Since Rex was around and working, and there's no telling if or when this will be the case again, I figured I better get Siesta as close to finished as I could while still allowing me the space to build a greenhouse into the south berm.
I added a diagonal brace inside to hopefully resist the unbalanced forces, and then dug out the rest of the drainage ditches and buried the north side of Siesta. I also threw some dirt on the southwest side, and a fair bit on the roof, but left the southeast side unburied since I plan to build a greenhouse there. I made a few more hugels downhill of Siesta. Also I piled up a bunch of dirt that I'll try to keep dry and use to finish burying Siesta, maybe with Rex later but it's loose enough that I could do it by hand if I have to.
A wild storm blew in quickly from the southeast, (unusual since the weather tends to come from the southwest most of the time,) and right around dusk the sky was lit up with the most bizarre golden light. A rainbow formed and lightning crashed in the southeastern sky. The colors of everything seemed so vivid and surreal, Jim described it thusly: "It's like someone put an instagram filter over reality."
Kai and I scrambled to get tarps over everything just in time and then it started hailing and raining extremely hard and kept on raining through the night.
The next day it rained a bit more throughout the day and we got those potatoes planted. I lazily didn't even cut them before planting them, just stuck 'em in the ground whole.
Also found some other cool-looking mushroom. Didn't eat that one.
And the hops Kelly Ware gave us are doing awesome! This hops is in front of the greenhouse and will hopefully grow up to cover it and shade it in the summer.
Tent caterpillars! Fortunately, these caterpillars made their own tents and didn't invade mine. Unfortunately, they made their tents up in some saskatoon branches and were threatening to eat a bunch of saskatoon leaves. Fortunately, I snipped off the branches they were tenting in and delivered them to the ducks.
Jim installed a wood floor in his house! And around his stove he's doing a oil-sealed earthen floor. I think it looks great and I'm looking forward to doing my earthen floor this summer too!
Speaking of Jim, we agreed to a mutual perimeter fencing pact whereby we'll each fence in the borders of our plots, minus the border we share, and so have a deer-proof perimeter to garden inside of. We agreed to get our fences completed by May 20th. It's not clear what the penalty for failing to meet this deadline will be, (garotting by fence wire? impaling by fence pole?) but in any case I don't intend to find out. The ducks have been venturing further and further afield during their field trips lately so that's reason enough to hurry up and get this fence done.
Kai and I threw together the rest of the fence along the western border of Avalon, and since it had been a while, we also moved the duck paddock out of Anarcadeah and down into Avalon.
In honor of the five ducks who lost their lives this past winter, we're naming five of the gates along the border of Ava.
The northeasternmost gate, entering into Anarcadeah, will be Petunia's gate. The gate into Lewisylvania, which will be a kind of tunnel through the berm, will be Elrohir's gate.
evan l pierce wrote:...
Also found some other cool-looking mushroom. Didn't eat that one...
You're right not to eat that one. If you did probably you could not tell that anymore ... To me this looks like a very dangerous one! We have such ones too here in my region. The start looking like ordinary, edible, 'champignons', but then they grow larger and larger. They are Amanitas, the most poisonous mushrooms I know.
"Also, just as you want men to do to you, do the same way to them" (Luke 6:31)
PI day is 3.14 (march 14th) and is also einstein's birthday. And this is merely a tiny ad:
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