jumpingfish

Let’s go for a walk in the back. I’ll show you around and tell you some stories.

[Click on the photos for bigger images. This is going to take a while. If you’re busy, feel free to leave at anytime.]

Let’s start on the patio.

Here’s our little pond. It’s in a 3′ cattle tank and has a small fountain that trickles and also keeps the mosquitos away, which means we don’t need fish, which means we don’t need to replace our fish if they die. (We’re not good at ponding, yet, and so why put fishes in peril?)

Overhead is our deteriorating pergola. I really need to deal with it someday. It’s starting to come undone.

In the distance, you can see some tall flowers in the middle of the yard. Let’s walk over there…

Ok, here we are, looking back towards the patio where we just were.

These are wild Sunflowers—not the stuff of formal gardeners, but we love them for their hardiness in the heat. I’ve seen something like them referred to as Cinnamon Sunflowers, but I’m not sure that’s the right name.

Anyway, we’ve been letting them go for the past several years, and with help from the Lesser Goldfinches, who seem to relish the seeds, they’ve been spreading to various parts of our lawn. The blossoms are very happy, and even though I haven’t seen the Goldfinches yet, I have seen Hummingbirds (yes on yellow blossoms) and bees. The bees are particularly gratifying.

To the left beyond the Sunflowers, you can see a bare spot in the yard. Let’s go see…

About a year ago, I lost my self restraint and bought another Oak tree. This is Quercus turbinella which is resilient to oak wilt and doesn’t grow very tall.

Last year we let Queen Anne’s Lace spread throughout the yard, something I’ve vowed never to do again. You should have seen me on my hands and knees for weeks this spring pulling up the sprouts sown from the cloud of seeds from last year’s crop. I just left a ring of blooming plants around the Oak but then cut them out before they went to seed—whence the bare spot.

In the distance, you can see some more Sunflowers to the left near the Ash tree trunk. But look in the distance…

Peering over the Oak tree (notice that it has acorns, already!), you can see some Turk’s Cap on the right.

Several years ago, I planted a 4″ pot of Turk’s Cap and I’ve been spreading the fruit with some success. They like the shade, and although the rain this year seems to be encouraging some kind of bug to feast on them, they’re very hardy and seem to be winning. They are just now starting to bloom. The Hummingbirds will be happy about that.

Let’s walk over to the Sunflowers on the left…

This is the far corner of our yard that until this year was kind of a wasteland. The fence was old and rickety and didn’t let a breeze thru, and we just didn’t find it pleasant back here.

But that all changed when we fixed the fence in January and opted for feedlot welded wire instead of traditional pickets. We now love this part of the yard and have been working on making it a nicer place to hang out.

In fact…

We now find this spot so enjoyable with the new breeze that comes thru from the vacant lot behind us that we got us a little swinging bench.

In late June, it’s brutally hot here well before noon, because the sun is directly overhead. But in the early afternoon, the sun goes behind a Pine and Walnut tree, and we find ourselves sitting here and just gazing around (that is, when the mosquitos aren’t out in full force, which they really have been recently due to all the rain we’ve been having … not that I’m complaining).

And to the left you can see what we gaze at. Let’s go over and take a closer look at Trudy’s square foot gardens…

There they are in their full glory: Trudy’s raised beds.

She’s got peas in the far bed, tomatoes in the tub in the foreground and four underperforming peppers that were easier to see in the last photo. (The tub has a long, illustrious history, but I won’t go into that, here.)

We’ve grilled a single pepper from our crop, and there’s another coming but no sign of ought else.

“Just keep them alive until the fall,” is what they told us at Natural Gardener last weekend. Hm… four plants for two peppers. We could have done better at the grocery story. But of course, that’s not really the point, is it? We’re getting better at this every year.

Come with me over here. I want to show you one more thing…

Just past the tomatoes is a funny fenced-in area that came with the house when Trudy bought it. There’s a huge Sunflower back there that towers over the gate and is shading some more peas growing on the other side of the chain link.

Let’s go thru the gate…

Look at this! From the house you can’t even see these Crepe Myrtles blooming. Years ago someone planted them pink/white/pink/white/pink. Every summer they bloom in profusion but only on this side, since the other side of the fence is generally shady but this side gets full sun in the morning.

Like all Crepe Myrtles, they love the heat, and as you can tell: it’s been hot.

Come with me a bit further. Watch your step. That lumber is pickets and old 2x4s left over from the fence we fixed. I’m getting rid of (most of) it slowly.

But let me show you my pride and joy…

Feast your eyes on those!

Two 3′ diameter compost piles.

In the fall, I collect leaves from the Red Oaks. In the spring I collect leaves from the Live Oaks. Sometimes I pilfer grass from neighbors who still bag their cuttings. And we compost all our vegetable scraps. (Even Bill across the street has started pitching in. Just today he brought over a dozen egg shells.)

I’m telling you, these piles are hot. Really, you’ll be shocked (no, scalded) if you reach down into them with your hands. But I’m telling you, there’s nothing better for the soul, than reaching into a hot compose pile with your hands.

And um… I can tell from the silence that we need to move on…

But that’s all there is to show.

We’ve reached the other corner of the backyard, and with that, there’s nothing else to do but show you this closer look at my beloved compose piles.

Thanks for coming along.

1. The Approaching Storm

“Watch the radar,” she said. “Don’t go emptying your rain barrels until you know it’s going to rain.”

The fair and industrious Trudy knows her husband well.

So I sat at the keyboard periodically glancing out the window, eyeing the approach of black clouds from the west. And I watched the radar: it was coming:yellows and oranges and … was that a little red? The sky turned black. A wind kicked up and tossed the upper reaches of the Ash tree.

I kept watching the radar. Until I could watch no more. It was certain to rain. The radar showed a wall of color advancing toward us. The sky was darker by the minute, and thunder was rolling just beyond the hills. So I went and drained some of our best rain barrel into an empty garbage can.

And you know what happened then, don’t you?

The wind died down. The clouds broke. It was as light as day again. And there was no rain.

I went back inside and sat down at the keyboard, shaking my head.

2. Walking the Dog

There were a few small corrections to make to my program, so I made them and checked the code back in. The sky was majorly light, now, and in place to the southwest there were patches of blue.

I could not believe my luck and went outside to silently shake my fist at that storm hills. And as I stood outside in the driveway reflecting on the dry grass and how the water barrels would be empty soon, the dog started barking uncontrollably from inside the house.

Take me out! Take me out! It’s getting late, and I haven’t been for my walk!

I smiled and went inside and turned to grab the leash just inside the door. Guinness jumped and squirmed and ran in circles, and I waited for him to gather his wits. And then we went out the door.

We went down the block and turned left, for to the right are the soccer fields, and the dark skies and flashing lightning had evidently passed that way, and I decided we didn’t need to be the only thing standing out there. So we went left and then left again for a quick walk around the block—something’s better than nothing

Then I felt a drop on my head. It made me chuckle. A little finger in my eye just to rub it in—a drop of rain where I had been expecting a storm. And then another drop, and then another and another, until the skies opened up (from what rain clouds, I do not know), and the two of us were soaking wet.

A family was sitting under the eaves of their house across the street watching us. They smiled and waved. I told them we could thank the dog’s walk for the rain, and they laughed. And I smiled.

And we got very, very wet. And my rain barrels got full.

He works in one place. I work in another far away from him. We’ve worked together on a project for several years.

We were talking on the phone about an idea he had, something to fill in now that our project’s being cancelled. But it was an idea that didn’t work out, and so our conversation was really “good bye”, since we won’t be working together anymore.

“You know this really makes me sad,” I told him.

“Well, it’s a small community,” he said. “We’ll run into each other again.”

He knows. He’s been doing this for a very long time.

“You know I started in this business during the downturn of Apollo. I’ve seen this happen before. But this was different. It just wasn’t handled right.”

Too many people not only feel sad about this, about the loss of the distributed, badgeless team that the project built, about the loss of the hardware, software and processes they’d begun to build. They feel betrayed, and they feel as if they were deceived.

You see, this was going to be the real deal. A project done right, built well, built to last. But it was never properly funded and so expectations were always well beyond what had been paid for. And the managers were constantly fighting a losing battle against too little money and too much mass. In the end, those who failed to provide the funds ended up taking pot shots at the technical people in the trenches, slandering their work, trying to pin the funding shortfall on them.

“It was vindictive,” he said to me.

A very sad ending.

A hard problem to solve.

Why don’t you tell me how your happy-talk can stop the spewing oil in the Gulf? Tell me how being a team player would help or how spin and PR will. Show me how the invisible hand will fix the glop and the death. Tell me how innovation that flows from unfettered profit can shut off the spigot. And tell me how thugs keeping the press away contributes.

No…

Happy-talk doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve. Being a team player doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve. Spin and PR and lies don’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve. Blind faith in the invisible hand doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve. Innovation that derives from greed doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve. And finally covering up the problem by intimidating the press doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve.

When you have a hard problem to solve, you need more than good ol’ boys with firm handshakes and cowboy attitudes.

Engineering hats.

And boy do the BP guys have a hard problem to solve. They knew it before it blew up. But they took off their engineering hats and took shortcuts because time was money and money is king and … you know … bad things don’t happen in the land of happy-talk and free markets and captured federal regulators, so who needs good contingency plans.

They took off their engineering hats and put on their management hats, and … kaboom … now their bad problem has become a calamity.

It’s the same calamity, is just so happens, that Transocean (nee Sonat) had with Ixtoc 31 years ago when they poked into the earth and blew up a well and weren’t able to top hat it or top kill it or junk shot it or do anything to stop the spew for 290 days. For years, a trip to the beach meant taking WD40 with you to get the goo off your feet, and heaven help you if it got in your hair.

BP has the same problem: same problem, same company owning the rig, same inadequate backup plans. The same problem … um … except that this one is a mile under the sea. And their engineering hats lay crumpled on the floor!

I know, I know. I’m a cynic and it gets tiresome. But you know when you’re playing with fire, you really ought to consider that the sky really could fall. BP really ought to have had realistic backup plans that were based on more than cut & paste. They didn’t.  (Really: Walruses in the Gulf!?)

1. Hawk

It was early morning. The sun was still low enough that the heat of the day had not yet risen, and there were clouds running low in the sky and even a hint of rain.

We stood at the top of a hill at the edge of a Juniper thicket. Behind us, a few of spring’s flowers were still blooming in the grass where the trees dwindled.

The Golden Cheek Warblers like the thicket, Brandon was telling us. And the Black Capped Vireos like the open, grassy places, although he wasn’t sure if they’d seen any up here.

And as he was talking about Warblers and Vireos and controlled burns, in the distance we heard a Red Tailed Hawk — a long mournful cry that lingered longer than any I’ve heard before. As it was crying, it flew towards us, wings outstretched, tail lit by the morning light. And then it was over us, screeching/crying as if to welcome us. Or maybe to complain. Or maybe, of course, for some reason that had nothing to do with us.

And then it was gone.

2. Owls

It was dusk of the same day. The sky still glowed with the remnant light of day, but the shadows were deep under the Oak and Ash.  It had been a hot day, and my clothes were wet from sweat. I came around the corner of the house to sit down on the bench and catch my breath and enjoy the little bit of evening breeze.

There was something in the tree—a scratching/scraping sound vaguely reminiscent of cicadas. Or was it a squirrel complaining? I looked up to see and noticed a small silhouette in the branches. It wasn’t a squirrel: I saw no sign of a tail. It wasn’t a broken branch.

Then something flew into the canopy from behind me with great grey wings outstretched. It landed next to whatever that thing was, and the two of them moved closer together. And the scratching/scraping sound continued.

Owls. They were owls. And now a third one joined them from the other side of the street, gliding into the upper reaches of the tree on great grey wings.

I whistled my Screech Owl call, and one of them turned to look at me, rotating its head each time I whistled. Behind me somewhere in the neighbor’s yard, I heard the long low rolling A-song of another owl. I whistled again.

And then they all spread their wings flew off.

3. Cranes

It was night of the same long day. Clouds covered the sky. The dog was off leach, because the soccer teams had left for the night. The field lights were still on.

I looked up at something that was moving overhead and saw a long ‘V’ of bright white birds lit up from below.

I think they were Cranes, although it’s late in the year for them. I understand they fly at night while we’re obliviously asleep. This group flew over the soccer field with it’s glaring lights filling the night, and my oblivious was erased. I stood there, head turned to the sky, and watched. I was facing east and stood there as they flew overhead and southward to the right until they disappeared again into the gloom of night.

They were headed to the coast.