Sunday morning, March 20th, 2022. Week number 11

Good morning. It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day today. It’s very possible that we have seen the end of Frost. We’ve picked a planting date for the Bean field for next Sunday because of this. Beans are not particularly afraid of frost, the almanac says that April 1st is last frost and that gives me a week to get everything ready. That would include fluffing up the field for beans, filling the raised boxes and possibly making some room for some ivy. My ex partner found this sort of climbing ivy I was looking for and basically, a bit like baseball, we can at least start playing games.

Of course this is incredibly ambitious and like a lot of great ambitions, it’s easier thought of in a warm Sunday morning soft spot than it is accomplished out on the field. But I’ll get there. Slowly but surely, I will get there.

This week will probably include a trip to town. Technically speaking, it’s not really necessary. For the purposes of saving money, I might try to be very quick about it one day this week. Or maybe I could just go straight through without it. I don’t really know. All I know is that I do not have any specific bureaucracy that is necessary. I took care of all of my bills and all of my needs last week. Everything that is important is out here in the village and so maybe I’ll just do what I have to do here.

I’m not sure I really need to go deeply into this but late in the afternoon last week, I got a call from a relative. It’s hard to explain what that conversation was like. On the one hand, I suppose it’s nice to get calls but on the other hand, I am very cold on the subject of family or nepotism. I’m also really cold on people feeling that they have access to me for whatever reason they think they do. I got a bunch of calls last week from people who know me and who could be qualified as friends. We see each other as friends and we sort of know that we can depend on each other in difficult moments. This has been the traditional way that Russians describe friends. I just don’t particularly see how family or at least the people still walking the Earth who might count themselves as family fit into this definition.

Maybe I should go a little bit more in depth about this. When I was teaching a lot of teenagers, I would hear this definition all the time. A friend is someone you can count on in a difficult moment. Like a lot of things that are taught to Russian kids, it turns out to be a universal and it’s accepted unquestioningly as the truth. Most Russian propaganda is given to people this way and it becomes eerily effective because of the training that requires people to accept these things.

However, maybe this is a good definition of a friend. When I used to speak about this concept of friendship, I used to advise my students that there’s a difference between high school friends, children’s friends and adult friends. Maybe this metaphor is really obvious but if you can picture a group of children playing in the sand, their friends are simply the people around them. Everybody is playing, everybody is friends. In high school, depending on where in the world you are, friends are people to walk around aimlessly with or, if you grow up with it, the people you experiment with drugs with. I apologize for saying that but it’s the truth.

When you are an adult though, it changes. There really isn’t so much walk around and bullshit time and though I’m sure the drug habit still continues, one would think that there is at least a little responsibility that makes some qualifying thinking in terms of Who your Friends are. I don’t want to name any cliches but perhaps it is the woman who starts screaming that the man gets his bum friends out of the house because they have a child. Or perhaps it is the man screaming at the woman to get some common sense because he has to get some sleep in order to make a living.

If you add responsibility into the mix, friends are usually people who can do something to help you out. This would be either business or perhaps particular jobs. When you have responsibilities, you need people you can trust and somehow there is a difference between sandbox friends, get high and walk around friends and folks you can trust with your house and your kids. You need to be a little bit more particular when you are an adult.

I’m being theoretical here because most adults I know these days are completely worthless except for showing up at their jobs. So let’s take this as a philosophical point.

So this brings me to my problem with family. I don’t remember any of my so-called family being helpful to me in any way. I’m talking about the last 25 years of my life really. I don’t remember a single family member being someone I would have as a friend. Not one. And in fact, almost a complete list of people I would count as enemies, people I absolutely cannot trust and who bring harm to my life come from that bracket known as relatives.

Perhaps one of the funniest ironies of life is how my neighbors felt that they could just walk into my life and start talking as if we had some kind of a relationship and how my so-called family feels the same way. I actually don’t know of any people that I count as friends who would show up at my house uninvited. I don’t really know anybody who I think of as a friend who wouldn’t call first or at least start whatever our deal is by phone or Internet. With friends, there’s usually a reason to show up and they give a call and see what the deal is first.

With evil neighbors and family though, they seem to feel no need for invitation or even qualification before they start injecting themselves into my world. In the case of the Russian neighbors, again, they probably feel this has something to do with the culture they were raised in. 25 years ago, there was still communism here and people were taught to live together and to share and to help each other out. It was better to have 100 friends than $100 and this was basically where the concept of a friend being someone who helped you on a rainy day came from.

But in case people have failed to notice, propaganda notwithstanding, this our people thing has turned into a bunch of shit with Russia firing rockets and killing ukrainians and ukrainians doing everything they can to get the Russians out of their lives. I relate to the ukrainians in this. I do not see peaceful coexistence and I do not see economic parity amongst people. I don’t see anybody working for a perfect society, I just see a bunch of individuals trying to find their own money and not giving a shit if anyone suffers for their efforts.

When I came here, I had an open door policy. I allowed people to come up to my house and quite often, people would just walk in when they needed me. There were no advance calls, and people needed me for whatever reason they needed me and they would just come by. In a perfect world, we could say mighty neighborly and perhaps even be happy to have some company. But in the reality of what all of this freedom of access meant, I don’t remember anything but misery coming from any of it. And what’s worse, I got really tired of being disturbed when I was doing something. And it’s not like you could tell them to call first or even beg them to be polite in this way, they just felt they had access and they certainly made use of it for whatever they particularly needed.

I will just add in that I was extremely sick with a very bad foot and could hardly walk. I was in need of as many friends as I could get and let me repeat as clearly as possible, absolutely no one thought pitching in to help me in my time of need was a part of their life. The only reason people came to me was for money.

So I put a lock on my door and left it there. At first there was a bit of a shock to find out that my gate was locked and that there was no entrance to my property. It sent a shock around town. It was easy to say bad things about me because I’m American or Jewish or not one of the people, etc etc etc. But I didn’t really care because it was quieter without people walking on my property and I left the lock there and now people seem to be used to it. And, without question, let me tell you that life is happier here with a lock on that front gate. Nobody comes in looking for work, nobody comes to spread gossip and certainly nobody walks onto my property to sell me something I don’t need.

I also found it very helpful to disconnect my home phone. This stopped the previous owners from calling me and a few other people from the city no longer have free phone calls either. If it’s really important, they can spend the money and use their mobile phones.

So that brings us back to my relationship with family. I know I whine about this a lot but I had quite a bit of money stolen from me from a relative and immediately after that, I started asking other relatives for help finding a lawyer. I did everything I could to fight this situation but frankly, I just didn’t have the resources to fight the war and I needed someone who knew someone who would make a few phone calls in advance to make sure everything was okay. I was okay with paying legal fees, I just couldn’t pay these fees up front. I would only be able to pay as a percentage of what I received.

And what did I get from family? Nothing. Insanity. I was talking to people who were so insane, a simple conversation was not possible. This included a lot of Facebook friends as well I might add. I was in trouble, I needed some help and all I found was insanity.

By sanity, I mean the inability to speak about one subject together. I know we have other definitions of insanity such as being outside of societal norms or doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. But perhaps we could add one other qualifier and say that sanity is the ability to focus on a single subject with another person and discuss it. This means no alternative ideas, this means no preconceived notions, it just means that we take a look at something and we have a talk about it for a minute.

I didn’t think I was being clever. I certainly didn’t feel as if I was inventing things just for personal profit. I just needed some help in a time of need and hoped some of these so-called friends might be helpful.

None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. No. Nothing. zero.

Nice, right?

So I tried to explain to my relative that he was intruding on my Friday. I gave the man 5 minutes of reasonable warm up. I allowed him some yada yada yada, haven’t seen each other for a while etc. And then I asked him what I could do for him. The assumption was that he needed some accommodation and that I was somehow felt to be obligated to give it to him. Nothing. He didn’t need anything. He just liked me.

So I agree that he’s a pensioner and an old guy with not much to do and I understand that he was looking for a sandbox friend or an adolescent walk around buddy. I understand that he wanted to Noodle on like most Russians believe to be relaxing conversation between each other. I get the irresponsible pointlessness and the desire for human connection. I get that he was bored and needed someone to pay attention to him.

I explained to him that I’m off family. I don’t like giving people access to me anymore. I like doing what I’m doing and I don’t like my attention being broken. I prefer working or resting as I please and I don’t like being at anyone’s beck and call except for business. If it ain’t business, don’t bother me. And I’m not talking about your business, I’m talking about our business.

If you’re selling, I’m not buying. If you’re looking for work, I’m not hiring. If you’re looking for a buddy to hang out with, I’m not hanging. If you are looking to get something off your chest, I’m not unloading. And please, if you’re looking to apologize, I accept and now go back to your miserable life. If we don’t have a mutual deal, you don’t have any deal with me and you should leave me alone.

Why do I speak like this? Why am I so unfriendly? History. I am one of those who studies history and therefore is destined not to repeat his mistakes. If you’ve done something to me once specifically to harm me, it is in my best interest not to give you another chance to do the same. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice and I feel like killing you and I prefer not to have these feelings in my life.

So am I lonely? Not particularly. I’m a little buried in work right now because I’m going to take a shot at growing my own food or as much of my own food as I can full-time for the first time in my life. I have done agriculture before and I’ve done landscaping before and some carpentry. I have some knowledge about what I’m doing and I have internet access for any genuine questions I need to ask. Also, my former partner has been pretty good about finding things we need online from local suppliers and so far, prices have been reasonable. And I’m okay with this knowledge base and for the most part, I seem to be tooled up enough to do all this work by hand, which is exactly my choice ecologically speaking. 

I’m going to go It alone, thank you. If you have some ideas that do not require my investigation or investment, I’m open to suggestions. If you have some genuine opportunity waiting for me, please call. If you want to partner up and invest in something I am doing, there are several eco-friendly businesses on the table from last year that could just as easily start this year, you have my email.

Other than this, if you want to know what’s going on in my life, read the blog. If you want to know if I’m okay, here’s the story right here. If you want to know what’s going on in the region with the war, have a look at these pages. If you’re just interested enough to reach out to make contact, everything you want to know is right here and I’m here everyday, 6 days a week. You’re welcome to read me the next day with coffee in the morning.

Some people might consider this sad. Quite a few people are truly afraid of me being lonely. A lot of people really want there to be a woman in my life and even if you people who think there should be a dog or a cat. Thank you. I appreciate it. I’m okay. I have all the people I need. I have everything I need right now to do what I want to do with my life. I just want to grow some food and learn as much as I can during the process. I just want to live an ecologically sane life and feel a bit purposeful in what I’m doing.

And if you have some comments about this, I believe there’s a place below to leave comments. Leave a comment. Be happy.

And now if you will excuse me, I guess I finally have to get up. Toast and coffee? Yeah.

***

Over breakfast, which was amazingly tasty by the way with some fried potatoes and cabbage to go along with some toast and coffee, I got to thinking about this gibberish talking business. Probably, talking gibberish is one of the great problems in the world today. When I think of examples of talking gibberish, my first thought always leads to Donald Trump. He is probably the quintessential gibberish talker of our times and that people believe in his gibberish is one of the quintessential problems of our time.

This is not to say that I am so enamored of Biden and Kamala Harris. I was a gigantic fan of Kamala Harris during the elections two years ago and right now, she is getting airplay. They are beginning to sell her as the next Presidential hopeful. This is how the media chooses our people for us. In this case, probably I’m okay with it. Maybe. Just maybe.

But if you listen to the Democratic side of the discussion, they like to work in percentages. They feel that if they make a particular legislation that leads to a few ticks to the positive, this relates to a certain number of Americans who get some minor benefit from what they are doing. If they can provide a few ticks more jobs, they pat themselves on their back. If they move a few ticks towards sustainable energy, they count this as a plus. If there are a few ticks less racial violence or a mild downfall in gun violence generally, they count themselves as sane.

Perhaps they are right. Perhaps Obama was right in that he quantified the United States as a battleship that did not turn on a dime. It needed the slightest turn of the wheel and many nautical miles in order to make a turn. On the other side of this, you have someone like Trump who believes that Vladimir Putin is the ultimate leader. He says pee and everyone unzips their fly. But not really.

It is hard to say where the truth is in all of this. On the one side, you cannot have a dictator telling us what to do because it means that none of us have any free choice whatsoever. On the other side, you cannot be run specifically by statistics that ignore equally the individuals and what they need. Both sides demand that the government is in complete necessity to run people’s lives and both sides agree that there is a person at the top that does the talking and eventually makes the decision.

And this is where the problem lies. It’s all gibberish. No one is addressing the elephant in the room which is what human beings basically need, and I’m talking about all human beings here, and what the actual job of government is. Whoever told these political celebrities that their job was to think for us needed to be beaten to death before they had an opportunity to pass the message on. The job of the government is not to talk morality just as it is not their job to tweak the economy. And no, it is not the job of the church to teach us morality. None of this is the job of any public Mass agency.

In my view, the job of the government is to make sure that we facilitate the needs of our people. This would include food, clothing, shelter, basic practical education and effective medicine. Insofar as defense is concerned, no guns, no murder and pay attention to all of the above on a local level and we don’t have people to hate anymore.

Okay, there will be some lazy bones that don’t want to do their time on the field. Let’s have a talk with them. Let’s have a talk with everybody. Let’s all agree about what needs to get done and about what is a good diet to ensure good health. And if we genuinely have some lazy bones who doesn’t want to do any weeding around the corn, we can find a good job for them. Or we can lessen their time in the field. OR we can put them in the field and do everything we can to make them happy.

For example, if you don’t like doing physical labor, make sure that you get a very good lesson about how to do it and then get high as fuck and go to work. Providing you’re not working with any tool that’s going to harm yourself, and you understand the difference between the food and the weeds you’re pulling, go and trip thyself to happiness my lazy friend and let us know how you feel about physical labor when our 4-Hour shift is done.

Don’t take that as an unlimited suggestion but I have seen bosses who get inexpensive day labor to perform for them simply by getting them high in the morning. When I lived in Minnesota, I had hillbilly neighbors all around me and most of them worked for a boss who picked them up in a pickup truck and got them high before they rolled away. Suddenly, nobody was bitching about $6 an hour and apparently this guy had a healthy business.

Exploitation? Absolutely. But if we were all in this together and all of this community gardening was exactly our food, all of us working together to provide for ourselves everything we need (and without playing with our heads about the need for foreign trading any further than the next village over), that’s not exploitation, that’s reasonable tribal culture. And I promise you within one generation, nobody would be bitching about the field work because there would be no one to look to as an example of being otherwise.

Here, I am going to make a note of the hypocrisy of my chicken neighbors who seem unbelievably stupid and lazy to my eyes right now. And for what it’s worth, I’m going to burn some of the dry leaves in order to put potash on my field for the beans today. Today is Sunday. It’s their day of rest. I owe them for driving they’re disgusting car and pouring emissions into my yard again and for running a gasoline-powered saw three times on my day off. 

Would you like to complain? Would you like to talk about “our people”?

“Your people” are greedy murderers who kill their own people because of fascism. “Your people” are gibberish talkers and it hurts my ears when you address yourselves to me without invitation.

I understand that I have just strayed a bit far from my original point but this business of talking gibberish or even starting wars as a way of avoiding the genuine problems of the world, such as ecology, global hunger and all environmental issues that relate, I was thinking about how I should set up a DIY version of Practical English.

Practical English has been my English class for the last 15 years and what I was thinking of was making an inexpensive, do it yourself grammar course. I feel I have the most effective way of actually getting people into speaking English well. By this, I mean without neurosis, without worrying about your pronunciation or your accent or whether you know the silent syllables or how many words you know, all of this gibberish that most English courses offer people as a way of keeping them for a long time. And this course is about how not to speak gibberish.

Since I started teaching, the very first thing I noticed was that traditional second language education in Russian schools is designed for people not to speak. If you consider the position of the government above people as a singular Soviet and advisor on how to live, and this is voteless let us remember, teaching people a language that they could actually functionally use goes against purpose. You can’t teach people to speak their mind because they are never supposed to speak their mind.

Yes of course, this is the birthplace and warm gooey spot where talking gibberish is born and raised. It is the petri dish for insanity and passivism. It is the barn where the pigs are born and raised.

And certainly it works. I mean, let’s look again at our friend Donald Trump. With his nose firmly implanted in Vlad Putin’s ass, he proved that at least half of America could be sold by gibberish. Literally, and I mean absolutely literally, he proved that he could talk like a roaming Street person without the shred of an understanding of what he’s doing except to enrich himself and 75 million Americans voted for him.

Of course he had help. Fox News is an expert gibberish talker. When you talk gibberish, there is no difference between journalism and opinion. Journalism by the way is now completely illegal in Russia. You cannot tell people what’s happening during the war or you will get arrested.

By the way, if you’d like to know what’s going on in the war, here is a wonderful link that you can click:

Ukrainian forces conducted a major successful counterattack around Mykolayiv in the past several days, and Russian forces continued to secure territorial gains only around Mariupol on March 18. Russian forces face growing morale and supply problems, including growing reports of self-mutilation among Russian troops to avoid deployment to Ukraine and shortages of key guided munitions. The Ukrainian General Staff continued to report on March 18 that Russia has failed to achieve its strategic objectives in Ukraine, including destroying the Ukrainian Armed Forces, capturing Kyiv, and establishing control over Ukraine to the east bank of the Dnipro River—the first time the Ukrainian General Staff included this territorial conquest as an explicit Russian objective.[1] The Ukrainian General Staff additionally stated that Ukrainian forces “continue step by step to liberate the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine in all directions” on March 18, the first Ukrainian mention of conducting counterattacks “in all directions.”[2]

Key Takeaways

The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russia has “significantly exhausted its human resources” due to battle casualties, cases of self-mutilation to avoid deployment, and psychological factors.

Ukrainian forces likely conducted a successful counteroffensive against Russian forces around Mykolayiv in the past several days.

The ability of Ukrainian forces to conduct a successful major counterattack indicates Russian forces attempting to encircle Mykolayiv likely overstretched, and Russian forces are unlikely to have the capability to resume offensive operations toward Odessa in the near term.

Russian forces did not conduct any offensive operations northwest or northeast of Kyiv on March 18.

Russian forces continue to make steady progress reducing the Mariupol pocket.

Ukrainian forces halted a Russian attempt to advance southeast of Kharkiv, through the city of Izyum, in the past 24 hours. Russia is deploying additional reserves to reinforce the Kharkiv axis of advance.

Russian and proxy forces made minor territorial gains north of the city of Severodonetsk in Luhansk Oblast and will likely assault the city itself in the next 24-48 hours.

Ukrainian military intelligence created an official website to provide support and guidance to Ukrainian fighters and civilians in Russian-occupied territory.

No, I’m not trying to be arrested. I’m just saying that this seems to be the truth about what’s going on. Perhaps it’s an optimistic truth but it is absolutely and certainly a truth that is not being expressed by Russian national media.

It is also not a truth that is being exhibited on Fox news or any other conservative brand American Media service. And frankly, it is also not being allowed on most other national media because American people have other things to pay attention to. It is not their problem despite their direct vested interest in the oil business which is behind this mess and this is despite the implication to the president himself lest we forget Hunter biden’s connection to the Ukrainian oil Business during the time of the election.

Or in other words, we talk gibberish too.

So the way I was thinking about this, I need to find a way to put out an English class that teaches the basic grammar of English while also at the same time teaches people to say what they see. Simple pragmatism. Nothing complex about it.

A couple of weeks ago, I tried out my new idea with my ex partner. We played a very simple game that she enjoyed quite a bit after getting started. It was difficult at first. At first, she had the same complaints as all my students always have. They always want to know what I want them to say. It doesn’t matter that what I want is for them to say what they see, being asked to look at something and say what is in front of their faces is against the rules in Russian culture.

She did indeed get it though after a couple of tries and I’ll give you an example of how this works.

Now, without giving you any particular idea about what’s going on in this picture and only looking at this photograph, what do you see? About the only information that we have is that one person is asking a question and the other one is expressing alarm. This of course would lead to two possibilities. Either the person asking the question is causing alarm in the second or the person on the right is expressing alarm and the person on the left does not understand it. I hope you’re okay with my analysis.

In a situation in class, there would be some text to go along with this picture. We would read about the situation and we would know who these two people are and what this moment meant and then we would talk about that. But without reading any particular text or without my adding anything here, why don’t we just say what we think this conversation is. We can just say the first five things that come to mind.

The problem with this is when we have figured out exactly what’s being said in this conversation, people find it hard to understand what kind of situation has led to this moment. If I ask what the logical progression was that led to this alarm or this question being asked, most people have never thought of that and don’t like giving their opinions. If they don’t know the correct answer, they will not say anything.

Here lies one of the great problems with talking gibberish by the way. If you are not allowed to speak unless you know something, you can completely cripple people’s ability to believe in their own sanity simply by saying that nothing can be known. The way you do that is by saying that there is always an argument and therefore nothing is real. Can you see how that works?

I personally don’t subscribe to this. The person on the left perhaps is saying “why were there another woman’s panties underneath the front seat of your car?” This picture now makes sense and to understand what has happened, we know that for some reason a pair of woman’s panties ended up in his car and then a bit later, his wife ended up in the car and discovered the issue of this clothing.

I don’t think that was so hard.

Actually, the one on the left is a man and he’s asking why he has suddenly contracted venereal disease even though he has slept with no one but his partner. Can you figure out a precursor to this situation?

Actually, the person on the right is Vladimir Putin and he is telling the Russian people that Nazism must be stopped in Ukraine. The person on the left is about to get arrested because he doesn’t understand how Nazis suddenly appeared in Ukraine or why in general, a country run by a Jewish president would suddenly have Nazis overrunning the place in general.

I’m not actually looking to be political, I’m just talking about being able to focus your eyes on one thing and give your opinion about it. I’m thinking it’s a winner as an internet business and even if I actually correct the papers myself, I think we could develop some income in the Russian speaking world and probably do some good while we are at it.

This by the way is an original idea but it is not a new idea. This is what I have been doing for a living for the last two decades.

***

By the way, with below zero temperatures almost over with, and today is a beautifully warm sunny day for example, I think I will be able to start working in my office soon. Perhaps this will be a slightly more comfortable place to do online work. Maybe it’ll be a good time to get to work on updating Practical English and perhaps even finally get this blog and website into shape. It’s not that I’m expecting any great things. I signed up for 3 years and I guess I have time.

***

It’s about 3:00 right now and I’m just finishing up with a break. I’ve got about half of the bean field beds built and I got a call from my ex partner. She’s been shopping for seeds and wanted to tell me what she had found. She also found exactly the tool that I was looking for. Well, not exactly. The handle is a little bit short but she did find exactly the digging tool I wanted.

I’m actually doing okay with the tool that I built. I shaved down the end of a shovel handle and stuck it into the most heavy duty garden hoe I had. This is not the kind of tool I wanted but it is strong enough to break up the dirt and fluff things up a bit. This field was plowed last year and I didn’t spend a lot of time walking on it. This means that the dirt is really not so compact and I’m able to fluff it up with this tool that I have and then just rake it smooth.

My ex partner also did some studying on planting lentils and apparently we need between 10 and 13 cm between each plant. The plan that she saw also called for a 50 cm gap between rows. I’m not exactly sure whether this is a walking path or not but my garden has 1.5 meter wide beds and 1 m walkways everywhere. The point of this is that my arm very comfortably can work 75 cm away from the path and this gives me access to both sides, especially with a hand tool. And again, nobody ever has to walk where the plants are growing.

We have a little time on this but my first thought was that we could plant at 15 cm in every direction and this would allow for 32 plants every 75 cm. Basically 16×16 planting squares. I don’t know if this is appropriate or not but this would seem to be a good way to grow a lot of plants and to limit the ability of weeds to grow.

I also brought my first wheelbarrow of dirt to the garden boxes. That was heavy. I took the dirt from the path between the rows on the bean field. I used my hoe to fluff up the land and then I used a bent scoop shovel to lift it up and toss it into my wheelbarrow. I didn’t count how many shovelfuls or how many loads I need to fill up a box. it’s probably going to end up to be something like or 7 trips for every box and as of the moment, we have eight boxes. So I’m looking at something like 60 trips just for this level. After this, we are either going to have animal fertilizer or not and I will do the same thing again with some higher quality topsoil.

If it’s feasible, I will buy some bulk planting soil or if not, I’ll just do the exact same thing I’m doing right now from the canals in the forest. Nobody has used that dirt in years and it’s about as rich and alive as any dirt you can buy. And by taking the dirt from the canals, I will also be helping water flow in the forest. I think this is a good combination.

What is not happening right now though, is I need to do something about the water problem. I am going to put gutters on the barn and collect rainwater from there and four other places. But then I also had a plan last year of putting a faux roof along the fence line at the end of my property to help gather rainwater for the trees there.

My original plan was to build from the top of the fence and have a sloping roof fall one and a half meters into a natural canal in front of the tree line. This will add quite a bit of water to each of these plants every time it rains. A very, very good way to deal with a drought and water hungry fruit and nut trees.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of a secondary plan to this and adding in grapevines along the same run. The problem with this secondary idea is that growing vines on trees is not really that good of an idea. If you have a failed tree like the one I have on the other side of my barn, you can do that and the tree itself will be a wonderful scaffold to grow grapes on. Literally, where the tree is terrible at growing fruit, The grapes will make up for that.

However, you can’t do both at the same time and the shade from that fence I have noticed here in the early spring will not be very conducive to growing grapes. Right now in the afternoon, there is still shade all along that fence and maybe a better thing to do with this bloody eyesore is just to cover it with ivy. That would be the easiest and most beautiful thing I could do to improve this property of mine. We wouldn’t really do anything about privacy, but it would look a lot better and probably feel a lot better.

***

That’s it for me. It’s about 5:30 and I’m done. Perhaps a younger man or someone more able-bodied than me could have done more. I’m absolutely sure a young able-bodied man could do three or four times what I did today. But I think I did a good job. What I’m looking at seems orderly and our plan for this year is coming along step by step.

Therefore it feels good. I am tired. I am physically tired. I’m probably not more tired than I’ve ever been in my life or any such elegant excitement. But I feel well used and the bean field looks good.

I will continue on this week making the beds for the beans and hauling dirt from the lower field up to the boxes. I don’t know if we are going to use animal fertilizer or not. The guy who came to me never showed up and I have not heard from him since. Maybe he will show up again or maybe he won’t. If he does, it’s okay and if he doesn’t, that’s okay too.

And as far as making purchases go, I could use a speed square and a level. We should probably pick up at least eight rain barrels and maybe I will buy this gardening tool. The tool is a little spendy but it’s a good tool.

It’s the beginning of magic hour right now and the Sun is casting Long shadows. I’m looking at my very Brown field and thinking what it’s going to look like in 2 months and in 3 months and in 4 months. I can see that this is going to be a wonderful garden someday.