So i am at the end of my onion stash... i have about 10 red zepplin onions left and not a lot of them are in the greatest condition. Nothing that can't be compensated for with a little minor surgery of course but i actually bought an organic onion at the high end produce store down the street... my options were to pay cash, card or have my left eyeball gouged out... i paid cash thinking that later if i needed protein in my soup that eyeball might come in handy.
I had a bunch of onion starts come up from seed from the flowers i left for the bees i transplanted them to where next years onion patch will thrive. If fact i let a lot of things go to seed this year with my bee bias and all and the local birds have had a heyday out there. Obviously you need to get your diseased plants out of the garden (like the tomatoes), but in that instance the seeds are in the fruit so it's a moot point. On any day junco's are found feeding heavily in my garden while the neighbourhood cat's try to catch a feed of their own.
The hops by my front porch didn't get harvested do to the insane bounty of hops i have, so i just left them, it was also a fine bird feeding area. I hadn't thought of that before i observed it... kale seeds, arugula seeds and all of the flowering plant seeds that i saw as weeds before they fed the bees.
December is a good time to move dormant plants, so there is always something to do in the garden. For now i will redistribute the blueberry bushes to spots that make sense. You see when i got the bee's in June last year i put the hive in and things were where they were and we got use to how the new order might run. So my job now is to locate the blueberries, the grape vine, the echinacea, the dalias, the black eyed susans and all of the other plants i might have forgotten the names of. We will need trellis's built and irrigation systems installed to really bring this garden into it's new era of productivity. The fruit trees should come out stronger next year and we can just hope the hive makes it through the winter. Oh yes i was going to make a shelter for the hive... i was thinking of something made out of plexi glass so the sun can get through but maybe a little less monsoon storm water gets on. Some people insulate their hives although i have heard mixed reviews, the con from what i understand is trapping moisture. It's always a worry about what to do but a law i like to follow in beekeeping and in life is that if you are not sure what the best course of action to take is then don't take any because more often then not human meddling causes more harm then good. Maybe you try to warm the hive to help them out but then it ends up helping a parasite more... it's one of those weird things. I actually had somebody tell me there is no chance my bees will survive and then offer to install mite poison strips in my hive. It was all well meaning of course, but i say if my bees die then i get the honey that i left for them and if the honey is infused with mite poison, than am i better off? Sure the company that sells the poison tells us it is safe, but apparently cow's milk treated with bovine growth hormone is safe too... so safe in fact that it is apparently required by law to have a label on all milk stating such a thing. Of course i find this very odd and having 3 young girls that drink a lot of milk, and being aware of the connections between early puberty and growth hormones in food products i err on the side of caution. People say climate change is a hoax and neonicotinoids aren't proven to hurt bees even thought they are an effective insect neurotoxin that kills insects... last time i checked a bee was an insect, but I'm sure some idiot might argue that point if they could make a buck off it or it wasn't written in some almighty religious book.
Whoops, did we slip off in a tangent again... don't worry nobody has time to read blogs anyway, and i have been known to hug trees, believe it or not. I mean i do love trees, hey they turn CO2 into O2 (Chemistry jargon of Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen)... an insane person who hated the economy might even insist we undertake a massive effort to reforest the planet, but that would cost money... right.
Did i ever tell you about my tree hugging story? OK, so i was doing my mail route and there is a massive old ceder on 11th avenue in between Glen and Windsor streets in Vancouver Canada. So there were some native elders out there one day visiting the tree and of course we got to talking about the tree's history and how great it was and that they had hugged it and i should take the opportunity to do the same... so i guess I'm hugging a tree right... i gave it a nice hug and that night the Canucks won a key playoff match. Well you know me and sports omens... what am i going to do? I'll tell you one thing... hugging a tree in front of some native elders that love the tree and believe in a good tree hugging is a totally different game that hugging a tree in front of a real estate agent in a suit and his clients while you are in your postal uniform (the house next door was for sale). Of course you have to hug the tree with the same passion because the Hockey God's might be watching... at the same time it did serve notice to potential buyers that there might be trouble if somebody got the insane idea to take that tree down, like they did to a massive stand of cedars on Hawthorne a couple weeks ago... good progress of course, could be a fine spot for a shit together apartment complex with no land left to garden.
Perhaps it's time to register Gardening as a religion and tree stands a sacred Gods, we might then have to hug, or pray to them... as insane as that sounds to your average "economy at all costs" deranged lunatics it just might work. Get the kids off the ipads and out climbing the trees... good for an exercise tax credit i say... family bonding excursions where you plant a hundred trees and get another tax credit. It would put us back in touch with nature, bring us together, open the souls with a little menial labor, and then of course a nice tax break provided one fills out the proper forms in a timely sequence.
I'd be in , but i won't hold my breath less i start turning a deep shade of blue. You know once you start embracing nature it leads you down a dark path and forever might it dominate your destiny. You start planting gardens and rejecting plastic packaging next thing you know you might take action to protest human activities that will destroy the balance of nature for the short term gain of a few... then you end up on a list somewhere of persons known do be dangerous to economic freedom...
It could be bad.
I had a bunch of onion starts come up from seed from the flowers i left for the bees i transplanted them to where next years onion patch will thrive. If fact i let a lot of things go to seed this year with my bee bias and all and the local birds have had a heyday out there. Obviously you need to get your diseased plants out of the garden (like the tomatoes), but in that instance the seeds are in the fruit so it's a moot point. On any day junco's are found feeding heavily in my garden while the neighbourhood cat's try to catch a feed of their own.
The hops by my front porch didn't get harvested do to the insane bounty of hops i have, so i just left them, it was also a fine bird feeding area. I hadn't thought of that before i observed it... kale seeds, arugula seeds and all of the flowering plant seeds that i saw as weeds before they fed the bees.
December is a good time to move dormant plants, so there is always something to do in the garden. For now i will redistribute the blueberry bushes to spots that make sense. You see when i got the bee's in June last year i put the hive in and things were where they were and we got use to how the new order might run. So my job now is to locate the blueberries, the grape vine, the echinacea, the dalias, the black eyed susans and all of the other plants i might have forgotten the names of. We will need trellis's built and irrigation systems installed to really bring this garden into it's new era of productivity. The fruit trees should come out stronger next year and we can just hope the hive makes it through the winter. Oh yes i was going to make a shelter for the hive... i was thinking of something made out of plexi glass so the sun can get through but maybe a little less monsoon storm water gets on. Some people insulate their hives although i have heard mixed reviews, the con from what i understand is trapping moisture. It's always a worry about what to do but a law i like to follow in beekeeping and in life is that if you are not sure what the best course of action to take is then don't take any because more often then not human meddling causes more harm then good. Maybe you try to warm the hive to help them out but then it ends up helping a parasite more... it's one of those weird things. I actually had somebody tell me there is no chance my bees will survive and then offer to install mite poison strips in my hive. It was all well meaning of course, but i say if my bees die then i get the honey that i left for them and if the honey is infused with mite poison, than am i better off? Sure the company that sells the poison tells us it is safe, but apparently cow's milk treated with bovine growth hormone is safe too... so safe in fact that it is apparently required by law to have a label on all milk stating such a thing. Of course i find this very odd and having 3 young girls that drink a lot of milk, and being aware of the connections between early puberty and growth hormones in food products i err on the side of caution. People say climate change is a hoax and neonicotinoids aren't proven to hurt bees even thought they are an effective insect neurotoxin that kills insects... last time i checked a bee was an insect, but I'm sure some idiot might argue that point if they could make a buck off it or it wasn't written in some almighty religious book.
Whoops, did we slip off in a tangent again... don't worry nobody has time to read blogs anyway, and i have been known to hug trees, believe it or not. I mean i do love trees, hey they turn CO2 into O2 (Chemistry jargon of Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen)... an insane person who hated the economy might even insist we undertake a massive effort to reforest the planet, but that would cost money... right.
Did i ever tell you about my tree hugging story? OK, so i was doing my mail route and there is a massive old ceder on 11th avenue in between Glen and Windsor streets in Vancouver Canada. So there were some native elders out there one day visiting the tree and of course we got to talking about the tree's history and how great it was and that they had hugged it and i should take the opportunity to do the same... so i guess I'm hugging a tree right... i gave it a nice hug and that night the Canucks won a key playoff match. Well you know me and sports omens... what am i going to do? I'll tell you one thing... hugging a tree in front of some native elders that love the tree and believe in a good tree hugging is a totally different game that hugging a tree in front of a real estate agent in a suit and his clients while you are in your postal uniform (the house next door was for sale). Of course you have to hug the tree with the same passion because the Hockey God's might be watching... at the same time it did serve notice to potential buyers that there might be trouble if somebody got the insane idea to take that tree down, like they did to a massive stand of cedars on Hawthorne a couple weeks ago... good progress of course, could be a fine spot for a shit together apartment complex with no land left to garden.
Perhaps it's time to register Gardening as a religion and tree stands a sacred Gods, we might then have to hug, or pray to them... as insane as that sounds to your average "economy at all costs" deranged lunatics it just might work. Get the kids off the ipads and out climbing the trees... good for an exercise tax credit i say... family bonding excursions where you plant a hundred trees and get another tax credit. It would put us back in touch with nature, bring us together, open the souls with a little menial labor, and then of course a nice tax break provided one fills out the proper forms in a timely sequence.
I'd be in , but i won't hold my breath less i start turning a deep shade of blue. You know once you start embracing nature it leads you down a dark path and forever might it dominate your destiny. You start planting gardens and rejecting plastic packaging next thing you know you might take action to protest human activities that will destroy the balance of nature for the short term gain of a few... then you end up on a list somewhere of persons known do be dangerous to economic freedom...
It could be bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment