The Only True Constant

When I was in college, I took a conceptual physics class.  It was required.  I did not do so voluntarily although I was relieved to learn that there was not a lot of math involved.  I do love science.  Physics is just a bit of a reach for me.  Many days and nights were spent sitting in a coffee shop with my husband trying to bend our brains around the latest thought experiment.  But, I remember the one thing that my professor jammed into my resistant mind:

There are these things that are considered mathematical constants.   We talked about the speed of light ad nauseum.  However, the only real constant in the universe is change.  The irony of that resonated with me then.  It still does today.

Look at those carrots!

I've changed jobs again.  This may come as no surprise to most.  In the beginning, the work at the sand mine was interesting and challenging. After a few months, it became unfulfilling, repetitive, and depressing.  The people there were, and presumably still are, unhappy and unmotivated and singularly unkind to one another.  It isn't the place for me.  I gave it eight months.  The final straw came when I nearly suffered frostbite one very cold December day working in the load out bay.  Think about that for a minute:  I nearly got frostbite for fracking sand.  

Enough is enough.

Sunrise at the sand mine...might have been sunset.  I can't remember now...

Now I've taken a job at a meat processing facility for a rather large company.  We make ready-to-eat foods.  My job is in Food Safety and Quality Assurance.  I monitor for environmental issues.  I perform equipment inspections.  I do GMP audits.  It is my job to monitor the food we produce and help to ensure it is safe from contaminants. There are those who would argue that the 'food' we make is not something that people ought to eat on a regular basis.  I will agree without hesitation that hot dogs and frozen pizza are not exactly prime cuisine.  But, the fact remains that people feed this stuff to their kids.  They should at least be able to do so without worrying that it might infect them with something awful. 

Look at that dinker!

Fundamentally, my work is satisfying in that I feel I am performing a function that society as a whole needs.  Ensuring the safety of the food web is an important component of feeding the general population any way you look at it.  In a perfect world, everyone would eat wholesome food that is locally grown and very fresh...they would know the face and the name of the person who grew it.  In the real world, people eat what they like and can afford.  For many it is hot dogs and frozen pizza.

The work that I do for money has strengthened my resolve to continue the other work that I do: raising lean rabbit meat, growing organic vegetables, and producing handmade bath items for the whole family.  I am stepping back into the role of entrepreneur and stocking up on fresh batches of soap.

One of my seasonal soaps called Mother's Day.  It has a floral bouquet fragrance.

All of this has lead me more or less full circle back to where I know I need to be.  The constant of change has lead me to learn that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I don't know who made this meme.  But, I love it.

It all comes down to balance.  Balance is the thing I've been searching and striving to find for years.  Maybe some day, I'll get it right.  Until then, I'll be gardening.

They Have To Eat, Too

This is just a nice volunteer sunflower.  Nothing to do with the post, really.

Last night while sitting eating my 'lunch' at what I've come to regard as my night and day job, I was thinking about what to plant as my fall crop this year.  I don't have a lot of luck with fall crops.  Either I plant too late or it gets too dry or the frost comes too soon or not soon enough.  But I was reading about growing carrots as a fall crop, so I decided to give that go.  I haven't tried that yet.  As a bonus, I happen to have leftover carrot seeds.

So, I'm out in my garden in back of my house digging up what is left of the carrots I planted last spring. I planted a rather long variety and I've pulled a few that were well over 10 inches long. They are some very nice carrots. I had to literally dig some of them out of the ground lest they break off and cause the prolific swearing and subsequent stabbing of the earth with my little garden trowel in frustration.

What can I say?  The sweat was in my eyes.

So I get the last carrot pulled finally!  I'm sitting on the edge of the bed breaking off the carrot greens and dropping them on the bed for mulch when some movement catches the corner of my eye. I look more closely. To my surprise, and horror, here is a baby bunny digging its way up out of the soil.

Gulp.

Right where I was digging mere moments before. Right where I could have ended his hippity-hoppity life with my little garden trowel.

Double gulp.

I decided to poke around a little, with my hands this time, because you KNOW baby bunnies don't come in singles.  I promptly unearth three more.*

That's when I threw up in my mouth a little and eased the wanderer back into the nest with his siblings before I could find any more or any potential carnage.

Now I know what you're thinking. Why am I not freaking out about a cottontail nest in the middle of my carrot patch?

It's the irony. It seems so appropriate to find rabbits in a carrot patch that I can't complain at all. After all, who of my generation can forget the Saturday morning images of Bugs Bunny tunneling under a carrot farm and popping up in a carotene-induced stupor wondering if he should have turned left at Albuquerque?

I expect Momma Cottontail will move those babes lickety split in the night once she realizes they've been found.**

Unlike some gardeners, I don't mind sharing some of my bounty with the wildlife. I don't like that the birds ate so many of my apples. But in a few years, I'll have more apples than I know what to do with.  It's part of the web of life. Besides, they don't understand our arbitrary boundaries.

Not to mention the fact that they have to eat, too. 

*I took my husband out to view the tiny dinkers and we found a fifth bunny.  All carrot replanting operations are on hold for the moment.

**Update 31 July 2016:  Nope.  They're still there.  And we have a wicked rain storm approaching.  Why am I worried about them?  Yes.  I covered them up with some discarded carrot tops.  Hopeless.  I am hopeless.

April Garden Update

It's garden time.  Can you dig it?

Yep, I'm giddy with anticipation.  At last I have dirt under my carefully manicured fingernails.  It happens every year.  Just about the time I get my fingernails to the perfect length and shape to look really nice and elegant with nail polish, garden season arrives and screws the whole works up.  But, I don't really care much.  The season has begun.

Last weekend I was hunting through what is left of our potato harvest from last year in the bitter hopes of finding a couple of unsprouted spuds.  No luck there.  But, I decided to make lemonade out of those lemons and I planted a dozen or so pre-sprouted red taters in a nicely prepared bed out back.  I can hardly wait to see if they will actually grow or not.  Someone told me once that they won't if they're already sprouted when you plant them.  That sounds sort of foolish to me, so we'll see.

Tonight, after a week of on and off again rain and a smattering of snow yesterday, I planted my peas, some radishes, a row of carrots, a row of beets, and 100 yellow onion sets.  I got lucky and found the onion sets on sale for 99 cents a bag of 100.  Less than a penny apiece!

So, naturally, I bought three varieties.  As usual, I will plant way too many onions and I will have to tuck them in where ever I can find a little space.  We somehow manage to use them anyway.

Now that it's getting dark outside, I realize that I need to take some new pictures of the garden.  We modified one of the beds and made it deeper.  All of the beds are practically overflowing with composted goodness.

I also found some dill seedlings when I was planting the carrots.  It really is true.  Once you've had dill, you will always have dill.  My mother-in-law was right about that much.