The City Mouse in the Country

  Without going into to much detail, I decided to leave my job at the beginning of September.  There are many reasons for this but for some time I've been feeling that my current position has not been the best fit for either the company or myself.    I did not feel like the company was listening to my concerns nor do I feel like they really cared for their employee's; despite a killer benefit package that I'll never see again.  Their technology was at least 20 years behind everyone else and  I believe that they really didn't have the best interests of their customers at heart. It's not all their fault.  I'm to blame too as it seems that I've not been living up to their goals and needs for the last year, and this is one of the reasons it's taken me so long to write this blog post. In addition to trying to find a new job before the end of the month, I've been dealing with anxiety and a mild case of depressio n.  Writing a blog that deals with nature,

Life can be stressful here in modern America.  Sadly we have become a country where a parent may worry that they will never see their child again as they board that school bus or go out with friends.  Not to mention the additional stress of worrying about our countries direction; and the direction of the planet, as a whole. We live in trying times, but worrying about the future all the time is only a recipe for sleepless nights and ulcers.  We all need that proverbial margarita by the pool sometimes.  In many ways I looked forward to taking the past week off and traveling to Niagara Falls and upstate New York with my wife. It has been nearly 30 years since either of us had been to the Falls, and on the way up we passed solar farm after solar farm and more than a few windmills generating power, we even passed a hydroelectric plant.   Green power is the future and in a way my heart sung that so much renewable power was being generated. However I also thought about the gas that we were bu

I started this blog for a few reasons and I never intended it to serve the purpose it does now.  I'm trying to pass on information in a variety of ways to help others.  I'm trying to help others learn from my mistakes. While my blathering may seem trivial.  It's not, for we have to put ideas and concepts out into the world so that they are be built on, improved, discussed and debated.  That's how we make progress.  That's how we build a better world.  Currently I'm still recovering from one very bad day when deer rampaged trough my garden and ate or destroyed roughly two-thirds of it.  I had invested a bit of money into it when it came to soil, fencing, containers and what not; only to lose part of that investment to deer. To deal with the deer, I'm going to have to possibly invest more and buy electric fencing or a variety of chemicals. I'm reminded of William Alexander's semi cautionary tale of gardening from his book The $64 dollar Tomato . It

 Rome, the saying goes, was not built in a day.   Home improvement will take longer than the rise and fall of Rome and despite recent emotional issues, simply can not wait.  Plans were put in place months ago, and for a variety of reasons, could not be completed until now.  Our home was built by its original owner and although there is much to be celebrated about it; it was never really updated since its construction in the 1970’s.  We replaced the roof shortly after moving in as well as the outdated wood stove used to heat the home with a much more efficient wood pellet stove. Fast forward a few years and now we are in the process of replacing the older windows and doors with new and more efficient ones, and the stress of having those replaced as well as work in our kitchen and bath going on at the same time has caused me...to become "unsettled." I would never call myself a fastidious person, but I do have my schedule and my own ways of doing things.  I like things to

        Pennsylvania never changes; and this has given me anxiety.  I have a variety of wild flower and grass seed that I want to plant along the front of the porch.   I've containers ready for the few tomato's, peppers, zucchini herbs and strawberries that I am planning on growing.       I have two dogwood trees and a few flowers that I planted this past weekend.   I've never planted a tree in my life.   They are in the ground now and all I could think was " Well, it's in God's hands now."     Part of this stress and the anxiety that I feel is because of a typical Pennsylvania spring can consist of highs of 80 only to be followed by snow on the ground, often in the same day.   So if I plant to early, I risk killing the very things that I want to grow.   If I plant to late, then I worry that I won't have much of a harvest at all.        Where I live is pretty much the center of hardiness zone 5B.   According to sources that means that the first frost

  This is not meant to be a political post, however when you talk about the economy - even in general terms - it's bound to be political   This is meant to be an educated opinion piece and I am very aware of my own confirmation bias.  So I worked hard to keep informational and interesting.        Skimpfation .   If you have not heard of it yet, wait.   It's the newest buzzword in the media and it describes an economic condition where services are not where or what they used to be; but you are still paying the same price (or a slightly higher price) for the same product or service.  It's always been part of "inflation" but is more noticeable now as store shelves are empty and wait times become longer.    Case in point...you out to dinner at your favorite restaurant and your meal comes with plastic silverware instead of the normal silverware you are used to.  Perhaps your wait for your food is a bit longer as well because of staffing issues.       That's Skimpfa

   Hey everyone!  Did you know that this page now has a companion Facebook page?    It will have articles, memes and such that interest me that relate to this page but don't really apply.  Be sure to check it o ut!        To be honest I expected errors, I expected mistakes, missteps and even the occasional "oops."   This is new to me, and I'm doing things like I've never done before .       This time however I let myself get carried a way a bit and made an error that could have been costly indeed.             Our wood pellet stove needs cleaned out at least once a week.  You can push it a few more days but the ash does build up.   This time we didn't have the air intake for the fire set right and the pellets built up, all the way to the hopper gate.  This concerns me because we have a friend that had the fire in their auger which ended up destroying their stove.   A rarity to be sure, but if their is one thing I've learned in my life...is that the millio

           Hey everyone!  Did you know that this page now has a companion Facebook page?    It will have articles, memes and such that interes t me that relate to this page but don't really apply.  Be sure to check it out     Let's be honest, 2020 has been one very odd and stressful year.     Covid hung over Thanksgiving this year like some weird creepy Uncle that the kids shouldn't be left alone with.   In our family, we ended up having two Thanksgiving dinners.  One with my brother and family on the 21st, the other with Sue's family on the 26th.        This has been our first Thanksgiving together with our families in over 15 years.  When we lived in Florida we would come home for Christmas normally, but as children grow and things change, even that holiday seemed to fall by the wayside.       We often invited friends that didn't have family in the area or some of the elderly folk over for Thanksgiving dinner when we lived in Florida.  That became a tradition.   

      Hey everyone!  Did you know that this page now has a companion Facebook page?    It will have articles, memes and such that interes t me that relate to this page but don't really apply.  Be sure to check it out.          So a few days ago my wife and I lost power for roughly 24 hours.   It was out on Sunday at roughly 4 PM and stayed out until Monday afternoon.      To be honest I've often wondered if I could lead a "Amish" style life.   I'm not a fan of TV in general.  I figured that some time in the future I would conduct a little experiment and see if I could give up things like the radio, TV and even my cell phone for 24 hours or so.        No, I'm not a " Prepper ", frankly if the proverbial excrement did hit the rotary blades I would probably be one of the first to go.   My nickname would be "Bait" in a Zombie survival situation.   I'm actually OK with that, because I believe in other people, that the best of a society come