The City Mouse in the Country

  resting cat Recently I found myself with a bit of time on my hands.  Normally this time of year my wife and I like to take some vacation time.   We generally don't go to far, having visited Niagara Falls and New York state the last two years, the plan this year was to go south, to visit an old friend that has just accepted a facility position at Duke University .   A few days there, a few days in Charlotte; where I once lived and then, if we had time, a few days in Charleston, SC where I also lived for a brief time. Sadly however, due to circumstances that I won't get into here, our vacation became a staycation .  Which was fine because I still had a tree to plant from the Native Plant sale, odds and ends to do and to continue my war against some aggressive neighboring plants, which it seems I was now finding everywhere, as well as other small jobs that I've been putting off. I actually wondered if it would be affordable (and reasonable) to rent a f...

  I could not let America's 250th birthday pass without some comment.   I love this country, but frankly this is not the country that I grew up in.   I'm not sure exactly where we went wrong and although it would be very easy to blame the current administration and the whole MAGA movement, that is to easy of a solution and not entirely true. What ills America today is a combination of things.   A combination of errors, bad decisions, mistakes that created a cascading effort.   We simply are not the country we thought we were and the proverbial chickens have come home roost.   Nor do I have a solution.    So why write about America's 250th birthday at all?   Because I believe in this country, despite where we are currently.  Because I am a student of history and we have seen all this before, and we have seen the solution to it as well.  Because after much thought about the state of the world and reading ...

 I lay in bed this morning as a summer thunderstorm rolled over and through me.  It was early, about 5:30 AM when the deep rumble woke me from a sound sleep.   The rain was hard, fast and beat down on my metal roof with a chaotic pattern.    The room temperature dropped and both my black cats scrambled off the bed as a BOOM echoed in the distance.   Susan, me wife, rolled over and tucked herself in a little more, oblivious to the storm outside the windows. There is something about a summer storm early in the morning.   The air is cleaner, cooler and the dirt and grime of the world seems to be washed away with only potential remaining.   I'm been thinking a lot about potential.   Several years ago my step daughter was putting together her Zombie apocalypse team because that was a thing.  I was honored when she included me.    "Oh," I asked her, "what is my job?" "Bait." She said laughing.  "You have...

When I first moved into my house some five, nearly six year ago, one of the first things I noticed was that we had a tree out back that was nearly strangled by an invasive woody vine called Oriental Bittersweet.   At the time I didn't think much about it as other more pressing problems, like a new roof and insulated windows, came first.  Other problems and projects kept pushing that "little issue" back onto the corners of my mind.   Small "little issues" tend to become bigger ones.  Oriental Bittersweet That's the problem with home ownership, their is always "one more project."  One more bill. I was considering where to plant the Pawpaw and new Bur Oak   and this corner seemed to be a very good option.  That's when I noticed my problem,  I have several Multiflora Rosa growing in my "wilds" and one that somehow I've missed over the last few years, it's become rather well established.   The Oriental Bittersweet was reaching o...

In a lot of ways I feel rejuvenated.  It's a glorious morning as I am driving down to Pittsburgh with the local radio station playing a mix of old and new that elevates my mood, the sun shining strong through the sun roof.   I am on my way to buy plants.   I have a list in my pocket and I expect that I'll be coming home with a few of them.  I had hoped to buy spicebush and maybe serviceberry , in addition to what I did end up buying.  As I talk to people there, I use the term " food forest " because that's about the closest definition to what I'm trying to do, although it's also not the best one.     What I'm more interested in doing is creating a refuge.  A place for a weary traveler in the future to stop, rest under the trees and have access to wild strawberries and blueberries (which sadly didn't take last year), apples etc.   A place of respite rather than a place that can self maintain itself over time, although I do...

The month of May for what ever reason seems to be passing slowly, but the year seems to be flying by.   Suddenly we are nearing the end of the month and I'm only now getting to work on the yard.   I did go in search of an electric powered riding lawnmower, for the same reasons that I went in search of an electric car.    Both searches failed, as the local hardware, lawncare and "big box" stores simply didn't carry any electric riding mowers.  I could have ordered an electric mower off of Amazon, or similar site, and had it shipped but then I would be looking at a two week delivery timeframe, and would have exceeded t he budget that I had set for myself. The grass, though high and feeding a variety of pollinators and other insects would simply not wait much longer.  Plus ticks are always a concern in Western PA at this time of year, and one way to control them is to keep your grass cut.   I had already had a few instances of dealing with...

Bad things they say; happen in groups of three.  Lately we feel that this has been multiplied by at least three, then that by three.  Nor was this the article I was hoping to publish this week, but here it is warts and all! Thankfully there is nothing seriously wrong with my family health wise, and this is nothing that some more hard work and dedication will get us though.  There is one big personal item that I can not go into details on to protect her privacy but what is affecting us right now is that we are again faced with decisions on what to do concerning some major purchases.   I've already written about having to buy a "newer" car but I'm not going to bore you with details about replacing the water heater or unexpected tax bills.  At the beginning of May, our riding lawn mower died.   This in itself is not that big of a deal because I got a good five to six years out of a used machine, and the fact that it has started to give up the ghost ...

  When my wife and I bought this house nearly 6 years ago, we made some upgrades.   We put on a metal roof, replacing the original shingles, replaced the floor in the kitchen, both bathrooms and the downstairs den.  We ended up upgrading the pellet stove (twice!) and added some insulation; one of the jobs I want to do in the coming year is to insulate the garage, mostly to keep the freezers we have in the garage from becoming damaged. It's only in various home improvement shows that the work to improve your home is done all at once and somehow in 1 hour.  For most of us its an ongoing never ending project. One of the important improvements that I've been wanting to make but have kept putting off for various reasons has been solar panels.  Now, I'm thinking that it may be time to least do something. The main reason we have been putting off this improvement was cost and how long it would actually take us to pay off the panels.   I'm 60 years old now...

 This is not the America I grew up in.    It occurs to me that those days are long gone, and that I am probably looking back on those days with rose colored glasses as well.   However there was a time in America when, if two parties disagreed, they could hammer out some sort of compromise.   Where opposing viewpoints were respected.   Where, if a heated argument did break out the chance of violence was very low. I miss that America.    Recently I was threatened with physical violence for something that I posted online.   I ignored the comment, I didn't bother to respond to it.  Not because I feared the person - I've no idea who they were, etc. - but because I am a pacifist.  To respond to violence with more violence makes little sense to me.  Plus, it's been my experience that such people are paper tigers.   The anger that is felt however, by both the right and the left is very real.  I can no...

What you see is the front end of my previous car.   I spoke about buying it just a little over three years ago in an article that I called  Buyer's Remorse .  At the time I lamented having to buy a car in short period of time, due to an engine blowing up, and not being happy overall with my choices. At the time I was hoping to move into a hybrid or even an electric car.   I was not happy with the results as I felt that I got pushed into buying a used Toyota for cash. The other reason I was not happy was because the research I was doing into hybrid and electric cars was not showing much promise at that time.  Electric cars simply did not have the infostructure needed to make buying one worth while.  Three years ago charging stations were few and far between and I am happy to report that several gas stations near me now include several electric car charging ports in addition to the traditional gas pumps.  I take that as a positive. My current j...

I consider myself a smart and well read man, so up until recently I was surprised that I had never heart the the the concept of "This Inevitable Ruin" before.  It's an idea or concept that downfall and destruction is unavoidable.   That chaos is an unchangeable outcome no matter what actions we take.   That what ever victory we obtain will have a high psychological and moral price, and may be short lived.    As my own family, friends, and readers face an unknown future on so many fronts I wonder if  such "Inevitable Ruin" awaits us?  If it awaits our country or even our world? I am not a nihilist  but the concept has been ringing in my ears lately as we seem to careen from one crisis - be it personal, economic, local, state wide, natural or global.   This article has started and stopped many times, yet I can't seem to get it right.  I even played around with an AI program to see if it would help focus my thoughts, it did n...

** The majority of this column was written nearly two years ago, however for a lot of reasons, has been updated and ready for publication now.** Recently a friend of mine and I were talking about some changes in our area.  We have had three solar farms built recently and there is talk about a wind farm. She brought up how wind turbines are responsible for killing birds.  That's a known fact that everyone can agree to, however exactly how many birds and what to do about the bird strikes is up for debate.   This conversation tells us a bit about the type of people we want to be.  We are going to have to make trade offs in the future and we need to determine what those tradeoffs will be.   Wind turbine's are constructed in a location that meets certain criteria to meet it's full effectiveness.   What happens if location X is also the breeding ground of a nearly extinct bird?  Can they still breed if the tower, or solar panel or geothermal ...

 It's been a bit.   When I started this blog I was in a stable place and a stable condition.   I thought that I was done with moves and surprises.   I would have been perfectly happy to just work for another five or ten years till I retired.    If I'm being completely honest with you but since moving back to Western PA just about six years ago, things have been odd at best and difficult at worst.   I've questioned why we moved but for better or for worse, this is home. Then I lost Facebook and that was one of the drivers, if not the main driver that drove people to this site.   Then my job situation changed drastically.   At first it was fine but it was clear that the company really didn't have a spot for me, and as they transitioned from "work from home" to "return to the office" it became hard for me to justify a commute of over 100 miles each way.   The jobs that I worked after that were temporary in...