Tomatoes? Already?

It was a beautiful winter morning when I let Moose out around seven to commune with nature after a good night's sleep.  Stars filled the dark blue western sky as the dawn was preparing to break, temperatures were around zero, and a light powdery snow blanketed the ground and drifted in wisps as a light breeze blew from the north.  As the Master of His Own World took his time sniffing everything in the yard, I was regretting not wearing socks as a cold wind blew across my ankles, my thoughts were focused not on the cold, but on warmer temperatures, spring and planting tomatoes.

In the past few years my tomatoes have been rather small when I transplanted them to the garden compared to the plants they are selling at the garden and home improvement stores.  My plants are always healthy, and present a decent harvest, but they come to maturity later than the store-bought ones.

So, this year I thought I would start my tomatoes a little earlier than last year's late-February date.  I think by starting in late-January/early February my plants should be close to store-bought plants.  I am also considering building a small hydroponic system to produce tomatoes year-round, but thoughts of that can wait for a later date.

I am also looking for suggestions on what and how many of each variety to plant. If you have a favorite, or an heirloom that you would like me to plant in my garden let me know. Also, I am looking for people to plant  some of my heirloom Italian tomatoes in their gardens.  Four years ago we had a strong wind storm that came through the weekend after transplanting, and we lost all our tomato plants.  And recently we have seen a few deer right outside the back door.  I would like to ensure that I have seeds from this season, even if something happens to my plants.  My thought is that if I can loan of our a few plants to others, with my only payment being the seeds from two or three tomatoes that the "foster gardener" may grow in their garden, I can rest a little easier about having seeds for next year in case something unfortunate were to happen to my garden.

Bad Year for the Garden

This year was a bad year for our garden.  We have a good crop of tomatoes and some promising rutabagas, but little else.  Not even the zucchini plants, usually prolific producers, did much.  The corn, which likes warm days and cool nights, got hot days and very warm nights.  Some local farmers were cutting their corn for silage as early as mid-August, as the cobs were not developing.

The drought and heat hit us early and hard.  There was so little rain that I didn't mow the lawn from mid-May until late August.  With the lack of rain, we could not water the garden from the rain barrel as we usually do, so it got a big dose of Mason city water, which I believe has too much chlorine for a garden to thrive.  And the heat was hard on us, but even harder on the garden.  Days in June and July stayed hot for 24 hours, not giving plants time to recover from the heat.

But why a good tomato plant and very little else?  I believe the reason was a lack of bees.  Tomatoes will self pollenate, and the fruit we have picked so far have all been on the lower stems.  The fruits and vegetables that depend on bees to thrive did very poorly.  We picked four strawberries off one box, and none off the other.  Are there fewer bees in the area due to hive collapse, as has happened around the country, or are we just too far from an established hive?  That I do not know.

As convenient as it is to live in town, I would like to move out of town where I could have a bee hive or two.  Keeping bees would not only provide a much greater opportunity for our plants to be pollenated, but would also provide us with honey, which is starting to get very expensive.

I hope next year is more productive.

"I got nuthin'......"

Lately, I have felt like I have had little to write about.  I've read a couple of books, including the newest Kellerman mystery and a Lloyd Kahn book on homebuilt houses of the Northwest, ridden over 90 miles in a week for the first time in a couple of years, learned hot weather means Moose will not go out of the air-conditioning for more than how long it takes to pee,  drove the young one to swim conditioning camp, researched cross bikes to replace an outgrown mountain bike, exchanged a broken spoke for a good one, and saw the big dipper the other night while waiting for a certain pooch to complete his business.

It has finally started to rain and the temperature has dropped about 20 degrees.  Maybe I can convince the boy to go outside to catch a Frisbee or two.

Back on the road again

Muscle memory is an amazing thing.  Over a  period of years of riding a bike, my leg muscles, when used regularly, fall into a very comfortable rhythm of turning over the crank about 80 times per minute.  When not used regularly, they fall into a rhythm similar to a fine precision clock.  Well, at least a fine precision clock that has been tossed off a cliff.

For the past two days I have been doing a loop of about 11 miles.  A few short years ago a short loop would have been 20.  But after taking a considerable amount of time off the bike, for which there are no good reasons, 11 miles seems to be a good number to start.

I have not been consistent about getting on the trainer in the basement.  It is very hard to get enthused about parking myself on a bike that goes nowhere.  It is a good workout, on a good day.  But a half hour on the trainer is nothing like 15 minutes on the road.  An hour on the road seems to go faster than 10 minutes on the trainer.  The rhythm is different also.  It is not hard to hold a steady pace on the trainer, but toss in a few grades (there are no hills around here, just grades) and suddenly my cadence changes slightly as the hill progresses and gears change, my legs start to complain and my heart rate goes up much quicker, the scenery changes and it is much better than the basement.  

Even after two quick rides, the memory comes back.  Muscles remember how to tighten and loosen, I shift without thinking, I slide back and forth on the saddle as the terrain changes.  I stop thinking about what to do next.  I see birds, cows and farmers in the middle of spring planting.  The wildflowers are starting to bloom in the hedgerows and unplowed fields.  And there must be a deer or two around somewhere.

As I ride along, I think back to other rides.  The long hills of DALMAC, the steepness of Brockway Mountain, rider-packed roads of RAGBRAI and the castle with the moat in France.  I guess memory is not restricted to muscles.

Yes, I sold a bike

This weekend was the annual "Spring Fling" on the Courthouse Square in Mason.  Spring Fling is one of those small town events with craft booths, food and musicians designed by the Chamber of Commerce to get people out of their houses and into downtown Mason after a long winter.  It is a great little event that draws people from all over the area.  And drawing visitors from outside Mason is a good thing, because to people who live in Mason the weekend of the Spring Fling is when all the neighborhoods hold their annual garage sales, cleaning out their garages, basements and attics of surplus "stuff."

We rarely have a garage sale, mostly because we don't have that much stuff that accumulated to make a sale worthwhile.  But this year, the young one decided it was time to part with some of her childhood toys, and we had some excess furniture and other things, so why not?

Among the items I brought out of the basement was a nice Italian-made Bianchi frame made from Dedacciai tubing.  The frame was originally to be for the young one, but it is a 55 centimeter frame, she really needed a 53, and I got a great deal on a 53 LeMond frame last year and built it up.  So this year, I thought I would sell the Bianchi, as it is a nice, solid frame that I would probably never have any use for again.

This was something Kath has rarely seen, me parting  with a bike.  She has only seen it one other time, when I sold Hubert an old Fuji that I turned into a fixed gear about ten years ago.  There are bikes she knows I will only part with upon death.  But the Bianchi, to me, was not one of those bikes.  She kept asking if I was sure I wanted to do this.  "Once sold at a yard sale, it is gone forever, you may never find another like it....."  I was sure, but I was also convinced that selling a bike frame at a yard sale would be a long shot anyway.

Throughout Friday, the first day of the sale, we kept hearing the same thing.  "Where are the wheels?"  "Fifty dollars for that?" "I can buy a whole bike at Walmart for $60. "   But to save the day from these same comments over and over(one of my friends refers to non-cyclists as "the great unwashed"), there were two people who knew what the bike was, and what a deal it represented.  Unfortunately, they both passed.

The joint between the seat tube and top tube on Kath's Farmer's
market bike.  The frame was done by Powdercoat Studio.

Saturday morning went much the same for the Bianchi,  more great unwashed scratching their heads in amazement since they could buy a whole bike at Meijer for $75 and wondering where the wheels went, there was one wise gentleman who gave the old frame a close inspection.  He picked it up and turned it over, noticing the missing part of a decal on one side, and a little surface rust at the lugs.  He asked if it was a 57.  No, a 55. "That might work."  He put it down, pondered a few seconds more, pulled out his phone and took a picture.  As he started to walk away, he said, "Interesting frame."

Who he called as he walked away is not certain.  But he wasn't but a few yards down the sidewalk when he did an about-face and returned, with two twenties and a ten in hand.  We talked briefly after I recommended Powdercoat Studio in Traverse City as a great place for putting a  quality new coat on the "vecci ragazzo" (old boy) and showed him Kath's Farmers Market Cruiser, with a Powdercoat Studio finish.  Then he left, with the frame in his hand and a bounce in his step.

He probably thought he got a steal.  He did.  But what I got out of the transaction is knowing the frame would be used much more than if it were hanging in my basement.  With a new finish and some spare parts, it would make a fine bike once again.  It would be ridden, which was what it was made for, no longer hanging on a hook in the far corner of the basement, but possibly being ridden as a commuter bike, on long rides on the weekend, pulling children in a trailer, on a great adventure around the state, across the country or around the world.

I really didn't sell the Bianchi.  Like a mustang set loose on the prairie,  I gave it an opportunity to be what it was meant to be.  Something it would never be if it were hanging from a hook in my basement.

Lessons learned from a storm

Each spring, severe weather in the form of thunderstorms, high winds and even tornadoes will roll across mid-Michigan.   In 2011, just before Memorial Day, we experienced a storm that featured high winds, driving rain and even some hail.  There was no apparent damage to the house or cars, but we were without power.

The cause of the power outage was immediately apparent.  The high voltage “Y” shaped aluminum power towers, and the high voltage lines that run between them to feed the transfer station about a mile west of our house were badly damaged.  While not called a tornado, the winds had been powerful enough to twist many of the towers like a pretzel, and rip others completely out of the ground.   High-tension power lines were snapped like cheap string.

We live in a society that is dependent on electricity.  Stop for a moment to think about how much of our day is tied to electricity.  Every morning the alarm wakes us and the toaster helps with breakfast.  Traffic lights make getting to work faster and safer.  Computers and cell phones need power.  Getting money from the ATM, nighttime school events, reading a book late at night, the midnight snack from the refrigerator and much more are only possible because of the electricity fed to our homes and communities by power lines. 

The most we had ever been without power had been about two days.  This repair promised to take much longer.   In the end, it would be six days before power returned.  We were prepared for a two, or even a three-day power outage, but had not been ready for anything longer.   We have a number of flashlights and lanterns on hand, but most of our batteries are rechargeable and most of them were in a drawer, completely dead.  We had a refrigerator/freezer and a standup freezer that were filled with frozen vegetables from the garden, a couple of frozen pizzas, a turkey and a few pounds of meat.   Being on city water, and with a self-igniting water heater, we had a steady flow of water and did not have to worry about a pump, taking away one concern.

Looking back on the six days, we were prepared for a short power outage, but not a longer one.  Our two biggest inconveniences were defrosting food and no lights.   We had a crank powered radio to keep us connected with the world and listen to baseball games.  We cooked the pizzas on our backpack oven.  We cooked meat on the grill.  Everything else was packed in coolers and the coolers covered with sleeping bags to insulate them more.  The turkey would help keep the rest of the food cold enough to save to be cooked when the power came back and then refrozen, while the vegetables would be dehydrated.

The easy solution for the next major power outage would have been to purchase a portable generator, or have a natural gas generator connected to our home.  Or, would a better solution be to re-think how, and how much power we use.  The Amish live complete lives without power.  We should be able to last a few days.

We took steps to be better prepared.  Now, there is always a fresh 24-pack of AA batteries in the house to provide enough light to last for two weeks.  We have emptied the freezer, instead choosing to dehydrate or can the vegetables we normally would have placed there.  We keep a lot less frozen meat on hand.   By not having a freezer in the basement, we save about $10 a month in electricity.  There are now prepared  “ready kits,” with clothes, a first-aid kit and food for three days for the family, the dog and the cat ready to go.

The greatest lesson learned is how much power we have reduced how much electricity we use, and our bill, by about 20 per cent.  Since the storm, we have been more aware of when a light or bathroom fan is left on.  We turn off computers when finished.  We have identified the appliances in the house that use standby power, and have specialized power strips that will only power up a connected device when the main device is turned on.  The best example is the DVD player receives power only when the television is on.   

It is just a matter of time before we lose power again.  But the lessons that have been learned, and the changes that have been made in our lifestyle, will hopefully make that time less stressful.

Happy Birthday to the Boy!

Today is Moose's first birthday.  In a little over a year, he has progressed from an unwanted, about to be "disposed of" puppy, to an over-indulged member of the family.  From unwanted to loved.  From unimportant to part of the family.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I told "the girl" she could have a puppy.  But he was so cute, cuddly and playful that he won me over right away.  I may have jumped into this a little quickly,  My only previous experience with a dog was my childhood dog, that I got for a birthday present when I was six, so I had forgotten that dogs need to be trained and exercised, and that they cannot be left on their own for a few days, like cats.

And I had no idea what would be involved with raising a Border Collie before I agreed to let one occupy my house.  I knew he was playful, energetic and loved to be rubbed and scratched.  I found out on the ten-hour drive bringing him home from Kansas City that he did not mind riding in the car.  But what I read later from a borrowed a book on Border Collies from the library, and heard from a couple of friends who know a lot about dogs, I was wondering what I got myself into.  What I read was scarier than a Stephen King novel.

The warnings were clear.  This is a highly intelligent, easily bored animal that will tear up your house if you don't keep him occupied all the time.  He will take a great deal of work, he will push boundaries, he will try your patience.  He will try to herd and dominate everything because that's what Border Collies were bred to do.  He will be a challenge.  Cujo seemed like an upgrade.

The reality of raising this particular Border Collie has been something much different different from the dire warnings about the evil that this dog would bring.  He is a very intelligent dog, and does he like to herd everything.  Some people use "herding cats" to describe the impossible.  Moose herds the cat.  All the time.  Not that the cat cooperates, but it is herded nonetheless.  I would love to see him with some sheep.  He responds well to basic commands like sit and stay, goes out for "necessary breaks" on his own and stays in the perimeter of the yard without fence or chain, and is getting better about being walked on the leash.  If we would walk him more instead of playing frisbee with him all the time, he would be much better on the leash.  Frisbee is just more fun.

There have been reports of Border Collies knowing over 1,000 words.  I don't think Moose is that smart, but he responds on command to finding his red ball, Kong and frisbee.  He knows where to find his "house," which is his crate, knows it is time to go to sleep for the night when he hears "bedtime,"   He, much to my disgust, has not learned that rabbit poop is not food, but knows when to "leave it."  He also has trained us to respond to his needs by doing his "tippy head" thing, where he tips his head from side to side, and whines when he has to go out.

He is also very sensitive to tone of voice and certain noises.  Loud laughing or disagreements among members of the family result in Moose taking to his crate.  When the neighbor next door cranks up his Harley, or when a helicopter goes overhead, he goes from room-to-room looking for the source of the noise.  He responds enthusiastically to praise for catching his frisbee in the air, or when he gets a belly rub.  He wears his mood on his little doggie face.

But, after we got through the puppy stage where he wanted to chew everything, he has not been destructive.  He learned quickly what he could have and what he could not.  And when scolded with a "bad dog" it is a more powerful punishment that I could imagine.  As for needing to dominate, he is more of an overgrown lap dog, wanting more to just be a part of what is going on.

In many ways raising a dog is like raising a child.  They require a ton of patience and understanding when they are young, they respond well to expectations and rules, and they learn at an amazing pace.  They do things that make you crazy, but love unconditionally, if you love them in return.

There have been times, especially during the puppy period, that I wondered if I had what it takes to raise a dog.  If I had the patience to teach him to be a member of the family.  I have been frustrated, angry and impatient at times with Moose.  But I have also been frustrated, angry and impatient with myself at times.  I have learned to be patient with him, he with me.  It has been a learning experience for us both.  I have learned a great deal about his behavior and his needs and how they are connected.  He has learned a great deal about my behavior and needs, and has adjusted as well.

But I still do not understand why he likes to eat rabbit poop.  That is just...wrong.