Skip to main content

Golden days of yore

Suddenly, it's October.

Actually, scratch that.  Suddenly it's mid October. 


Frankly time has passed me by quickly this month.  Nor do I have much to share.  We are still in a holding pattern over our home improvements, and I have just learned that our builder has come down with COVID.   So our plans are put off a bit longer. 

I would rather have this work done sooner than later because October is a bipolar month.  It's full of sunshine and warm days only to shift to cold nights and rainy weather, here in Stonoboro there is even the possibility of snow flurries in the coming days. 

It is not something I'm looking forward to. 

For now however I'm finding joy in leaf peeping.  I'm enjoying stepping out on my porch during a break and letting the sun warm my face.  I'm enjoying the taste of homemade eggnog and the fact that my yard has taken on the appearance of a rich Persian rug.  

 


Susan is baking fresh bread and an apple pie.  I relax with a hot cider.

Fall has its own joys and wonders.

As we transition from one season to the next I find myself without much to do.  I am NOT going to rake the leaves and other than one more, perhaps two, runs with the lawn mower my yard work for the year is done.   At least till it's time to shovel snow.

So I'm enjoying the time that I have.  I'm enjoying the cooler weather and taking in the view. I'm at peace.  

Taken at a lake near my own.  Photo is not mine.

 We already have a plan for how to set up our container garden next year, and it will be a little more protected from the deer that wonder through our yard next spring.  It will be a little bigger too.   

The only question that I have is do I want to plant more than two trees next year?  I am thinking at least two apple trees and I would love to put a grapevine in as well.  But I don't want to get ahead of myself.  It's easy to do and I often bite off more than I can chew.

I am also not sure where I want this blog to go. Things have changed in my life pretty drastically over the last two years.

1)  I took up cheese making and cooking, more to keep me busy during the long winter months and I long to return to some of it.   

2)  My diet changed and I find myself eating more vegetarian and vegan dishes than I would have ever thought possible.  This was mostly due to health and diet concerns but I found I affected the environment too in small ways that surprised me. 

3)  Those changes lead to me to explore how I could make additional little changes and how those little changes affected the environment around me; around all of us.  We are not going to "save the Earth."  The Earth will be fine without us.  We have to try and make the Earth habitual for our species. That is where we are failing.

I may end this blog by the New Year.   I'm simply not getting the readership I want, and frankly for me to get back up into the numbers that I used to have (500 to 600 people per blog post) I have to change the very nature of this endeavor.  I am not sure if I want to put in that effort.  Times have changed as well.


Today to be successful you need Tic Tok, Instagram, You Tube and other video platforms.  I have neither the interest or time to pursue those.  I am also more interested in telling personal stories than I am in trying to influence anyone.  Although I do hope that I've influenced someone somewhere somehow.  I find myself more ready to retire and become a "gentleman farmer" more than anything.  

That sounds like a plan to me.   Well I don't think I am "quitting"; I do think that I'm not going to try and blog every week moving forward.   I'm just not sure what I want to do yet.  I'll figure it out, we always do.


Labels:
Location: Stoneboro, PA 16153, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

What all the cool kids are reading.

Getting things done. Small victories add up.

In the new TV show Fallout there is a great line.  " The Golden Rule of the wasteland is thou shalt be distracted by bullshit every single time." I've never played the game it is based on but the picture shows the two newest distractions in my life.  We have taken care of our former neighbors barn cats since he moved out nearly a year ago.   Long story short the mama cat gave birth in his barn that we we given access to.  We found four little black long hair kittens and decided to take them, as it would probably be the only time we would be able to catch them.   Much to our surprise after a day or so the mama came over and started to milk them laying on our kitchen floor.  She's comes in, feeds them and then goes back outside.  Once they are mature enough to have them fixed we are planning on doing so and then they will go to a good home.   That's the plan...but plans have a tendency to change as one or two of them are findi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Calling in the professionals

 I come from a long line of guys that call in professionals.    Part of that reason is my own lazy nature, part of that reason is that I would rather have it down right the first time.  Everyone has their own skills and abilities, so why not call in an expert to have it done right the first time? In this case; why not seek advice in the battles against the invasives that have not only invaded my yard, but also a nearby piece of property that my neighbor simply refuses to take care of?  I find myself in a bind of my own design. I let part of my property "go wild" in the first place because that area had a lot of exposed roots, stumps and rocks.  At the time, I was not expecting a bunch of invasives, of which Mulitfora Rosa  is the worse of the bunch, to be a problem.  Yet, here we are. I decided to let parts of my yard "go wild" back in July of 2021.  It has proven to be a mistake, and in order for me to ensure that the invasive plants st...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rain and tears and those damned deer. Gardening can be painful.

“ None of us understand what we're doing, but we do beautiful things anyway.” ― Allen Ginsberg   The weatherman stated that we have not had any significant rainfall in over two weeks.  Nor did he see any relief in site. We are not in drought conditions yet, we are just unusually dry.  Interestingly enough, Pennsylvania should be getting warmer and wetter in the future if the climate models hold true.  If we narrow that down even more to my home town , the picture becomes even more interesting.   Solar Punk Pittsburgh For now though, I was worried about my garden.   It is not that big, I basically have a variety of containers around where I am maintaining lettuce, leeks, tomato's, peppers, strawberries, grapes, sunchokes (which I was really interested in growing) and a few other things.     Every garden needs to be watered and I played around with the idea of a r ain water collection systems before, we even had a simple one i...
2 comments
Read more