Sunday, June 12th, 2022. Week number 23
It’s about 10 minutes to 9:00 and I’ve been up for a while. I got up slowly. I ate too much. I learned another lesson that I’ve learned many times but I did eat too much and it was unnecessary and therefore I am waking up very slowly and unhappily.
I talked to my ex partner a few minutes ago and she is planning on coming up by bicycle today. I don’t know why she makes this ride. Maybe there was a time where I would look forward to a day of bicycling. But that was a few years ago. Before a knee injury and another operation and being able to breathe mostly fresh air all day. You get addicted to being away from cars and finding yourself out on the road getting stifled by Auto fumes and noise takes the luster out of bicycling. Bicycling itself is a beautiful sport but though I spent a career riding roads, I just don’t want the poisons anymore. I don’t believe the investment is worth the reward.
I also understand that she has some kind of religious reason for being lazy today. I don’t know why that equates to all of that bike riding. I don’t know why she has decided to be allergic to taking the bicycle train ride. I don’t even know why I bothered to argue. This is okay because there is not much need for all day gardening work.
I am going to at least drill the holes and set the fittings in as many water bottles as I can. I might need to make some adjustments to the new gutters so that I can drop the water where I want to. There are two arguments. One lets the waterfall outside the gate and the other brings the water inside the gate. Outside the gate has positives and inside the gate has positives but unfortunately we can’t do both and have to decide. This doesn’t really affect anything except that inside the gate has less direct sunlight on the barrels. They are black barrels so the UV disintegration is less but you still want to make them last as long as possible so inside is better.
I made bread for my day off and I’m glad I did. It was not difficult and I didn’t do anything particularly special. I just made dough and rolled them out into flatbreads and dry-cooked them in one of my iron skillets. I made greens on Friday night and had cabbage and beans on Saturday. It was okay and bread has a way of giving you a sense of peaceful well-being.
The mistake I made was factory macaroni. I knew it the moment I ate it. I don’t know why I let it slip in. I should have let it go with the factory bread. This was my last mistake for a very long time, maybe until the end of the summer. I’ll either make my own or maybe just do something other than wheat pasta. It’s not the brand, it’s just that it’s not the effect I want physically. I just didn’t feel very good after eating.
If I sound a bit broken up right now it’s because I am just at the Apex of a very long hill right now. Technically speaking, I believe I am right here at the center of this blog. I believe the number is 45 or 46 weeks. We are also coming up on the solstice and we are going to be getting less and less sunshine everyday. We are at the beginning of the hot weather. All of this investment in water is really for the next two months. I hope it was worth it and I hope I will have enough water to finish this season.
But there are also some personal relationships that are coming to a head right now. I’ve had something like final conversations with a few people that I just do not feel like putting myself out for at all. They are not worth the effort and I’m tired of having my arm twisted by them. There are too many parasites in the world. Too many people who think power is the most important thing and I am very, very tired of being owned. I’m tired of being abused to be honest with you. I’m tired of abusive people. I’m tired of bosses. I’m tired of people who believe that being the boss is the only way to go because they are too lazy to do their own work.
You know, at the end of last week I told that story of working at the youth hostel and not taking anybody into the hotel who refused to talk to me and listen to a few rules that I had about comportment. I still believe this is true and more so, during my teaching career, I would never let anybody into my classes who did not call me themselves and agreed to talk with me. When a mother or a boyfriend or some other agent contacted me on behalf of someone they wanted as a student, I always universally said the same thing: have the student give me a call. There was no other way to do it and there was no compromise that could be made.
The problem is that in any relationship that is going to work and function, both sides are going to have obligations. We are both going to have to be disciplined, we are both going to have to make certain sacrifices and we are both going to have to be open and honest and share both the workload and the management. In an English class of course, I have the track that’s going to be presented but we all need to have our eyes on what we are talking about and we have to be willing to share our opinions. In a language class, this opinion sharing is the basis of your practice but in a class generally, this feedback means the student has a genuine interest in the study. Passive people will not be successful.
At the same time, control freaks will not be successful either. Nor will people who are laying back and staring at me or at their own reflection. It actually takes the physical effort of doing what needs to be done without personalities or politics and every percent that goes to the left or to the right or is held back because of these seething internal politics that we let eat away at ourselves as cancer are cancer. Every percentage that you waste on bullshit is bullshit.
This is at the heart of my trepidation. It seems that I am at a confluence of several 50/50 people right now. 50/50 is how all the Belarusian teenagers used to answer questions. Maybe they still do or maybe now they just ignore it and laugh as being beneath them. What do you think about the Russian invasion of Ukraine? 50/50. I don’t know if it’s good and I don’t know if it’s bad. What do you think about the alcoholism problem in the Republic of Belarus? 50/50. I think it’s very bad but I also think people can’t stop.
I had a family come to me a long time ago to study. They were very adamant and excited about immigrating to the United States. They were investing a lot of money in this, they basically sold all they owned and they wanted to improve their English and were willing to work as hard as possible. There were three of them. There was a mother and a father and a very beautiful teenage girl. The father was one of these men who you just like immediately for the power of his heart, the girl was an ace in school, an athlete and a scholar. The mother was a ship’s anchor. Not an anchor meaning that she held the family together, an anchor as in she was not interested in doing any work, this was his project and the girl’s project but not her own. She wasn’t really interested in leaving, in studying English, she was just along for the ride.
I probably don’t need to even tell the story about what happened. I’m talking about what happened in the class and in their trip to the states. In the class, the extra weight of carrying mama put pressure on everyone else that didn’t need to be there. I’m not sure that they learned as much as they could because the situation was more family political than it was educational. I don’t think I sent them off half cocked but I felt bad because we definitely could have covered more ground.
In the end, the entire project for them failed. Every problem that they encountered had to be fixed without mom’s help. Every time there was a problem, mom complained more and more that she wanted to go home. Eventually, the weight of that ship’s anchor caused their entire house of cards to fall down. The girl was heartbroken and I don’t think she has ever really gotten over it. She ended up becoming a doctor here and an extremely depressed drug addict. She is now in Germany doing something. Beautiful girl.
And what? What would you consider the power of an $80,000 loss in a country where the average salary was about two or $300 a month? What would you think of an Enterprise that gambled their home but yet would not come to the table full force?
50/50. That’s how they give their answers. Everything is 50/50.
I can say that this is about fear as much as anything. People wonder what they are going to get. I think that’s the main problem. People wonder what they are going to get before they think about why they are doing something or how to do this thing. There is a weight to everything that slows you down. I think of the local band who plays like they have a weight on their backs. I think about watching the local football clubs who always act like they have a weight on their backs. I think of almost every bureaucrat I’ve ever run into who falls apart when they see me. I’m sure all of this objectification that I get has to do with all of the weight that is on their backs. What are we going to get? We’re not going to get enough. It’s not worth it.
So here I am standing at the top of this little climb I’ve made. Truthfully, I’m not sorry for all of the effort I’ve put in. I have apparently chronically injured myself from this effort. It’s not only my fault, it’s also the bureaucracy I live under and the weight of this war and global warming and a drought which is only going to get worse and my money issues and relationship issues and health issues and everything else. I’m not sorry I built this garden and truthfully, I am kind of proud showing off the work I’ve done. It’s not over yet and we still have to bring these things in but I’m pretty pleased with everything I have here. I am into this. I’m going to do my best to go all the way to the end.
But if I have any second thoughts about this it is that if I didn’t do any of this, if I just let the field go wild and dig a few holes for trees, berries, zucchinis and pumpkins, it would have required a lot less work, a lot less maintenance and therefore a lot less suffering. If I hadn’t invested anything in human food, the cabbage and onions and this sort of thing, true, I would not have breakfast out in the garden every day pulling spinach leaves and fresh onions which is nice. But I have all the greens I could ever possibly eat growing wild on my property and the cost of veggies in season is nothing.
But don’t get me wrong, I know this negativity will just bring you right down to the bottom of the ocean like a ship’s anchor. I understand I’m not supposed to have these thoughts. And hey, there’s a war on. If things get to pushing and shoving locally and our systems all break down as is greatly possible, you bet I’ll be happy to have as much of my own food lying around as possible. You absolutely bet saving seeds and having boxes with decent planting soil ready to go was a hell of a good investment. And, if I want to look several years down the road when I’ve already got my systems in place and it isn’t really so much work to do the maintenance and set up or even if I’m just thrilled to have something physical to do everyday, this was the best idea I’ve ever had.
Or even just for the fresh air and quiet.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in. I am very happy I bought this house. I have some parasitic people around me who don’t seem to understand that this is my life and I make my own choices. It’s just a shame that they’re parasites.
Perhaps this is the last piece of this puzzle. I started thinking about all of the people who bring really ugly extra weight to my life. When I think of people who just drain my energy, I realize that the common thread between all of them is that they are corporate people. Every single miserable person in my life, and I am talking about people who are terminally unhappy and depressed, tend towards negativity to the point of violence, what each and every one of them have in common is that all of them are wage sleeves.
The polar opposite of this is that all the people that I like and with whom I have the best conversations, even historically when I think of people whose company I have enjoyed the most, it is with entrepreneurs and self-made people. I much, much more enjoy people who make their own choices and look through their own eyes than people who are told what to do and only dream about sharing their misery with others.
This is the big thought that came to me this weekend. It’s the truth about my family relationships, it’s the truth about my relationships with my neighbors and it’s the truth about global warming and the ugliness of the destruction of our climate. We have too many slaves and we don’t have enough people with a vested interest in their communities. We have too much irresponsibility and not enough people who believe they have agency or the right to act. And we have way, way too many politicians and too many people following two many lunatic ideals instead of simply taking care of the people around them.
We cause harm and we do not help. We act selfishly and we never think of the consequences of our actions. We fight instead of working together for good common goals. We practice exploitation rather than fairness.
So week 23 is here. We are 10 days away from the solstice but the garden is already telling me that the plants understand that the heat is on. The plants understand that the Sun is going to be heading out shortly and that there’s going to be a little bit less light every day. The plants understand that it’s time to get going, it’s time to get their babies out there, it’s time to do everything possible for life to continue.
Every form of life on the planet is listening to the Sun except for one. Everything that lives and grows or walks or flies or swims or crawls or slithers is listening to the Sun. The Sun is telling us that we are arriving at the Apex and that it’s time to prepare for winter. Every living thing in the world is listening to the ticking of this clock but us. Everything alive but people are simply following the rhythms of the planet. We are too busy chasing money. We are too busy chasing drugs. We are too busy making ourselves feel good. We are too busy doing our jobs. We are too busy making our car payments and putting gas in the tank. We are too busy killing each other. And we’re killing everything because of it.
***
Mr Zelinsky says we are getting closer. The president of Ukraine is telling us that the bureaucracy of becoming a part or at least a candidate for the European Union is happening. The weapons are flowing in, the money is flowing in, despite the war, he is already thinking of the future. He’s probably already decided that push come to shove, he simply allows that extended corridor in the eastern part of the country to go to Russia and just sort of hopes that they stop firing missiles. Or maybe he believes eventually that the sanctions will stop or that Europe will genuinely quit Russian oil and the oil business generally. These are his hopeful words. Soon, soon Ukraine will be with Europe.
You’ll forgive me if I do not believe in these options. You will forgive me as an ecologist if I do not believe all of this talk of weapons and economy and politics will be the salvation of anything. You will forgive me if I do not believe in making 25% of your country refugees means that anything positive is going to happen. You will forgive me if I do not believe that none of these things create any roads to Paradise in Ukraine or anywhere else.
It’s possible that things wear off. We have so much information coming into our heads, it’s difficult to avoid the overload. Most people prefer not being bothered anymore and everybody is way, way too tight with each other. And of course, the Russians like things as brutal as possible and have no problem murdering people whatsoever.
I know it’s redundant for me to say it but I feel the entire point is redundant already. The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again but expecting a different result. Capitalism doesn’t work. Capitalism is a drug. Capitalism is not sustainable. Market economies fail.
In fact, if we were to somehow fly up into the sky and look down like we were looking at a map and maybe even jet ahead 100 years or 200 years and look down and see what that mouth looks like, you tell me if this is going to be an enjoyable picture or not? You tell me if you see happy people living reasonable lives in sustainable cities or if you see the absolute drags of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, people living like rats coming through garbage dumps.
Go ahead, climb into your drone and take a look at this landscape I’m showing you. Look into the eyes of people who live the lives that current progress is leading us to and tell me if you see any happiness anywhere.
***
Just a brief farm report.
I went out and took a walk around and had a look at how everything is. Our no dig potatoes are looking pretty healthy. I haven’t checked underneath the blanket yet. I’m one of these people who don’t like to know the sex of the baby ahead of time. But the best thing is that the potato beetles have not found this box yet. They have eaten some of the volunteers pretty well. But I think this is a good thing. Firstly, it gave them something to do but not very much. This means they will not grow in such abundance next year. This is sort of a natural way of weaning ourselves off. Maybe.
I am also happy to say that almost all of the squash we planted has finally popped and all but one of the zucchini plants have popped as well. Our zucchini replants are doing absolutely fine. I don’t think I’m going to have a problem with vegetation. And if I do manage to get into this food saving business, I don’t think I’m going to have a lack of food all winter long.
With the exception of that one fatality, the pickles are looking well and some of them are starting to bloom into serious players. Probably this is going to be the week that I’ll build some structures. I’m going to need structures for the pickles, the peas and the climbing beans. This means a trip to the forest for Willow branches. I don’t really think I want to do too much purchasing if I can help it. I will probably end up buying metal frames for the great plants but for the rest of it, I think I can work with wood. I am tempted to buy some fencing though. Simple metal fencing stretched on a frame is probably the easiest and fastest thing. Let’s see how this week goes.
That one great plant is still hanging in there. All of the leaves that came with it are gone but there is still some green and even some fresh leaves appearing on its first climbing vine. It doesn’t look so good right now but it’s not dead yet. Hope holding out.
But perhaps the nicest thing is that we are getting all kinds of flowers right now. The poppies are on their last legs but I have some orchids growing right next to them who are opening up beautifully right now. There are yellow and purple and blue wildflowers growing everywhere. One of the greatest reasons not to cut the grass I promise you. And even the lentil Garden is now producing flowers.
Speaking of flowers, the sunflowers are starting to get raucous. No, we don’t have these bursts of Van Gogh yellow just yet but they are coming and coming fast.
It’s still June and a lot of things can happen over the next couple of months. But as of the moment, there are only a couple of cabbages who have decided to fold up, the boxes are very much alive with life, there are enough greens to feed me for probably 5 years and certainly enough for breakfast every single day.
I like it. So far so good. And by the end of the day today, we will have another 1,000 l of water storage capacity sitting under a roof that could probably fill it with even a single decent rain.
What is the purpose of gardening? To be around life? To produce food to eat? For the enjoyment of beauty? Well, on June 12th, we are checking all three boxes.
***
Oh boy, that was a day. Today was a good day, a long day and a hard day. But today was a good day.
It’s a little after 8:30 in the evening and my ex partner is about a half hour or 45 minutes into her ride back to town. She insisted on bicycling up and back today. She’s a Dynamo.
Today we covered a lot of genuine ground. We studied two of the cabbages that we lost to wonder why. Probably it’s about ants. She has bought Valerian extract, catnip actually and she believes that this will be a good deterrent for pests. I am very much against using poisons of any kind. Firstly, because I like to nibble directly from the garden, especially at breakfast. I don’t know anything that tastes better than salad but is still alive. But more than that, I want the under soil of my boxes to be as full of life as possible. I’ve studied a lot and though you really don’t want to lose your plants to bugs, you don’t want to poison everything. You want as much life as possible.
This of course leads me back to the argument about why we are fighting so hard for all of this typical human food. For a day or two’s work digging some holes for squash, zucchini, fruit trees and berry bushes I would already have more food than I can ever get to.
I mean, we fight so hard to keep the weeds in check. This was my mistake in not taking the trouble to find enough cardboard to truly block out the bottom of the boxes. It was just an energy issue. Pain, balance and energy. I just didn’t do that job so perfectly. It’s not like everything is ruined forever and ever. We are seriously going to invest in Practical mulch next year at the beginning. This will control a lot of the weeds. But other than this, it’s really not so much work going through the boxes. Everything we are growing is pretty successful actually. It’s amazing how well everything is growing and the lasagna I made. But live and learn. We will get better.
We also worked together to complete the water system on my barn. Sitting on the grass underneath, my partner took the trouble to give me a hoorah for having finally finished it. I was pretty tired at the moment and I wasn’t really thinking about such things as celebratory ills or pats on the back for a job well done. I still don’t know how well any of this system is going to work out until we actually get some rain and I see how it works. But I tied together four barrels at the bottom and they are all going to fill up together as the water comes off the barn roof. When we finally have our next good rain, I’ll be out there checking out every fitting to make sure that it’s working and absolutely I’ll be out there the next morning to have a look at how much water we collected. Can’t wait.
I think there’s only two other points worth mentioning. Watering is much better as a two person endeavor. It’s not just about turning on and off the pump, it really is nice having someone unravel the hose for you and make sure it doesn’t break up the plants or drag itself into problems around the boxes. It’s so nice to have an extra person on the job helping with the 50 m of hose. The only negative was that I came to the realization that I really should have bought a surface pump. This submersible pump just leaves too much water behind in the buckets. We would get another 50 l or so if we could drain from the very bottom instead of requiring almost 30 cm for the pump to draw. For sure, the next time I feel comfortable about letting money go, one of these pumps is definitely worth the investment.
For what it is worth, the entire cost of my water system was about 800 rubles. If I go for a new pump and fittings, this will Jack us up to about 1,000. 800 rubles these days is about $320. I don’t know if this is a lot of money or not. We have $2,500 L of storage capacity and I have not had to go to my well even one time for water for my plants since that week when I got into it to see how much I could pump out. Perhaps my neighbors don’t think any of this is necessary but like I said, everything we put in the ground is growing well.
All the ideas that I brought with me are proving to be fruitful at least now at the beginning. And it’s only June, we don’t have any zucchinis yet this year but I don’t really need very much outside food at all. Some porridge and lentils and maybe some whole wheat flour right now. Maybe some buckwheat or barley. But yeah, I would say at least half of my diet right now, all of the greens, salads and onions are right out there to take. And tonight was the first time that my ex partner was able to pack up a backpack full of salad veggies to take home. I really have to admit that it was a very, very good feeling to be able to send her home with food today.
The other thing worth mentioning is the genuine difference in how I feel now versus a week or two ago. I’m into doing a light workout everyday which is good. But the genuine change was dropping the oil and the factory bread. Getting rid of macaroni is also part of this. I’m physically changing right now. I have more energy, more clarity.
I agree that by the time we finished watering, I was ready to say that I was done. I went into the kitchen and put together some lentils and barley with all of the grub greens my partner pulled off the field today. I’m talking about the beet leaves that she thinned out and one of the cabbages that wasn’t going to make it. She cannot bring herself to eat horseradish leaves yet but she will. I chopped up everything and threw it in the pot with water and added some raisins and a little bit of spice and then dry-cooked some flatbreads from the last of my dough from this morning. She used the flatbread to make a salad sandwich and absolutely agreed that there is nothing better in the world than a spinach sandwich on fresh bread. I completely agree but I thought the stew was worth eating as well. It was warm and comforting but definitely clean energy. Good human food. Tasty good human food.
Today was a good day. Today was a good day for the two of us. At the end of it, perhaps I let a little bit of a complaint go. It’s an old argument between us. It’s just the nature of our relationship. She’s a corporate person and I’m not. She’s weighed slave and I am an entrepreneur. I’m free to live up here as I like and I do like it. She’s only free on Sundays and probably begrudges me Saturdays. But I mean, you can take the girl out of the anti-Semitism but you can’t take the anti-Semitism out of the girl. Yes my love, Saturday is a day without gentiles. That’s why it’s so relaxing and restful. It’s a day without Christianity.
Anyway, I’m on the floor of the warm room. I’ve got one of my two fans blowing and cooling off the room a bit. I really should take the trouble to build some screens for some of these windows so I can leave them open at night. I don’t really like having to close my windows against bugs although it is the most effective way to get rid of them.
If I were to look back at a really beautiful moment today it was just one second where there was a mild change in the breeze. We were just walking around the boxes and idly picking weeds and such and the change of air suddenly brought this beautiful sweetness.
“Stop. Smell that.”
“Smell what?”
“Smell the air right now. It’s unbelievably sweet and fresh. It’s got a lot of water in it and some sweetness.”
“Yes, I can smell it. It’s beautiful.”
“There’s a lot of water in the air. Maybe there’s a lot of pollen but maybe it’s from all the wild flowers blooming everywhere.”
“The lentil Garden is flowering right now. Do you think it’s the lentils?”
“It might be. I’ve never smelled anything so fresh in my whole life.” And it was. Do you think that’s crazy? Do you think it’s crazy to stop and notice a moment of fresh air? Try it yourself.
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