The City Mouse in the Country

  This is a true story.   Years ago when I was a young man studying Evolutionary Biology as part of my teaching degree; our professor told us this story.  His professor at the time walked in, dropped the textbook into the trash and said something to the effect of " The discovery of complex life developing in deep sea vents changes everything we thought we knew." In other words....the biologists at the time were surprised to discover multiple colonies of complex animals with completely different biochemistry living in a very hostile environment, at that time it was believed that only small organisms evolved in the extreme temperatures and high pressure of the deep sea vents.    Suddenly there were advanced forms of life (worms and crabs) whose biochemistry was unlike any thing else on the planet.   Evolution, at least the way it was understood at the time, changed.   This story has stuck with me all these years because it teaches a v...

 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...

        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 we lost power when the transformer blew across the street.  We were without power for about five hours.  Another day we went without power for about two hours due to a fierce thunderstorm.  As luck would have it both these instances occurred when I was off of work (I work from home on a semi-permanent basis) and during the day.             As such, they proved to be not much of an issue, however it did give me time to test the generator, which has been setting out on our covered back porch awaiting this very opportunity.              Only it would turn over, but not start.  That could be due to a variety of reasons but old gas in the carburetor would seem the most likely culprit however.  It would also be the easiest fix to the problem.            I would simply have to open up the carburetor drain screw ,...

       In many ways, I want to make this home of ours into a gem.  We have an idea of what we want to paint, what we want to update and what we want to replace completely.     If the weather cooperates, this morning at the time of writing there is a heavy thunderstorm moving through, I hope to add some more rocks to my "Dry Creek" project and start/finish the often delayed fire pit build. Taken from a window during a storm     Well we did not plant a garden this year for a variety of reasons; we do have the room in front of the house for a wonderful and varied garden.   It's also the part of our property that gets the most sun and has a very fine slope away from the home so water can flow out towards our road.     We may never be self sufficient but we can be a little smarter and environmental conscious on what we do, and how we do things.   This is why I am thinking about letting so...

      A few months ago I found myself in a precarious position.  The lights had gone off for a tad more than 24 hours and I panicked.  You see, I work from home and hope to continue to work from home into the foreseeable future and to do that, I need a reliable source of power.  I am planning on NOT ever going to the Cleveland if I can help it.        My job is technically in downtown Cleveland, and we moved to Western PA to be closer to family and friends.  My mother , for example, passed shortly after we moved.  I     So I spent a few days looking for a generator that could not only keep my up and running, but could also help keep the house warm by running our pellet stove and lights.   If you want, you can read more about how I ended up with the generator I did, here .  However long story short, it was important to me that I could keep my work PC on, a few lights, the pellet stove burn...