Mt Garden Today

I keep losing my photos on Picasa, don't know why?

Here are some recent ones though.

Now the weather is cooling, it has been hot for May.

We are more "normal" forecast for the next ten days,

65F. during the day and 48 at night, and a little rain,

but not too much.

 Little Garden Pool, 8' x 15' x 3' deep, nice on a hot day!

  Area between Greenhouse and Garden

Blue Berries and Flowers and Jasmine

How is the weather?

There are no safe topics.  Everything leads to politics.  "Global Warming" may have been misnamed  it is a certainty that the weather is changing what may be in doubt is how much culpability we will admit to.  Maybe it is not our fault but it probably is.  It is true that we could do something about it but I wonder if we will?  It is a fact that the weather is changing.  Snow in April in some parts of this country!  Crazy weather!  We are missing rain in Oregon by more than half.  "April showers bring May flowers" has always been true for Oregon and it has been know to rain through June.  Normally our summer doesn't begin until the fourth of July and often we have an "Indian Summer", nice sunny days through September and into October.
   It was 80 degrees yesterday.  And the day before.  We have three cloudy days forecast but no rain and then the ten day forecast is close to 80 degrees every single day.  The gardening "rule" in Oregon has always been to get your garden planted by Memorial Day.  That is the end of May!  Summer is a month early!  I normally harden off my tomato plants during the first two weeks of May, taking them from their protected environment of the greenhouse and exposing them to the real world a few hours at a time.  Not so easy when the temperature is already in the eighties!  Crazy weather!
   Last year May was also nice but then June came and it was colder than normal and rained every day.
That sent my tomatoes into shock which they did not recover from until the end of July.  What will happen this year?  The weather man is always right in predicting the weather fifty percent of the time.
This has to be crazy hard for the farmer.  Some parts of the country they can't plow because there is snow on the ground and other parts a veritable drought.  Nuts.
    On a different topic, do you have a juicer?  It is the latest fad and my wife bought one last week.
It is pretty amazing really and has to be healthy.  I go out in the garden and clip a few leaves of spinach
and Swiss Chard, different lettuces, some cabbage and nasturtium flowers.  She adds some apples and a banana and juices it all up!  Pretty cool! and all fresh from the garden.  What do you like to juice? and after the thrill of the first two weeks, how often do you use it?
   How is your weather?
You can see more of my garden here:  http://www.ArtWanted.com/slate

Hotter than Blazes!

Well, it is all relative, for Oregon it is hot.  99 degrees today!  I will be in the pool!  It is hotter everywhere, you know.   This drought is world wide, ask India or our own Midwest.  Corn it seems is in every food and in the gasoline to drive our cars and there won't be much this summer!  How much hotter does it need to get for you to believe in Global Warming?  I wonder how much more coal we need to burn to really screw up the atmosphere?  Seems like a challenge, doesn't it?
   Chic-a-fil seems to think we are challenging God in the bedroom when it is really this small blue orb that we are playing with.  It is not nice to fool with Mother Nature!  It will get hotter, that is for sure, and a lot more weird weather before we will admit...anything!  That is just the way people are.  Stubborn.
   I have a well on my little one third acre, one of the first things I did over 40 years ago.  It is only 20 feet deep and has never run out of water, although I am not so presumptuous as to think this might never happen.  I pray to the well gods every time I turn on the pump.  So far that works.

   So, how hot is it where you are?  and what do you do to cool down?  I don't have air conditioning, would only need it one week a year in Oregon.  I have my little garden pool and that is where I will be.

The Weather is Better!

This is such a huge country.  Somewhere there is still snow. It is pouring down rain and flooding in Florida and Colorado is burning.  Literally. The worst forest fires in history.  Oregon has been damp, a bit of lingering rain but pretty mellow by comparison.  A light coat in the mornings and shirt sleeves after noon.  Today it is not raining and the sun is pushing through a light layer of clouds.  The next ten day weather forecast is nice and for my up and coming art show, perfect!  No chance of rain and close to 80 degrees!

   I ran around my garden this morning and thought I would show you a few pictures. Despite the rain it is looking pretty healthy and with ten days of sunshine, maybe a real opening to summer, it should take off!  My corn is about a foot tall but with some sun it could still be "a foot high by the forth of July"!  My tomatoes should be taller but they have tomatoes on them.  They will shoot up with some warmer days ahead.

It Is Raining...

It Is Pouring, actually with thunder and coming down in torrents.  It is not good for my garden.  I watered just yesterday, a day full of sun and promise, then, fickle like a school girl, the weather changes and now all is wet.  I think the rain went all the way to New Mexico and put the fires out.  That is what I hear, soggy ashes, flash floods and no longer a fire.  Nature at its best, putting fires out and at its worst, drowning my tomatoes.
Some people pray for rain and other's for no more rain and at some point all prayers are answered.  Too late for a single tree and plenty of time to save a forest.  Sometimes.  I wonder how it all works?
   Do you listen to speeches?  I do and wonder about them too.  It is coming down to two philosophies, each side admits that there is a problem.  Reagan economics was a top down trickle theory and for awhile it worked pretty well.  It is the credo of the capitalists saying wealth generates wealth and as the rich spend it, it trickles down and other's reap the benefits of those spending money.  That sort of worked until they quit spending money in our town!  When they began outsourcing, sending the jobs overseas and then putting their money in off shore accounts, the trickle down went elsewhere and the well here at home dried up completely.
   I am not sure that trickle down ever really worked.  The "other philosophy" is expanding the economy from the middle out.  As a percentage of the population the United States used to have the largest middle class in the world.  Our middle class has lost 40% of its wealth in the last 20 years.  What are we doing to get it back?  It seems to me that we are zeroing in on those "just above us" on the pay scale.  Instead of increasing our position we want to strip those just  above us of theirs.  We go after the Union Workers, we go after those with pensions and health benefits, we go after Government workers.  We are like pirhanna in a fish tank and are eating each other!
   Is no one analyzing how we became "Middle Class" in the first place?  How a raise in Union wages could increase everyone's wages?  The role of Government in building our roads, bridges and infrastructure?
We will not get back on track by stealing money from someone else.  That never works.  Eventually they will run out of money to steal.  But there are things we could do.  It is embarrassing and stupid that China has a better railway system than we do, that we have allowed our bridges to fall down and the roads to deteriorate , that we rely on a sewer system that in some cases is over 100 years old.  Our infrastructure is falling apart and there has never been as good a time as now to repair it.  Money has never been cheaper to borrow.  We have the workers.  We need the jobs.  That is something that would trickle down!  God forbid if our Congress did anything to make our President look good!  We are willing to destroy America, anything it seems, to make his job as difficult as possible.  Why can't we all just get along?

Another Arbor

Grinding in my shop

Here I am yesterday working on a roof for another arbor!  Without gloves!  I almost never wear gloves,
keeps me too far away from my work.  This arbor is about ten feet wide with a five foot entry and side walls.  It is pouring down rain so I will wait for a nicer day for the installation!
   I am wishing now I had done the Home Show! I probably could have sold a dozen of these.  There wasn't a single metal worker there!  I mentioned this to my supplier of steel and he said he understood, no one is buying anything!  That is a defeated philosophy for sure.  They would have bought this one had it been there!
I don't really want to work a booth at a Home Show. I am retired and they are a lot of work.  Next time I am thinking I will make an arbor for someone else's booth.  It will help them gain attention and I won't have to be there!
   I read about the "warming of America".  The Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC are one full month early!
It is not happening in Oregon.  We had a dusting of snow this week and rain every single day! I am thinking it is a Canadian conspiracy!

Controversial Weather

Of course we can't talk politics and I seldom discuss religion but until now "the weather" has always been a safe subject.  Something strange is happening.  It is interesting how we have lost the ability that our ancestors
had, predicting the weather and developing a sense of causation.
   It is raining now and it rained all day yesterday.  It never rains in July in Oregon.  It is camping season and if the sprinklers are not set on automatic the garden should go dry.  There is still snow in the mountains, 200% of "normal" but it is difficult to figure out what normal means any more.  We have had only two days over eighty degrees.  It is an "unseasonably" cold Spring and early Summer, much like last year.  Pretty much exactly like last year.  A new standard.  The weather is changing and it is strange.
   The garden knows it.  My corn is not yet "knee high" and two tomato plants have the color of Fall already.
Only the broccoli and cauliflower like this weather.  I wish I had planted potatoes.
   Other parts of the country are having strange weather too, a little hotter maybe, unusual dust storms, hail storms like snow.
   I sometimes wonder whether the Earth can't tell us or we can't listen.  Something is happening here.
Maybe like talking to a deaf person the Earth will shout.

You can always visit me HERE.http://www.artwanted.com/slate

My Simple Bench...

 Location, location, where to put it?

is done!  Sometimes simple is best.  I never really know what a bench will be until I finish it.  I only have the basic shape and size in mind when I begin it.  They sort of grow and take a life of their own.
   A lot of it depends on what I have in my shop or the graveyard behind my shop.  I almost never buy anything specifically to make a bench.  The seating area is concrete, I have shown you how I do that.  I thought seriously about "painting" this bench; I've shown you those also. You would think that painting a bench with $2 dollars worth of paint would be easier than the slate that I did, but my hat is off to artists who work with paint.  It is a lot of work!  Slate is pretty easy and Nature supplies the colors for me!
   I am still "between jobs" so I am considering making a little table to go with this bench.
   I go on about the weather like an old man!  We got 2 days of sun and then the rains came.  The forecast is more rain for a week.  I gave up on my late corn and tilled it in.  My early corn is up but barely and will never make that "knee high by the forth of July" rule.  The tomatoes look healthy but it is too cold for the blossoms to set.  It will need to be a late, hot summer for them to produce anything.  Funny weather all over.
More of what I do is HERE