Can’t We All Just Get Along?

In one of my work situations, I’m in an awkward position — my immediate supervisor, with whom I usually work alone (meaning no other employees around) absolutely hates the “big boss”.  My supervisor, who I’ll call D, spends most of her time complaining harshly about the big boss, who I’ll call B.  D regularly and frequently doesn’t follow the rules and procedures that B has established, and therefore I generally don’t/can’t either, or I will appear to my supervisor to be 1) in defiance to her, and 2) allied with the hated B.  For similar reasons, I can’t directly tell B (with whom I don’t always agree, but generally have a healthy and pleasant relationship) about all the places where D isn’t following the rules — because D and I work in isolation from other employees, there would be no doubt of the source (me) if any tales of disobedience were to reach B.  This much I have explained to B and she understands.  Sometimes B or another employee joins us for a shift, but on those occasions, D’s behavior changes dramatically, so there is much less for B to notice (though the physical condition of the office, as well as the progress or lack thereof on assignments, would seem to be pretty blatant).

I’m sure this is really confusing to read — it’s confusing enough to experience, and although I’m quite sure neither of them would ever read this, I’m not going to be more explicit here anyway.  Too much at risk.

The bottom line is that, while I’m in a good spot in that they both think *I’m* doing well (and the big boss understands that she can’t ask me to elaborate on conditions in our office, she needs to interact with D separately), it’s mildly stressful to me for several reasons.  First of all, the potential hatred of D that would be aimed at me if she were to ever suspect that I don’t hate B with all the passion she does.  Actually, I’m exaggerating, she does know that I’m “cordial” with B, which makes me, in her mind, already suspect.  But D sees the world in terms of alliances, and if she ever thought that I actually was *more* on B’s side than on her own, I’m sure I’d never hear the end of it, and might even experience bad job juju as a result (bad review, misplaced blame for problems, etc.).  At the very minimim I’d experience the silent treatment and be on the receiving end of direct hostility at work.

The second (and primary, at this point) reason it’s unpleasant to me, is because D experiences her job as overwhelmingly stressful, almost to the breaking point, and that’s all she can talk about, and I’m the only one there to listen.

Ironically, D’s stress gets in the way of her doing a good job — the job is not so complicated, and D is fully smart enough, that she should be able to do it without much stress at all, even if she doesn’t like B’s rules or management style.  But D is one of those people for whom complaining is apparently her primary mode of being.  I’ve directly seen her choose complaining over fixing a problem — even a simple problem.  If she was the source of the problem, she’ll deny it and instead blame the boss or complain about the boss’ overbearing style (as if that negates her mistake?  hello?)  But if D wasn’t the source of the original problem, then watch out!  Especially if the problem came from B or anyone she thinks is allied with B.  D would NEVER dream of fixing a problem that someone else created, not when there’s the opportunity to complain about it instead!  Again, it puts me in a bind — each time that I move to solve a problem that she hasn’t solved, I’m at risk of “showing her up.”  As if my solving a problem in thirty seconds might make her huge blowup about it seem out of proportion?  Or as if my willingness to act instead of complain makes me appear to be on B’s side?  (these are MY thoughts, not hers — this is what I worry about that D might think when I step in to fix in thirty seconds what she has just spent an hour whining is an insurmountable hassle…)

The sad part is that this is in a work situation that involves dealing with the public, and wouldn’t you think that serving the public would be of primary importance here?  Certainly more important than pointing fingers or whining about the boss.  But no, not for D.

Ironically, as unpleasant a work environment as this creates, this job is my favorite of all my part-time jobs…  Go figure…  I think partly that’s because I truly enjoy the work, and partly because I’m in a favorable position in the sense that I personally am managing to get along with everyone, and I am productive and getting a lot done.  I think (biased though I might be, lol) that I do several *times* the amount of work that D does per shift.  She spends so much of her time complaining about the boss (and then complaining about how stressed she is) that it’s a wonder she gets any work done at all!

This situation has built to a head in the last few months, since a new computer system (and its attendant need for training) has caused the boss to join us frequently.  And during the boss’s visits, she has noticed some of the OTHER backlogs that had piled up in the office, and is now asking for those things to be taken care of.  While I think this is perfectly reasonable (the backlogs had bothered me too, see above for my view that D spends her time complaining instead of working), B’s interactional and management style have many people irked, D most of all.  B comes across as condescending, it’s true.  She talks to us all as if we were kindergartners.  For some reason I don’t understand, this doesn’t bother me, although I’ve certainly taken offense to being talked to like a child in other situations.  And for some other reasons that I also don’t understand, D is way beyond bothered by B’s style, all the way to hatred, hostility, and the edge of explosion.  She takes such great offense that she’s nearly reduced to tears each time B talks to her.  Each conversation revs the hatred up higher.  And yet D would never be able to consider actually expressing her feelings to B.  Because D doesn’t see the problem as herself being offended, so she’d never consider attempting to solve it from that angle.  Instead, D is so certain that B is “wrong” in every way shape and form, that all she can do is seethe and vent, before and after (and lately, even DURING) each interaction with B.

Seems to me that honest communication could eliminate this problem.  Or at least 90% of it – D might not ever like B’s style of interaction.  And B might not be able to change her style much (though I’m sure she would try if she realized how people perceive her).  But at least B could factor that in to her management style and actions, and D could learn to not take it personally.  I might have an opportunity to talk generically about this with B, and if I can, I will.

Another thing that’s so ironic about it is that, while D is offended by being spoken to like a child, she is, in fact, BEHAVING like a child, both in her pouty whining, and in her refusal to do her job in favor of finger-pointing and complaining.

Sheesh, you’d never know we are all adults here!

Anyway, as I said, things are coming to a head, and I personally think it’s possible that D might either tell B to “take this job and shove it”, or have a breakdown, or actually get fired, if B decides to pay more attention to the actual work that is or isn’t getting done.

Gonna be an interesting winter at “Dog’s Little Office”…

Restart: Reading!

I’ve always loved reading.  It’s my ideal vision of a vacation, or even just a day off, to curl up with a good book.  This feeling has only increased in the last few years now that I work at a library.

But somehow I’ve ended up with the idea that reading is “leisure” and thus you’re not supposed to do it until all your “non-leisure” chores are done.  Which, of course, they never are.  So I haven’t read nearly as much as I’d like in recent years (ok, that’s not the only reason, too many other things competing for even my “leisure” time, and me having “issues” with time management all had their role).

Last winter, I started a project that combined reading and decluttering — I planned to read twenty books over the course of the winter — twenty books I own, that are sitting on my shelf, but that I don’t think I’ll feel the need to keep after I’ve read them.  I know, some people simply cringe at the idea of ever getting rid of a book.  I certainly have my “library” of books I don’t ever plan to part with — reference books, and books that define me — that a new acquaintance could see upon my shelf and *know* me through them.  But, ahem, I have plenty of books that don’t fit that category.  And my brand of minimalism spurs me to scan my shelves regularly and try to keep shrinking the pile, or at least keep it from growing bigger.

I didn’t get far last winter — my life was overturned at the beginning of the year by the end of my relationship and my move into temporary housing and then into a rental.  I’m a very slow recoverer, mentally, and even though I might have used reading as a good distraction or escape during that time, I didn’t.  So I read a whopping TWO books from my declutter list last winter. (Of course, I read several other books lent from friends or from the library, but only two from my project.)

Now I’m ready to restart my project.  I’ve actually pulled twenty books from my shelves and set them into a pile.  One of the books I’m in the midst of now, will count (The End of Nature, by Bill McKibben).  I’ll add the titles and authors, as I progress, to the blog sidebar — first in the Currently Reading section and then in the Recently Read section.  According to the self-generated rules of this project, once I start a book I can of course decide to keep it.  If I decide to keep it, I might finish reading it anyway (in which case it counts as one of the twenty) or I might abandon reading it in order to focus on reading books I can give away (the reading part is important to me, but the real motivation is the declutter part).

And of course, I will keep reading other books as well.  One book I devoured so fast I didn’t get to put it on the blog sidebar until just recently, was called The Last Season, by Eric Blehm.  It’s the true story of a backcountry wilderness ranger in the High Sierra — what drove him to live his unusual life, how he became an expert in “search and rescue” when a backpacker would become lost or missing.  And then, when the ranger himself goes missing while on patrol, the search, conducted by his peers, for him.  I really liked the book, but then again, I know people very like the ranger and others depicted, so I felt like I was reading it from <almost> an insider’s perspective.

Currently, in addition to The End of Nature, I’m reading Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson.  I learned of these books (it’s the first in a trilogy) when David on the LessIsMore yahoo list posted an excerpt from Fifty Degrees Below (the second book in the trilogy).  The excerpt was this:

“they thought they were temperature tough-guys, but really they were just indoors all the time. They used their buildings as clothing, in effect, and heated or cooled these spaces to imitate what clothing did, no matter how crazy this was in energy terms.- - But they did it without thinking of it like that, without making that calculation. In the summer they wore blue jeans in imitation of what people three generations before had seen in Marlboro ads. - - Blue jeans were the SUVs of pants, part of a fantasy outdoor life…. Now as it got colder people still wore blue jeans, which were as useless in the cold as they were in the heat. Frank meanwhile
[living outdoors] shifted piece by piece into his mountaineering gear.”

I thought it sounded interesting, made a mental note, then thought no more about it.  Until a month or so ago, when Fifty Degrees Below showed up in a box of paperbacks donated to the library.  I snagged it and set it aside for me to read first.  Then I realized that when books are in series, I really like to read them in order.  So I submitted my request for Forty Signs of Rain, and it showed up on Friday.

Then, also, R has lent me his recently-finished copy of Ivan Doig’s Bucking the Sun.  Back when we were living together, he recommended Doig’s English Creek to me, and I really enjoyed it.  So when he said he was enjoying Bucking the Sun, I figured I’d like that too.  I haven’t started it yet though — just got it from him today, and I think I need to finish at least one of the others first — three books at once is a bit much for me right now.

Restart: Blogging

Well, I’ve had a nice break from the blog, and I think I’m feeling ready to start posting again.

I’m in a different place mentally than I was a month ago (or however long it’s been since I posted).  A better place.  Much better.

I moved forward over the past month in the post-relationship mental processing — a giant leap forward.  This was really necessary for me, even though it’s been over six months since I moved out – I’d gotten stuck in a place where I recognized that my thoughts and judgements and opinions had been forced into his mold, but I was in denial about how dramatic that was, and I couldn’t step out of the mold quite yet.  Especially since we were still spending lots of time together.  In fact we’d been spending more and more time together, and I’d begun to wonder if we might not have a chance at getting back together.  I initiated a conversation where I started clarifying some of the things that hadn’t worked for me during our time together, and it blossomed into a dialogue of crystal clear communication (VERY rare for us, that was one of my issues actually) which, while encouraging in and of itself, made it very clear we are NOT getting back together.  As soon as that conversation was over, like magic, I felt freed up.  Freed up from constraints I hadn’t even realized I was carrying.  I apparently have a HUGE tolerance for walking on eggshells to accommodate another person.  For taking their perspective and denying any other (even though I usually have a personal view that’s a conglomeration of several perspectives).  I’m not sure that’s a wholly bad trait, but I guess I’d gotten rather carried away with it.  Discarding it, now that it doesn’t serve me, felt really good!

Anyway, so here I am back.  When I first started the blog, I used it almost as a diary, just posting tidbits of what happened each day or every couple days.  I think I might like to go back to that, instead of feeling like every post has to be so SIGNIFICANT.

Unfortunately, my first diaric post is of a vegetative day in which I did nothing except water the garden, surf the web, and make a pseudo-omelet for lunch with eggs (local), avocado (not local) and bleu cheese (not local).  The garlic was not local either, although I do have some local garlic, but I’m using up the pound from the co-op first before I get to the local heads.  Oh, and I added in a half a jalapeno from my own garden too.  As I’ll describe another time, my garden this year was truly a bust - hardly anything grew.  But there are bits and pieces that grew, and three jalapenos is three more than none.   Then tonight I made a salad from store-bought greens and tomatoes, and feta, and another avocado, and some other non-local stuff, but some of my own chard went in, plus slices of a local leek.

Retract, Regroup, Restart

As recent weeks and months have passed, I’ve noticed that my energy for the various challenges I’m supposedly participating in has evaporated.  Lots of reasons all converging:  extra paid work that is taxing my time, much free time spent getting the winter’s wood in (still ongoing), feeling mentally down (variety of reasons but mostly relationship-oriented), and the fact that my garden is a bust this year, with only potatoes and chard doing well.  I might end up with four or five winter squash total, perhaps four beets, two tomatoes, three jalapenos, one bell pepper.  Time just got away from me and all of a sudden everyone else was harvesting, when I was still looking at seedlings.  As for the blog challenges, they were generally sucking more energy from me in the guilt of all that I’m not doing, than they were enlivening me with the accomplishments I was doing.

And, I realized recently that there are some things — personal paperwork, housekeeping, reading list — that I really would rather be spending my time on at the moment.

So, I’m officially cancelling my participation in just about everything:  Riot for Austerity, Independence Days Challenge, Growing Challenge, etc.  I will of course still have a goal of moving forward with preparations and skills learned for the future, growing and cooking new things, etc.  I just won’t be taking much time to report on it on a regular basis.  Every now and then, yes — every week, no.  And I’m sorry to say that I will probably stop reading many blogs too — my blogroll had gone from ten or fifteen blogs to several dozen on a reader that told me when a new post was made.  I could easily pass the evening online just reading blogs.  While I may still do that now and then, I’m going to try to wean myself from that in favor of time spent on my own projects — sorry, y’all, no offense I hope!

Hopefully this new direction will mean that I occasionally have something to say here other than an IDC report or whining about how tired I am!

A Twist on the Week’s IDC Activities…

The twist is that I’m not at home — I’m in the Bay Area for a week visiting my mom and dad.

Planted: Nothing, but I did buy a potted chocolate mint plant at Mom’s farmer’s market.  I think it will be a container plant at home, but we’ll see.

Harvested: Nothing

Preserved:  Nope.

Stored:  Five pounds quinoa pasta (actually I bought it for a friend who can’t have wheat, but it turns out this contains rice flour in addition to quinoa flour, and she can’t have that either, so I’m keeping it.  I’ve never had quinoa pasta, so stay tuned for me to try this and count it as ‘cooking something new’ one of these weeks).  Dog treats.  Soymilk.

Managed: Nothing.

Prepped:  Four more buckets and gamma seal lids from the co-op.  Plus, I went into the local Goodwill store near Mom’s and found a nice wooden kitchen table for only $25 (marked $49.99 but it was half-off that day!).  I didn’t have a kitchen table and definitely wanted one, so I guess this is a prep, though it doesn’t have much directly to do with being ready for a different future.  I’ll consider it like a ‘tool’ for doing more in the kitchen - you need enough room to spread out and have a work space, right?  OK, now I do…  :)

Advocated for local food economy: Nope.  I wore my Locavore Farms T-shirt to the Mountain View farmer’s market, but no one noticed or asked about it, so it doesn’t count.

Reduced waste: Got showed a better way to string the line in the weedwhacker that was brand new but not working right, so that hopefully it can have a full life reducing the fire risk in my yard, instead of being junk.

Cooked something new:  Yes!  I made cole slaw from the cabbage I bought at last week’s farmer’s market.  I perused recipes online until I got the basic gist of the mix of ingredients.  I wanted something simple, but that also approximated the cole slaws I’ve had before (which is what my taste buds were craving).  I shredded one head of cabbage and one carrot, added salt and pepper and caraway seeds, and mixed it all together.  I mixed together four tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and two tablespoons of white sugar, and then poured that mixture over the cabbage.  I then added two dollops of mayonnaise (about 3 tablespoons total, I guess) and mixed it in — just enough to barely coat the cabbage.  When I tasted it, it seemed to need something sharp-flavored — just a bit more tangy.  So I added the juice of half a lemon.  It made a pretty big bowl, but my mom and I made short work of it — after two meals including it, there’s only one serving left.  I’d still like to add something a big spicier into it — maybe a dash of cayenne?  Or some chopped pickle/relish?  Some of the recipes included some onion, and I didn’t add any, but that’s also an idea.  Anyway, it worked and was yummy!  This worked out well, as I don’t usually eat mayonnaise and don’t have any at home, but since I was at mom’s I was able to use hers.  When I make cole slaw next at home, I’ll probably try one of the no-mayo recipes for a more long-term personal recipe for me.

I want to expand this “cook something new” category to also include eating something new, even if it doesn’t need cooking or if someone else does the cooking (to expand the kinds of food I know about and can eat).  To that end, I tried a smoothie — I suppose I can’t claim I’d NEVER had one, but it had been years, sufficiently long that I wasn’t even entirely sure what was in one.  When a co-worker raved about the one she got from the wifi cafe, I went ahead and tried one.  Bleah, just not for me.  It was ok while it was all still frozen, but something about the thick texture of it as it melts is unpleasant to me. Perhaps it’s the pineapple juice I don’t like — I might try getting a custom-made one using different juice.  On the other hand, since I don’t (yet, I’m thinking about it) have a freezer, I suppose getting hooked on blended ice drinks isn’t such a smart idea anyway…

Yep, Another IDC Update! What A Surprise!

This past week:

Planted:  Transplanted banana pepper sprouts.  These guys hadn’t gotten any bigger in weeks, but they didn’t die.  It might be too late for them to produce fruit this season, but I planted them anyway.  I planted the whole “tray” the seedlings were in, since I’ve had almost zero success with my transplanting this year, especially with seedlings that are still small.  I dug a hole the size and shape of the plastic tray, then flipped the whole sheet of soil, seedlings and all, into the garden.  Then watered thoroughly, of course.  We’ll see if this is any more successful than the breaking apart each seedling method.  I now understand why doing many seedling per tray isn’t a good idea, and next year I’ll be using individual little pots instead.  One friend who does a gangbusters garden told me that she doesn’t even use the really little divided pots, because transplanting into a medium size pot and then transplanting again into the garden was just too hard on the plants.  So she starts her tomatoes, peppers, whatever in 3″ pots, which are big enough they can stay there until they go straight into the ground.  I’m taking notes for next year.

Harvested:  Apricots, peas

Preserved:  Nothing

Managed:  Mulched the potato bed?  Does that count?

Stored:  Nothing new.

Prepped:  Another firewooding trip with R.  I took home a half cord of top quality lodgepole.

Reduced waste:  The only thing I can think of above and beyond the ongoing composting is that I used yard-trimmed alfalfa to mulch the potato bed.  I spent some time gathering more cut thistles for the next trip to Kate’s, but didn’t deliver any more yet.

Advocated for local food economy:  Wore my Locavore Farms T-Shirt to my job at the library, and it got commented on by someone who didn’t know about the full extent of their farm!  They say their you-pick option will start up in early August, so I’m hot to spread the word about them as much as possible before then.  I also bought some stuff (jam, relish, onions, cabbage, zucchini bread) at this week’s farmer’s market.  Didn’t set up a table or sell anything, as R and I were heading out for the woodcutting day.

Cooked Something New:  Hard-boiled eggs in a solar oven!  Wasn’t sure it would work, but it did!  I just set two eggs in a small dish, no water.  I left them WAY too long (hours!) and they did get a bit overdone, just as eggs would if they were boiled way too long, but they were still tasty!  Next time I’ll pay attention to the time and see how long it takes to get soft-boiled and how long for hard-boiled.

Learned a New Skill:  Nothing I can think of, though R and I did have some challenging conversations this week that required me to interact with him in a different way than I used to.  There’s something about getting frustrated that makes it really hard to explain to someone WHY you’re frustrated, at least in a way that they can hear you and not shut down in self-defense.  We had some interactions where I tried some new approaches to expressing my concerns.  I’m usually a pretty clear-headed communicator, and it was really hard to realize that I had no idea the right way to say things so that he would understand what I was expressing.  I don’t think I actually learned a new skill, but perhaps opened a path that might eventually lead that way.

Yet Another IDC update…

Gee, whatever happened to all those OTHER posts I planned to make?  You know, the ones that are about something other than the IDC challenge?  I have a book to review, the Growing Challenge to report on (photo update soon), and sometimes just some interesting thoughts that almost seem blogworthy…  But each week, all of a sudden it’s time for the IDC report, and I discover I’ve made no other posts since the last update.  Oh well…

This past week:

Planted:  Brussels sprouts, cabbage, pumpkin, sprouted black beans.  Transplanted: Tomatoes, turnips, squash/melon (not sure which – start from a friend), honeydew melon, rhubarb.

Harvested: Peas

Preserved:  Nothing

Stored:  Nothing

Managed: Nothing

Prepped:  Went firewooding twice this week with R.  We each got a good load.  Nice lodgepole!

Reduced Waste:  Brought another load of thistles to Kate’s for her goats to eat.

Advocated for local food economy:  Sold a few garden starts at the Saturday farmer’s market.  Introduced myself to the other partner in the nearby organic farm and asked her about a CSA — she knew what it was AND seemed interested!  She said doing a CSA takes a lot of organizational skills and time, and she just happens to love that stuff!  And although she has been splitting her time between here and Portland, she says she’ll be around here from April through November next year.  So I’m very hopeful that we might have a CSA in the valley next year!  Wa-hoo!  Also in the local food economy category, someone brought some excess chard into the library, and I took with me what was left when I closed for the day, but since I already had plenty of farmer’s market chard at home, I gave the new bag to the auto mechanic (when I picked up the Geo Metro from getting its new timing belt and water pump).  He was not familiar with chard, so hopefully he and his family got a good introduction!

Cooked something new:  Nothing this week.

Learned a new skill:  Nothing I can think of this week.

Two Weeks of IDC belatedly updated

For the week ending July 6th:

Planted:  Nothing

Harvested:  Peas

Preserved:  Nothing

Stored:  25 lbs pinto beans.

Managed:  Nothing

Prepped:  Firewooding with R, got a half cord of lodgepole (went to him).  Ordered a scythe!

Cooked something new:  Sauteed farmer’s market chard & spinach from R’s garden, cooked like mushrooms with red wine (and onion and garlic and a bit of oil), then a dash of vinegar once it’s on the plate.  Needs more spices, otherwise good!

Advocated for local food economy:  Participated in the farmer’s market, selling garden starts from a friend’s garden.

Reduced Waste:  Trying to repair a weedwhacker instead of junking it after one part broke.  A recently-bought new one is so poorly-designed that it’s about to break as well, and I’m pondering returning it.  Then I bought a THIRD weedwhacker for $13 at a thrift store, am mostly using that.  (all this mess with problem weedwhackers became the motivation to order the scythe!)

Learned Something New:  Tried again using the sprouting screen.  Last time I tried to sprout very old red beans.  One or two sprouted, but most didn’t, and the whole thing just started to ferment pretty fast.  This time I’m sprouting freshly bought black beans.

Then, for the week ending July 13:

Planted:  No

Harvested:  Peas and one tiny strawberry

Preserved:  No

Stored:  No

Managed:  No

Prepped:  No

Cooked something new:  Baked a cake (from a mix) in the solar oven.

Advocated for local food economy:  Wore a T-shirt promoting the local organic farm/you-pick

Reduced Waste:   Started feeding the cat raw ground beef instead of cat food.  Even though the beef comes in plastic wrap and styrofoam, it’s a lot less packaging than can upon can of cat food.  I’ve had to feed him less and less at a time, so that he eats most of it right away and there is less food remaining in the bowl to spoil in the heat.

Learned Something New:  When I went to try the cake in the solar oven, I put it out very late in the day (6pm, and I live hard up against the east side of a mountain range, so the shadows cross my yard about an hour earlier than they do farther out in the valley).  So I left the cake out there all night — I did fold up the wings of the oven, since it was quite windy that night.  The next morning I didn’t have to leave until after 10am and I was hoping the cake would cook by then, but it was still pudding, so I left it while I was away, and came home to a yummy cake late that afternoon!

Independence Days Challenge Update 6/29/08

Another week of progress in some areas, but still too many areas neglected.  Time management is a perennial struggle for me, and when I add in the emotional post-relationship stresses I’m feeling, plus the full-plates-at-work stress (which I don’t necessarily hate, it just leaves me feeling exhausted at the end of the day and un-inclined to focus on other projects), well, it can just get out of control.  Extreme weather can also augment my lack of productivity, as I tend to just “ride out” really hot or really cold weather without doing much productive other than fending off weather-related crises.

All that said, this week wasn’t too bad!  Here’s my report:

Plant something: Transplanted into garden:  dipper gourd starts, and one special bell pepper plant whose variety is apparently is acclimated to Klamath Falls, Oregon, which is not far from here.  Hopefully this means it grows in a shorter season, as we often don’t have enough time to grow bell peppers in this area.

Harvest something:  First, R brought me five tiny strawberries from his garden (that was my garden last year, strawberries I planted).  That was the entire harvest and it was very nice of him to bring them to me.  Also I ate the mesclun mix I was growing in a pot — it didn’t get nearly as big as I expected, but perhaps that’s how mesclun mix is.  And with the heat it was getting leggy and planning to bolt sometime next week.  It wasn’t enough for a salad, but I added it to an existing salad and it was very tasty!  Harvested some comfrey leaves to dry.

Preserve something:  Those comfrey leaves are drying in the dehydrator.

Store something:  Rainbow rotelli pasta.

Managed reserves:  Nothing this week.

Prepped:  Finally, after months of waiting — I bought a Geo Metro!  We finally got an appointment for a smog test.  It had some valve or vent that was clogged that took an extra $200 to fix, but then it passed the smog test.  This car will double (or perhaps even triple) the mileage I’m getting, though I’m afraid to tally up the insurance, registration, etc, to see what my REAL savings is (’cause I’m not getting rid of the truck just because I’ve added the Geo).  I consider it an important part of “walking the talk” and demonstrating to my community as well as my literal gas savings, so that would have to add in to the equation as well.  I’ve only had it for 2 days, so no mileage results yet, but I plan to top off the tank tomorrow so that I can start my tracking.  Also under prep:  bought a Grundig crank AM/FM/SW radio for $7 at a yard sale.

Cooked Something New:  Not really, but since I’m not aware of having eaten mesclun mix before (I probably have in restaurant or potluck salads, but I wasn’t aware of it), I’ll count that.  Especially since I’ve been disappointed several times in the taste of lettuce varieties I’ve grown, and this stuff I really liked!

Advocated for local food economy:  Well, I did set up a table at this Saturday’s farmer’s market, but I was selling books and movies that the library is trying to get rid of, so that doesn’t count except socially!  However, I did learn that our one local certified organic grower has you-pick options!  And he’s only about 25 miles away!  He’s named his endeavor “Locavore Farms” which is also highly encouraging.  Here’s his website just because I gotta say how pleased I am to learn what he’s doing: http://www.lxw.com/LocavoreFarms/ 

I plan to go up and see his place, maybe volunteer a little, get to know them, and DEFINITELY go get some you-pick stuff as it’s ready!  And speaking of volunteering, the other local food economy thing I did this week was my monthly volunteering to sort co-op orders.  This month’s effort is particularly notable since, due primarily to my submitting my order at the last possible moment and putting it in a mail slot that the co-op guy forgot to check before calling his orders in, I personally received *nothing* from the order this month!  Oh well, as long as the economy doesn’t collapse before next month…  :o

Reduce waste:  I’ve been snipping scotch thistle which are exploding on the property I rent.  I told the landlady that I did NOT want the county spraying to kill them, so that obligated me to deal with them somehow.  I’ve been snipping them down with long-handled loppers, though I suspect that I really need to dig them to keep them from resprouting.  But no time for that now, they’re putting out seedheads, so lopping is faster.  The waste reduction part is that today I loaded the back of the pickup full of thistles and took them to Kate’s house.  Kate has goats, who love to eat thistle!  I suppose I could have just left the thistles to dry and decompose in situ, especially since they are scattered out in several fields, but I think the seeds can germinate even when the plant is snipped before the flowers have opened, so it would be better if I burned or discarded the plants.  Eaten by goats is the best deal, as it not only reduces the waste I have to discard, it also reduces the amount of feed Kate has to provide them.

New skill learned:  Well, I’m getting the hang of cutting down thistles without getting poked — er, make that without getting poked AS MUCH.  Nothing I can think of beyond that this week.

 

Yes, Deer, No, Deer, Whatever You Say, Deer…

We’ll see how well my garden fence actually keeps out deer once there is something  in the garden that the deer might like.  So far there isn’t much in the garden that is more than an inch high, except for a tomato plant I got from a friend, a few pepper plants, and some potatoes that have sprouted.  More will grow or be planted shortly.

Anyway, here are the photos I’ve been promising of my deer fence.  I had the wooden pickets and wanted to use them just because I already had them.  But they are only about three feet high, and a garden generally needs an 8′ fence to be confident of keeping deer out.  Here’s how I compensated and made do.  Click on any photo to make it bigger.

One technique I used was to take advantage of some terracing of the yard.  The terrace is only about three feet high, but with the shrubbery above it and then a three-foot-plus fence above that, I think it will deter the deer quite effectively along that side:

Then, from the other direction, this is how I tackled the challenge:

You might not be able to see the details in that photo, so here is a better closeup:

I used branches from pruning the fruit trees to extend the posts higher.  Then I strung some thick orange twine across at a couple of intervals, then hung some lengths of twine vertically to create the illusion that the area is “occupied” by a fence.  From what I hear, this will work on deer even though there are gaps that might be big enough for a deer to jump through.  For good measure, I hung some garbage cds to provide shiny movement and distraction.

Two other views from inside the garden area, looking out over the terraced part:

 

Here’s my favorite piece: part fence, part art.  This is a giant metal door hinge that R and I found at the dump.  It’s got a kind of medieval look to it, with the horizontal straps that extend all the way across the door.  I didn’t get to take it when we split up, but when I told him I had a use for it as a garden gate, he was kind enough to lend it to me on a long-term basis.  I searched the junkyard for a lightweight interior door or screen to put in it, but found nothing suitable.  (Not to mention that any solid door would have taken to the air with the first good wind gust).  Finally I had an absolute brainstorm about what to put inside the hinge:

One of the things I like about the fence is the extent to which it’s cobbled together from stuff I already had or stuff I found.  The white and brown pickets were all originally bought by me, but years ago for use at earlier homes.  They were used as garden fence at R’s in a clever double-height scheme.  The green pickets in the hinge were in place at the house I bought in 1996, but when I had a better fence built there, the pickets became part of my “stuff” that moved around with me.  Some of the fenceposts were here on this property and I just relocated them.  Others I bought new, and I might have brought a few from R’s.  The branches, as I mentioned, were pruned off fruit trees here on the property.  The orange twine was here on the property — a giant roll of it, sitting on the scrap lumber pile.  Even the cds were repurposed — they come to the library where I work, one every month or two, and we use them to update the electronic card catalog.  Once we’ve used them for the update, they’re trash — except that I’ve been saving them for months now, in anticipation of this use.  And although I’m not showing off the garden itself yet, until I’ve removed some weeds and until things are growing a bit more, I will point out that the walkways you see in a few of the photos are made from cedar planks that were left over from that fancy fence I mentioned that I had built at another house.  The cedar plank boards came in 6′ lengths, but for much of that project we could only have a 4′ high fence (building permit laws — back fence may be 6′ high, front and side yard fences can’t be more than 4′ — sheesh).  Anyway, I saved all those 2′ lengths of cedar planking, through three moves now, and finally have found a use for them as garden walkways and weed suppressors.

So, overall, ten fenceposts was all that I bought new for this project.  Oh, plus some bolts and nuts for attaching the door to the giant hinge, and the hinge to a fencepost.  Not bad!  As long as it works, that is, and the deer decide to admire it from afar only. 

To make the garden also rabbitproof, I have some chicken wire I will staple along the pickets.  That part of the project is coming up pretty soon.