Fashion Show at Nina's

Nina looked after June last weekend while Jenny took a much needed trip with here girls. Based on the photos below looks like Nina and June played dress up for most of that time :) Also some pictures of cuddles.

Spring Cleaning in the Shop

Spent a couple weekends getting the shop open for business this spring. Caught a raccoon hanging out in the wall when I hung the doors on the house, ended up stripping out old insulation and plywood that had been a nesting ground for mice and the furry bandit. Bodhi and I gave him a good scare and chased him off. Also was in bad need of some new work benches as I had no room for tools and hardware and was constantly playing hide and seek with essentials. When the shop shuts down for winter it very quickly becomes a tool shed for urgent household projects, like windows or a new water heater. Something very therapeutic with getting things in order. Even found a spot for a lathe that Calvin has in storage and says he his happy to lend me indefinitely until he sets up a shop.

Next stop is the lumber yard, time to start in on my backlog of projects. I think there is a wedding coming up or something.

Fish eye view of the shop. John, the shop foreman, getting our work plan ready.

New workbench and vise I got on kijiji for 50$. All the tools at arms reach finally. Put a little paint up and trimmed the windows out while I was at it, makes for nicer work space, perfect spot to work on detail stuff as I can see anyone coming. Shelves here and on the hardware bench are all basswood from the wedding table milling session. The 3" thick plywood bench top was a bit of a cop out but once I trim the edges in oak and drill some holes for bench dogs it should work just fine until I can build a proper 3" maple work bench. Despite the appearances of my nothing is square or level shop the bench top is perfectly flat and level. 

Hardware and sharpening station. Will need to figure out a better place to keep my gas, turpentine and kerosene before I fire up that bench grinder, but my chainsaw is happy. Hardware all visible in jars, my favorite being the "trip to town avoidance jar" with all the odds and ends I find around for that rainy day when you need just one of something.

Knocked out a new stand for the chop saw, nice place for processing stock and closer to the dust collector, long stock comes in, gets stacked up then can be jointed, planned and cut to length all in one footprint. Then over the benches for joinery.

Pathway to the Divine

Every now and then, a faint glimmer of god's hand reflects in that built by man,

When sunlight grazes a cathedral's spires revealing all their intricacies,

Or some such fleeting manifestation of godly beauty, that we,

Being imperfect, thinking lofty thoughts, imagine ourselves more.

But in all things not made by man, the cosmos, physical and natural world,

Does god's work beam forth with such blinding radiance, beauty and complexity,

As to shame the greatest, most daunting heights of human ambition,

With something as simple as a mountain stream.

With brutal indignity and self-delusion hath man pried himself from god's embrace,

To build up fortresses for our indifference and keep the sacred from our space,

The soil crushed and entombed beneath our streets, the water channeled underground,

The skies torn asunder by combusting jets and seas afloat with a discarded anthropogenic scum.

But god is not defeated, not yet at least, alive and well in forests flowing among the trees,

In soils richly teeming it leaches life from rock, in oceans swimming ever against human onslaught,

In clear nights, dancing lights along the milky-way,

In windswept mountain meadows whispering to us of play,

With infinite love and patience the gift of freedom god bestows.

Shall we come to live in heaven or hell? Our generation may never know,

God is of all things, our universe, our creator,
She is all of this, nothing less and nothing greater.

I pray we find amidst her many gifts, a state of peace and grace,

Though I rest my head in the knowledge that, regardless, we all return to her embrace.

Grandma Maggie's 80th - Evolving Playlist

Grandma's 80th - April in Eronga!

GLAD TO BE IN MEXICO AGAIN

by David Farrelly (the bamboo poet)

Well, I board a bus in Frisco for the border,

in Mexicali, catch the evening train…

Now we’re sliding out the station

to glide across the nation,

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again!

#(chorus) I’m glad to be, I’m glad to be,

Glad to be in Mexico again!

That Baja is mighty bald and dusty,

and Sonora sure could use a year of rain;

but with a little practice

some can learn to love that cactus,

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again!

#

Oh, the train was in the station in Los Mochis
and I was in the baño for the men,

when this gringo with a goatee

up and offered me peyote

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again.

#

Left the train to bus down to the beaches

past a town in Nayarit named Matanchen.

And I met a dozen locos

on the Playa de Los Cocos,

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again!

#

Well, I aint some Holy Pope or Dalai Lama –

a common mortal dwells beneath my skin.

and I met this sizzling mama

frying fish in Aticama,

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again!

#

I see lights of fishing boats out on the ocean,

light in the east means dawn is coming in…

and the surf’s long crashing motion

has been such a moonlit lotion,

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again!

#

When I was born, God meant to make a gringo,

and I think he nearly managed with my brain.

But I've got a Latin heart

beating in me from the start,

God, I’m glad to be in Mexico again.

#

Well, you may not know tortillas from sombreros;

don’t forget amigo is the word for "friend".

Then when you get back home I reckon

ties’ll bind but beans’ll beckon

and you’ll long to be in Mexico again.

                                             

Spring Sprouts + Tomato Trials

Now, in early April, the vegetable gardens in the Pacific Northwest are coming to life. My peas are a few inches tall and starting to climb their trellises. Fruit trees are budding, rhubarb is sprouting, and salad greens that were started in greenhouses and cold frames are ready to be planted outside. This is the end of "the hungry stretch" - the months in late Winter and early Spring when supplies of squash, potatoes and canned harvests from the Fall are running low, but the new Spring growth hasn't produced much besides the occasional salad garnish. Now it is time to hunt slugs, prepare beds, and select the most promising starts to be transplanted.

Below: mustard greens from a variety mix

Below: lettuce starts from seed saved from last years mix

Below: trays of starts in the greenhouse

Here is the Pacific Northwest our long, cool spring is fantastic for salad and peas, but we have to plan ahead for good yields in Summer gardens. The most needy vegetables are the Solanum family - tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplants, and peppers. In the Pacific Northwest we need to start our Solanums early. This year I started peppers in January and tomatoes in March.

I decided to run some trials to find the best potting soil. My three finalists this year were:
A) Soil Blocks (compressed blocks of peat/compost/fertilizer that require no plastic pot)
B) Deluxe Mix
     1/2 Compost
     1/4 Peat/Coconut Fiber
     1/8 Vermiculite
     1/8 Perlite
C) Budget Mix
     1/2 Soil
     1/4 Perlite/Sand
     1/4 Peat/Coconut Fiber
     +Fertilizer

Left: Fertilizer and ingredients to be mixed.   Right: Three growth media.

Each variety will have six starts (two in each mix). varieties range from Italian paste tomatoes to dark Russian tomatoes to little wild tomatoes from Grandma and Grandpa's yard from their first spot in Morelos.

All of these tomatoes will be grown in my deluxe indoor grow machine - a chamber lined with reflective foil on wheels that grows plants on heating blankets under LED lights with 18 volt fans to promote air circulation. The entire system is on a timer - the only human interaction required is watering and fertilizing. This may sound a little too mechanized, but daily care of 126 plants for 3 months is a bit overwhelming.

Below: Pepper starts were already a few months old when tomatoes were started.

Below: Tomatoes today

Below: Soil trial results! L: Budget Center: Blocks R: Deluxe

As evident in the photo above, results were very clear. The Budget mix was superior to the more expensive Deluxe mix, which has more ingredients but no fertilizer, and to the Soil Blocks, which dried out quickly and had a very high seedling mortality rate. I was happy to see that ordinary garden soil can grow great tomatoes by simply: ensuring proper drainage and retention (with Perlite/Sand and Peat/Coconut Fiber) and providing proper nutrients (with powdered organic fertilizer and applications of fish fertilizer).

I'm happy to share a bit of what I've learned so far this spring. I hope that it proves useful. Much love to all of my beautiful and talented relations. 

-Ben

A poem for Jasper and Jenny

On Children

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, 

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

and He bends you with His might 

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

- Kahlil Gibran