The City Mouse in the Country

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...

Without getting into much detail, I was sitting in a doctor's office  recently waiting on my appointment browsing through "Bon Appetit" magazine.  There was a recipe that caught my eye, which at the time of this writing; I have not tried.   I'll be sure to include the recipe for Tomato Roasted Onions with Paprika on the recipe links page of this blog.  What caught my attention was not only were they using onion as the main dish, but the ease and simplicity of it as well.  It also feeds into something that I've been thinking about recently (pun intended).  That is the very real threat of food scarcity in the near future due to climate change. We are only a super storm or a drought away from disaster and a few years ago some food and other items disappeared off the shelves due to COVID.  Costs for other foods skyrocketed and came down slowly over time.   This food scarcity issue was mostly a temporary one, but it did serve as a wake up call f...

As I write this the temperature is climbing.  We have a window or two open, knowing that soon enough we will be shutting up the house for the next three months or so we can protect ourselves and our cats against the onslaught of winter.   Our wood stove burned overnight to take the chill out of the air and I found myself buying new boots and gloves and driving home with the windows down. This is the nature of autumn in Western Pennsylvania and as I sip on my pumpkin flavored coffee, I cannot help but praise the fruit of the season, and yes it is a fruit, the simple pumpkin. A few things are still growing in our garden, the last of the herbs and tomatoes...a stray pepper or two that needs to be picked.  Yet I find myself interested in growing pumpkins next year after realizing their potential and that they are high in nutritional value.   It's easy to forget in our modern world just how easy we have it as compared to our great grandparents and their grandparents....

  Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. Rachel Carson     This past week or so, I've been stuck for a topic.  Not much has really happened as I've dealt mainly with leaving one job and searching for/accepting another.     Several quiet anniversaries were celebrated (we moved into our home 3 years ago this month) and I volunteered to man the Odd Fellows booth at the local Stoneboro Fair several days last week.    Months ago I had applied for a Master Gardener class through the Penn State extension program.  I promptly forgot all about it as I have only done container gardening in the past, and I saw this as an opportunity to learn more. ...

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...

“ 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...