Sidetracked Charley

My digital indoor/outdoor thermometer says it is 41 F outside predawn. The low overnight was 36 F.  An old fashioned thermometer in the greenhouse says it is 33 F. It is June 9th.  It is very difficult to depend on the survival of my food source for the summer.  I began the challenge of gardening at 8250 feet altitude because I did not like iceberg lettuce and that was all the local store carried. I persist in gardening because of e coli and other persistent problems in food sources. In the United States you could once count on safe food. I grew up certain about water sources and safe food. If you went to Mexico or Cozumel you should not drink the water but here regardless of where you were in the country you could drink the water. Then there is Flint, Michigan. And soon a lot of other places because Trump repealed the clean water act. And clean air. In the mountain west we only had to worry about where the US stored its nuclear waste. Too much of it is in New Mex...

How can the god of the New Testament of the Bible allow mass shootings of innocent people in a municipal building in Virginia or a high school in Florida or a concert in Las Vegas? The list of his errors in judgment is long. Remember the Oh, God movies where the little girl asks if he was so smart why did he make the seed of the avocado so large? Or Judas's closing number in Jesus Christ Superstar, "Why did you choose such a backward age or such a strange place?" Oddly I get the floods, and the swarms of tornadoes. And accidents happen. All are subject to the natural order. But why lying pastors just after your money? Why  Christians Sessions or Pence or Graham or Trump? Why does evil triumph over good again and again and again? I just want to know. Frankly, in this day an age I see more evidence of a Zoroastrian God.  Maybe that is why those true believers  fight so hard to not die and go to their reward. Or punishment. Like why if Trump is innocent does he fig...

Growing up in Albuquerque I came to expect roses for my birthday as Mother's rose garden was usually in full bloom. I loved a yellow one in particular. This year in the high country I will be lucky if it doesn't snow. Still the lettuce in my green house is good. The hollyhocks bit the dust and the poppies are not coming back up. The winter was just too cold and wet. But the sunflower seeds are planted and if BoBear does not get through my security measures and dig up the flower beds there will be something blooming this summer - later this summer. There always seems to be changes around my birthday. This year it is an empty rental unit. But the tenant is leaving me a queen sized bed, a white leather couch, and a small kitchen table. The beginnings of a guest house for visiting friends, or if the world continues along the same bath, fleeing friends. With Dog Gone Park providing income I think I can do without the rent. I have before. And if art sales pick up I can do imp...

There was a television show of the same era as the original Twilight Zone I used to watch. The basic theme was an event in each episode which changed drastically the direction of the characters and the plot. I became obsessed with defining those events in my past. I had some big ones. There was my mother's breast cancer, the art teacher coming after me with mat knife and then inviting me into he storage room for me to apologize, and being struck by a skier while teaching. But not all turning points in our life are so clearly defined. Sometimes we continue on our planned route without realizing we must have taken a turn because this is not where we thought we would be. As my sister would say in our off road adventures, "Not lost but just unsure of how to get back to where we started." To which I would ask, "Is that what we want to do? Go back?" It rarely was. We sort of enjoyed going beyond the limits of the GPS. Note: in the mountain west that is easier ...

During the days of the Black Death women survived to a greater percentage then men. Theories abound as to why. I hod with the men never do as they are told theory. They just didn't drink the herbal tea their witch wives told them they should. The end result was more surviving wives ended up in control of property the Catholic church wanted. And so was born the Spanish Inquisition, which in truth was everywhere in Europe and not just Spain. The church in all its evil maleness came up with a plan to get the property and put women firmly back where they belonged: under the control of their male masters. They promptly declared all surviving females of the black death as witches and offered to remove the satanic demon from their bodies with a bit of torture they would have to pay for. Well, the old priests quite enjoyed the torture part so they made it worse and worse and worse to the point a women could be found innocent of witchcraft and possession only by dying w...

And I am so depressed. I had such plans for spring and summer. I hit the ground running till the 18" of snow on May 9th. For the next few days it seemed to be one road block after another. Gutters were suppose to go up today. Handyman broke his truck. And to further impact my schedule I volunteered to have the June 10th garden club meeting at my garden. Too bad they may need to go into the house too. I should relax and just take it all one chore at a time but I get overwhelmed at the enormity of the task before me and sit like a rabbit in Watership Down totally tharned out in the middle of highway. In part I just feel so far behind. Enter the Garden Journal I keep. I thumbed back to last year and I am really about two weeks ahead as far as edibles in the hoop house. But I made no notes regarding poppies or hollyhocks. None of the former and only a couple of the latter have poked their leaves above the soil. And this coming weekend was when I went to the nursery in La Cue...

A foot of snow when three inches was forecast. No power. No internet. No cell phone service. Grateful I still have my land line. But I can reach nobody who has a cell phone, even those out of the area, because I deleted the long distance option with Century Link because of the expense. This is like being on Lake Powell in a house boat totally cut off from the world but today it is the snow and not the high canyon walls limiting my access to the world. Because of the heavy spring snow on the hoop house I am having to go out every hour or so and shake or brush it off the covering plastic to avoid total collapse. Note: if it weren’t for the solid ends it would have collapsed already. We are looking at three more days of this. Currently I have a fire going and am thankful I took the extra effort yesterday to bring in an ample supply of firewood. But I am wet and tired and frustrated. At least, before the power went out at 4:35 a.m, I had my coffee made, and had cooked and eaten br...