My Boring Life
Found this over at Weekend Pundit.
Nightmare on Connected Home Street.
Yup, can you picture the viruses that would be possible, considering today’s computers loaded into the entire home? I love the concept of the smart thermostat that can learn your habits and control the temperature appropriately for you. And I can just picture the havoc that such would cause when it gets hacked…..
Before someone asks, yes, thats me (age, between 2 and 3yrs of age), no, I’m not still blond, nor is my hair nearly that curly any more…..
Ok, so this year I’ve got a decent sized garden. No, its not big enough to truly support the two of us, but it IS big enough that we won’t be able to eat everything that it will (potentially) produce right away.
I don’t have a good place to store much of this. Some can be frozen sure, and some can be dehydrated, and some jarred, but some is better kept fresh if possible.
I don’t have a basement to turn into a storage space, and the crawlspace isn’t an option, maybe if it was better insulated, but last winter proved its not insulated (much less sealed) enough to keep out the cold, much less the critters.
The garage generally stays at least a few degrees warmer than the outside air in the winter (and the reverse in the summer), but thats not enough insulation in a normal winter, never mind one like this past winter. Ditto the breezeway.
In the winter the furnace stays set at 58-60 with the wood burning stove for when we want it warmer. I planted thermometers around the house last winter and the only place that reliably stayed below 60 when we lit the stove was the master bath. I’m not converting the master bath to food storage. No where else came close, so even if we set the furnace to a lower temp as soon as the woodburning stove warmed up it’d be to warm.
Obviously this is a problem we’ll have to eventually remedy, we might be able to insulate the workroom on the back of the garage for example, but not this year.
Looking through storage requirements for the vegi’s we’re most likely to have the most of, most of them should be stored between 40-55 degrees. Though humidity requirements vary a bit.
Doing some looking around, and old fridges and freezers are cheap on craigslist. If I add an external temperature controller, I can control the temperature of the fridge or freezer to stay within the range I want. Humidity is a bit harder, but I think I can cope. And the fridge wouldn’t have to run nearly as hard as usual since it wouldn’t be having to cool as far below room temp (somewhere in the 45degree range likely).
Does that sound like a reasonable solution? A fridge with a temp controller with me doing something to manage the humidity? Or does someone have a better idea?
*the link to Amazon is via my Amazon Associates account, if you buy something after clicking through that link I’ll earn a few pennies.
Examples of tires in the garden.
This is a large tractor tire, its got some very happy strawberries and a variety of flowers growing in it. I”ll have to transplant out at last some of the flowers either this fall or next spring. I did cut the sidewalls out of this.
I wish I’d gotten some photos of it over the winter, the black rubber definetly holds the heat well, and at the same time its not to hot to lean against even in full sun in the summer. Picture taken a couple weeks ago.
My main garden, which uses a variety of sizes of car and truck tires. I did cut the sidewalls out of these as well.
Picture taken a couple weeks ago.
And close ups of the tires:
And this is the only one I painted, I just used some cheap spray paint, nothing fancy, but so far its holding up well. I did not cut the sidewalls out of this one, but it came off a Mustang, and so there wasn’t much sidewall anyway.
There’s no reason you HAVE to cut out the sidewalls, though doing so gives you 2-6 extra inches of growing space.
Passing by some fields this week and I caught sight of this:
Thats a Killdeer chasing off a female Northern Harrier. There were actually two Killdeer, but I couldn’t get an angle on the 2nd one. I assume the Harrier came to close to their nest.
And I saw my first Pileated Woodpecker:
Now that I’ve gotten a good look at him I think I’ve actually been seeing him flying around but hadn’t been able to ID him from those glimpses.
And I saw my first Indigo Bunting!
The Bluebirds might not be nesting in any of my boxes but they are in the area at least:
We set up a second humming bird feeder in the back, the fights over the one in front are fun to watch, but still…..I’ve been slowly working on inching my way closer and closer to it while the hummers feed, and as a result have managed to get some awesome shots out of it:
I also discovered that at least one of the male Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds (the only breed that normal here) thats hanging around is actually gold throated:
Did some research and it looks like that golden/orange throat isn’t abnormal, but they don’t actually know the cause of it yet. Theories range from a genetic quirk to feather age to some combination there-of.
Managed to catch some shots of a young Bald Eagle being harassed by some crows, but I won’t post the pictures cause they’re pretty horrid. I had to get help IDing the birds on them because of the long range and horrid lighting.
Seen Osprey several times. There’s definitely a nest somewhere not to far south of us, in a straight line over us from the lake, as I’ve now seen an Osprey powering over with a fish headed in direct line flight over my head on several occasions.
The Orioles have completely stopped coming into the feeders. I haven’t changed what I’m putting out for them, and they’re definitely still hanging around the yard as I see and hear them regularly. They’re just not coming in to the feeders. Not sure what happened.
The Ceder Waxwings are back! Haven’t found any nests yet this year though.
They keep invading his yard! I do have to say though, between the big barky dog and the Plantskydd deer repellent so far nothing’s been chewed on in the garden (the fruit trees are another story though!).
Little guy was still shaky on his legs, but momma was determinedly leading him away from the big barking dog who was protesting the invasion of his yard…..
Not a whole lot going on here. I’m out of a job again, having finally quit my job at *major retailer who’s not long for this world if they keep doing what they’re doing*, which I should have done a long time ago, but I kept hoping to find something else first. But I finally decided that I needed to quit before I lost my temper at the store manager again. Its easier to find a new job when you’ve QUIT your last job vs having been fired from it.
The garden is mostly doing very well. I’m not sure that the sunflowers and corn are going to make it, not sure what I did wrong there, but I have some guesses, we’ll see I guess. Everything else is thriving, though I added some bloodmeal to the dirt under the cucumbers and the sugar snap peas yesterday as they were looking a bit yellowish. We came within a few degrees of a frost just a couple days ago, but everything seems to have survived the experience.
We almost ended up with another Tibetan Mastiff this month. There’s a breeder in Oregon who has a special needs litter, and as such is struggling to place them into appropriate homes. The number of folks who can handle TMs is limited. The number of folks who can handle TMs AND the potential medical costs and needs and heartbreak is even smaller. Unfortunately we were unable to arrange suitable transport from OR to upstate NY. Apparently NO ONE flies direct flights from OR to any of the upstate NY airports. I found 1 flight direct into JFK, but thats a 5-6hr drive each way depending on traffic. My parents who’re in MA offered to pick up the pup at the Boston airport and drive her to us, but even there, direct flights were almost non-exsistant, and none met the needed requirements. At that point I started looking at what it would cost for me to fly out there and pick her up and fly back (that way we could do a layover), but it would have been $950 just for the plane tickets, another $200 to check the puppy as baggage (she’s to big to go as a carryon), plus crating and medical cert costs. And since I can realistically expect to have to drop at LEAST that much money on vet appointments within the pup’s first month here I just didn’t have that to spare TOO.
On that same note, if you’re up to a Tibetan Mastiff (think bigger fluffier Akita with extra guardian), and up to the potential medical and heartbreak please let me know, I’ll put you in touch with the breeder.
On a happier note, last week while taking the dogs on their property rounds we discovered that the warblers had invaded the pines on the back lines. There were a TON of little brightly colored birds hopping around in the pines. They’re such little jumpy little things, I struggled to photograph and ID them, but I managed to catch solid looks at a Yellow Warbler:
A Chestnut Sided Warbler:
And a Magnolia Warbler:
The late migrating Snowy Owl who was hanging around a nearby farm finally moved on, but not before I managed to snatch one last picture:
This year I decided to experiment with putting out orange slices on a platform feeder to see if I could entice in the Orioles, and boy did I ever!
The above are all Baltimore Orioles, and I’ve been enjoying watching them. Though I could have done without the one male who kept trying to attack his reflection in the window…..
What really made it all worth while though was this bird:
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a female Orchard Oriole! Not technically rare here, but often hard to spot, and I’d never seen one before. She’s been back a few times since, but so far no sign of a male, cross your fingers for me!
Ok, he’s not truly white. He’s got just the faintest tint of yellow to his feathers.
He’s not albino, if he was he wouldn’t have the black feathers, and he’d have red eyes. Due to the faint gold tint he isn’t technically leucistic. So I’m wandering between a weird mutation and a diet problem causing him to grow in feathers in the lighter shade this year (we didn’t have an abnormally pale Goldfinch hanging around for the winter). But he’s still cool to look at!
