Dakota with
a dead alternator. On account of the holiday Monday, it might be
two days before she's rolling again. She heard the funny noise there
while gassing up, and a mechanic was nearby, or she might have been stuck
out in the long ways to nowhere...
I may have mentioned we've made this trip back and forth
to Minnesota countless times. I myself have broken down in Murdo,
but it was only a loose screw in the distributor so I didn't have to take
in the local amenities... Nearly every town on the route evokes memories
of blown tires, overheated engines, and draining batteries.
On this trip she also had to replace the radiator and
the power steering. It was a good car 16 years ago when it
was new... And it's getting newer every day with the added parts...
That reminds me one of our other cars is still in for
a replacement transmission, and the other needs complete brake service.
It's almost as expensive to fix them as to drive them nowadays...
May 29
I bicycled down to the lake and hiked the ridge for a bit of exercise today. There's a new geese family that hangs around by this old boat (truth be told) filled with artificial flowers. I haven't seen any rednecked grebes this year, which are a bit more unusual than geese. Sometimes their ducklings catch a ride on a parent's back.
May 30
My wife is due in around 2 a.m. She certainly received
great car service in Murdo, S. Dakota. On Memorial Day, the mechanic
even went to the home of the parts store owner to try to locate an alternator,
but to no avail. So then the first thing this morning he came and
picked up the car, fixed it, and brought it back to the motel...
I wish we had such good service locally...
Also this evening I saw my first Mountain Lady Slipper orchids, but didn't get a good photo, so plan to return tomorrow. In identifying it, the book said finding these flowers will make one's day. Indeed it did...
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