Action on the Ideas

I have not upgraded the computer yet but am posting this to see if my technical problems have resolved.

I appreciate the feedback on my questions in the previous post. Thanks!

For the hair dye, I decided I don't really want to get back into a routine of sitting around with crap on my hair trying to cover white hairs that don't want to be covered. Since it doesn't add much work to my current routine, I steeped some used coffee grounds in vinegar and will use that - after straining, of course - for my diluted vinegar rinse. The grounds can still be composted afterwards.

For the moss basket, I did manage to pick up a couple of standing wire baskets yesterday at a thrift store. I was also at a nursery so I got some small plants and will try doing a couple of baskets. The only problem may be the baskets are smaller than I suspect they need to be.


In the meantime, I got a nice "color bowl" at a sale this past weekend.

For the weight loss blog, I will start that once I get the computer upgraded and have a bit of time to set up a new blog. (In other words, don't hold your breath. It's coming but not this week.)

See, now those decisions weren't so difficult. What's going to be difficult is digging the holes for the trailing rosemary, Texas ranger, and "gopher plants" I bought this week!

Are these bad ideas?

Seeking feedback on a few ideas. Positive or negative, whatever you got. Alternative suggestions or recommendations welcome, too.


Dyeing Hair with Coffee

I used to dye my hair occasionally, not with coffee but with one of the well-known brands. It was a slightly less toxic version of hair dye, which is another way to say the effects didn't last very long. When I began getting more white hairs, I noticed they were not taking up the dye. I finally gave up the habit and let my hair go natural.

However, I got my annual haircut recently and the gal cutting it mentioned that another customer keeps her gray at bay with coffee grounds and vinegar. I looked around online and found a variety of information about dyeing hair with coffee. I am still unclear on the vinegar method. I saw one site that mentioned steeping used coffee grounds in vinegar for two weeks and then straining it. I'm not sure then, though, how much to put on the hair and how long to leave it on.

Another site suggested mixing brewed and instant coffee with leave-in conditioner and using that just like a commercial hair dye. I don't have any instant coffee, though. Yet another recommendation, listed several places, was to simply work used coffee grounds (wet is okay) into the scalp after shampooing the hair. Rinse and condition.

I decided to try the coffee grounds idea this morning. This was a bad idea. I rinsed my hair with about 20 times more water than normal and still could not get all the grounds out of my hair, despite even rinsing vigorously with my head upside down, something I hate to do because it always results in tangles. It took more water to wash down the tub enclosure as there were coffee grounds splattered all over the place. After towel-drying my hair, I tried doing the hand-banging thing over the tub to shake out more grounds. Then I had to rinse the tub again. I've been picking at my hair all day to remove grounds. People are beginning to wonder if I have ticks or fleas or something!

Have any of you successfully dyed your hair with coffee (not grounds)? If so, would you please share your technique here? Thanks!


Making a Moss Basket


I have one of those large hanging fruit baskets that I never use. Well, almost never - it's got bay leaves drying in it right now. Ordinarily though, it's just a dust collector.

I was trying to come up with alternative uses for it and thought it might be interesting to make it into a set of moss baskets. Flowers would be pretty or it might be fun to make it an edible basket. As I read about how to make moss baskets yesterday, I noticed the recommendation that one select where it hangs carefully. When watered, apparently a moss basket can be quite heavy. That got me to thinking that perhaps hanging it in the bathroom from a ceiling hook was not going to work.

I could hang it outside but it would require more water due to the wind and heat. Outside placement would also make doing an edible basket difficult as all the birds in the area would treat it as a buffet.

This morning, it dawned on me that the baskets themselves might not be able to handle the weight. After all, the chain is not heavy duty and the wire is pretty thin. Maybe this is a bad idea over all.

Input from experienced moss basket makers would be appreciated. Is a moss basket a bad idea anyway in a xeric desert climate?


Weight Loss Blog

I've been tossing around the idea of starting a new blog chronicling my attempts to lose weight. It would mean revealing the extent of my weight issues with the very real possibility that I am not successful in dealing with them. It would mean risking judgement that I must be stupid, lazy, incompetent, "fill in critical word here" because I'm fat, know I'm fat, know how unhealthy it is to be fat, and still haven't lost the weight I need to lose.

It is likely that comments for it would be heavily moderated as I will welcome feedback and discussion but would not want it to become a place to debate fad diet programs, weight loss drugs, or surgery.

It would not just be a weight loss journal. It would occasionally look at weight and fitness from the angle of living lightly on the earth as well as what it means if the shit ever does hit the proverbial fan.

Would this be of interest to anyone?

What a Load of Crap!

Actually, more like about five or six loads. After moving old horse manure from our neighbor's corral a couple of month ago by shoveling it into the bed of her truck and then scraping it out at our place, we decided to pay someone else to move the rest. This manure's been sitting in the corral for about a year so it's nicely aged, albeit not really composted since it hasn't been turned or tended.

It took a local fellow with a front end loader less than an hour to move the whole pile from her place to ours. I'm thrilled at the prospects of having it for the garden but also a bit intimidated by the quantity. A little bobcat would be a really handy piece of machinery to have on hand!

We need to get this moved and/or contained within the next three months before the summer monsoons present the possibility of flooding, which could wash it all away. So far, we've moved half a dozen wheelbarrow loads over to our hoop beds and are talking about doing some lasagna gardening (sheet mulching) somewhere to grow squash.

The idea for the hoop beds was planted when someone commented here a long time ago about a German method of piling up brush, topping it with soil, and planting in it. I couldn't find the comment so I don't remember what it was called. We wanted to do some kind of raised bed but very casual.



We decided to make a circle about 6 feet wide with chickenwire and fill it with some of the dead brush from the property.



Once there was a good layer in there, one that would hopefully discourage the burrowing critters from getting up into the soil, we started filling it with old horse manure. When we ran out of manure, we left the beds to settle for a while.



Now that we've got enough poop to fill it up to cover all the wood, we've done so. A layer of dirt will go on top and then we'll plant some squash seeds in it. With any luck, we'll be enjoying some nice tasty squash later in the season.

This only made a small dent in the huge manure pile shown above, though, so I've still got a lot of work left to do!

Plans for an Emergency Food Bucket

In my Costco mailing this week..... Oh, alright, I can tell I'm going to have to explain why I am shopping at a big corporately-owned box store first. There is one reason: organic soy milk. Yes, I do own a soymilk maker. However, it is, quite frankly, a pain to use or rather a pain to clean. And I'm not crazy about the taste of the homemade soymilk. For the past year, I also simply haven't had the time to make soymilk from scratch, so I buy it.

When Silk quietly started sourcing their soybeans differently a couple of years ago, the only way to avoid GMO soy was to buy their organic version. In the regular grocery stores, it is priced at about $3.49 per half gallon. I did the math and joined Costco so I could buy their three-packs of it for $6.99. We've been using a fair amount of soymilk between my coffee and my sweetie's cold cereal. This may not always be the case, and certainly wouldn't be if things fell apart, but it has been for the past year.

So, back to the mailing. I was interested when I noticed Costco was offering a vegetarian emergency food bucket. They have a different one available in the stores that is not vegetarian but this one was, although available online only. It is on sale for $75 and contains 275 servings. Seemed like a good enough deal to check out. Sadly, there is a heavy emphasis on dairy in it, which makes it a poor option for us. (Dairy aggravates my sinusitis and plantar fasciitis, as well as causing digestive problems for my sweetie.)

My next thought was that we could put together a bucket like this on our own. We could use some of our dividend to get dehydrated meals at REI and also order the tasty dehydrated vegan soup blends from Harmony House. If we added some oatmeal packets, we'd have a pretty good emergency food bucket of our own, albeit for a higher price per serving than the sale above, but still convenient for tossing in the vehicle if we need to leave in a hurry.

The wheels of my brain were still slowly turning. When my mother-in-law was recuperating from her emergency hip replacement, I used some of the dried veggies from the backpacking kits we'd gotten before with our REI dividend to make her some instant soups. I included instant brown rice in some as well as seasonings. She said they were darn good and very easy for her to cook. It'd be great if I could do that since I still have some of those veggies left, along with some of their TVP "meat" products. But they wouldn't keep well at all in little ziploc baggies....

Doh! I have a vacuum sealer! Hey, this opens up lots of possibilities, cheap ones and tasty ones. I can custom-make exactly the kind of soups and meals that we would like. I can buy bulk instant oatmeal and mix it up with some sweetener and seasoning for easy breakfasts. I can even mix up some instant coffee mixes for me and toss in some tea packets for my sweetie. The only things I'll need to purchase are some instant brown rice, quick oats, and bags for the vacuum sealer.

Once I get this all packed up, I'll store it with the propane camp stove and a couple of propane bottles. For home use in an emergency, I'd use the rocket stove and solar oven.

Do you have any favorite recipes for "instant" food mixes you can recommend? Do you have a stash of super easy-to-prepare food ready for an emergency? Is it lightweight and portable enough to grab on your way out the door with less than 5 minutes notice? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments!

A Siren Means PULL OVER, Jerk!

Okay, listen up, people. When an emergency vehicle has its sirens on and lights flashing, that means there is an emergency and time is critical. A house may be burning down, someone may be bleeding profusely, a person could be trapped in a burning car, or somebody might be about to get murdered. It might not be happening to you this time, but the next time it could be your house, your deep cut, your accident, or you getting attacked. Whether they are responding to someone else's emergency or your own, the emergency personnel need to get to the scene PRONTO!

That means drivers on the road need to get the hell out of the way. On a two-way road, everyone is supposed to pull over to the right-hand curb and avoid blocking any side roads, driveways, or intersections. Generally if on a divided road - you know, where there is a physical barrier in between the two directions of traffic, only cars on the side the emergency vehicles are on need to pull over. At intersections, pull over to the right (never the left) if possible. If there is nowhere for you to move to get out of the way, then just stop and let the emergency vehicles wind their way through. They have training for this but need the drivers on the road to be predictable.

How will you know if there are emergency vehicles on the road when you're driving? Easy. Pay attention. Stop yakking on the phone, stop texting, stop reading a map, stop cranking up your car stereo, stop applying your make-up, and stop eating that cheeseburger. I know you think you don't have time to do those things except when you are driving but your callous disregard for the task at hand - that would be driving - could very well cost someone their life. Are ya good with that? I'm not!

And while we're on the subject of idiots on the road, jockeying for a better position in traffic while pulling over for a siren and then pulling back out into traffic is so not cool. It's dangerous and could easily spark a road rage incident. Heck, look at how pissed off I am but at least I'm venting my anger in an educational post rather than screaming at other drivers. Okay, I screamed a little but my windows were rolled up.

Are we clear now? Pay attention to your driving when driving and pull over for emergency vehicles.

My Last Yard Sale ... Ever

Well, I made it through our yard sale yesterday but decided it will be the last one I hold. With the time spent sorting through everything to decide what to sell, packing it away, hauling it to storage, moving it from one storage unit to another, hauling it home, going through it all to decide what to keep with the RV plan scratched, pricing it all, hauling full buckets of dirt into the yard to make tables with scrap plywood, making good signs, roping off the drive so people wouldn't drive into the "orchard" area, hauling the stuff outside, setting it all up, my sweetie putting up the signs, holding the sale, packing up after the sale, and hauling the leftovers to a local charity, I think I made about 25 cents an hour. Maybe. Might have been less.

And that doesn't include the cost of an extra storage unit for a couple of months to store it nor, of course, the original cost of the stuff. That part is never included in yard sale calculations because after all one presumably got use of the stuff before deciding to pitch it to the curb. In any case, the yard sale was definitely not worth it from a financial angle.

Now, in the past - more distant than recent - I always enjoyed the actual sale. As an extrovert, being around people generally energizes me. At least it used to. I have found myself moving more and more towards the introvert side of the sociability scale in the past few years. Being around lots of people has become more draining than energizing and by the end of the sale yesterday, I was totally wiped out.

It didn't help that despite anticipating some problems and heading them off by, for instance, roping off where the driveway was so people wouldn't drive into the "orchard" area to turn around, people still managed to astound me. As indicated by my sign, many chose to park on the road. That was fine. What was surprising was that most of these people then chose to cut across an unstable slope littered with holes from the ground squirrels and lined with poky acacia bushes rather than walk an additional three feet on the road to come down the driveway. Thankfully no-one twisted an ankle or fell down! Despite bright yellow rope dividing the yard from the house (and back gate), a number of people headed for the back gate to get in to the yard. Uh, no. Controlled access and exit is important in a yard sale so the back gate was locked. People got a little huffy that they had to walk around. Geez, it was sooooo far.

Can you tell I'm losing patience with people these days?

I specifically said in my ad that we had no children's stuff for sale, hoping to head off crowds of kids. Not that there is a problem with kids; the problem is with the adults. They don't supervise the kids and we had tables full of SHARP-edged and pointy tools. I put warning signs on those tables as well as one on the entrance, yet still had to point this out to numerous parents whose children were left unsupervised.

When I price for a yard sale, I put very reasonable prices on stuff. Past sales have attracted dealers (antique, stores, etc.); these dealers haven't quibbled over cost because they know a good deal when they see one. For a dealer NOT to try to bargain you down means your prices are damn good. So...when people try to grind me on price, it irks me. I don't mind someone throwing out a quick, "Would you consider less?" Sometimes I'll budge, other times no. But to continue to grind me, or to flat-out lie, pisses me off. I'd rather donate to a charity than accept $10 for something priced at $20 when it really is worth $30 in yard sale dollars! (And then to follow up the $10 offer because "that's all I have" with "Would you take $11?" - no, don't do that.)

I did give some great discounts yesterday. Do you know who to? A neighbor. The only neighbor who bothered to show up. I'd really hoped my neighbors would see the yard sale as a great neutral way to have an excuse to come by for a quick hello and visit, yet only one showed up. She's probably got the least money of all my neighbors so I gave her some great deals. Then she called up her mother and sister who live nearby and got them to come over. I was about to close up due to the wind coming up but waited for them. They took a lot of what was left, for pretty good deals. They appreciated it and I appreciated that they took the time out of a busy day to come by.

All that's left to do now is break down the set-up outside, recycle the signs and collapsing boxes, and try to sell a couple of things on craigslist that might be of interest to someone in town. I'm also going to post my remaining yard sale supplies - posterboard, price tags, hanging price tags, and King-size Sharpies (for sign-making) - on craigslist. I'm not doing this again. Anything that doesn't sell easily on craigslist is going straight to charity.

Yard Sale Angst

I used to love having yard sales. I enjoyed all parts of the process: the culling out things no longer needed in the home (and garage and yard), the price research and actual pricing, the advertising, and the actual sale. Somewhere along the line, this love has become tarnished.

I suspect it started when every yard sale we held in one town, near the US/Mexico border, was attended by folks from across the line with a different view of yard sale ethics. One woman in particular always came for the clothes and tried to lie to me about what she had stuffed in the bag to buy. I learned to get out everything and total it up myself, even though she took affront to this. It got to the point where I dreaded dealing with her so much that I quit selling any clothes at all in my annual yard sales.

Still, after moving from there, I remember having some good yard sales elsewhere. I've even had a couple of decent ones since being back in Tucson. Then there was the day that the wind blew so bad, that I had to fold up early. And the moving sale we had before coming out here was poorly attended, always a disappointment when one has invested a lot of work in putting the sale together.

Now, I am trying to get over a dozen boxes of our belongings priced to put out on Saturday and finding it hard to push myself to keep on plugging. On the one hand, I'd love to just haul it all off to the thrift store and be done with it. On the other hand, we could really use the cash from selling at least the nicer things. We've done some of that on craigslist but finding people who will drive out of town to pick things up can be tough, along with the hassles of dealing with the usual component of flakes ever present on the list.

I sigh and tell myself, it will all be over in a few days. And hopefully we'll have gotten enough money to pay for some new tires. Maybe, too, it will provide an opportunity to meet a few more neighbors.

I think, though, that this may be my last yard sale....unless we end up moving into something tiny (you know, like a remote cave somewhere away from the crazy world) and selling almost everything we own.

Editing My Life for Public Consumption

Following a comment left on another blogger's post, I stumbled across this funny post about how we bloggers edit what we share with the world about our lives. In the case of Redneck Mommy, her daughter argued that her mother was a hypocrite for telling her to clean her room while she herself never told her blog readers about the messes in the rest of the house.

This got me to thinking about how I pick and choose what to tell you about here on my blog. Of course I edit my life. For one thing, hearing about everything I do (and don't do) would bore you to tears. And, not surprisingly, I want you to think well of me so I don't often share my shortcomings. I do sometimes, though, but usually for a laugh or to illustrate that living a perfectly green, low impact life is damn near impossible. Does this careful editing, however, make me a hypocrite or does it make me simply human?

Does the fact that I've been saying "I really need to get in the habit of baking bread every week" for a couple of years, yet I don't and therefore have to buy bread regularly make me a hypocrite? I read blogs where people talk about (or brag, it sometimes seems to me when I'm feeling like I am not doing nearly enough...) that they just made their peanut butter and jelly sandwich with their own freshly baked bread from wheat they grew, threshed, and ground (by hand!) themselves, homemade jelly from their own homegrown strawberries, and peanut butter ground from the peanuts grown in their own soil. That's lovely, it really is, but I'm not there. Will I ever be? I don't know. Hopefully, though, I will eventually actually bake my own bread regularly (maybe in the solar oven) using locally grown wheat that we've ground with pedal power.

Does the fact that I know how to do laundry by hand but usually use the machine make me a hypocrite? I've never claimed that I do all my laundry by hand, but I also didn't make a big deal about the new water-saving front loader we got when we moved in here. In the world as it is today, I don't have time or energy to wash the clothes by hand and I'm grateful for the machine. If the world fell apart, I would, however, have the skills and ability to do it by hand. Thankfully, if the world fell apart, I think the standards for "clean" clothing would fall drastically so I'd be washing more infrequently than is necessary now, especially for my sweetie's workplace.

Does the fact that I advocate riding a bike instead of driving yet I haven't ridden my own Xtracycle in months make me a hypocrite? No, it makes me angry. There is no place for me to store my bike securely (protected from weather and theft) at this house because we had to get rid of our shed for zoning reasons. My bike lives several miles away at a rented storage unit so it doesn't get used. Lingering feelings of anger and depression over the whole zoning situation here have not helped motivate us to ride anyway, although I think I've finally come up with a way to build a low-profile acceptable storage run for the bikes now.

Does the fact that I'm a huge advocate of decluttering yet am currently surrounded by boxes of clutter we've been storing for months make me a hypocrite? Let's say no. It makes me patient - patient enough to wait for good yard sale weather. Now that it's here, I've drug the two dozen boxes of clutter into my office to sort through and price. Sort through? Contrary to my own advice, we are going back through the boxes to see if there are things we want to keep. We have a legitimate reason. When we set aside all this stuff, we intended to give up the homestead and move into a fifth-wheel trailer with considerably less room. Since we are staying, we can use some of the tools that wouldn't have been useful in an RV. And I'm keeping my sledgehammer. Oh yes, I am.

As you can see, there are quite a few things that I'm not doing that you may have thought I was doing because I generally avoid mentioning it one way or the other. I'm guessing this is probably true of most people, though. We have ideals we strive for but our reality often falls short and we don't necessarily want people to think we aren't as awesome as they might have assumed. Let me tell you right here and now that you should banish all beliefs in Chile's Perfectly Green Life right here and now. I do the best I can but I am, after all, just a little chile pepper.

Roadrunner and Coyote

One of the reasons I'm glad we have coyotes in our area is that I figure they help keep the population of garden pests down. Actually, though, I've only seen the resident coyote with a rabbit dangling from its jaws once . Most of the time, it is just crossing the property empty-handed, so to speak. One day, he spent a bit of time chowing down on mesquite beans, a good protein source, and the droppings left scattered around are often full of beans, although some also have fur in them.

Today, I learned why I should value my resident pair of roadrunners more highly. Anyone who knows anything about roadrunners - the real ones, not the cartoon character - knows they eat snakes among other things. In fact, they eat rattlesnakes. While we haven't seen in a rattlesnake here in the year (almost) that we've been here, I still feel reassured that "my" roadrunners are helping patrol the grounds. They also eat insects, including scorpions (of which several have turned up here), small birds, and rodents.

Now when I've read their diet list before, I've always kind of assumed that the rodents they were eating were small. You know, like field mice or maybe an unlikely kangaroo rat. Uh, no. While eating our lunch today, my sweetie spotted the roadrunner out front with a large morsel in its mouth, still wiggling. We grabbed our binoculars in time to watch this roadrunner beat the living crap out of a pocket gopher. A pocket gopher, for those of you unfamiliar with them, is about the size of a large city rat.

The roadrunner kept picking it up by the loose skin and slamming it down on the ground until it finally quit moving. Unfortunately, the roadrunner then moved between some dense acacias to eat, so we weren't able to witness the gory feast. I'm super-impressed at the bird's hunting skills as it most likely pulled the gopher out of a hole in the ground. Maybe it saw dirt moving as one of the holes was back-filled from below and was able to grab a leg. In any case, we're thrilled to have some pest control assistance here and will not be following our neighbor's recommendation to poison (with strychnine!) the local gopher population.

Buckets & Barrels for the Garden

Since we plan to grow our vegetables and herbs in containers, both to avoid critters who like to nibble on roots and zoning issues, we need containers. Yard sales and thrift stores sometimes yield a few, often over-priced, pots for plants. Once in a rare while, craigslist will have a few free pots listed, but often the gas to drive to pick them up costs more than new pots. We have found that 5-gallon buckets work just as well as pots and cost a whole lot less. Because they don't flare out at the top, too, more can be crowded into a small space.

If, like us, you've chosen to go the bucket route for your container garden, your next step is to procure a bunch of buckets. I avoid used paint buckets as I don't want to risk contaminating the soil or plants grown in them. Luckily, it is not too difficult to get hold of food grade buckets. The challenge can be getting enough and getting them without having to make multiple trips to pick them up.

Buckets can often be had for free from bakeries, caterers, and restaurants. The problem I ran into when going this route with grocery store bakeries was that it was a real crap shoot. The bakeries, for instance, might or might not empty a couple of buckets per day, usually ones that held greasy frosting and fillings. The store closest to me didn't like to leave the empties sitting around so staff would haul them out to the trash quickly. If I didn't time my visit to the store just right, I'd miss out. They weren't willing to hold them for me, although they were more than willing to give me what they had if I showed up at the right time. Another store promised to hold them for me but didn't. The next couple of stores I checked with looked at me like I was insane when I asked about buckets in the first place.

This routine got old quickly. Then I learned that a local sub sandwich chain, Eegee's, collected all the empty pickle and pepperocini buckets from the shops at their corporate headquarters. They donate about 150 of these per month to the local food bank but the rest are available for purchase. The price is not consistent, I'm assuming due to stock on hand. Currently they are asking $1.50 each including the lids. However, I have not been able to get any the last few times I've tried because they keep selling out. (Spring fever for container gardeners? Or more people storing food in light of global instability?)




In the past, we've picked up a few 55 gallon barrels from the local bottling company for water storage and rainwater harvesting. We got rid of those when we moved out here, with the plan to go much bigger (and then sold the bigger tanks when we planned to leave here.) With the inability to find buckets, I suggested to my sweetie that we try cutting the big barrels in half to create two big planters. He liked the idea and I stopped by the Kalil bottling company in Tucson. These are food grade barrels previously used to hold the concentrated syrup for sodas and other drinks. They currently charge $13 per barrel, up a bit from what I paid the first time several years ago.




While waiting for the paperwork to be completed there, I noticed huge stacks of 5-gallon buckets. I asked about them and found out they were for sale, too. Their price is slightly higher than Eegee's at $2 each, but, more importantly, they have plenty, and lids if you want them. My vehicle smelled like a sickly sweet soda factory on my way home!

Like the ones from pickles and pepperocinis, these buckets still have a strong syrupy smell even after cleaning. However, plants don't care. For just forty dollars, we've got enough containers now to do a decent-sized garden. Even better, the soil will be free, made from a mix of my finished compost and leftover dirt from planting trees and bushes. I hope the garden will produce enough that I can get back into canning and preserving food.

Do you container-garden on a budget? Where do you find containers?

Weekend Warrior? No, Weekend Gardener!

I am so tired! I spent some hard hours out in the yard today. We want to make sure our trees do well so we followed the planting instructions from the local nursery, which recommended a nice BIG hole filled with a 50-50 mixture of the dirt from the hole and compost. This is probably because much of the dirt in this area is poor, like that in the yard of the house we rented in town, as well as because caliche is common here.


Caliche is why we bought the drop bar that I used today to loosen the soil before shoveling. Oh, wait, that's not true. We bought this particular drop bar because our dog peed on it while we were wandering around the flea market. However, it's been really handy over the years and is kind of cool since it's actually a drive shaft from a Model T.

Anyway, back to today's gardening. I dug two holes, each about two feet deep and two feet across. While I mixed some of the dirt with some unsifted compost, my sweetie lined the bottom of the holes with hardware cloth and then put chickenwire around the sides. This is to discourage pocket gophers, voles, and round-tailed ground squirrels from gnawing on the tasty roots of the young trees. The roots will push through the wire, actually breaking the soft wire welds as they grow, and over time the wire will rust in the earth providing iron nourishment for the plants. When the roots are bigger, they will be less susceptible to destruction by the critters.


I didn't use as much compost as recommended because we have really good alluvial soil here. I didn't hit any caliche either while digging. In fact, the soil was great until about a foot and a half down where I hit the sand and rock layer. The drop bar mostly just made it easier to scoop out loose soil rather than having to push hard on the shovel. I tossed some of the compost and dirt back in the hole, my sweetie put in the trees (an apple and a peach today), and we filled in around them. We also folded some chickenwire over the top to discourage the hungry rabbits and wrapped the bottom of the trunks with the expanded aluminum sold to put on top of gutters to keep debris out.


Since we mixed compost in with the soil from the holes, there was quite a bit of dirt leftover. I sifted all of it (including that from the fig tree planted last week) so my sweetie will have good dirt to mix with my sifted compost for the container garden. The rocks and gravel were used to fill in a low spot along the road to hopefully keep rain from running down our driveway. We've got a couple dozen 5-gallon buckets and I hope to pick up another dozen so we can grow lots of tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, and whatever else my sweetie's got germinating inside.

I'm exhausted from today's work and looking at a bunch of pots with plants that still need to go in the ground. My plan is to dig one hole a day; when my sweetie gets home from work, we'll line it with the wire and get something planted every day. I hate formal exercise so this is a great way to work my muscles!

Were you a Weekend Warrior in your garden today (or yesterday)?

Digging in with Fruit

Today we spent about a month's food budget (which admittedly has been high lately due to stress-eating) on fruit. We didn't go to the grocery store or farmer's market and load up a basket with fruit. No, we went to a 20 acre local nursery and got plants.

Wait a minute, some of you may be thinking while scratching your heads. Didn't she say they weren't going to stay where they are for much longer than a year?

Well, yeah, but that was last week (or month?) and life changes. We don't actually know how long we will stay here, but with the chaos rocking the world right now, climate change bearing down on us with every season, and peak oil sneaking into everyone's consciousness lately, we've decided to hedge our bets. We may not have the option to move on from here when the time comes, especially since some commitments (family, job) will keep us rooted here for a while.

Fruit-bearing plants are a long-term investment, unlike a single season's tomato or lettuce crop. We may not harvest anything this year, but eventually these plants will yield tasty and nutritious food. If we are still here, we'll get to eat it, both fresh and preserved. If we're not, we hope the plants will increase the attractiveness of the property to potential buyers. It seems like a win-win situation, even though we'll have to skimp on the food budget for a few months to compensate for the money we spent today.

We focused on getting trees, berries and grapes that should deal well with our summer heat as well as our colder-than-Tucson winter lows. Some of the trees will be low-water use once they are established while other plants will need more water. We hope to use harvested rainwater and gray water for a good portion of the plants' needs.

Right now, I've got to go dig some holes. Luckily, the soil is pretty easy to dig in here and we didn't get so many plants that it's going to take all that long. We do have to allow a few extra minutes to line the holes with chickenwire to discourage the pocket gophers, though. We've been told the little buggers can kill a tree in a single night.

Sorry Bees, No Blooms for You

This morning, I ripped all the blooms off the rocket (a dandelion) in my yard. No, I don't hate flowers nor do I hate bees. However, I hate that my stupid dog eats bees.

Polie is obsessive-compulsive when it comes to eating bees. As soon as he hears or spots any bees, he will zone in on them with the intention of eliminating them from this world. He will chase them down and even leap way up in the air to catch them. He is oblivious to everything else going on, including me yelling at him to stay away from the damn bees.

The problem is that when he eats them, he invariably throws up about an hour later. This reaction does not stop him from trying to eat bees, I suppose because the hour delay keeps him from making the connection that eating a bee makes him sick. And I absolutely cannot keep him from chasing the bees outside. He's possessed.

On Tuesday morning, he ate two bees. Hoping to fend off a serious bout of vomiting, I gave him a diphenhydramine pill. (An acquaintance who is a vet had mentioned I could try that.) He didn't throw up but that afternoon he started snorting in the reverse-sneeze way that dogs do and trying to hack something up. This was so severe that he was almost crouched on the ground with the effort. This continued off and on through the night, although he never did hack anything up. His energy was low and he was obviously miserable.

By yesterday morning, we were pretty concerned and called our vet. She ended up giving him a couple of shots, steroids, to get him over the reaction. The tech advised us that the Benadryl might have worked if we had given him more (1 mg per pound of body weight*).

They had no real suggestions on what we could do to stop him from going after the bees in the first place, which would be my preference because we certainly don't want to drive him all the way into town (which also means hubby has to take time off work to wrangle the other dog) and pay them almost a hundred bucks every time he eats multiple bees.

Today I bought a large bottle of generic diphenhydramine, just in case. If you have any suggestions, however, on how I can discourage this behavior, please leave a comment.

Calling him does not work; he doesn't seem to hear me. Treats are totally ignored. Putting him on his leash doesn't stop him from jumping to try to get them. Short of only taking him out with a muzzle on, I'm not sure what to do. We'd like to try the super-soaker toys we've seen people use at the dog park, but the stores aren't stocking summer stuff yet. Any ideas?


*Please note I am not a veterinarian and you should not treat your animal based on what I was told. Ask your vet or do your own research!

Low Tech Solutions

I think sometimes people gravitate towards high tech solutions to problems simply because they are sexy, exciting, and new. However, low tech solutions often work just as well and are immediately accessible to almost everyone, without the hefty capital outlay.

For instance, keeping warm in your home. We are looking at this issue ourselves right now. There is already insulation under the house. The ceiling appears to be well-insulated based on how long this weekend's snow remained on the roof after it had all melted off the trees and the ground.

The two problem zones are the doors and the windows. With one warped door and the other door frame out of square, we're facing expensive and time-consuming repairs. The windows are double-paned but of the absolute lowest quality. There is no way we can afford to replace them and my idea of putting cardboard up last summer to keep out the heat had the unintended consequence of discoloring and warping the blinds.

One cheaper solution to the heat lost through the windows in the winter is covering them (with something other than cardboard). A couple of years ago, I haunted thrift stores, yard sales, and church rummage sales to acquire quilts at inexpensive prices. It may take a while, but I hope to have window quilts installed before next winter.

There is, however, an immediate solution to reducing the amount of energy used to heat our house: more clothes. Layering clothes is a great way to stay warm when outdoors and there's no reason not to do it indoors. As this very good article points out, too, one doesn't have to wear layers of heavy and bulky clothing. Thermal underwear made from the new synthetic fabrics actually have a better insulating value and are much lighter weight than cotton or wool. I know the materials are made with petrochemicals but this seems like a much better use of them than simply burning them to stay warm briefly.

Another area that could use a low tech solution is food. There is significant upheaval around the world right now and much of it is a direct result of people being hungry. Food is a basic need for all of us but many go without. This is only going to get worse with climate change, peak oil, and increasing economic instability.

Rather than looking to some high tech solution to world hunger, Dr. McDougall proposes a much simpler and immediate solution in his current newsletter, one that we could implement right now. It would not be a popular solution with many people, but it would help feed the world's hungry. And this, in turn, would help reduce the difficulties in transitioning to a lower energy world as oil runs its course.

What low tech solutions to problems do you use in your home?