twoeleven | Reading

This large guy is, apparently, an Eastern dobsonfly:

Seems a bit random to encounter one just outside my building, but when I was leaving work yesterday, there he was.

This morning S and I went on a little jaunt to look at a small piece of land up for sale in Watervliet (verdict: meh.). Heading to campus after, we biked past a shop I've wanted to check out called the Tool Box. It's a tool thrift store.

I found a couple of useful items, and so did S, but any enthusiasm I might have felt about the shop was quickly obliterated by the tone and nature of the political conversation the people running the shop were having. Sigh. The Historic Architectural Parts Warehouse was far more fun.

rebeccmeister

Raspberry season has arrived!

Time to stockpile more raspberries so we can make more of that delicious raspberry sorbet.

This garden bed is known as the BBQ Garden, because it originally looked like it used to be the site of a barbecue grill. Our lease explicitly says we can't have a barbecue grill, so instead we've got the BBQ Garden. A good, full-sun location:

The tomato, basil, and pepper plants in the BBQ Garden have really taken off over the past month, to the point where S figured we could roll up the chicken wire fences for the year. These tomato plants and the ones in the half wine barrel seem to be doing better compared to the tomato plants in the main garden bed.

Oh, here's what's at the other end of that rope:

In the meantime, the Dark Dahlia is getting big, and the lavender makes me happy every time I look at it.

And the porch herbs and smaller fig are pretty satisfying, too.

Overall I think we've reached a pretty good state with the garden and house plants. S would really love to take out all of the burning bushes on this property, which is understandable. But it isn't my top priority, because this is a rental house, and I've got too many other projects to work on in the meantime.

ranunculus

Shade cloth project is coming along but is not finished. Here is a little walk through the garden.
The little fig tree is, well, little.

( Pictures )

ranunculus

Another successful ride on Firefly with my friend Kim riding Raja. I was a little worried, the wind was blowing, coastal fog (rare this time of year) had cooled things off, and Firefly was objecting to everything from being groomed (normally she loves this) to having the bridle put on. I walked for the first 1/2 mile of our "ride" because it was all downhill. Downhill invites faster speed and that isn't what I wanted. Uphills usually follow downhills, so I mounted up and we went up for the next most of a mile, which calmed things down a lot. She was never "bad" just a little snorty at first. We worked on confidence, she did great, and only once needed Raja to take the lead and show her that the scary downhill with an eroded trail was perfectly safe. We also worked on refining our cues. The times that I have to use big gestures and insist on where I want to go are getting fewer and the times I can give a tiny squeeze of leg, or tightening of my fingers are getting more frequent. At one point I leaned over a little, grabbed a gate and pushed it open a little further. It took some pressure to push, and I could see Firefly thinking hard about what was going on, but she stood perfectly still. Oh, and we picked up trail ribbons from April's event. Firefly only once looked scared of the ribbon, and that was a big 3 color one with 18" streamers. Like usual she thought about it, sniffed it and relaxed. If I can ride, at least a little, three or four times a week, we will make really fast progress. Sorry, snuck out before M took any pics, but here is one of Firefly today being very, very serious about eating her evening meal.

P.S. Yes, she has changed colors again. In my last post, on June 19th, she was dark grey.

rebeccmeister

Sometime soon I am hoping to start on the project of refinishing a lot of the rowing club's oars. On some of the blades, the surface has worn down to the point where we're starting to scrape through the fiberglass layers. Other blades have chips and cracks. Not good. Those things ain't cheap!

Certain things clicked into place during a conversation with teammates about how to honor one of our teammates who has just moved down to NYC for three years while his fiancee undertakes a pediatrics fellowship there. P mentioned the idea of giving J a map of our section of the Hudson River, with our usual landmarks illustrated, so J would remember his rowing roots. When searching online, he wasn't able to find anything of the sort, but that all gave me Ideas.

Here's the original dirty old blade I worked with, one of a bunch of blades I salvaged when teammates wanted to throw them all away as Useless Boatyard Junk:

After sanding the blade down and coating it with primer, I put the first layer of paint on with a bristle brush, and quickly concluded I didn't like that application method, for reasons such as what can be seen here:

I switched over to a foam brush for the subsequent layers, which worked well enough for this purpose. Oar blade painting is almost as stressful as putting on coats of varnish, except at least oar blades are much smaller and easier to reposition. When it comes to repainting the oars the club uses, I'll mix in a couple of paint additives that a teammate recommended based on her prior efforts to repaint oars about a decade ago.

I used SignPainter's One Shot for the major design elements:

Then some Sharpies and more One Shot for the finishing details. Overall I'm pleased with how it turned out! I don't know how durable the SignPainters One Shot is, but hopefully durable enough?

As I told J, I'm now hoping that he can convince his future father-in-law to come up with a good method for mounting the oar for display, since his future father-in-law is a really good woodworker. And if the FFiL does...maybe additional ones can be made for the other 5 blades in the pile? That has been one of the aspects of Art Oars that I just don't really want to deal with.

I should point out that I've been carting around one of the oar blades in the pile since the Texas days, so it might be another decade before I'm struck by inspiration again, heh. Still - these are nice materials to work with for the sake of making display/art items for rowers.

----

Project 2 came from thinking that my research students and I should make something to commemorate our summer of research work. Just based on our personalities, I came up with the idea of some sort of "Easily Distracted by Ants" concept. One of my research students is artistically inclined, and agreed to create a design based around that concept. After working on it, she got inspired to make a second design featuring the name of the ant species we're working with.

Once I showed the designs to S, he asked if we would like to do DIY screenprinting if supplied with a screen, ink, and squeegee. But of course!

On Sunday I picked up a stack of blank shirts at Goodwill, and yesterday I got additional shirts from 2 of 3 students, to print on.

The first design, which also went on the front of all the shirts:

Design on the back of all the shirts:

Shirts waiting while they dry:

I am SO PLEASED with these. There are definitely going to be more rounds of shirt-printing in the future.

So now you have some idea of some of the things that have been keeping me busy lately.

ranunculus

Hotter weather is on its way. We have been luxuriating in temperatures from the low 80's to the mid-90's for the past couple of months. Sadly that is ending and a week of 100F + is coming up. The hot day is forecast at 104F. By last year's standards that is cool, last year this time it was running up to 117F. Oh well, the cool was nice while it lasted, and it resulted in the tomato plants setting huge amounts of fruit.
100F + means I have to get busy and finish up the shade cloth supports. I --was-- finished with the main part of the garden. But that didn't include the bed and tanks behind the main area, or the apple trees and it doesn't include side panels on the west side.
This morning I walked out and took a hard look at: measurements, paths and how everything lines up. Turns out I did a rotten job of advanced planning in half the garden. The shade cloth worked great on the raised beds, but I really needed different post spacing in order to extend it out. This means; undoing the wires holding up the overhead pipes; removing the shade cloth; pulling out 7 posts and moving them over. On the west side one more post and associated pipes, need to be added to each line. Fortunately the ground is soft and the moves are going well. I've got 5 posts moved and the associated pipes and shade cloth back in place. Two of the three new posts are in the ground. Shouldn't take long to finish.
When I have finished extending that half the garden, the small tanks in the back of the other side of the garden need all new posts (4) and a couple of pipes. Two of the small apple trees need shade as well or the fruit will sunburn. Those should be easy as the trees are only about 5 feet tall.

Note: pruning apples in summer works amazingly well. Summer pruning encourages fruit. Winter pruning encourages growth, so I don't prune much, or at all in the winter. My oldest apple tree, now in its fourth year, is absolutely dripping with apples. After doing a bunch of reading: apples fruit on branches that are at lest 2 years old or older. This year my 3 year old trees are starting to set a little fruit. Next year there should be lots.

While I'm talking about fruit trees, the little fig that I planted this spring is doing well. There hasn't been much growth above ground, but I bet the root system is growing like crazy. It has stopped wilting in the heat. I'm so happy that it has finally taken hold. Way back in the winter of 2020/21 I took the first cuttings from the old trees near Split Rock. The trees are at least 100 years old and incredibly tough to have lasted with no care. Those first cuttings failed completely, as did the ones from the next year. But the cuttings from 22/23 rooted as did a couple from 23/24. This is a baby from the first batch.

rebeccmeister

I can't even remember where I left off. Ah yes. I didn't even get to blogging about taking my research students on a boating adventure Thursday morning. That was pretty entertaining, but definitely kept me very busy.

Friday I got all geared up and went bike camping with a small group of local bike people. We rode out to the Beebe Hill State Forest, where we camped out at a leanto and watched all of the fireworks shows along the Hudson River from the top of the fire tower there. Incredible views.

S was going to join up with the bike camping expedition on Saturday, but it fizzled out, so instead he and I just met up at Kay's Pizza at Burden Lake, ate lunch (not pizza, they weren't open yet), then biked home. If nothing else that at least got S out of the house for some miles.

That meant that instead of more biking on Sunday, I could get chores done, and then we headed over to Wolff's Biergarten to help a rowing teammate celebrate her birthday.

I'm feeling pretty frazzled today, but it's the penultimate day for my research students, so my goal is to just power through the day. I'm having them come over for a pizza dinner tonight, plus a DIY project to celebrate the end of our summer research period. We've gotten a lot done!

But I could really use some down time. Soon.

ranunculus

Carrie called around 9am and asked if I'd like to do a short ride. Yes.
I groomed and saddled Firefly, putting her bridle on over her halter, then moving the reins to the halter, not the bit. We walked out a little way to meet Carrie and I got on. For the first few yards Firefly was a tiny bit fussy. We were headed back toward home and she DID NOT want to go home. The minute it was clear we were going somewhere else she perked up. Honestly, for most of the ride I felt like I was on an old experienced trail horse. She was as good as gold. She looked carefully at the bank we had to walk down and then went down quietly. She looked carefully at the rather steep stream crossing and then walked quietly and carefully across, no jumping, no trying to move fast, just perfect. At one point she did spook a bit at a particularly black and suspicious cow pat. When I say "spook" I mean she stopped, looked at the cow pat , tensed up a tiny bit, looked at it again, put her head around to my boot to ask me if everything was ok, and when I said it was and encouraged her; she sniffed it, relaxed and walked on. That is the first time she has clearly asked for reassurance from me while I was mounted. Perfect. We rode through the herd of cows, passing several within a few feet with no incident. We watched the flock of turkeys without a spook or moving away, or any drama except stopping and looking. I never for an instant felt I needed to move the reins to the bit for more control, in fact quite the opposite. She accepted light contact with the reins and went where I directed her.
I'm thrilled. Maybe we will have issues next time, but for the mile we rode she was delightful. Very slow when we turned for home, but that was enough for one day.

ranunculus

Lots of tomatoes have set. Far more than last year at this time. I think it is because it has been quite cool all the way through June and the first few days of July. I'm expecting, and dreading, the arrival of very hot temperatures. I still have lettuce in the garden!
The first okra will be ready tonight or tomorrow morning.
Picked the first cucumber today, it was a pickling cucumber. The lemon cucumber, which was planted quite late, has started blooming. Meanwhile one of the Japanese thin skinned varieties, Shinto Kiwa has tiny fruit all over. Somehow I planted two of that kind and both vines are growing vigorously.
I'm ready to pull out the "Smooth Criminal" yellow squash. I don't like it's flavor or size. Ditto another summer squash, Zucchinio. Zuchinio is supposed to be both a summer squash and, if allowed to get big, a winter squash. As a summer squash it just tastes like it is green, with no other redeeming qualities. I'll replace it with another Butternut.
This morning, pre-snake activities, I added some big logs to the bottom of the 6' tank. Over the top of the wood is lots and lots of old potting soil and coconut coir mixed together. All that got wet down a little and then I added a nice layer of moisture holding, native soil that is rich in clay and mixed it in a little. Next: drip irrigation followed by planting, followed by horse manure for moisture retention.

ranunculus

Firefly was being obstinate this morning. I called her to come in from the field and she turned her back on me. We had words. So I marched her into the corral and hurried around the shop to get some alfalfa for her.* I was about 8 feet from the hay pile, which is covered with a blue tarp, when I spotted the snake lying along the front of the tarp. I screamed, because snakes are what I'm scared of, and left the area. Dave gave us a shotgun a couple of days ago, but we didn't have shells for it yet; so I called Michael. Perhaps 25 minutes later Michael and his girlfriend showed up armed with a shotgun, shovel and metal rake. The snake hadn't moved. Michael carefully uncovered the snake's head, and shot it. Poor snake, it was never aggressive, even at the end. It had 10 rattles and was really fat. I fetched a bucket and they took the body with them. While I am quite relieved, I'm also still wary. Snakes often have a mate somewhere around, so caution is still warranted.

* Grass looses most of its protein when it dries. We feed alfalfa, which is a legume and very high in protein, as a supplement. Firefly had lost some muscle, which means she was protein deficient and her body was breaking down muscle to provide needed protein. I should have started a couple of weeks ago.

ranunculus

Picture a two car carport with a fully enclosed room (my shop) at the end of it. The roof over the top of this building extends out toward the garden about 4 1/2 feet on the south side. The carport hasn't been used for cars for years, though I do park the Gator in it most of the time. These days there is a tarp across the south facing side of the carport (but not the shop) and another tarp that goes halfway across the east facing side of the carport. This keeps the carport fairly dry except in the most violent storms. I've struggled to keep things tidy, especially as more and more stuff arrives from San Francisco. Here is a picture of the garden path leading to the door of the shop.

( Read more... )

rebeccmeister

That's it, that's the post.

Monday we had a department summer potluck. To make that work, I got up early Monday morning to bake some frozen samosas and potato-onion puff pastry things, and made up a batch of delicious cilantro chutney to enjoy with them.

Then I had to scramble to put together a workshop on career networking that I held yesterday. Ultimately, only my own research students participated, but I think we got some things from the time and conversation. And I'm glad to have an initial version put together that I can continue to improve in the future.

There was a rowing club board meeting yesterday evening, and really, the net effect of all these things is very little down time to work on tasks that require concentration.

There are some lights at the end of the tunnel, thankfully. Our research intensive wraps up next Tuesday. Some of my July travel plans got canceled, so that should buy me more time at home to get myself organized and work on the things I'm behind on.

Overall, good problems to have. Just, the blog is getting the short end of the stick right now.

ranunculus

This week there was an enormous rattlesnake IN THE GARDEN. For TWO days. Chena alerted us to the snake by barking at the garden. Sadly we didn't quite understand, so it wasn't until Donald rustled around getting ready to sit down in a chair and I heard it rattle that we realized what was up. This is an old snake. They live up to 30 years so I'm pretty sure this snake has been around for years. It isn't aggressive despite the rattle we heard, it just wants to be left alone and will warn you away. Still, it has no business in the garden. I saw it the next day, under my Dahlia table, quietly hanging out. It was partially coiled up, perhaps because I'd just sprayed water down there? Later that day Chena woke up from a snooze in the driveway to bark at the woodshed. M and I could see the snake moving through some wood in front of the shed, apparently heading away from the garden and house. I'm really relieved that the dog will have NOTHING to do with the snake, and will alert us to it. As a result of this I'm in massive cleanup mode. No more snake habitat at the shop, or near the woodshed. It is going to be a long process. We have a big pickup load ready to go to the dump today.
In other news, I rode Firefly last night, bareback, in a halter with reins and she was really good. Better than with the bridle. She really hates the bit and is much better behaved with the halter.
Sent Donald off on the buss yesterday. Won't see him much for a while. We do have a lovely weekend in Santa Cruz planned for the end of July and I will need to go to SF for another load of stuff from the garage soon.

rebeccmeister

It was an eventful weekend. I got up at 3:40 am on Saturday to head down to a regatta at Rockland Lake State Park. I was signed up for 3 events, which meant 6 races total, and a very full, busy, wonderful day in the sun. I also got to give a Top Secret present to a teammate who is moving away: an oar blade painted with a map of our stretch of the Hudson River. Photos to follow. All of the races went well! Altogether it was a very smoothly run regatta.

Saturday evening S came to get me and then we drove over to my Aunt C and Uncle D's house in Connecticut. It had been TOO LONG since I'd been over to visit, and wonderful to have even a brief period of time to catch up and hug them.

Sunday morning, S and I then headed over to the Wooden Boat Show at the Mystic Seaport. I got him tickets as a birthday gift. While getting a bite to eat and reviewing information about the show, I noticed that we had missed a talk on Saturday by a guy named Roger Barnes, whose internet videos about Dinghy Cruising we've been watching for years at this point. Drat! S joked that maybe if in the midafternoon we went back over to the pub on the Seaport Grounds that we'd spotted, we might just find him there.

Lo and behold, dear readers, we did!! I don't get fangirlish very often, but I definitely got fangirlish at that point. It took me a while to screw up the courage to go over and ask for a photo, and then, of course he was as kind in person as one would gather from the videos he creates. Cheers to that!

And that's to say nothing of all of the delightful boat-ogling we got to do. And to say nothing of how you can check out a boat for a half-hour to toodle around on the water, for free as part of your admission to the Seaport. We had so much fun in a small sailing dinghy of a type I'll have to ask S to describe for me again.

I took a thousand pictures, but those will have to wait until I have a few more minutes to process them.

I feel like I have so much to be grateful for right now. My heart is full.

ranunculus

I got a call a few days ago that my friend Phoebe needed a hand-truck, did I have one. I do, or at least M does. Phoebe and her daughter (Luna) are moving out of a two bedroom apartment. Luna is moving to Humboldt State University, into a dorm room. Phoebe is moving to Oakland (CA) into a studio apartment, so there is a lot of sorting out of stuff and getting rid of things. Phoebe is not the kind of person who is comfortable loading a truck so she asked if I could come down today. Donald and I went down this morning. Luna was good help. We talked about weight distribution and keeping fragile things safe I packed things very tightly and showed Luna how to attach and work a ratchet strap. We put two of them on the load. I don't really think both were absolutely necessary, but they will keep things together a bit better. The whole thing only took about an hour and a half. Phoebe was happy and Luna very grateful that she didn't have to do most of it by herself.

The garden is starting, slowly to produce summer's abundance. We have had the first two yellow summer squash. Various cucumbers have set fruit, but nothing is even near harvest size. That is because I got most things planted so late. I've picked the first two larger tomatoes, Tim's Black Ruffles {Edit: I'm not at all convinced that this tomato is actual Black Ruffles, looks too smooth. It was a pack of complimentary seed so who knows}. The plant is in a 5 gallon bucket. Cherry tomatoes have started to produce. The first flowers are visible on Moon & Stars watermelon, though nothing has set yet.

Did a little cleanup in the shop today. There is a steady stream of stuff coming from SF to Ukiah that needs to be put away -- somewhere.

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twoeleven

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Page generated Jul. 10th, 2025 12:24 pm

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Reading

Seen around town

Good times in the garden [gardening]

Garden Photos

Firefly

Recent projects [projects, art, rowing, ants]

Garden

Still running too high-octane [status]

Firefly

Garden Notes

R.I.P. Snake

Cleanup Progress

Behind on multiple things but head's above water at least [status]

Snake

Boaty weekend: Rockland Regatta + Wood Boat Show [rowing, status, boatbuilding]

Phoebe

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