A Time for Everything Under the Sun

24 April 2009 was tilling day, and the beginning of our adventure across the street. We started with such great expectations and for the most part they came true. We jumped in and grew many things. What started with our neighbor Joyce welcoming us into her backyard and her daughter Marcie continuing to give us open access has ended. Our choice after seven years.

How many people do you know that would let you use their backyard as if it was your own? We had access virtually any time of the day. And as much as we could get them to take the produce, the only rental cost was the fruits and vegetables that were produced. Suburban Sharecropping is what we called it and it worked. In Joyce's last days we knew that she could look out onto a green yard and that spurred us on to grow.

Ultimately lives and times change. We found ourselves in a constant battle with Bermuda grass and weeds. But the Bermuda was and irritant beyond contempt. We tried things we never would have tried in the beginning. Weed cloth, pulling by hand, mulch, herbicides were to no avail. It became tiring to walk across the street knowing we would see our vegetables partially grown over with the Kudzu of the west.

But it was more than the Bermuda. Marcie, Tyson and the boys always made us welcome, but we were still walking into someone else's yard. My personal sense of space had alarms going off. It was me that felt like an intrusion. I used the alley gate and that helped, but as the family grew I couldn't help but feel like an interloper. This was my internal workings nothing they did or said.

The final decision was made in January. We were starting to plan for this year's plantings. The no-till method was working well on our property and for the most part across the street. We were confident the plants were getting nourished. We were talking one evening about weeding across the street in preparation for planting. I happened to look out into our back yard, specifically some unnamed unfinished job and I became overwhelmed. I looked at the tasks I needed to finish here, the fact that baseball season was beginning and I would be around less and i thought now is the time to change. I felt I wasn't taking care of my own first and that any time spent away would make finishing more difficult.

We talked about the decision and made adjustments. I still haven't finished everything I want to, but some have been completed. Many days bring a reminder of the decision, and more often than not it is an affirmation that we made the correct choice. We won't have as much produce, but one of the ways we are adjusting is to look to maximize our own land usage. Disposing of some stuff is helping and looking closely at what we keep is important.

Ultimately if we believe that hard times are coming, we can't have unfinished jobs, materials and work cluttering our minds and efforts.

Irons in the Fire by John McPhee

Another McPhee book and another snippit of wisdom about the world. The is a collection of short and not so short stories loosely connected. Sometimes very loosely. But interesting none the same. Geology ties some of these tales such as in the use of gravel and geological zones to help solve the Coors murder in Colorado and to discover Plymouth Rock came from what is now part of Africa. Along the way we learn that the rock that many consider the beginnings of european settlement of North America is actually in multiple pieces and probably wasn't used by the Pilgrims for landing.

Two auto related stories tell of an exotic car auction and what happens to the mountains of tires that get discarded each year.  We learn of the voice recognition software with a blind English professor and a truly virgin tract of forest.

The title story is about cattle rustling and a brand inspector in Nevada. And McPhee is at his descriptive best in all of the stories.

How Wide is Home Plate?

Some will know that I coach baseball. High school baseball with some Babe Ruth and Little League thrown in. Simplicity and complexness and attention to minutia rolled into one wonderful game. The is so much going on when so little seems to be happening. But that's not the only reason I coach baseball.

Life lessons are taught with this game, and that is true for many sporting activities. Baseball is what I connected with and baseball is what I use to teach about life. I was told by an old baseball friend about a story I needed to read. The story was told by John Scolinos a college coach. The story was told to a group of coaches at a coaches convention.  It sums up better and tells the tale of what I've been trying to do in one quick read. Baseball fan or not, you should read this.

http://www.sperrybaseballlife.com/stay-at-17-inches/

The Botany of Desire--A Review of Sorts

This Michael Pollan book is like many of his books. He brings a quirky history to a subject and makes me think. The premise of the book is human desire. Desire for sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control. Pollan couples these four desire with plants that are historically connected to these desires. Pollan gives us the history of these desires as well as the current thoughts.

Apples, tulips, marijuana and potatoes. I learned something new about each and changed my view on a couple of the desires. I was also reminded that just beyond desire is greed, and not all we are told is truth.

Ducky, Part II

We don't have any absolute answers to why Ducky goes AWOL every day. Our best guess is that she is broody and sitting on a clutch of eggs. We found her first two laying nests and took the eggs. We think she is hiding in the yard trying to hatch her eggs. But they aren't fertilized. And we can't find the eggs. Ducky shows up in the afternoon quacking loudly to announce herself. She eats some and socializes with us and Jimmy, then she disappears.

Hope we find her nest before summer.

Ducky and Jimmy, the Autopsy Gremlin

We are NCIS fans. The original, not so much the added cities. I like Gibbs' rules, and for years before we discovered Gibbs' Rules I have three of my own for the baseball teams I coach and have shared them with the players often.* One of the characters, Dr. Mallard or Ducky, has an assistant, Jimmy. This post isn't about NCIS or even about the rules. It's about our duck, Ducky, and her chicken companion, Jimmy.

Over the last few months Ducky has ingratiated herself to us. She quacks and follows us around when we are working in the back yard. One day she walked into the back cabana to see our son. Right after that a chicken  flew over the chicken yard fence and the duck and the chicken soon became fast friends. Now Ducky and Jimmy both follow us around and come into the house when the back door is open. Ducky originally had a male duck companion, but that duck flew the yard and the last we saw of him he was paddling around the golf course ponds with the other ducks. I guess Jimmy fills that void.

The last few days Ducky has been absent in the morning. We're not totally sure what is happening. At first we thought she had flown to greener pastures and ponds. But she came back in the afternoon. Then it happened again, and today it's the third day she has left or hidden herself in the morning. What is interesting to see is that Jimmy is looking for her each day. Ducky isn't back yet today. We don't know what will eventually happen, but Ducky sure has been a hoot, er, quack to have around.




*Coach's Rules for baseball
Rule #1: The coach is always right.
Rule #2: Never play catch or pepper in front of the dugout.
Rule #3: Refer to Rule #1.

But I always remember Gibbs' Rule # 51: Sometimes you're wrong.