Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
[Click on images for high-res versions]
We see disturbingly few honeybees at the abbey. Last year, it seemed as though bumblebees did most of the pollination. There were some honeybees working the apple blossoms this morning, though, and they were a welcome sight. There also were lots of other nectar-sipping creatures.
Pear blossoms [click on images for high-res version]
Carolina jasmine
Kiwi, climbing
Apple blossom buds
Scuppernong grape
Lettuce
Heirloom climbing rose
Violets
Flowering cherry (Ruth the chicken is buried under this tree)
Sedum
Maple leaves on young shade tree planted last fall
Day lily plants
Chrysanthemum
Kentucky 31 tall fescue
It took me months to decide to splurge on a new iPad. In the end, I decided that I could justify the cost by the amazingly many things I can do with it:
— My old iPad 1 was my favorite reading device. The new high-resolution display is extremely easy on the eyes. It’s a fantastic reading device. The Kindle app has been updated to take advantage of the high-resolution display.
— My GPS device is five years old and was ready to replace. The iPad has a GPS chip. With an app like MotionX, the iPad serves as a GPS turn-by-turn navigation device. This must really be cutting into the sales of companies like Garmin.
— I have longed wanted an HD video camera. I’ve had no video camera at all for years. The iPad has two cameras. The forward-facing camera on the back can shoot high-definition video. The iPad also is a very good camera for snapshot quality photos.
— It’s an email device, including when you’re traveling. I have the Verizon 4G iPad.
— It’s a web browser.
— It’s the best device I’ve ever seen for video phone calls. It’s easy to switch between the two cameras on a video call, so the person you’re talking with can see your face, or, switch cameras and point it at other things. Using the Facetime app, I had a video call with a friend in California yesterday. He showed me what his cats were doing, I showed him what Lily was doing, and I walked around outside and showed him what’s blooming at the abbey. I am now sold on video phone calls.
— Using apps such as Apple’s GarageBand or MusicStudio, I can connect the iPad to my Rodgers organ with a MIDI interface and connect the audio output from the iPad to the organ’s amplifiers. Then the iPad can add orchestral voices, and other synthesized or digitally sampled acoustic sounds, to the organ. I’ve worked up a number of arrangements for string orchestra and organ.
In short, the new iPad does a lot of cool stuff to help justify its cost.
I haven’t even tried out the iPad’s new speech-to-text dictation feature. I’ve had the iPad for only two days, and it takes some time to try out all the iPad’s capabilities.
As many reviewers have said, the iPad’s high-definition Retina screen is stunning. Once you’ve seen it, there is no going back. In a few years, probably almost all device and computer monitors will have these displays. Individual pixels are now too small to be visible. You see only a smooth image and perfectly formed text. I’ve realized that I’ll consider replacing my iMac desktop Mac when Retina displays become available for iMacs.
Photo by Ken Ilgunas
The clover — and, to a lesser degree, the grass — at Acorn Abbey is greatly in demand. Everyone eats it — the chickens, deer, groundhogs, rabbits, voles, birds, and turkeys. Today Ken and I saw a squirrel eating both grass and clover. I had never seen a squirrel eat grass and clover before.
The pear trees up the hill from me. Click on photo for high-res version.
I think it’s time for the annual posting of a poem about spring by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Spring
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots,
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1921.
Click on photo for high-res version
Ruth resting in the grass the day before she died
Ruth died on Tuesday. Some sort of digestive disorder carried her off. She fought it for a week, then finally she stopped eating and drinking and weakened fast. Tuesday was a cold day with a very cold night forecast. We brought her inside and gave her a heat lamp Tuesday morning, but she died very peacefully around dusk.
We bought a flowering cherry tree as her memorial. She’s buried under the new tree. I am not certain what made her sick, but I think there’s a very good chance that it was the organic fertilizer we spread a couple of weeks ago. The fertilizer contains chicken manure, and it’s pelletized. I’m afraid the chickens ate some of it before the rain washed it in, because it probably looked like food and wasn’t recognizable for what it was. Patience also was sick and had diarrhea for a while, but she recovered. So there’s a new rule at the abbey: The chickens must be kept away from newly spread organic fertilizer.
Now we’re down to one chicken — Patience. I was afraid that Patience would be depressed from loneliness, but she seems to be doing pretty well so far. Then again, she’s had Ken for company. Ken has been working on replacing the screen and re-securing the chicken house against predators, in preparation for new baby chickens. Patience has stayed right with him almost every minute. Ken said that, at one point, when he was lying on the ground to work on the bottom screen, Patience was exploring his hair with her beak. I think I’ve mentioned before that Patience has long had a crush on Ken.
Anyway, it’s almost time for spring chickens, and we’ve had to make some quick decisions. Ken had the brilliant idea of getting some fertile eggs and giving Patience a chance to hatch the eggs and raise the chicks. She has already shown a bit of a tendency to nest this spring, though she hasn’t been obsessive about it. Maybe some eggs will stimulate her instincts. I’ve ordered a dozen Golden Comet fertile eggs from eBay. They should arrive next week. We’ll give Patience five or six of the eggs and see what she can do. If she succeeds, we’ll have to figure out what to do with the males. If she fails, there should still be time to buy chicks from the local roller mill. They always sell baby chickens in the spring, around Easter.
Any time Ken’s in the garden or orchard, Patience dogs him, especially if he’s digging, or on the ground like a chicken. Patience has thoroughly enjoyed Ken’s work replacing all the predator wire on the chicken house.
What’s wrong with this picture?
It seems I regularly fret about how to get more variety into breakfasts, but I forget about banana bread. I had not made banana bread in months. As with many traditional American basics, I start with a recipe from Irma Rombauer’s 1943 edition of The Joy of Cooking and modify the recipe to make it healthier. This is whole wheat banana bread with vegetable oil instead of butter.
The Ingle’s grocery store in Walnut Cove regularly carries organic bananas at prices only slightly higher than regular bananas. I find that the organic bananas always have a much nicer, more old-fashioned taste. Bananas have changed over the years. They tend to be too big these days, and lacking in flavor. Organic bananas are more like bananas used to be.
Striking It Richer: Emmanuel Saez
Charts like the one above help make it clear why the right wing hates — and fears, and demonizes — progressive economic policies like those advanced by Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression. Those policies left us with plenty of rich people, but the rich could no longer take it all. That, of course, is how the American middle class arose after World War II. By the beginning of the Reagan era, the rich got the upper hand again and started taking it all back.
Emmanuel Saez has newly updated data showing that the top 1 percent captured 93 percent of the income gains in 2010.
And yet, thanks to the right-wing propaganda machine, white working Americans in the red states are kept in a state of deep ignorance and cheer for and vote for their continuing impoverishment and marginalization.
Update: The Huffington Post has a story on this today.
When the daffodils are out, it is time to scratch in the dirt.
Onions, lettuce, and chard from plants bought at the roller mill in Walnut Cove. They don’t look like much when they first go in the ground, but they’ll be much more photogenic in a few weeks. I’m probably about two weeks away from planting my broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, etc. Those plants are being started for me in a nearby greenhouse from seeds I ordered from Baker Creek. I figured that a greenhouse could do a much better job with young plants than I can do under a grow light in front of a window, which is how I started my plants last year.
I finally found some sour cherry trees, Montmorency. I bought two, and Ken planted them yesterday. I’m not entirely happy starting fruit trees in the spring, and the dirt ball on these trees was poor. But having spent more than two years looking for sour cherry trees, I’ll take what I can get when I can get it. We also planted a peach tree, a couple of lilacs, and some NanKing cherries (see below).
A gardener friend of mine recommended NanKing cherries. I was not familiar with them. They’re a shrub that produce edible cherries that the birds also love. They’re a hardy plant from Asia that was brought to this country over a century ago. NanKing cherries grow in the Himalayas.
When we scratch in the dirt, the chickens come running up to help. They know that it will mean worms and grubs for them.
Patience
Ruth