The City Mouse in the Country

I feel like an old man as I watch the blustery snow swirl outside my window.  I'm wrapped in a warm sweater, drinking an aromatic herbal tea and I am at peace.  " All I am missing, " I think to myself, " is a pipe and my cranky old man persona would be complete. "  Winter gives me time to think.    I hate the winter, the cold and the dark of it.  I hate the short days, the snow and the cold rain.  I hate the very thought of dealing with it. It was winter that drove me south all those years ago. We have yet to have a harsh winter since moving back to Western Pennsylvania.  We have had cold snaps and snow of course, but the snaps haven't settled in for months and the snow - while heavy at times - has generally melted away quickly.  This has made the winter bearable for me. Winter gives me a break, a moment to stop and catch my breath before the busy seasons begin again.  Lately I've been thinking about work and what I have to do come ...

If you have been following this blog for some time then you know that 2023 has not been a great year for us.   We have dealt with death, failure, job changes (which I realize was a mistake) and more negatives than positives. That's life.  It was the hand that we were dealt. Now that Thanksgiving day is upon us (and at the time of publication, past us), it occurs to me that we do have some things to be thankful for.  We do have good friends and a strong family.  We do have money in the bank and jobs that we are successful at. We have our health. We can change some things and work on making our lives better.   We also have, perhaps overly ambitious plans, for the winter and next spring.  We plan on painting this winter, which has been on the agenda for sometime but still has not been accomplished.  If we manage to get one room done then I'll consider it to have been a success.  Then in the spring, I think I'll put off planting anything like a t...

 I'm the first one to admit that I'm pretty useless when it comes to any thing what I have to build or assemble.  For example it took me three days to assemble a closet from Ikea for our previous home in Florida. Although to be honest the instructions were not that clear about what part to begin with, although once we did start it came together pretty quickly and, to the best of my knowledge, still stands today.  My comfort zone has moved somewhat since I've moved out to the country.   I'm not afraid to take on a project knowing that I'll learn from it in some way. We started planning our garden in the last days of fall, although it appears that both Sue and I didn't communicate enough.  I was thinking that we would do a container garden and grow some some simple things like Basil, Brussel Sprouts, Carrots, Cilantro, Cucumbers, Garlic, Onions, Parsley, Parsnip, Peppers, Radish, Strawberries, and Tomatoes.  For a family of 2, we would need...

 Sometimes I think I'm more in love with the idea than the actual practice. I'm basically a lazy man, more in love with the concepts of homesteading and building an edible lawn/food forest than actually putting in the hard work to make it happen.   Sometimes however, things happen that present you with unexpected opportunities....if your smart enough to take advantage of them.   Recently we had a series of wind storms move through the area, the winds toppled trees, caused several electrical outages and even managed to damage roofs and homes in the area.  Luckily no one to my knowledge was hurt and the damage was minimal.  We did lose power for a few hours but never once considered running the generator as we were tucked in all cozy and warm. A decent sized maple tree did came crashing down in my yard on Saturday night and proved the old adage that if no one is there to see it, it does not make a sound.  Neither Sue or myself was aware of the problem till Su...

Suddenly it's spring!!!  Actually, it's not but with temperatures in the high 40's (7 t0 9 C) it's certainly feeling like it.  We even hit a few days were it was 68 and 70 degrees (20 - 21 C).  The grass is starting to change from its winter brown to a lush and vibrant green; a few trees are even stating signs of early budding.   However as anyone that has ever lived in Western Pennsylvania knows old man winter has at least one more trick up his sleeve and snow as late as April is a real possibility.  We can't count out the old man just yet. If I am serious about wanting to plant a garden and work towards making this yard an edible oasis, then sometime this weekend I need to start planting seeds indoors.  That's the goal.  While we may not a proper garden this year, we have been prepping since last fall.   It's not pretty but it's something. Last year I think we waited too long to plant and didn't have much in the way of cross pollinatio...

 So far this year has been one of upheaval.  Things however finally seem to be settling down into a pattern which I'll happily call "normal."   We have been blessed, so far, with a mild winter having just a few cold snaps but nothing drastic snow wise.  The days are getting longer and with it the feeling that spring will be upon us soon.  With the coming of spring I find myself thinking more and more about starting a small container garden to supplement our diet, and the edible landscape that is the long term goal.  Last year we had some small success, but were ravaged by deer, late planting and our inexperience.  We learned some things and have hopefully grown from that experience.     The greenhouse that our daughter-in-law wanted to build for herself over the winter fell by the wayside, and not wanting to let the old windows not to go to good use, I decided to pay to have a wood working family member build cold frames for us both...

      At the age of 56, it occurs to me that I have roughly 30 years left in my life give or take a few.  I've (sadly) never had kids.  So in some ways my newly found environmentalism might be my way of leaving some sort of lasting legacy?     I honestly don't know.   I'm no dummy, I know that what ever I do is spitting into the ocean.  However I also feel that not doing anything is morally bankrupt.  You can make a difference in one persons life, even though you may never see that outcome.       For whatever reason I've been coming across a lot of info on No Mow May - which is a simple idea to let your lawn grow wild during the month of May, allowing bees and other pollinators to do their thing and help re-establish a needed but diminishing species.  I let part of my yard "go wild" last year and I'm planning on letting the same parcel go wild this year.      Only I'm pla...

        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...

          Recently I went out to eat with friends and I order a vegetarian option.   After getting playfully teased about eating rabbit food, the conversation turned to eating healthy, and the expenses of trying to maintain a healthy diet.     We also talked about gardening, canning, and the fact that they felt things were going to get much, much worse with the American economy.     While I am far from being a survivalist, I can honestly say that one of the reasons I want to learn to garden, to forage and store my own food is because I don't like where we as a country and as a planet are going.   No, this isn't a political blog, my concerns are more food availability and environmentally based then they are political.        If the pandemic showed us anything, it's that the supply chain can be interrupted and supplies can become diminished rather quickly.   Plus when co...

      I've been wondering of late if I should put this blog to rest.       It's been over a year and I'm nowhere near the audience that I've had in the past with other blogs.  Of course, those were a bit more focused.   In the past I wrote about Second and Third Tier soccer in the states, during a time when information about that level of play was hard to come by.   I wrote about communities in virtual reality pioneer Second Life and I wrote about my adventures on a motorcycle .     Myself and my Mom on back All of those blogs had a few thousand readers, and one of the greatest joys in my life was when I was recognized in a bar for my work with the now defunct and fan driven A-league.com ( USL soccer ) website.   I'm lucky if I break a few hundred hits here on any one piece.      Of course, this blog is unfocused.  I'm trying to cover a lot of ground here...and there is a...

    Over the past few days the temperature has been on a roller coaster ride as we hit peak highs and small dips that remind us that this is Western Pennsylvania and winter may not be over till April.  However the days are getting warmer and spring - once a faraway dream - seems to be sneaking in.        I was even able to open the windows a few days ago and the last of the snow; dating back to mid December, has finally melted away.        The other night I watch as a family of deer grazed outside my front window nibbling on the first green sprigs of grass, our youngest cat looking on in fascination.  Spring is coming.  The days are getting longer and I think about planting some flowers and seedlings obtained through the Mercer Country Conservation website .      I'm thinking that the native wild flowers and grasses will make a nice addition to the home.     ...

       By the time you read this it may very well be the 10 or 11th day (if not later) of January, 2022.   Happy New Year!     We would have got here sooner but frankly we were hiding in our bunker, unsure if we should peak our head or not.  Sue and I caught what we thought was the common cold around the end of the Christmas Holiday and it stuck around.   Two, thankfully negative, Covid tests later and we are ready to enter the world once again.       However we are flying blind here.   Normally we have a goal, a sure plan on how to attack it.   This year we have a vague idea of where we would like to be and a even vaguer idea on how to obtain those goals.       Sue somehow found a job cleaning some buildings every night which, while not particularly hard, does take up some time and is paying what debt we do have down drastically.    Well I'm t...

           Although no one asked for it, I thought it might be fun to do another food review (my blog, my rules).  I figure that eventually we American's are going to have to adapt to a more plant based diet and if I do nothing more than convince two people to try something new...then they can convince two people to try something new...I've done my job as concerned and decent human being.    In some ways we are already moving that way as the sale of plant based food items recently reached a peak.   I think it has dipped currently due to a lot of different reasons, but the market will only rebound in the future.       So yesterday I decided that it was a good day to try and go meatless for the entire day.  I've been trying to incorporate a few more meals per week into my "Meatless regime" and thought I would make some Tasty Bite Bombay Potatoes as a quick late lunch/early dinner.    ...

           What makes you fall in love with a house?  Is it the layout, the square footage, the way the sunlight dapples the floor?  Susan and I fell in love with our house for a lot of different reasons.   We loved the wood burning stove and hard wood floors.  We loved that we had roughly 2.5 acres of mostly wooded land.  Sue loved that the kitchen, although small, had original Amish handcrafted wooden cupboards.   However I fell in love with the house when I was walking through the backyard and realized that the small "creek" that flowed between two hills and away from our house was not a natural feature at all.   It was a drainage ditch that looked natural and drained the water into the sewer system out by the road..     It was man made, I could see where the cut for it began at the top of the hill and had been obscured by some underbrush.   I would trace its path down along the hill a...

      The official first day of spring was roughly three weeks ago, although I think in most people minds, spring officially starts around Easter.   The last of the cold fronts have hopefully moved through and we are all waiting, anticipating, the growing season to start.     It's almost a palpable energy sweeping through this small community.  All around our small town; I see fields getting plowed, garden beds are getting readied, even our own.  Talk of what fertilizer to use and potting soils fill each and every store around us.  Weed killers, organic and otherwise, are quickly flying off the shelves.  The hum of lawnmowers and other equipment fills the air.           With each day that passes, another tree blooms.  Another flower sprouts.  Our yard is filled with daffodils and here and there, even a dandelion pops up.      Officially the first frost free day is...