Category: Musings

quick visit to Australia

My Mother, two brothers and their families live in Perth, Australia and now my nephews and nieces have reached the marrying age, so trips to attend weddings occur frequently.  I was in Perth in January for a wedding and I just returned y'day from attending another delightful wedding.  Perth is on the other side of the world from Atlanta and it takes about 34 hours to reach there door to door.  There and back takes 68 hours and if you call it 72 hours then it is 3 days travel.  I was gone a week Read more [...]

the worth of a civilization

I just received the Audubon special issue:  "Birds & Climate Change".  I was forewarned of its depressing contents by news articles and recent podcasts.  Paging through it steered my mind to a discussion last weekend with one of my running buddies. He said it was surprising how long the Sunni-Shiite divide had persisted especially considering the advances and scientific knowledge of the  Islamic Golden Age.  I replied this brought to mind my history studies of the tribal warfare which Read more [...]

chaos, determinism and health

I am harvesting carrots, okra, muscadine, carrots, peppers and the occasional non insect damaged kale, collard and chard.  I am hoping for a decent crop of sweet potatoes - here is my first unearthed specimen: I am also clearing the beds of tomato plants and weeds and layering on compost, and seeding for fall.  Gives me time to mull on past conversations.  We just returned from a West coast visit where I met an old acquaintance and we began discussing climate change.  He said no one can Read more [...]

leveling my fig tree and preparing the tree nursery

The property came with a big fig tree about 15 ft high and 15 ft broad which bore delicious figs each year for the wasps and me.  Then came the cold January weather when the temperature fell close to 0 deg F, which is cold for this area and unaccustomedly cold for fig trees which had not seen less than 10 deg F in the past 30 years.  Most of the fig tree died and, as they will do, it has produced growth at the foot of the tree.  My neighbor came by and nicked the tree in various places and suggested Read more [...]

dilemma unraveled

In my previous two posts I described Randa the flying chicken who established a nest containing 15 eggs in the bush and how, after much debate, I relocated Randa and her eggs to the safety of a spare coop.  The dilemma was what would I do if say half of the eggs hatched, since I have chicken enough and would wind down rather than expand my chicken operations. The potential dilemma dematerialized.  Although I had prevailed on Randa to sit on her  transferred eggs in the new nest box she quickly Read more [...]

dilemma – postponed

In y'days post I outlined the dilemma with Randa, the flying hen who established a nest beyond the pale (paddock) and my provisional decision to leave her there and let nature take its course.  Well my better half prevailed with the argument that once we take on pets (or chicken since they are not pets in our case) we assume responsibility for them and when we have domesticated them (select bred for egg productivity) they lose their instincts to survive in the wild.  Ergo, we could not leave little Read more [...]

dilemma

I have a dilemma.  Since I retired I have had few dilemmas - no more the quandary of whether I should attend an important business meeting or pitch, vs a child's sporting event/concert performance or family function.  But now I have a dilemma! I mentioned in previous posts that we have 2 nimble chicken, Wanda and Randa, who easily fly over the paddock fence and that Randa had disappeared one evening but was there the next morning and we all celebrated with sunflower seeds.  But the next night Read more [...]

what value different life forms?

I have been thinking of the different manifestations of life and their relative value.  Triggered by a recent local report of a man who had two dogs and had to relocate and could not take his dogs with him.  He approached neighbors to take his dogs and when no one was interested he shot them.  And was arrested. I cannot locate the news article and there may be more to it than I recall, but I can only speculate - maybe he didn't take them to a shelter because they would be separated and maybe he Read more [...]

recent visit to Australia and Thailand

I have family in Perth, Australia which is a long way to go when you depart from Atlanta.  On previous visits I travelled via Los Angeles and then Sydney or Melbourne to Perth.  I had never been to Bangkok and decided to include Bangkok en route which meant Atlanta to Tokyo to Bangkok to Singapore to Perth.  A longer travel time but an opportunity to explore Bangkok and Thailand en route.  I abandoned plans to spend a week in Thailand because the protests which started in December seemed unending Read more [...]

why I feel better about the appearance of my organic veggies

I recently attended an open house event at a  local organic farm trending to permaculture.  I wandered the fields with the manager and we discussed many topics.  It was only later when I was by myself and walking his rows that I noticed how perfect his vegetables looked.  No weeds - well I could manage that too if I was doing an open house, but not a single insect chewed leaf!   By that time the manager was busy with other visitors and not accessible. I thought long on what I had seen.  Read more [...]