Black Gold

This is a time of year when I get wound up and unable to focus, because I see everything that needs to be done and worry that I won’t have enough time—or energy—to tackle it all. The energy thing has been a big frustration to me lately. Much of it is hormone related and not worth going into here. I also know that even when I’m not firing on all cylinders, I am probably getting more done than a lot of people. Still, I know what I am capable of doing and it irritates me when I fall short.

[It is also tough to be married to someone who could kick most 20-year-olds to the curb. I am far more competitive than I realized, apparently.]

I’ve been planting beans. I am planting a lot of beans. I may regret, in the fall, just how many beans I planted, but we’ll see how it goes. Thus far, I have put in one row of Calypso beans (black and white), one row of Steuben Yellow Eye bean, three rows of Jacob’s Cattle beans, and three rows of pinto beans. These are 40’ rows, for those keeping score.

Still left to do are three rows of Vermont Cranberry, three rows of Kerbarika beans, three rows of mayacoba beans and the packet of Calima beans. The Calima are for eating as green beans. The rest are for dry beans. I have a lot of white beans in storage and won’t do any of those. I also have a packet of Swiss chard and a packet of collards. I likely will plant the collards as I like to blanch them and freeze them for soup. It is going to rain on Saturday so I want to have all of this in before then.

I think I have to give up on the dream of growing cowpeas in Montana unless something miraculous happens. They aren’t doing anything. They are farther along than they were at this time last year, so I won’t write them off just yet, but I am bracing myself for potential crop failure.

The grapes are leafing out. The apple trees don’t have a lot of blossoms on them, but they produced heavily last year so I wouldn’t be surprised if they took a year off. If that happens, I will receive it as a blessing.

After planting beans (I’m pacing myself), I moved some compost. The husband moved the pile of aged chicken manure over next to the greenhouse. Then he cleaned out the compost bins and piled the contents on top of the chicken manure:

This is a lovely pile of black gold. I shoveled it into the wheelbarrow and moved it over to the rows of corn:

We’ll keep spreading it around the garden until it’s gone.

I did not see my snake friends yesterday despite looking for them.

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I’ve cut way back on my social media usage this week. I’ve been seeing the absolute worst of humanity on Facebook and Twitter and I am tired of it. Bonnie Hunter, a well-known quilt designer who is incredibly generous with her time and talents—she hosted the Unity quiltalong (for free) during the quarantine—shared a blog post yesterday that made my blood boil. She was taken to task for not participating in the #blackouttuesday movement.

[TL;DR She didn’t participate because she didn’t have reliable internet access where she was, was not on social media except briefly in the morning to put up a blog post and thus was unaware that anything was happening (I didn’t find out until about 2 p.m.), and Tuesday was her deceased daughter’s birthday, so she spent the day in remembrance and mourning. As a result, she got some very nasty comments on her Instagram-linked blog post.]

I am sick unto death of all this virtue signaling, public shaming, and policing of other people’s morality. Some days I think we’re living in puritan New England. I saw plenty of this nonsense during the coronavirus crisis, and now it has shifted into overdrive. Go ahead, announce that you are a better human being because you did X and that person didn’t, or you didn’t do Y and that person did, you’re educated and those morons over there aren’t, you believe in science—go ahead and post whatever meme or comment you think will demonstrate that you’re a better human being than people who think or behave differently from you. I won’t argue with you, but I’m probably going to tune you out.

[By the way, there are serious questions being raised about that recent Lancet study debunking the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine. You can read about it here (please note that I am linking to an MSM outlet, not some conspiracy theory website). So go ahead and “believe in science” with the understanding that it isn’t infallible—or, more accurately, that human beings engaging in scientific research muddies the objective waters somewhat.]

I raised my kids with the admonition to watch what people do instead of listening to what they say. Actions will always speak louder than words. I could tell you anything I want to on this blog, but it’s what I do when I walk out of the house and into the world that really matters. Those actions—not the sanctimonious crap I might post on Facebook or Twitter—are how I am going to be judged. And that is how it should be.