stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

for those who don't care about computer stuff and/or don't wanna know you can skip this post...

otherwise i now assume you have given consent to be geeked at a bit about what's up...

i run Linux and i did my once in a great while update of my computer system and upgraded my Debian stable partition to the recent version, which means updating over a thousand pieces of software and downloading all those updates over a rather slow connection (it took about an hour and a half to just get everything download).

Debian stable changes the major version about every two to three years and then gets minor security and other bug fixes about every few months. i don't normally use it at all other than if something breaks with my daily system which is running Debian testing.

if you don't know what that means is it is another version of Linux and Debian puts it all together via various methods and running testing is a way for me to help out as it gets updates as the various volunteers get around to working on things and uploading their changes (often there are changes every day but they don't usually impact me). so every morning i do the same sort of routine, i turn on the computer, check for updates, if there's some that affect what i'm running then i make them and sometimes restart my computer to make sure all is working and then i get on with my day - about once every three to five years a change will happen that breaks something and i'll need to restart the computer and use the stable version to fix the testing version and then restart again. it's all ok with me. if i can help someone else avoid an issue i'm glad i can contribute a bug report or a fix or workaround...

and then i can get on to e-mail, gardening forums, usenet, checking the weather, etc...

 

[flowerbug]

the weather forecast is telling me to stay inside today and continue puttering around... i'm good with that...

 

[flowerbug]

Mom made some chicken-a-la-king some weeks ago and we froze some of it because as usual she makes enough to feed an army and so today we pulled a quart out of the freezer to use.

after thawing it a bit i tried a few bites right from the container (still cold and somewhat frozen and crunchy ice but the flavor was fine even if the texture was decidedly wrong). after warming it up it was much better (of course ). on a cold day warmer food is wonderful... i had eaten a bit earlier so i wasn't quite hungry myself to get a warm version until about a half hour ago. yep, still good. we did, however, talk about how much more we liked using those pre-roasted chickens they sell instead of having to cook the chickens here. i said that it makes more sense to have them do the roasting and shrinking for us before we buy them... i really like that we get a whole chicken and not just breast meat. it was all so much better the last time we made bbq chicken using the roasted bird and we surely could not have done it as cheaply here at home if we'd cooked the chicken here. so a new tradition is being hatched... err, ok...

 

[flowerbug]

got a few garden tasks taken care of today.

some gardens i had on my list to finish up the last buckets of wood ashes so those were scattered.

usually i dig them in to keep them from blowing around and i thought to myself that if it is calm enough today and tonight that perhaps they won't blow around too much and then the frost tonight might be enough to hold them in place and even if they do blow around a bit i'm also ok with that since it really doesn't count as erosion since it is something i'm adding on top.

the main reason to not want to dig the ashes in is to test out how well they will work as a weed suppressor - if dug in they'll lose that initial basic chemical harshness (aka high pH) that may help to make weed seeds think it not a great place to sprout and also perhaps the ashes will act as a dessicant?

we'll see how this works out, i'm trying it in a few different gardens that will otherwise sprout a lot of weeds due to nearby plants dropping a lot of seeds or that i used some old humus from another garden which had a lot of weeds sprouting in it and really didn't want to waste it on the weed pile out back, humus is valuable stuff around here.

even if it only delays a few weeks of sprouting that is ok with me as the later we get into the winter cold season then the less will be sprouting anyways. as all of these spaces are now cleared of garden debris and other obstructions they are much easier to get scraped even if a few weeds do want to get going. i have a challenge now with all the grass seeds blowing around and then the thistles...

oh, but in one garden where i spread the ashes to see if they will work as a weed suppressor is the tulip garden which i've not amended with anything other than what weeds or beans were grown there at all for the past 14 years. i kept it clear of beans this past year to make it easier to weed after the tulips were done because it is really getting too full of weeds and i needed to really keep after it this year to break some of the cycles of the various weeds involved. even some grasses were trying to get going in there and also the horsetail. that's a major PITA if you don't head it off sooner rather than later and i sure don't want to have to dig up the entire patch (which is what i had to do to get it out of the North Garden when it got in there).