Ang's Journal

It is time for my favorite annual internet event: Fat Bear Week! Click the link & rejoice in the glorious fatness of the bears of Katmai National Park.

I have noted with mild irritation that - effective October 1st - all my various savings instruments reduced their interest rates by 0.5%, right in lockstep with the Fed. They never delay with reductions but always dawdle on raising their rates to match Fed changes. Grumble grumble.

I had a work client give me a really nice gift today. It's the nicest thing any client has ever done for me. Don't believe the news - the world still has nice things in it!

One of those nice things is The Bible Project, a nonprofit, crowdfunded group out of Portland that provides tons of tools for learning more about the Bible. They are currently doing a once-weekly, yearlong podcast series on The Sermon on the Mount. They dive deep into every word, every phrase, & every nuance, & I've learned a lot.

This poem captures the feeling of hiking through the woods & suddenly realizing you are most certainly not alone...

It's not my track,
I say, seeing
the ball of the foot and the wide heel
and the naily, untrimmed
toes. And I say again,
for emphasis,

to no one but myself, since no one is
with me. This is
not my track, and this is an extremely
large foot, I wonder
how large a body must be to make
such a track, I am beginning to make

bad jokes. I have read probably
a hundred narratives where someone saw
just what I am seeing. Various things
happened next. A fairly long list, I won't

go into it. But not one of them told
what happened next -- I mean, before whatever happens--

how the distances light up, how the clouds
are the most lovely shapes you have ever ever seen, how

the wild flowers at your feet begin distilling a fragrance
different, and sweeter, than any you ever ever
stood upon before--how

every leaf on the whole mountain is aflutter.

It's been snowing on & off here all weekend, but when the sun is out, it feels WARM. That, plus the lengthening hours of daylight, has turned my mind to the garden.

Alan hasn't really done much gardening at his house - he had some cherry tomatoes & herbs in planter boxes on the back deck, but that's it. However, the meadow behind the house gets full Southern light, & is somewhat sheltered from the wind by pinyon pines all around its periphery. Alan is going to build me a big raised bed, completely enclosed by chicken wire to keep out the varmints (deer, chipmunks, Hobbes). B* asked: "What about bears?" I don't think chicken wire would even slow down a bear. Perhaps I will put up an solar-powered electrified wire like the one I put around my fish pond when Hobbes wouldn't stay out of it. A good zap might deter a bear.

I made my first purchases yesterday. From Camelot Gardens in Montrose, I bought:

• 2 plastic seedling trays with covers;
  
• a grow lamp (I can't remember what I did with the grow lamp I had in Denver);
  
• 15 lbs./1.5 cubic ft. of potting soil;
  
• 9 seed packets: tomatoes (2 varieties), bell peppers, kale, Swiss chard, cantaloupe, sunflowers, romaine lettuce, & carrots.

Time will tell if I can make these into food.

This morning, I ordered four more packets of seeds from Seed Savers Exchange: hot peppers (2 varieties), butternut squash, & pickling cucumbers. I wanted to get zucchini but they were sold out.

Alan asked the Log Hill Village NextDoor community the date of last frost up here, & got a wide variety of surprisingly unhelpful answers. Online research was similarly vague - altitude makes SUCH a difference here, you can't search by ZIP code or anything so broad. I have decided that I will use June 5th as my last frost date. I back-calculated from there to get some seeding dates for my seeds. Indoors, I'll be starting the peppers in early April; tomatoes mid-April; cantaloupe early May; lettuce, squash, & cucumber in mid-May. The chard, kale, & carrots will be sown outside starting in late April. I am going to do batches of the peppers, tomatoes, carrots, & lettuce; hopefully, that will spread out my harvest times.