I would be remiss to not mention the kid’s completion of grade school. Now with the official summer break, she is a middle schooler!
–Simon
Middle School
Farm to Table
I never wrote a sequel to the great strawberry harvest of 2021:
At the time, I didn’t seem to have had much hope of a good crop. As it turned out, however, the yield was very good indeed. And my portioned bags of frozen fruit saw us through many a cold winter Saturday family card night with margaritas and daiquiris.
Ultimately though, I lost the war on weeds that year and started over with new plants, and they haven’t had enough time yet to fill in, so no followup harvest.
But as it turns out, you can cheat, and visit a tourism farm or whatever they call them. That wasn’t on the menu for me as a kid out west, but apparently affluent white people from the midwestern burbs just can’t resist the opportunity to drive out into the countryside and pay a farmer to pick their crops for them. Whoever came up with that business plan is a genius.
It sounds absurd, but if you want to buy some fruit in bulk, it’s ultimately cheaper. Bonus: it builds character too.
30 pounds of fruit yielded about 2.5 gallons of jam and butter, plus some reserved for freezing.
Also this was not my project – I just took photos. To chronicle the homesteading and such. Liz doesn’t want to write blogs, so she can’t fight back when I talk about her here and say things like that she labeled the cans wrong. Nya nya!
As for me, I’ll save my canning for tomatoes and broth. (And the tomatoes I’ll be growing myself! I’ll even let the kid pick them for me for free.)
–Simon
Gangsta
As in, 1920s mobsters. Al Capone and The Untouchables and such. Cool gangsters. Not, you know…Glocks and that bitch better have my money…gangsters.
Of what do I speak? Well, remember that elitist pistol I bought unnecessarily for elitist reasons? The 1911, which I’ve name Suburbia?
Well, how better to carry a pistol I would never conceal carry but with a method by which I would never conceal carry?
I would never conceal carry a gun that, whether legally or illegally confiscated, I would fully expect to disappear from an evidence locker.
But give me a Capone goon’s salary and it might not matter. Look at that shoulder holster!
Now I just need to solve some crime. Or cause some. Or somehow just be caught up in it.
And you better have my money.
–Simon
I Don’t Want to be Seen
I don’t want to see some views, but I also don’t want to always be seen.
In all cases of lattice work, it’s a little of both.
The specific view in question this time involves a vista of the neighbor’s driveway and the road beyond. Traffic on the road is distracting at night, but what really breaks the tranquility is the cars coming up the driveway. The approach, before turning to their garage, directly points to our deck and the sliding glass door to our living room. At night, headlights from approaching vehicles illuminate the whole area. It is, somewhat annoying. Recurring readers of this blog might have noticed I dislike the runaway trend of increasing lightbulb strength.
It would probably be unreasonable to ask the neighbors to turn off their headlights, so, it was back to an old trick: a trellis.
Using some prior lessons, the work went much faster this time.
A few 2x4s, 1x2s, 1x8s, 1/2″ bolts, and several hundred deck screws; I had successfully created a polite screening, and prime real-estate for climbing plants.
Also, look at this fancy seamless joint on the corner.
–Simon
P.S. I still managed to refrain from putting tools in trucks.
Aquarium Evolution
I realized that I haven’t taken a photo of my aquarium since it was restarted, so I will do so now. For reference, here’s what it looked like in 2018:
I have since upgraded the lighting and added a CO2 system, which allows for better plant variety. I also ripped most of these out, because the tank was completely overgrown. This is what it looks like now:
Amano competition here I come!
–Simon