View from the Office

We are in the Sierras this week doing some layout.  The creeks are flowing, the wildflowers are blooming, and the air is fragrant.  Unfortunately, it is still southern California.  I have the permission of those who live here to say that the place is trashy, crowded, and rude.  When I stopped for this picture, I had to step over dirty diapers, abandoned coolers, and the ubiquitous empty beer can.  So much for the $1000 fine for littering posted up and down the highway.

A Legend Re-Imagined

"What is the verdict?" I asked the young page who had befriended me in prison.  The boy looked dejected.  "The King has ordered your execution," he replied.  "On what day?" I asked.  "On the evening of May 20, 2012," he rejoined.  "Hmmm," I thought, wasn't there something about that date?"  "YES!"  "Tell the King," I said, "that I am a magician with special powers, and that, if even one hair on my head is damaged, I will blot out the sun from the sky."  The boy looked incredulous.  "Just tell him," I said.

May 20, 2012 dawned clear and bright, perfect for my plans.  I spent the day crafting a filtered visor to allow me to look directly at the sun.  At 6:30 pm, my friend came to visit, carrying a tray with what he expected to be my last meal.  "Don't look so dejected, son, did you tell the King what I said?" I asked.  "I did, sir, but he didn't believe me.  He simply instructed Merlin to come up with a magic stronger than yours."  "Don't worry," I said, "that old fraud has probably never heard of an eclipse."  "A what?" asked the boy.  "An eclipse," said I.  "It has probably started already.  The moon will fully cover the sun at 7:30 this evening bringing a false dusk to the earth."

At seven, they brought me out.  One glance at the sky through my visor confirmed it:  The sun was partially obscured by the moon.  As I confidently mounted the scaffolding, the king looked a little worried.  "Well," he asked, "have you any last words?"  I paused dramatically for a moment, and then uttered loudly and vehemently, "fja;ionriaseulkxvnaroiuha;oifjldkjf."  The king and his entourage recoiled at that word.  As 7:30 approached I glanced again with great confidence at the sun.  The King turned to Merlin.  Merlin, with a smirk, muttered a few useless incantations.  I shrugged.

With my next glance at the sky, my plan came to fruition.  Through the visor, I saw the full eclipse (pictured above).  Beside me, I heard the King laugh.  "Ha!" he said.  "Off with his head, and give Merlin a raise."  I felt the executioner grab my arm.  "Whatha?" I yelled, as I pulled the visor off my head.  Without the filter, I could see what the King saw (pictured below).

Aphids

For the past couple of years, the leaves on our plum trees have curled up and died.  I have not paid much attention because the weather has been so cold for two years that we've had very little fruit in our orchard anyway.  This spring, in contrast, the weather has been very mild and we are likely to have a good fruit crop.  In order to help the fruit along, I have been conscientious about spraying "Bonide" every two weeks.  The spray contains a mix of Captan, Malathion, and Carbaryl, and is supposed to control most insect pests.  Despite this attention, however, the plum leaves have been curling again.  My father-in-law asked me if we had aphids.  That was my first clue.  My second clue came when I examined the plum trees and found them covered with ladybugs.  (In the picture above there may be both a lady- and a gentleman-bug.)  Because ladybugs are known to feast on aphids, I thought I should look to see what they were eating.  Sure enough.  The curled leaves were playing host to those tiny, fat, transparent, ugly, white, green pests—aphids.  The Bonide says that it controls aphids, but I'm not sure what to do now.  I don't want to harm the ladybugs, and the aphids are not bothering any of the other fruit trees, so I may just let them be.  The plums can be my trap trees, I guess.

Buying the Farm

When the Mormon pioneers settled Parowan, each city block was about five acres square.  There were generally four homesteads on each block, one per corner.  As a result, each family in town had about 1.25 acres for an orchard, garden, barn, and corral.  Over the years, however, the parcels were subdivided into smaller and smaller lots.  Many homes in town are now on lots of less than a quarter acre.

At The Homestead, our original corner lot was, at some point, split into three.  Aside from our house, one of these other parcels has been developed, but the third one is still a vacant field.  It has been known to us as "Mr. Tiger's Field," because our friends Tiger and Melissa have owned it for the past few years.  After today, however, the name may remain the same, but the ownership will change.  We are scheduled to "close" on the property this afternoon.  Stand by for reports from our new farm.

Weight Problem

When I saw myself in the mirror the other day, I thought of Iggy Pop.  During the late fall and winter, I had managed to control the weight loss problem—I was up above 175 and feeling pretty good.  But the mild, early spring has been a disaster for my waistline.  We've put the garden in, built more fence, and planted dozens of trees.  All that, plus a lot of hiking has cost me ten or 15 pounds.  I'm not getting enough fuel and I may need to go to an all burger and bacon diet to keep from dropping below 160.  After all, I don't mind looking like a punk legend, but, with my pants sagging, I'm afraid that people may mistake me for one of those hip-hop-rappers.

A Late V-Day Gift

Many of the larger local canyons have relatively accessible perennial streams.  These can generally be reached by driving or hiking along their banks.  There are steeper more remote canyons, however, that contain intermittent tributaries to these perennial streams.  Because there have been no natural or anthropogenic disturbances—fire or forestry—in these side canyons for many, many decades, they have become choked with brush.  Some of them can still be navigated by foot if you don't mind some rough walking, (In the image above, Tiger is trying to surmount a narrow cascade to avoid the thicket.) but others are nearly impenetrable.

I found myself in one of the latter yesterday.  It was the proverbial dog-haired-thicket.  I persisted for about half an hour, but as I struggled through the alder, big-toothed maple, and downed spruce, I began to wish for a helicopter evacuation.  When I finally turned around, I started to think that the afternoon had been a failure.  At Rural Ways we live by the axiom that "there is always something interesting to be found in these little canyons," but it was looking as though I might have found the exception to the rule.  I felt sad as the thorns pulled at my clothes and slapped at my face.  I wondered if I should submit a story about this brush choked slog to the editors at Rural Ways, or if I should just cover it up.

It was at this low point in my emotional journey that my eyes fell on the balloon.  It was one of those shiny aluminum foil balloons that come with a big bunch of flowers and say "Get Well Soon," or something like that.  My first thought was that every time some suburbanite releases one of those silly things—either intentionally or unintentionally—it returns to the earth as trash, and most of the time it trashes the woods, where you sort of wish it wouldn't.  I forgot all about trash, however, when I reached for the object and discovered that it was a Valentine's Day balloon with a dollar attached to it by a pink ribbon.  My spirits soared.

I stuck the package in my pocket and made a bee-line for the Chev.  The whole way down, I was thinking, this is one of those moments of destiny.  I'm going to un-roll the dollar and find a message with a telephone number:  "You were meant for me.  Call me.  Love, Candi."  It was going to be one of those Hollywood endings where Candi would whisk me away from the drudgery of Rural Ways to a villa in the south of France or something.  I mean, some chicks must dig grumpy, aging, dumpster-divers, with an 8pm bedtime, right?  When I got to the Chev, I cut the pink ribbon with a shaking hand.

The dollar was, of course, just a dollar.  After the initial surge of disappointment, I began to be irritated with Candi.  I mean, if not a French villa, you could have at least sent me a ten.  Even my irritation evaporated, however, when I realized that there is always something interesting to be found in these little canyons.

How Old Are These Trees?

I was working with a colleague in Paradise Valley, Utah last week, collecting forest stand data.  We were working in the pinyon-juniper, measuring heights, diameters, crowns, etc.  When we could find a good tree—meaning one that was not too old and twisted—we also estimated stand age by taking cores and counting rings.  The majority of the trees we were able to core were 60 to 70 years old.  There were sections of forest that were older, much older, probably 250 to 300 years older, but a significant portion of the pinyon-juniper forest in the project area originated around the end of WWII.  It seems likely that this forest expansion coincided with a period of much improved rangeland fire suppression, as well as a couple of good seasons of seed production and germination.  As you can see from the picture, the trees we cored were six to eight inches in diameter.  The core with the reddish heartwood (at top) is juniper and the longer core is pinyon.  (If you can't tell by looking at them, you can always tell by sniffing them—they each have a unique smell.)

Big Rocks, Utah

On Wednesday night I was in Loa, so I decided to camp at Big Rocks.  Big Rocks is only a couple of miles from town and it has been designated an OHV sacrifice area by the BLM, so it could have been bad.  (And, from the trash and graffiti, I suspect that it normally is bad.)  But, on a Wednesday in May, it was totally empty.  I got off the Big Hollow Road quite a distance, pulled into a flat with afternoon shade from a big, er, rock, and settled in.  There was good picture making weather, the cacti were in bloom, and I had cell coverage so I could talk to the girls without driving around.  When the sun set over the Aquarius Plateau, I had a brat for dinner, and went to sleep with a moth fluttering around my head.  In the morning, the sun came up over, you guessed it, the Thousand Lake Mountain, while I made a big thermos of coffee and ate pop tarts.  This was my kind of night—sleeping rough in Wayne County, Utah.  It is hard to imagine that heaven will be any better.

Who to Believe?

When I got up yesterday, the thermometer said 36F (outside).  So, I went out and turned the irrigation water on the orchard.  Pretty soon the strawberry bed looked like this (see above).  I got on the computer and checked the temperature at the Cedar City Airport (22 miles away).  It said 23F.  It seems like one of my sources of information must have been wrong.  So I asked my friend Vern.  He said that it was 28F at his house across town.  Since I had two votes for temperatures below freezing against one above, I was starting to think that the crusty layer I had put on the orchard was ice.

Ragpicker's Paradise

As the guy pulled away from our neighbor's house yesterday with a trailer piled high with junk—including a wrecked truck that had been an eye-sore for a long time—I couldn't help but think that America is a ragpicker's paradise.  With all due respect to the real ragpickers—and I don't mean Mark Knopfler—who work harder and have less than ANY person in this country, being willing to use other people's trash means that this continent is virtually a Garden of Eden.

Let's start with vehicles.  Despite the nearly non-stop moaning in the pop media and on the campaign trail about hard times, there is no one in the United States today who is driving an old car.  Buzzing up and down the street and tailgating me where ever I go, the whole county is full of new cars—some of them being driven by people who I know are unemployed.  In fact, I was talking with Weston over at Reese Automotive the other day and he said that the recession has brought them very little repair business because low interest rates make people feel like they'd rather have a loan on a new car than pay for repairs on their current car.  Evidently vehicles are simply made to be consumed and thrown away—not repaired.  Which is where the ragpicker comes in.  If you are willing to drive a car with a hundred thousand miles on it and maybe a few scratches in the paint, you can have essentially free transportation.  People will be practically throwing the thing away, and you might be able to drive it for another ten years.

But, it doesn't stop there.  Furniture, appliances, boats, and even sidewalks.  If you are willing to haul it off, clean it up, and make a few small repairs, you hardly have to buy anything anymore.  From the yard sales, to the thrift stores, to the dumpsters and the roadsides, you can find just about anything you need.  Sure it takes hard work and a willingness to fall behind the Joneses, but you don't have to have a lot of money to have a lot of pretty nice stuff in this country.  (We've told the story before about how we got our living room sofa.  A friend was on his way to the dump with an old couch he didn't want, but decided to stop at our house.  We hauled it from his pick-up truck into our living room and have used it ever since.)

At Rural Ways, we are not indiscriminant ragpickers.  We recognize that it does you no good to pick up something that you don't have the ability to repair.  Take small engines.  If you can't fix the lawn mower yourself—which I can't—taking it to the shop will probably cost more than it is worth.  So, we generally buy lawn mowers new ($99 at Walmart at the end of the summer), use them for a few years, and then recycle them.  But, many things don't require a lot of skill to re-use, so you just have to keep your eyes open as you're going up and down the road.  For example, right now I am looking for some old field fence to use in the yard, so if you see anything laying in the gutter, let me know.  Just watch out for tailgaters.