Monday, May 2nd 2022

Good morning. It’s 8:00 a.m. and I suppose I genuinely have to get moving. I don’t want to. I don’t have a muscle in my body that wants to work anymore.

But okay, I can do this.

We have more planting to do. I am going to need to do a few runs to the forest to put a little bit more life in the lower gardens. The message we are using is very hopeful though. I like the attention we paid to our soil mix both in the boxes and what we used specifically for the planting. I like the architecture of the garden and the relative ease to both get into the garden and to keep everything healthy. There are also going to be quite a few leaf gathering missions that I wish I had already done.

The worst part of this though is the water. Yesterday was the first day that I really tested the water system and what it is going to take to get water to everything. Sure, I could get a much longer length of hose and one of a better quality than the one I bought and this will help. We probably also need a wand with a shower head to better deliver the water and that’s going to take a trip to the market. Not a big deal but actually doing the logistics of keeping water available is going to be a pain.

Possibly, if all we did were trees, and this was my original plan, possibly it would not be so bad. But if we’re going to try and keep vegetable gardens going, those boxes are going to need a lot of water. The roof system is going to help but it’s not going to help that much. We’re not going to get all the water we need only from rain. And if we have a drought, which I’m planning on, just working the groundwater to keep the tanks full and he’s going to be an everyday job.

Of course, if I had an unlimited wallet, I could do several things to make this easier. I don’t have an unlimited wallet. In fact, I have a ridiculously limited wallet that does not ever show any signs of being any less limited. Yes, we can make up the Gap with human effort. Yes, the design of the garden is set to hold any water that we do get. Yes, I’m doing everything I possibly can to get something out of this. But it’s not going to be easy. No, it is not going to be easy.

On the positive side, my ex partner is very enthused. Our fight over the last week but at least enough compromise from her to allow some discussion. And really it was just a matter of allowing her to work on pure impulse. I don’t want to be insulting but she has a way of doing things stuck in her mind that she learned as a child and that are accepted ways that are just not going to work in our current climate. This region is not what it was 20 years ago. Global warming is real, 13 years of drought is real, a completely ruined bog is real and if you want to do gardening here, you’re going to have to get on top of it and be smarter about what you do.

As an example, last year, with great enthusiasm, she barged on to the field and started throwing seeds in the ground. Making gardens as she saw fit and how they laid and planting things indiscriminately. The problem was that she was planting on land that never had enough water, there was no thought to putting in any watering system, automatic or manual, and there was literally nothing in the over plowed and desertified land to feed her plants. We got nothing and a lot of the vegetables tasted so horrible that they weren’t even worth eating. Carrots without any sweetness and the tiniest ears of corn in the world. Literally, we raised tortured crops.

To go along with this, I tried to tell her that I was not going to be available to do the caretaking of what she was making. Most of the early summer I couldn’t even walk last year. I was sick most all of the year and this is not even considering the politics of my asshole neighbors. It was a debacle and truthfully, we would have gotten more by simply letting the field grow, bringing an old couch out and watching the butterflies Chase each other.

Also, in the long run I don’t really believe I want to do annual vegetables. It is so much work. I’m not even talking about that we are not working with a greenhouse. It’s just that the land we have here is extremely Sandy, the cost of materials is too high and the amount of work necessary to do annual vegetables is a lot. I am available this year to kick in. I am not the MVP athlete but I am here to kick in and I’m capable of doing a lot of the necessary work. I was good enough to set up the damn Garden. But in the long run, it’s going to be about trees and berries and things that don’t take a lot of effort to keep going.

I guess I’ve said all this before. I don’t want to get ahead of myself. The plan is a reasonable one. The land has been reasonably well managed. Looking back, I definitely think we should have broadcasted the beans instead of doing specific planting. She believes that they will grow and when they are at full size they will cover the garden. But yesterday I tried to run a cultivator between the rows to sort of disturb the grass that wants to grow there and a lot of the stuff is just not growing. Again, we didn’t water them in. There was rain and some things are growing but a lot of it is not growing and we probably could have achieved our goals by just populating the boxes with seeds and letting the plants do what they wanted.

Additionally, when you’re talking about growing lentils, the actual bean pods that you get contain two lentils. Yes, we are talking about two bloody lentils per bean pod. And even if each plant has 10 or 20 pods, we are really not talking about an extensive amount of food. The main reason for doing this in the first place was for soil health. Like most legumes, these plants are nitrogen fixers and they are known to be excellent green manure. After cultivation and harvesting, you just plow the material back into the land.

I’m not really sure. It’s been a while since we planted. I’m sort of thinking of waiting until we have a nice rain and going out there and just hand broadcasting more beans into the space.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being impatient.

And we did have one other mistake that didn’t show up until late in the day. We forgot about the pickles.

So the thing is that if you’re going to grow pickles, there has to be a trellis. They have to be able to climb and stay out of the mud in order to get healthy pickles. The problem was that we chose to plant cabbages in all of the boxes. This was one of my specifics that I didn’t want all of our food in one place because I didn’t want bug infestation. If you intermingle and co-plant certain things, if you do get a bug that likes to eat a particular plant, they can’t just bounce from place to place. We ended up making a bit of a compromise on the potatoes because my ex partner just did not believe that you could interplant potatoes with other plants because of their height. But we made a mistake because she chose all of the northern spots in the garden for cabbages.

What this means is that if we tried to plant pickles now in the available spaces, they would shade out everything that’s behind them. All of the most northern spots would have been ideal for planting pickles but she planted cabbages there. Now, all of the ideal spots are taken and either we have to build yet another Garden specifically for pickles, replant the cabbages or simply find a less fortuitous place to grow some pickles.

At the end of the day, I don’t think this is a massive big deal. I don’t really think it matters that much and we’re not looking for industrial growth. But it did mess us up at the end of the day yesterday. I was sitting on a chair. I did not want to move at all anymore. My ex partner was putting the finishing touches on something and I asked her where we were going to put the pickles.

The reality went into her head almost immediately. But not entirely. She understood the problem with shade but every time she made a suggestion, “we can just put them here”, I kept having to remind her where South was and where the sun traveled and what would happen with shade. It was like a bad chess game.

Luckily, yesterday had a lot of good humor in it. We were both being very polite with each other and she was trying very hard to listen to what I had to say and I was trying very hard to be appreciative for the company and to help. I think the pickles are not going to be a big deal. And what I really think is that somewhere in July, we are going to be eating some pickles and smiling. I believe this will be true even if we have to buy the damn things.

Just as a side note, at least originally and in the original climate, this is pickle country. This region is known for pickle production. And traditionally, during the season, pickles are the cheapest vegetable in the world here. You can buy kilos after kilos and put them up in glass jars for winter abundantly for very little money. This argument is about pennies or c

Kopeks. Nobody gets rich doing pickles.

Anyway, I have got to get up. We’re going to move some more water today so that we can water all of our plants at the end of the day. My ex partner will not be helping out tomorrow which makes tomorrow a general day off for everybody. And after tomorrow, I get to start figuring out my basic system for caring for a garden that is now alive. We have things growing in these boxes. The plan is actually happening and the building is going away and the maintenance and curation is beginning. And it’s all going to be about water.

So this is the news from here. Zelinski says that he has worked out some reasonable compromise with the Russians to evacuate people from Azovstal. Hopefully Mariupol is next. But still, the wreckage is extensive and the amount of lives ruined by this absolute insane action continues to get larger everyday.

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The Russians understand about doing things in vain. Зря. It’s for nothing, it comes to nothing. It was purposeless.

At the heart of everything I’m doing is the understanding that there is an incredible chance that all of it was in vain. All of the effort, all of the pain, all of the attention and maybe, all of the love. The understanding of this concept is deeply rooted in Russian consciousness. If you wanted to put the evil done by my neighbors into context, just understand that they are trying to put this feeling into me. It is a deep concept here.

But what else am I supposed to do? I’ve been here for 20 years. I did my entire career here. So much of everything has been in vain. Right now, I’m just looking for a little peace. Maybe a little solitude. But just some peace. Hopefully none of the political things that could go wrong will go wrong. About the science and the climate change, you can Bank on that making things miserable. About my neighbors disturbing the peace and working to make sure that they are on the side of climate change and global destruction is also bankable. They are not going to get smarter. You can Bank on that as well.

I’m going to keep going though. Most of the day is nice. I like gardening. I like being with nature. I like watching things grow and live. Maybe this will be a nice place after all. You never know.

***

Okay, it’s about 12:15 and I need to think through this problem.

Right now my ex partner is finishing the first half of the ivy planting. I dug the holes before she got here. We both agree that the bicycle ride from town is miserable. Going to town is not so bad because it’s downhill and usually you have a tailwind. Riding uphill against the wind is harder, the cars with their noise and pollution and obvious danger make all of that worse. I’ve got to give credit where credit is due, my ex partner is resilient. She’s also vegan. You know, I just wanted to say that she is a vegan bicyclist non-car owner. Resiliency.

Anyway, I have to wrap my head around the water problem. Maybe I should break this problem down into individual parts.

1. My well holds only about 600 L at a time. Perhaps I can find someone who digs these things out. Perhaps we can make more space at the bottom and therefore hold more groundwater. But as of the moment in the springtime with about as much water as we are possibly going to have, I have a maximum of only 600 l a day of well water. 
2. I have not done the measurement of how long it takes to refill. This is unfortunate and something I have to do.
3. I do not have enough hoes to go directly from the well to the last of my trees or the parts of the garden that are meant to be watered.
4. As of the moment, I have 1.5 thousand liters of storage capacity. One of which is getting good flow off of the main roof, the back part of the roof is not being collected and the roof of the barn is not being collected.
5. The pump itself works but it’s very loud and a pain in the ass to hook up and move around.
6. I do not really want to spend a lot of money to create any kind of an automatic watering system.
7. The upper garden boxes have a total of about 34 square meters to be watered and the recommendation for a healthy garden is about 25 L per meter per week or a grand total of 844 l.
8. Additionally, I have about 40 more square meters in the lower Garden that can get by on maybe 15 l a week. This is another 600 l.
9. So my entire gardening necessity is for 1500 l a week and technically, I have right now 1500 L of storage capacity.

So what is the answer to the question?

First of all, I could use a longer hose. Secondly, I can probably plan on being able to harvest about 500 L of water from my well at least twice and perhaps three times a week. This would be enough for the job and of course any rain we get can be harvested to help out.

Shit. I forgot about the fruit trees.

How much water do fruit and nut trees require?

Scanning through this, it looks like the answer is between 3 and 6 l a week. I’m currently sitting on 25 trees. This is not so bad, it’s just another 150 l a week.

Okay, back to the thinking.

So, what I need to do is make sure that I have another 50 m of hose. And to be safe, I probably should invest in six more water tanks. This is probably Overkill but, if I tie the tanks together and use the three places that I have right now, I will have enough water I believe to do this project. That’s positive. However, I think what it also means is that I need to move 500 L of water from the well three times a week.

After this, depending on my energy and dedication, I should plan on watering the garden three times a week. Okay and if I break the weekly watering needs into three and allow a little bit more for good measure, the breakdown seems to be as follows:

1. 35 L per Garden box (about 2 minutes per box (315 l))
2. About 25 L per box in the lower Garden (about one minute 30 seconds (150 l))
3. And I need to get to all the trees perhaps twice a week for about 30 seconds each (about 150 l).

So basically, I need about 500 to 600 L of water available to water the garden and to be prepared to do this three times a week.

Actually, I feel much better for having done this math. If you know what you need to do, you can figure out a way to do what you need to do. This basically means that two or three times a week I pump water out of my well and three times a week I water my garden for a specific amount of time.

What I need right now to finish the project is about 50 m of hose, a watering wand and to finish the gutters on the barn. Easy peasy lemon squeezy and about 2 hours three times a week.

Sign me up. I’m in. But if anybody believes in god/nature and if you believe that prayers are answered, please say a few nice words on my behalf or if you’re feeling it, make a little dance for rain. I can use all the help I can get.

***

7:15 p.m. and it has finally gotten quiet. It was a very busy day today.

Five of the eight boxes are now fully occupied. There is space in the last three but we are thinking about late season cabbages. Also the lower Garden has been ignored but not for long. In 2 weeks we are planting beans and squash. Maybe I’ll put in the squash myself over the next two weeks. And I am definitely thinking of reseeding some of the bean gardens that have been slow to develop. Even as ground cover, it’s not worth worrying about.

My ex-partner was amazing today. She actually didn’t even want my help most of the time saying that I was in the way and to be honest, with the planting systems in place and the plan for the boxes known, I was incredibly grateful that she was happy doing this.

I was also not lazy today. I dug the holes for the ivy along the front fence. We are not really going to have anything special for at least 2 years. But the original Vines are planted so we get to see them develop.

I also got a crazy idea this morning. I was staring at the roof that needs to be guttered and I noticed something. The roofing nails, or the heavy roofing nails that hold the roof panels in place were not flushed and had a gap. That Gap got my brain to working and I found some heavy gauge wire and strung up some gutters directly from the roof. This is also ridiculously unprofessional. However, I was able to manipulate the distances such that I freed up two water barrels for use in other places. One can go in the back of the house that has a downspout that is currently throwing water mildly away from the foundation and the other can come up front and act as a catching tank for yet another useless spot.

This overall adds to the efficiency of rain catching. The final steps of course would be to hang a similar water system off of the barn roof and then I think I’m going to acquire four more tanks. This will give us a grand total of about 2500 L of water retention and pretty much as much rain harvesting as I can do. And tomorrow or Wednesday, I will go to town and get another 30 m of hose, some quick links to join and join the two lengths I have and that should be enough to basically cover everything I have growing. I might not be able to get to everything directly from the well but given how many places I have that are catching water, it will be an adequate watering system for the year. It’s loud but it’ll work.

I also want to find a wand with a shower head. I need something to soften the water other than sticking my thumb in the hole. A spray nozzle might be okay but I would like to be able to reach out from one edge of the boxes or gardens and water an entire area.

The weather today was ridiculously beautiful. The sun was out and I am looking at some definite darkness on my arms. I also have that great feeling of calm well-being you get when you spend the day outside. I guess the feeling of well-being also goes along with excellent relationships between my ex partner and myself. She was in all of her glory today and I didn’t have to do everything here for a change.

It also doesn’t hurt that we are in the middle of blossom season. Next year or the year after when the fruit and nut trees mature a little bit, this whole place will explode with beauty around this time of year. The blossoms are everywhere and today when we were doing something in the back of the house, a wind came up and we found ourselves in a snowstorm of flower petals. I tried to make a small movie but I am terrible at getting the camera out of my pocket in time to get anything. I guess we will just have to live with that moment as we remember it for ourselves.

The game is not over yet. There is still some hard labor to do bringing some humus up to enrich the lower Garden some more. There are also going to be some leaf gathering missions. The idea is to use Forest leaves for mulch. I don’t think I ever fully understood the point of mulching until recently. It’s not just a ground cover, it’s the decay that comes along with helping water retention. It’s not really just about weed suppression, it’s about feeding the soil and keeping it moist and healthy.

Other than this, I made friends with this remarkably interesting bug today. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. It is a bit like a well armored stocky cockroach but it’s gray in color and it has two enormous antennas that go out to the left and the right of its head for what would be the equivalent of maybe 7 m if you had a mustache like it.

I went on the internet and my best guess would be that this is Elaphidion mucronatum, AKA,the Spined Oak Borer. I’ll try to get a picture of this guy next time.

What’s interesting about this clumsy insect is that he acts just like the local alcoholics. He flies erratically and has just slammed into me several times. And then he just stays there on my arm or my pants. He lets me pet his antenna, he shows absolutely no fear of me or any sort of reaction to move if I move. To actually get him off me, I have to find a piece of straw or a stick, get him to come on it and then I can toss him.

But that tossing was yesterday and today he came back again. Okay, it might not be the exact same bug but the same type of bug came back today and landed on one of the garden boxes just in front of me. Again, nothing seems to shock him. He doesn’t pounce on other insects and he doesn’t seem to chew on the wood. When he drops on to the grass, he doesn’t seem to want to nibble on it. It’s hard to tell what’s going on. It seems like he just likes hanging around.

I do have one theory though. Sometimes, I really do feel as if the insects want to communicate with me. I know, I know nobody wants to hear this from me because they don’t want to believe that I’m completely out of my mind. But if this is what I think it is, he may have come to talk to me to ask me why there isn’t an oak tree anymore in the middle of the garden.

I really didn’t think of that until right now. It was obvious he wanted something from me but it’s not like we have a verbal conversation. It’s more like an empathy or an understanding. The insects are pretty fair. They don’t imagine themselves to be anything more than I am and they really don’t ask anything of anybody except to live and do their business. Generally, they like me for not using insecticides. I can dig that. But what if this guy was offended that I took out the oak tree? I mean, I can’t really see myself going out of my way to plant another oak tree just to satisfy some beetle. But the next time I see him, I’ll say I’m sorry