Sunday, October 2nd 2022. Week 39

This is a much more brutal War than you might imagine. 

Here are some links I picked up on my day off.

To start off with, here is a new map reader with pretty dense and serious information from informative sources including the end of Lyman’s occupation. I have heard that Ukraine is planning a referendum in the newly reacquired territories. My guess is 107% in favor of the blue and yellow. 

In response, Russia decided to shell a civilian humanitarian convoy. Brilliant strategy.

Apparently, when the Kremlin called for peace talks, their only two demands were to allow Donbas to stay in Russian hands and that Ukraine never join NATO. Within one day, here is the Ukrainian response as Zelinski signs NATO fast track docs.

Incidentally, though I have heard that the Americans are not specifically in favor of fast-tracking Ukraine into NATO, Joe Biden has stated publicly that NATO will defend every single inch of its territory in a remark aimed specifically at Russia.

Some serious information about how ill prepared Russian conscripts are and how many people are trying to run away and what Russia is doing about it.

I don’t really know why I’m following this guy, but Nikki has ended up in Tbilisi, Georgia and makes an interview with NFKRZ, a popular English language Russian blogger about the difference between living in Petersburg and “an actual civilized country”. Incidentally, I mentioned last year that if Belarus legalized marijuana, the place would be a park within two weeks. Marijuana is legal in Georgia. Just saying…

And if you’re interested, the latest blog from NFKRZ. Not surprisingly, he finds the Russian state more than a little insane.

***

It’s not quite 4:00 a.m. here on Sunday morning. I am keeping track of the Mets Braves game. The two teams are tied for the Eastern conference title. Jacob deGrom couldn’t keep the Braves in the park despite striking out 11 in six innings to bring the teams even. Max Scherzer is pitching tonight and they are tied 1-1 in the fourth inning. This series is a big deal because it’s the difference between having to play an additional three game series or getting three days of rest. Go Mets.

This was a pretty weird day off. It started weird and it stayed weird. For some reason known only to herself, Lena decided to show up at my house on Friday just a little bit before sunset. She sat on the street outside my Gate screaming my name at the top of her lungs. I was very brief with her. She told me she had brought me some present and I told her to keep it, to have a good weekend and not to bother me on Friday evenings. 

Then on Saturday in the mid-afternoon, Ghenna started ringing my phone. I had to block him just to make sure he got the bloody message. And if this wasn’t enough, that guy Dima who cleaned my well decided to contact me on Saturday by sending me some weird singer doing a Russian shanson. I didn’t answer him or look at the video when it came in but when he tried calling me for a video call just after sunset, I texted him telling him I was not really available. My guess is that he is still drinking his birthday party which was Friday. I sent him a congratulations and he sent me this song because it turns out that the singer looks a little like him.

I really, really, really should have turned off the phone.

It’s worth mentioning that the bread I made on Friday was probably the best bread I’ve ever made. It was very light and fluffy and the flatbreads puffed up beautifully. Everything I made was ridiculously tasty and the one meal I ate yesterday was also super satisfying. I guess what was interesting about that was the cabbage leaves that went into the stir fry. I like eating the dark green cabbage leaves as well as the white head leaves.

As far as dealing with wounded legs, it’s a little good and a little bad but when I do get up to walk around, I am free to walk around. I understand that in a perfect world I would continue to stay off my feet but I need them. Life is not worth living when you can’t get off the couch. This is the only decision worth making. It’s absolutely lovely to be able to walk around with no crutches and no cane. 

The plan for today is that my ex partner is coming up and unless something remarkable has happened, we might get some help from Ghenna. My ex-partner made a special request that he help her and it was my pleasure to pass the message on. It is my pleasure because though I might help out, she will be the one communicating with him and I will be free to actually enjoy some helpful labor without the bullshit high school friend fist bump covid nonsense. And if it is the gift that keeps on giving, she can transport some of his covid back to her friends in her office when she returns to slavery on Monday morning.

I really don’t take my days off lightly. I’ve said this before but it’s a definite feeling that I do not wish to live without if I can help it. I like the world to go away. I like not having people bother me that I don’t want bothering me.

I am not married right now. I don’t live with anyone but I don’t mind it one bit. I think my father was the same way after my mother passed on. He told me that he was not really in the market for another live in. He enjoyed the freedom and I’m pretty sure he enjoyed the quiet. He was free to do what he liked, he was not pressed into service by his partner. He had no social obligations outside of those he devised himself. I think he liked what his life felt like.

This is not to say that I don’t like women. I do like women. This is also not to say that I particularly think something negative about Slavic women. I’m saying this even though my life with Slavic women generally turns out catastrophically. There is one of those give and take things you get from women free to enjoy their sexuality while at the same time also enjoying their emotional (and financial) instability.

I suppose there is an argument to be made against monogamy. I’m sure there is an argument to be made for monogamy. Let’s just say monogamy is something that can be argued. I’m not sure what the global divorce rate is but I believe it’s a 50/50 chance that people stay together. I’m sure the odds against a monogamous relationship lasting are actually worse than that. About raising children, well, this is also a matter of contention here. The absolute Norm is for an absentee father, either because of economic reasons forcing him to travel or because alcoholism basically makes him unwelcome. Even fathers who are not alcoholics find a way to get ejected. There are a lot and I mean a lot of “heroic” women deciding to raise their children themselves. This is in fact the cultural norm that children are raised with fathers as an abstract concept.

I am not really interested in having any more kids. I’m not really interested in starting a new monogamous relationship. My last monogamous relationship was with my ex partner. Technically, we are still very close friends and she lives for opportunities to take care of me. We do not however see eye to eye on a lot of things. She kind of went vegan for me but she never got into it except for the fashion statement. She will never give up her job or the money that it brings her. I am an entrepreneur. Well, I am now a mostly retired entrepreneur but she keeps her slaves status and I am easily thrown under the bus come 5:00 on Sunday evening. That’s when she flips her switch and goes back into working mode.

Do I get lonely? No. This is the true answer. There are times when I guess I feel some desire for physical intimacy. I’m not going to give any details about my needs in this regard except to say that I never go so far without contact that I starve to death or go crazy. I have basically as much as I genuinely need. I am older and I am diabetic and I am not a porn star or a Maniac or any other sort of unique physical specimen. I might have been a baller when I was younger but that was a minute ago. Things have changed with time, misuse, abuse and the medical and legal systems of the Republic of Belarus. Time has a way of robbing us of our home run swings no matter what we do.

I am a terrible baseball watcher these days. The Mets went up in the top of the 5th but then Scherzer gave up a two-run homer in the bottom and the Braves are now up three to two. Scherzer is having a rough time of it giving up eight hits against only 4ks. This is not the time for the most significant one to punch in the national League to go cold.

It’s raining again. There is a specific sound that the rain makes as it makes its way into the gutters and down the downspout. It’s not an annoying sound in any way. It’s comforting actually. I like the rain. The field is turning green here late in the season as new grass is starting to grow from all of the water. My will is filling back up. I am absolutely sure that I did not waste money by sinking that second well. It was definitely a game changer and it’s going to be nice to be able to meet the needs of the trees and the bushes and whatever goes in our boxes next year.

I watched a few videos about the benefits of straw. Apparently, you can even plant in straw bales. The bacteria that naturally grows inside a hay bale is quite conductive to growth with nothing but a little priming. I’m not exactly doing something like this but I believe my combination of fertilizer and keeping the beds well mulched with straw will make for a very healthy soil content going forward. I don’t know that this will be the answer but I’m pretty sure I’m on a good track. I’m also sure that mulching everything is absolutely essential during our current drought ridden climate. I know it’s weird talking about drought while it’s raining. The growing season is over and I would rather not have everything roasted again next year, thank you very much.

I don’t know what else there is to talk about here. I have a couple of people that seem to be doing well at school but I don’t feel any pressing need to include them in my story. They are not really in my story and I’m not really in theirs but I’m happy for them. 

I guess the only thing I really wish to say is that I hope the Russians decide to withdraw generally from Ukraine. I genuinely hope that something gets through to Mr Putin one way or another that perhaps the late stages of his perpetual presidency might be better spent paying attention to Russian infrastructure. It’s a really huge place with lots of natural resources. Perhaps he could do something about the corruption and use some of the wealth of his country to better the lives of his own people and leave everybody else alone. Perhaps a shift towards the green might help. It might also help if he might stop bothering people about their sexuality. I don’t know why he needs to think that this is a matter of national security. I don’t know why he’s so worried about masculinity. Sounds like a personal problem actually.

Actually, withdrawing from Ukraine, withdrawing from moral judgments, withdrawing from personal corruption, going green and legalizing marijuana might turn Russia into a pretty interesting place to live. I guess this would be finding a cure for perpetual traumatic stress syndrome rather than cultivating it.

I’m sorry if I’m dreaming but when that guy Nikita was into viewing the Russian blogger and he asked about where was better for partying, the guy said that everybody had the most amazing weed and that at night, it was Wakanda. 

I mean, you can have a beautiful dream or you can have a nightmare. Which one would you choose for yourself or for your children?

***

Interviews with people in Moscow. This is what they know, this is what they believe and this is how they speak.

***

It’s 2:00 and I am at the end but perhaps the greatest work day of the last 6 months. Today was a day of artistry and beauty. Today there was life and genuine teamwork. Today sang. Today, work got done.

To start out with, I had everything ready before my ex partner showed up. Her back was still bothering her, but she was ready to see what would happen today.

It’s cold today, very cold and a little rainy and wet. It’s a good day for hard labor because you won’t really work up a sweat. It’s a bad day however if you’re not going to work. It’s a good day to catch a cold if you slow down too much.

I started this day with legs. I felt great waking up and walking around. I was pain-free and without crutches or cane. I don’t know how much I planned on actually helping, probably not much, but I was definitely up on my feet.

Ghenna showed up right on time and was exhibiting signs of military discipline. Almost. I would say he was more of the Russian army than the Ukrainian army but nevertheless, he was here and awaiting orders. My ex partner was not very interested in listening to my orders but nevertheless with our team in place and at the ready, I stood up and asked everybody to follow me. Sorry, it’s my nature to be this way.

The job that needed to be done went as follows. There was some new green growth in the lower gardens where the new trees have been planted. These needed to get cut down to prevent further growth and after that we were going to start spreading fertilizer. Ghenna would bring the wheelbarrow and Tanya would run the rake. We didn’t need to overdo it. When the fertilizer was spread, we would move over to the straw. Everybody said they understood the plan and my part would be logistics.

Work started slowly. I guess the concept of what we were doing was not so firm in anyone’s mind. Both Ghenna and my ex partner started slowly playing with the ground in the orchard, carefully picking out and digging out each of the little green sprouts. I saw them doing this but was busy trying to get the last of the necessary tools in place.

After about 15 minutes, Ghenna got some kind of a phone call and just walked away and got on his bike. I’ve seen this before. It’s definitely one of his negatives. However, I decided to pick up the slack myself. 

The problem was that I wanted this job done today and not into more weeks. I don’t have a command at my disposal everyday and I did not need to waste all of our time. I picked up my two pronged for and jumped into the garden asking my ex partner to pay attention.

The specific use of this two-pronged fork was to take out grass. The two prongs go deep into the land very easily and if you rate in a square pattern, diagonally left to right and then diagonally right to left, it does an amazing job of pulling up all the grass, roots and all. It is the absolute specialty of this instrument and though I told everybody that we needed to do this, nobody listened to me.

My ex-partner still didn’t want to listen to me. So I spoke a little more forcefully. I wasn’t interested in sitting around for 2 hours playing. I said to just use the hoe and just quickly rake over the green stuff that’s growing, cutting off the top and bothering its life. We would be cutting off its light within an hour and we didn’t need to dig the garden, we just needed to eliminate the plants that were growing. This was 15 minutes of work, not 90.

My ex partner fought back. Why was I yelling and spoiling the mood? The question went the other way. Why wasn’t she doing the job the way it needed to be done so we could get out of here on time. Additionally, I don’t give a shit about anybody’s mood. I just want this field buttoned up here and now.

I started raking furiously, trading instruments with her until she got the clue of how quickly we should be moving. Ghenna came back and picked up on the pace and started delivering fertilizer by the bucket full. I told him not to waste time being delicate but just to dump it in between the trees and let us rake it into place.

I believe this was the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve worked with a proper command. I was raking from one side of the row and my ex partner was raking from hers. We were spreading the dobrenia quickly and Ghenna kept the material coming. We got all the way to the last part of the last row when things started breaking down. Everyone was tired. We were working a lot faster than anybody wanted to.

For me, this was the worst thing that could have happened because with the diminishment of the adrenaline rush, the reality of my heroism started showing up. My leg was on fire from all of this work. You have to be in shape for this. I had used up all of my vertical time. 

However, nobody was complaining anymore about my leadership demands.

Seeing the next step had arrived, I got up and limped over to the hay bale and pulled the ropes aside. Ghenna followed me over and I told him what I wanted. A good solid wheelbarrow load was enough for about 3 m. He immediately said that he had a better idea. He took out his knife and cut out a square of the leftover tarp he had brought to cover the hay bale. Tossing about two wheelbarrow loads of hay onto the tarp, he then gathered the corners, threw the whole thing over his shoulder and marched over to where we needed it and dropped the whole thing in a pile.

At this point, I found a place to sit down. I don’t think anybody thought badly of me. My ex partner took up the job of spreading the hay and Ghenna did a good job of collecting and transporting the straw. It really didn’t take long until all of the rows were golden and warm in their hay blanket.

Ghenna took a smoke break and my ex partner made quick work of the last mid garden box. She took away the very last squash. It was looking a little wet on the underside and we talked about what to do about this. But then Ghenna came back and we threw fertilizer on that bed, spread it evenly and then went back to collecting straw. 

Like I said, today we were a command. Today we worked like a team. Today everything got done. The whole new orchard, all of the mid garden beds and even two beds in the upper boxes got cleaned out, fertilized and covered with a thick coat of straw. The job was done and it wasn’t even 2:00.

I asked my ex partner if she was still angry at me for yelling. She told me she was but she didn’t have an explanation of why her face looked so happy. Truly, we were great today. There is no other way to say it.

I asked Ghenna how much money he needed and he told me and I gave him what he asked for plus a little something. He also had an amazingly happy expression on his face.

After this, I went and found a spot here in the kitchen and made another pot of tea. It really is very cold and wet. I would love to build a fire and get warm for a while. Something tells me I am not going to be very active on my leg tomorrow. I am probably back to the Iwalk for the next while. It really did get painful.

As of the moment, my ex partner is out collecting walnuts. We actually have a pretty amazing Walnut harvest this year. I made a mistake and left them in the gathering buckets and unfortunately, some of them started to look a little moldy. This was my mistake. To overcome this, we are baking the nuts in a pretty warm oven for about 10 or 15 minutes to generally dry them out and then we’re transferring them to the drying rack which I brought in from the field and is now sitting in my office. We can leave them there for about 2 weeks or 3 weeks until they completely dry out and the nuts inside get crispy.

What else? Nothing else. The garden beds look absolutely beautiful. Without being too phony about it, against the blue sky they look a lot like the Ukrainian flag. They look warm. They look warm and I am doing pretty much everything I can to improve soil health ahead of next year. We are not completely done. There is still a row of trees that need to get tucked in in a similar fashion as well as our new berry bushes. There is a bit more work to do. Possibly we can get everything done by next week. Possibly, I might even find my way to get as much of it done before next week as possible to help ensure this possibility. And of course there are still a few boxes with food in them that will need to get buttoned up sometime in the future.

Today however was a great day. Today we worked as a team. Today we worked hard and effectively and we did the work that was planned and we finished on time. I think we overused or underestimated our resources. I think we used more straw than we needed and I think we used a little bit too much fertilizer. I can see needing more of course which I’m sure makes everyone on my command happy. I’m the only one who doesn’t like spending money I guess. 

Anyway, my ex partner is going to be out of here within the hour. I need to get the oven running to bake this latest batch of walnuts. And she just stuck her head in the kitchen having collected three rather huge mushrooms that were growing out near the cherry plum tree. Unfortunately, though I have been told by one of the grandmothers at the market in town that it is possible to consume these mushrooms, it is a complicated road and basically, they are not very good to eat. Well, if you wish to be sick then I suppose they’re good. I think they’re going out to the compost pile now.

For what it’s worth, I also found out that it is possible to compost Walnut leaves. The chemical in them that makes them so harmful to other plants tends to dissipate within 2 weeks to a month if they are left exposed to water and Air. This is good news and not so much of a job to rake them up and carry them over to the compost pile. That compost pile probably needs some more attention but basically, like I said, everything is going according to plan.

I think it’s time to enjoy some tea.

***

I don’t actually understand what the perpetual fascination with Nazis is. Maybe I do. Maybe it’s simply a matter of the fascists doing everything they can to gain political control of the world because this is what fascists do. And the thing is, with all of the anti-russia and pro Ukraine propaganda, in the middle of this, Putin always wants to remind us that we might as well focus our attention on The Americans and that the Russians aren’t doing anything special except using the American playbook.

Well, this seems to be a symbiotic relationship because the American conservatives seem to wish nothing but to play by the Russian playbook. Fascists are what fascists do. And at least as far as America is concerned, though coercion is pretty easy to point out. Just take into consideration the Christian Media Monopoly in the Midwest and deep south. There are no individual opinions in all of those small towns but one national agenda pushed day and night to everyone sitting in a car and keeping the oil business in power. It goes without saying.

The only thing I have to offer is that tiny sticking point for things like this Russian referendum. Of course, they love to say how legal everything is and they can show you that $122% of the population voted in favor of what they wanted them to vote for. But there is this small problem of coercion. Were these people forced or under some kind of obligation, economic or political, to make this vote? 

Then there is one other thing to consider. When the Russians came to the region and started killing civilians and torturing people for information, do we really believe that they were able to inspire love? I mean, if it’s the difference between being physically tortured or watching your family murdered out in the woods, are you really thinking about the best possibilities for the future? Are you really thinking about the relevance of this election or are you just scared absolutely shitless of being killed or tortured?

This is exactly the point. The more I cruise around listening to people’s opinions from Russia or from Ukraine, other than shifting through the propaganda for genuine information, the thing is I can’t find any positive thing that Russia actually does for anybody other than to provide a few natural resources that earn them profits. Oil and gas help people to run around and live in their economic slavery, fighting poverty and trying to stay afloat. In the winter time, a little gas is nice to warm the house. But it really is an interesting question when instead of simply supplying these things to keep the infrastructure running, they murder your neighbors and members of your family while they are visiting. It’s nice to have some natural gas. I like cooking on a gas stove. There’s no question about it. But would I find another manner of cooking my food if it meant seeing my wife and daughter shot to death? Would it really matter whether I used an electric hot plate or not if it meant getting beaten to death by a hammer? Exactly what are these natural resources worth?

It is a mockery. This love of fascism and power is a mockery of democratic politics. It is simply power for the sake of power. I can’t for the life of me see any reason to keep this stupid game going except for the joy of being able to torture people as a demonstration of personal power. Russia is simply saying that they have the right to bomb civilians, torture people, murder people and yet at the same time claim that everyone loves them and respects them and is completely enjoying their company. This is nothing but sadism and that is the truth. There really is nothing else to think of here. There was no vote. There was torture.

***

There were a couple of moments worth talking about today. These were just little nuances that one should pay attention to. This business of my shouting a little bit to get things going was a real thing. We did finish the job and by the end of the day, I don’t think my ex partner thought anything horrible about me. We had our usual intimacy and I don’t think I had a gun to her head for a little moment of togetherness. I don’t even think she held a grudge really because when we actually got moving and we’re working like a machine and things are getting done, she actually liked it. No comments about fascism exactly here. I am not the emperor of all things, I’m just the guy who wanted the bloody work to be finished already. I didn’t want to have to do this again and I really didn’t want to take twice as long to do a job if I didn’t have to. It just required a bit of wake up.

The nuance came however once we got rolling. There were only three of us and I was quickly reaching the absolute limit of my ability to walk around on my leg. I went over that limit actually by a long shot but you know I stayed on the field to make sure things were cooking. But there was a moment where there was a pause and Ghenna stopped pushing the wheelbarrow around to do something else. I don’t know whether this was a break or what it was but in the minute, it was obvious that someone should pick up the wheelbarrow and roll it over to where we were dropping the contents in the orchard and do the job. My partner has been complaining a bit about a bad back and she was tentative about doing so but she did take the hero call and walked over and picked up the handles to the wheelbarrow. Good for her. Seriously, good for her. She saw the job that needed to be done and did it.

But here Ghenna came back and immediately started speaking to my ex partner as if she was a delicate princess and she should let the big man do his job. Whatever his motivation for doing this was, not looking like he was failing the team or maybe it was pure Russian gentlemanliness. No one will ever truly know for sure except that what happened was that the moment she was Princessed, she immediately gave up on any sort of active heroism and dropped out of the sky in her productiveness and started hiding in her frailty. Literally, she came from busting her ass to not let the team down to being a complete dead weight.

It was just a moment. It’s funny the things that motivate people. This is about the time that everything broke down for a few minutes and everybody suddenly needed a break. With the end of the adrenaline and the forward progress, this is when I first noticed that my leg was on fire and that if I didn’t sit down, I might die or something like that. It wasn’t a very long break, and when everybody came back, it was apparent that it was now a two-person job and my ex partner picked up the slack and ran the rake perfectly. No complaints. This princess stuff was only a minute.

But when my ex partner was up at the house and Ghenna was busy running another load of manure I stopped him and told him something that he should really consider. I told him that the next time that my ex partner decides to pick up the wheelbarrow and do a job, let her. Say what you want about the man’s level of alcoholism and actual pride of life, he definitely understood my point. You could see it on his face that he recognized that we had taken someone, a human being, who was trying to pull her weight and we took the responsibility right out of her hand because of course she was just a frail woman.

It was an interesting dynamic. It didn’t actually last long. Ghenna was on a schedule and told us how long he had to help out. When I asked him what the big thing to do was, he simply mentioned that it was a Sunday meal and threw the fact that he needed a drink very badly into the explanation. No one was arguing. He was going to work as hard as he could but he was going to get his money so he could do some drinking. Any arguments? The moment he was gone, suddenly all the responsibility fell on my ex partner and she fully understood that she had the opportunity to take care of me. I was the weak link of the chain and she had full agency and autonomy to finish the necessary work. And she did.

The moment of intimacy was real. We love each other and I think we understand each other. We probably all understand each other, all three of us. We each understand each other with more than a little objectification. I am something to both of them and each of them is something to me. At the end of the day though, somewhere in the future, hopefully there’s going to be a lot of food lying around here and for quite a bit of the year, we will be able to enjoy this food and the exercise it takes to make it. It’s just a little gardening. It’s just trying to be a little closer to Nature. It’s just something nice to do.

Anyway, all of this was tempered by a thought that came to me while watching a video about organic farming techniques and working with straw. I had made a mistake by leaving the walnuts in a plastic bucket and mold was beginning to form on the outside of some of the shells. Hopefully we fixed this all today and within a couple of weeks, we will have some nice walnuts to eat. It was a mistake of not being prepared. I am better prepared now and I don’t like making the same mistakes twice.

In a video about making your own planting soil out of forest leaves and other natural materials like hay or hay bales, this one rather scientific blogger mentioned something about growing your own winter barley as opposed to purchasing straw like we did. He mentioned that if you simply grow your cover crop and then cut it down and use it as a planting medium on top of leaves for example, it’s better because at least you know there’s no chemicals in the straw. It was a really interesting point to creep into my head after all of the yelling and screaming and work. I know where this hay bale came from. It came right off the field that is next to the village I live in. And it’s a good question about what kinds of chemical fertilizers were used to raise that hay in the first place.

I could call Ghenna and ask him but I’m not going to do that today. There’s not really much we can do about it at the moment. What’s done is done and the best we could and hope for is that everything we are using to improve the quality of the soil is on the up and up and we don’t get any weird deformations because of some particular additive that went into the straw. While we’re at it, it’s really not such a great question as to what was actually being fed to the cows or what they’re living situation was. We were making jokes about some of the harder balls we had to beat apart with rakes in order to get a reasonable amount spread around. We were joking about the mood of the cows and what level of constipation they were facing to make giant hard balls.

Right away you can see that there is a level of perfection that we are not going to reach. There is a level of ideology and a compromise here. Of course, there was the Great compromise in using cow manure in the first place. There are other compromises that have everything to do with my physical capability to do what I’m trying to do. There is no backing off from living here. I’m not really interested in moving back to town and I don’t particularly need to have heating that I don’t put together myself. No matter what, I always seem to manage and I haven’t died yet. I don’t mind The rustic situation, I like it but there are compromises here. There is a level of perfection we are not going to get.

Looking around, you don’t really see anything but compromises. Ghenna makes compromises everyday in trying to get through his country life in a decent enough fashion to allow himself to drink himself to sleep in the evening. My ex partner needs to do everything she needs to do to get by in her life. She also likes to tip a little bit but she will not give up her independence. And then there’s crazy me. Whatever I was thinking to start this ball in motion is the stuff of legend I guess. Nevertheless, we are all still here, aren’t we?

And the ball is rolling now. I only have things growing in four beds. Everything else has been fertilized and covered in Golden hay. We have months now to do our planning for next spring. And with luck, they won’t start using nukes and maybe we will be here again.