Wow, has it really been more than 3 months since my last time on the blockchain? I took an unintended digital detox after wrecking my last PC, essentially not using any computers or devices since early April. I've immersed myself in my gardening, while dealing full-time with my son's ongoing health problems. My wife and I have also been taking our 2 children on trips around BC - our first time traveling in many years, their first time ever. Here's 6-year-old Brett... somewhere in this shot, which was taken near Prince Rupert, BC:
My previous garden post showed how it looked then:
Last night, it looked like this:
This year's troubles have included:
When growing food, there are always challenges. Some crops do well and others don't. I always make sure to grow a variety of foods so that there's always something doing well each year. I have a greenhouse now, but it was very expensive, and will only last a few years, so we'll see if it's worth it. Supermarket food sure is expensive now. And up here, it's normal for about half the items to be out of stock. The supply chain is very weak this far North.
This year, the best crops have been peas, lettuce, and strawberries. I'm expecting a good harvest of green beans. Hoping the tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and garlic turn out well. I'm doing potatoes, but they're in buckets (not in the photo) this year because wireworms bite the hell out of them in the main garden beds. I now have raspberries back in the woods, which are already producing fruit. The apple tree is growing, but still too small to bear flowers. Blueberries took the year off. Oregano and basil are doing fine.
It hasn't actually been very summery here yet this year, but I'm keeping the title as is! Maybe the heat is just around the corner?
Oh yeah, I mentioned the strawberries. I've been bringing in a handful or two every day for the past few weeks.
They aren't as big, or shiny, or flawless as the ones in the supermarket. But OH MAN are they ever delicious. Sweet, but not overly so. And very, very flavourful. You can taste them before you even get them in your mouth. Possibly the best I've ever tasted, and I've tasted a lot of strawberries in the past 5 decades!
Oh, here's a yummy lunch I cooked up recently.
Garlic scapes and asparagus right from the garden into the pan. Genuinely wished there was another 10 plates of it! I would have finished them all. But scapes are a once-a-year thing.
Cryptos have had their bear market, as expected. Is it over? Yes, or close to it. What the next bull run will look like is up in the air. I'm glad to be mostly out of the market.
Sad to see BLURT taking such a loss lately. My tens of thousands of USD, and several years of full-time content creation seem to have amounted to less than $1000 at the moment.
BLURT is currently going for about 0.00078 USD each, down from 0.0025 USD a year ago. I notice that HIVE has been gaining against BLURT in the 3 months I was away:
BLURT has lost about a quarter of its value against HIVE. And that's not good, because HIVE has been falling to a brand new all-time low:
I remember holding my HIVE tight (and earning as many more as I could) during the desperate 10 cent lows of 2019 and 2020. Then came the $3.4 spike in late 2021, and we said "it will never go anywhere near 10 cents again", assuming we would soon see $8 and beyond.
Here we are at under 5 cents now.
So the cryptos are down, and the blockchain tokens are pretty much dead. It sucks, but we all saw this coming long ago. I've begun to process the whole experience as a big learning experience. "Woops."
So yeah, I have a new PC, which blew several hundred bucks I would rather have used elsewhere. But at least I've got access to my files, music, etc. I put Linux on it, which I did on my wife's PC as well, so this is now a Microsoft-free house. There's a learning curve to Linux and it's not perfect, but then again neither is Windows!
I'm not sure how active I'm going to be, despite having regular access to the internet again. It was nice to just forget about certain things, no offense to anyone or anything. I just got into taking care of my son's condition, the garden, and practicing my bass guitar when I have a chance. And some travel. My brain's kind of on a different wavelength.
Thanks to 
Seriously though, I hope you've all been doing well.
Grow in peace.
DRutter
