Hello Everyone!
Resting or slacking, More rain equals more muck, Finding more mushrooms, A dead mulberry tree & The pesky pestilence!
Alright, I woke up not all that long before midnight and wound up letting myself drift off for nearly two more hours... before finally rousing myself from bed and setting some espresso to brewing. Maybe it was the sound of the rain that kept lulling me back to sleep at first... because at that point I had already gotten a full night's sleep and did not really need more rest.
It seems like all that I have done besides hiking the previous several days is 'rest and recover' which must have worked given how I am feeling this morning. The weather has aided me in my 'slacking' as well... because one storm after another just keeps blowing into the region and keeping the area that I need to be working in a mucky mess.
There have assuredly been some 'sunny hours' but with all the overcast (and wildfire smoke haze) the ground never seems to get all that dried out. I swear it is one thing to work in mucky areas (which I am generally fine doing) but doing it in an area where the clay clumps to my boots... to the point that walking is both laborious and difficult... is an experience that I would rather not have!
Anyways, I wound up doing a lot of hiking around yesterday looking for mushrooms... and anything else growing that might be edible like ramps and more fruit trees. I do not want to get bogged down trying to describe all the mushrooms that I found... but they are popping up all over the place... and I even found a sole golden chanterelle which was awesome.
I also found more of those mushrooms that smell like apricots... and at this point I am beginning to believe that they might actually be some kind of chanterelle. It is super hard to pinpoint what they are... so in the end I might wind up doing a spore print of them to see if that will help me make a positive identification.
More than a few mushrooms that I have seen of late need to be properly identified... and it seems like the more hiking that I do the more of them that I find. For instance, in just the last few days I have seen what looks like cesar mushrooms (but probably are not) as well as that white bottomed bolete (that might be a king bolete) and of all the random things to stumble upon... I found a bunch of white coral mushrooms.
It is kind of funny, because the coral lead me to spotting a bunch of tiny 'berries' on the ground... and the sudden realization that I was standing under a split-base (two trunk) cherry tree... that is probably a good fifteen or more meters tall. The cherries themselves are tiny and mostly all seed... but otherwise they were rather tasty and did not have much of the tart that I am accustomed to tasting in those kinds of small cherries.
Not all that far from that same area, I found a massive standing dead mulberry tree... whose animal and pest riddled trunk stretched up into the canopy a good twenty meters. It is an incredibly sketchy tree given the extensive rot, animal/pest damage and how the only thing that seems to be holding it up... is that it is directly leaning against another tree slightly downhill of it.
I looked all over that area for more mulberry trees... but I did not see any which I thought was odd given how big that tree was before it died. Perhaps by the time it started producing berries itself (and the surrounding trees) had already 'shaded out' the area below them so much that any newer trees would have a hard time reaching maturity.
On a different note entirely, the damned 'pestilence' has been driving me crazy lately... because for nearly a year now I have not been able to routinely get flea meds for the dogs. Mainly, I have been dusting the dogs with diatomaceous earth to make up for it... but that has not been effective enough... so the other week I got some 'flea drops' (with the main ingredient being etofenprox) which helped a lot but did not totally solve the problem.
Hopefully, I can come up with the funds to get some proper meds for the fleas soon... because each time it warms up outside the tent gets warmed up in turn... and a bunch of fleas hatch out all at once. They then hop around all over (mostly on me it seems) until they get on the dogs... and then eventually die from the etofenprox drops... which is way too slow of a process for me.
Health stuff aside, dealing with fleas on that level is just downright aggravating... and my 'big plan' at this point is to 'nuke' the tent with 'bug bomb foggers' that contain pyrethrins or pyrethroids. I also want to fully dismantle and discard the mattress that I have... and replace it with one that has some kind of impermeable layer and/or an impermeable cover for it... so that I never have to deal with flea eggs getting into a mattress again.
Part of why I am in no rush to get moved to the area where the new building is located... is because I really want to contain/eliminate my pestilence problem and not spread it to another part of the property... or worse into the building itself. It is one hurdle among many in regards to all that moving jazz... because as I have said before there is so much that just has to be done in that area first.
Everything will of course 'happen in good time' but there are so many things that are going to require actual resources or funds to achieve... and there is no other way about it. One of the main things that keeps coming to mind, is that I want to get the building wired up to the extra breaker slot that I have in the breaker panel on my power/meter pole... and although I can easily 'do the work' I need to have an electrician do it to keep everything legitimate.
I have yet to decide on what approach to take with wiring up the building... because on the one hand as it is now it has a single 'four-gang' outlet box with a single piece of romex running out the side of the building which is a super easy setup. On the other hand it would be nice to have a few more outlets... and perhaps a sub-panel (located inside the building) for the sake of convenience.
Another electrical related thing that I have been pondering, is how I can most effectively light up the area around the building (or just the driveway) at night. I have yet to spend too much time on that rabbit warren... but I am considering making some inquiries with the power company to see if they know of any street light (or yard light) programs or anything similar.
I am also looking into what it would take to get a proper solar installation done on the roof of the building and figuring out everything in regards to the electrical codes, permitting fees and such. As of yet I still have to get some measurements of the roof itself... to figure out what size and how many solar panels that I can fit on it... but given the size of the building I think it will be 'enough' one way or another.
Well, I am getting behind on my schedule and need to cut this short... and get on with the editing and posting phase of my morning. I hope that folks are doing well. Ciao for now.
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