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CatsKills

I want to shoot neighborhood cats sooooo bad.

Rewind.

Okay, so I just don’t want cats on my property.  I find this to be a very reasonable request.  Yet, in the internet debate over cats being allowed to roam unrestricted outside, the arguments against this practice focus on the dangers posed to the cats themselves, which is still a self-centered argument, even if it’s on the against side.  It overlooks what should be the prime reason: it’s rude to other people.

Even if letting your cat outside wasn’t inherently dangerous, it’s still pissing and shitting in my vegetable garden and digging things up.  It’s being destructive to my property and hobbies, and potentially passing infectious diseases into the produce I eat.  Under no condition would a rational person consider this okay.

And yet – there they are.

And it turns out that the problem was worse than I thought, revealed to me after my garden camera install.

…And that’s just one day.

But I’ve ranted about roaming cats before.  No need to go through that futile discussion again.  Instead, I decided to find a preventative measure that was more likely than changing a cat owner’s behavior.

Although there are other animals I wish to deter, like this skunk
…and some of the squirrel population (but it was fun to talk to them through the camera).

Instead, I invested in a motion-activated ultrasonic alarm.  I had limited expectations, but I haven’t caught any more cats on camera in the two days since I installed it!  So I bought two more.  It seems feasible that I can at last create a cat-free perimeter.  The 3rd one I’ll run at a higher frequency and see if that does anything to the squirrels.  That’d be a double win after last year’s tomato patch decimation.

And the camera worked for one of its intended purposes.  I love it when a plan comes together.

–Simon

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Ring 3

It’s not quite paranoia, but I wanted another outside camera.  This time, I wanted a view of the garden.  Why?  Because the house doesn’t have any windows on that side and I want to check in on the veggies.  And to yell at any deer and cats that trigger the motion alert (the latter of which I’ve already chased away with the camera’s alarm).  I’m also hoping its presence will be a deterrent to a certain neighbor who takes their dog across the property line to shit.  Doubtful.

But between the pandemic and chip shortage, the camera model I wanted, which I’ve previously installed in the backyard, hasn’t been available for a couple years now.  Then, finally last month, it appeared open to order, though it must have been backordered because I only just received it over the weekend.  No matter. I have it now.

Taking the previous installation’s lessons, I routed a CAT6 through the attic and to the garage window, where I installed a keystone jack, and connected to this a specially-ordered outdoor patch cable which ran along the eaves and to the camera.

Exposed wires are never elegant, but it’s the garage.

I also must be losing my touch with crimping cable terminals.  I struggled to the point of fury before deciding to go out and buy a different model, which worked just fine.  User error maybe.

Surpassing the other camera, this is now the longest ethernet run I’ve pulled.  And fortunately, it worked the first time.

I see you!

This makes my 10th drop to the patch panel.  And I even acquired a PoE switch since last time, thus replacing the prior single-port injector and giving me 4 powered ports.

Future expandability!

Looking forward to some nature pics.  And foiled pooping attempts.

–Simon

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Winter Carrots

As I mentioned last month, I am on a gardening quest to extend the growing season.

Phenology 2022

In so doing, I’ve cataloged these extended growing times through observation and failure, have been largely successful overall.

Bastard deer couldn’t even finish a whole carrot.

I also mentioned Bambi, amusing in that it was these rampaging ravenous ruminates that forced my winter carrot harvest – probably the last of my phenologic experiments of the prior year.  The goal was to dig them up at the beginning of March, at which point I would then plant onions and radishes in the newly-vacant and opened earth, just before the carrots started growing again and converting their sugar.  If that were successful, I would have closed the gap entirely on the fallow period.

Still, I was close.  I just need to…address the wildlife situation.

And make more stock!

–Simon

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Phenology 2022

As a famous whitetail deer once lamented: “Winter sure is long.”  And here in zone 6a, I would concur.  The last week of April through the last week of October are the only guaranteed growing times for anything not frost-resistant, and even that’s a gamble.  The remaining half of the year is reserved for watching it rain.  It certainly gives the mind some time to contemplate self-harm.

But then I discovered something: Phenology.

In an applied context to gardening, it correlates planting times to what local native plants are doing.  For example, when the crocus blooms, it’s time to plant radishes.

The benefit being, some vegetables can, in theory, be planted ahead of last frost, thereby extending the gardening season.  The practice is entirely anecdotal, as micro-climates are too variable to establish a regional constant.  The information available is therefore crowdsourced, making for nice little community of gardening nerds.

It also made for a fun experiment.  And with a basic internet search providing corollaries to what I planned to grow, I was able to create my own planting guide.  The dates themselves I left blank, as I would fill them in myself, noting whether the incidence was successful or not.  And so, after one year, I have my own vegetable garden planting time reference index, specific to my immediate geography:

Local Phenology 2022.xlsx

I intend to add more items, but for now the greatest revelation was that I could squeeze out a few more weeks’ growing time for peas and root vegetables.  And with the carrots maturing earlier as a result, I was able to plant a winter crop far enough in advance of the hard freeze to yield some impressive roots.

I pulled this out yesterday: 1/17!

So while Suicide Month will remain unchanged, I can at least take comfort in the knowledge that it’s the last month of the season that I can’t plant anything.

–Simon