stubbed toes and mud pies

[Marie2020]

ok, today, could have been bad day, neighbor chooses to burn his ditch across the road from us (i'm not even sure it his his property). i do have lung issues at times and smoke can do me in.

I'm getting smoke frequently I'm my home. Not from a fire but skunk. I know how smoke affects breathing. It painful

I'm dreading the selfish folks around here burning fires during the heat when we need to keep windows open for air.
I can't always do that either thanks to the man upstairs and his party of splif heads

.. i went out to pick up the recycle bin after the truck came by and emptied it and talked to the neighbor for a bit. i didn't get mad, i didn't even mention the lung issue, just said hi and talked a few moments. came back inside.

thought about it for a few minutes and then said, "hey, i bet this guy has a brush hog." so i went back out and talked to him again and asked him if he did and if he'd clear an area for me on the other side of the big drainage ditch. for a price. he said sure when the ground dries out a bit more. it's getting pretty grown up back there and i was looking to do it all by hand, but that would take me several weeks or a month of here or there picking away at it where he can do it all at once.

now i gotta tell Mom what's cooking when she gets home. she's gonna say something about the smoke/smell. i have to give it another hour to clear out there before i can go chop up some more grapevines and check the groundhog den plugs...

of course, we also talked about gardens, tomatoes, etc. he's an ok guy, i just think it's silly to burn ditches. he does it because he says it cost him 25K on the property tax bill at another place and that it's too hard for him to clean them out with his tractor if it gets too full of stuff. well, um, mow 'em once in a while, but don't burn 'em and for sure don't plow so close to the edge... which almost everyone does around here now - right up to the edge... *sigh* to me that means yeah you should be charged if the county has to come along and clear them back out again... makes sense to me at least. but of course, i didn't say it.

Some people get offended when you thoughtfully offer advice. That's sad I think. I've learned so much from people that know better

i smell like a smoke bomb.

 

[Marie2020]

With a floor drain and a shower head you could have had a shower shed. For those really dirty gardening days.

I would love an outside hut I could sleep in occasionally. It would be like camping

 

[Marie2020]

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/House_Finch/maps-range

I wanted to be sure that I could identify a resident House Finch here at home. I can! I am somewhat unsure about the distant garden but know that they were there about a month ago. Those critters might not have taken up residence but they are probably just not real close.

House Finches used to be very common in the garden. It might have coincided with me growing sunflowers, starting about 12 or 15 years ago. Anyway, they always seemed to be around.

Then, they weren't ..! For about 4 or 5 years, I haven't identified a House Finch, NOT in the gardens or here at home. Take a look at the map and notice how their range doesn't extend all the way up the WA!/ID border ... I didn't realize that I am at their northern limits until this year when I began asking myself "where have they been and why haven't they been HERE?"

Steve

I bought a couple of potted sunflowers. Reported them and for some reason one is dying.
I'm so crap with some plants

 

[digitS']

@Marie2020 ,

The House Sparrows were only a problem for a time about 5 years ago. With 2 neighbors feeding them, a neighbor who lined up bird houses along her garage, 4 nearby deciduous trees, a group of young evergreen trees providing a dense  thicket of protection from hawks — their population exploded!

Having an abundance of seeds for feed but little fresh, green food, the Sparrows moved onto our lettuce like  champs. Even moving into the hoop house, they essentially destroyed every lettuce plant. This year and many others, I see very little damage. And, BTW, I seriously appreciate their busy searching out of aphids. They will even go through flats of young plants and rather thoroughly rid them of the bugs.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

My goodness. They are realy beautiful. It's sad they attacked other bird species

omnivores... like us...

 

[flowerbug]

...
Having an abundance of seeds for feed but little fresh, green food, the Sparrows moved onto our lettuce like  champs. Even moving into the hoop house, they essentially destroyed every lettuce plant.

like chumps or chomps...

glad they helped with the aphids. we have so many of the various lady bugs around here that i rarely see any common aphids on any plants. it's the gray-green aphids that show up on crucifers that nothing we have around seems to go after (because we don't grow many of those now perhaps?). at least the turnips and daikon radishes don't seem to be bothered by them or at least i've not noticed yet.

 

[flowerbug]

I bought a couple of potted sunflowers. Reported them and for some reason one is dying.
I'm so crap with some plants

some plants don't really like to be disturbed once planted. also i'm not sure but they are probably full sun kinds of plants and you may have too much shade for them there? though of course after transplanting you'd not want them in full sun until they've recovered...

the term transplant shock is important and it can happen depending upon how much the roots are impacted by the handling and the changes.

 

[Marie2020]

some plants don't really like to be disturbed once planted. also i'm not sure but they are probably full sun kinds of plants and you may have too much shade for them there? though of course after transplanting you'd not want them in full sun until they've recovered...

the term transplant shock is important and it can happen depending upon how much the roots are impacted by the handling and the changes.

Thanks. Another lesson learned

 

[flowerbug]

I would love an outside hut I could sleep in occasionally. It would be like camping

i found out by experiences on the road for several years that i sleep best when i sleep in the car. hotels, tents, visiting friends all have their downsides and it takes several days of being someplace before i can sleep very well.

which makes sense too because spending a lot of time in the car meant it was very familiar, but also the sounds of nature are not peaceful to me at night so sleeping in a tent with microthin layer of almost nothing between me and whatever is "out there" is pretty much grounds for nightmares. i can do it, but it's just not restful.

now, many years later and circumstances have changed, i now go to sleep at night with Mom normally watching tv (sleeping in her chair "watching" dvds) and the volume is cranked up and going through the stereo speakers and i've been able to sleep through that (with my door closed), but at times the bottles and things in here do rattle from the sounds.

perhaps now i would sleep better than before, but i'm also very happy on those days when i can go without turning on the music or have background noises for a while. as it is i still have some tinnitus which is always there. this morning is nice, no music for a change and i'm enjoying it.

 

[flowerbug]

this may be a tough topic for some people here so i'm putting that right up front here, drug addiction...

in scanning the news headlines i came across this article:

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/10/nx-s1-5414476/fentanyl-gen-z-drug-overdose-deaths

i knew things were bad but i didn't know how bad.

i'm glad that things seem to have calmed down somewhat and also turned around.

my own experiences with drugs were in times before and i tried to limit my exposure to only the mild ones (pot and hashish), but at times people did pull things like putting acid in my beer (i stopped hanging around that person right after that happened) or the pot was spiked (opium) or had chemicals sprayed on it (paraquat).

gladly i did put limits on myself, i absolutely did not want to get into harder drugs like cocaine or heroin (um, needles really! noway! that's just crazy) and acid was really scary in what i saw what it did to some friends (who OD'd or destroyed their minds). i also made the limit that if i was going to smoke pot i was going to have to quit smoking (which i largely did).

then after a few years i decided that i did want to go to college so i stopped smoking weed entirely by the time i was half way through 10th grade. haven't smoked any of that since then and i only smoked a few cigars until one time i really got sick from too much nicotine all at once (a friend cut a cigar in half to share it and the fact of how the whole cigar would filter the smoke vs. what half a cigar smoked was like... well, i threw up i was so dizzy). to say the least (i can actually do that? ) i haven't done any of those since then either. my lungs now say thank you. i'd probably be in much worse shape than i am had i not quit all those things.

still i'm addicted to smoking, i dream of it at times even now and i've not touched any of this for 20-30 years or more.

but back to the present, there are some people in my life who i worry about, i suspect they may be "using" of some kind. i don't worry about those who are into smoking weed. i do worry if they are doing other things.