David Nightingale

Well spotted Riona!  The times in fact have moved about a month for me Puget Sound Micro 7a-8b, as I used to plant in late September some 10 years ago.  I started planting Music in the late 90’s in Clinton, MT it was September there.  When I brought that MT Music garlic to Puget Sound I was advised to plant later Oct, and I did.  Over time I moved planting up to get back to late September, as I got better harvests.  The garlic remembered MT planting timing.  This helps when ordering new garlic, to ask where it’s from.  
Garlic adapts well to soil and seasonality, but it takes a few seasons.  I focus more on flavor, storage, and timing you don’t want the tops to freeze off (too early).  You can push the garlic season earlier or later by selecting for earlier and later starting cloves of each variety just like size.  If winter comes in shorter and milder as El Niño predicts I will plant a test batch (10 cloves of each variety) 1st Nov as a check to see if that’s a better growing cycle during El Niño.  Actual tests by planting is the best way to really study seasonal effects with most annual crops at a specific location.  If this seems confusing it is.  I write down soil amendments, plantings, tests, harvests in a journal for reference, my Garlic Book.  Adaptation is vital for planting anything successfully over time,  Again, Cheers Riona!

Jeene Kaisa Pyra bina.           (What is life without love)
Is Duniya mein Aaya ho to   (Now that you have come to this world)
Ek Duje se pyra karo.            (Love each other, one another)

Look in her eyes
The face of love
Look in her eyes
Oh, there is peace
No nothing dies
Within pure light
Only one hour
Of this pure love
To last a life
Of thirty years
Only one hour
So come and go

Song, ‘The Face of Love’
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Eddie Vedder
1995,

Happy Garlic Day!  Garlic replanted last week as I had to prep soil a bit as well.  Sampled a bit of the dried gems, al dente!  Fall dining al fresco: Pesto di Noci, Macco di Fave, con cocozza, Corvina in the garden this evening.  Cheers Aliumophiles.

The Ice Cream Man

Rum and raisin, vanilla, butterscotch, walnut, peach:
You would rhyme off the flavors. That was before
They murdered the ice-cream man on the Lisburn Road
And you bought carnations to lay outside his shop.
I named for you all the wild flowers of the Burren
I had seen in one day: thyme, valerian, loosestrife
Meadowsweet, tway blade, crowfoot, ling, angelica
Herb Robert, marjoram, cow parsley, sundew, vetch
Mountain avens, wood sage, ragged robin, stitchwort,
Yarrow, lady’s bedstraw, bind weed, bog pimpernel.

Michael Longley, poet.
1991, Gorse Fires

Can people fall in love with the land over other people?   For thousands of years, everywhere on Earth and reasons as numerous as sand grains on miles of ocean beach people have loved their land.   Trees, grass as far as the eye can see, lakes, rivers, mountains, with animals that love as people do for a lifetime, nature.  People fall in love with other people for perhaps even more diverse reasons.  Companionship, friends from young age, common desires, suddenly and infinitesimally.  As love is more varied than stars in the sky.  Which is more right, each person can choose for themselves.  To choose is the blessing of life and none are wrong by any measure or in any philosophical difference…  an unanswerable universal question.  What shall we do with our lives?   To ask it, is human.  
We are the people.
Pick me up, cast me away

Cindy Cain wrote:I wish I had your troubles with biomass to dispose of. Our voles don't leave enough of the chokes for we himans to get a decent harvest. Any ideas? We live in a busy road so barn cats aren't an option

 Currently, I plant horseradish, daikons, and garlic around the tubers to protect them from voles, moles, and rabbits.  Herb green cover cropping over the top helps some potent cilantro, peppermints, seem to do the trick.  It’s only my second year with chokes, but I’m going to try Oscar’s Hugel mound, (maybe linearly) chokes idea as a perimeter for the greater garden.  Every time, amazing and truly creative folks all, thank you.  Cheers.

Love the photo Tommy, Ten thousand words.   LGDs are fascinating.  Growing up with cattle dogs and hunting dogs nothing prepared me for LGDs utter disregard for anything other than the animals they protect often austere, stoic, some stone-like dedication to protection.  Then when I’m out in the pastures she sneaks up behind me and paws on my shoulders gives me a lick.  I’m not sure but my Akbash Beatrix has some kind relationship with our local black bear, I see via a nocturnal camera.  She lets him eat the Oso plums and Buffalo berries but herds him away from the pasture.  And she guards the garden from the bear although pigs have a repelling effect on bears as well.  Moon last week was full and I saw the bear scooting down the road Beatrix right behind him not sure what he’s eating now? Truly a different level of agriculture thanks to Beatrix, and in a way I never would imagined.  Cheers.

A written word is the choicest of relics
It is the work of art nearest to life

And not only be read but actually
carved out of the breathe of life itself.

The symbol of an ancient person’s thought
becomes a modern person’s speech.
 
H. D. Thoreau, 1854 Walden, “Reading”.
(‘Slightly Amondated’ as A. Lincoln would say)

Loss of a yearly staple is tough.  In hard times this can be devastating, and I take it very seriously. Sun/open air drying many protein based crops beans, peas… seems to limit the microbiology on them.  I throw some very dry tea leaves as a desiccant about 1/2lb tea leaves per 50lbs of beans in our usually damp climate.  More humidity in warmer climates just add more tea or bay leaves.  My grandfather used to store his beans in oak barrels with some bay leaves, I loved the smell.  I use bone dry sugar maple staves (local) and 1/2lb/50lbs tea/beans storing several hundred pounds in two 53g barrels.  Cheers

Jarret Hynd wrote:The new page is a great improvement over the original in regards to world domination. Good work to everyone who put it together.

Mass AI use the last few years has made images, similar to the original cartoon, one that many will just glance over because everyone and their dog are spamming AI images everywhere. People want real life images - I've seen this trend in various industries the last year. (reference the research article "Customer reactions to generative AI vs. real images in high-involvement and hedonic services")

Ideally, you'd want a video playing in the hero section instead of just the image of the RMH bench: say a 15 second loop of 4-5 clips.

New one Looks great, I like the multiple clip of different heater styles idea. RMH Design diversity and spatial adaptability are practical sales strengths here.  Beware kids can smell AI generated content even if true from a mile away, and it stinks to them.  So custom artistic aesthetic of living room RMH’s are in fashion again. Got asked about them at work the other day.  Cheers