Hello Everyone!
Thunderstorms galore, Minimal wild fruits, The Squirrel population & Finding oyster mushrooms!
A series of strong thunderstorms rolled through the area last night and all the rumbling (and rain) did not abate until sometime near dawn... which lead to me getting way less sleep than I wanted to. I was hoping to wake up in the early morning hours and do some writing but wound up falling asleep not all that long before my planned 'wake up' time.
So here I sit, bleary eyed, mildly grumpy and feeling much more inclined to go back to sleep than to be here pecking out one word after another in the text editor. Considering that there is still an ongoing heatwave I have already missed the 'cool' part of the morning to get outdoors and do some routine chores and probably will settle for going on a brief hike instead.
I guess those two paragraphs were all that I had in me to write yesterday! After doing so, I got outdoors, did some hiking and even remembered to go inspect the persimmon trees to see how much fruit got knocked from them during the storms. Surprisingly I only saw a single unripe persimmon on the ground and all the trees seem to still be holding their fruit well so that is good.
All the fruits that grow here have been either nonexistent (from all that late frost we got this spring that devastated the blossoms) or been in very limited supply... probably for much the same reason. So... those persimmons represent the bulk of the 'wild crop' for the year. Admittedly, I have grown quite protective of them because without them the wildlife will not have much to eat once autumn begins and the edible vegetation starts dying back.
This year has been so frigging wonky with so many things and at times I am inclined to think that 'scarcity is the new abundance' or 'scarcity is the only thing in abundance' which I guess amounts to much the same thing no matter which way I word it out. Not that I get too hung up on all that as a 'mindset' or anything but the 'scarcity' theme has been a consistent one that has no end in sight.
Perhaps even the squirrels know that because for months now I have been watching them building their nests much lower in the trees than they usually do. A few of those nests are a bit annoying because they are in the dog yard (or very close to it) and if I venture to close I wind up getting acorns thrown or dropped at/on me which I guess is their way of telling me to bugger off!
As a side note about the squirrels, their population seems to have increased over the previous few years and while I would not say their are 'too many' of them... the population does 'seem' larger, healthier and more on par with what I think it should be given the state of the woods here. There are probably a number of factors that I am missing in the equation (as to why that is occurring) but it is a good sign given that I do not feed them or anything. Hopefully the population trend will continue on the gradual arch it appears to be on because I sure like seeing them around the place.
Okay, it is now a few days later and I can finally write on my main computer again instead of making podcasts! If you missed it in the podcasts, my main computer's power supply fried and I was stuck working on a backup system for the last few days. Come to find out... that video card that I bought a few years ago fried and in turn that somehow caused the power supply to burn up! Thankfully I had an old spare power supply that works and the onboard video card is functional... so here I am!
Anyway, it has been a weird few days but along the way I discovered that some of the passion flower vines in the dog yard have fruit on them. There are only three such fruits but I still find it incredibly exciting because with a little work I can mayhaps get some arbors setup and perhaps have more fruit in the future. It is kind of odd because I have taken several hikes looking for the vines elsewhere on the property but the only place that I have seen them is in the dog yard.
There is what looks like another type of passion flower (maybe Passiflora vitifolia) growing along the road but I have yet to go inspect it closely enough to see what is what. As for the ones in the dog yard (which are Passiflora incarnata) I tried digging up and transplanting four of them into flower pots but only one of them seems to have survived. An old friend informed me that burying a part of the vine might result in it rooting on its own so I now have a terracotta flower pot setup near some of the vines and buried some of their stalk in it to see how it goes.
Between the Carolina jasmine and the passion flower I am hoping that one, the other, or both can be grown near my black locust saplings to help shade their stalks/trunks against the locust borer beetles. I am really unsure if those beetles are all that problematic this far south but I think their is no harm in trying to protect the saplings against them even if they are not that common here. The way that I currently have the trees growing is in a 'clump' where their various sizes help shade each other... but long-term solutions (utilizing vines) would be a better approach in my perspective even though they seem to do really well when clumped together the way I currently have them.
Alright, it is a good bit later in the day and I just got back from hiking around and looking for what mushrooms are growing. I did not get too far off the 'beaten path' or anything but I did find some oyster mushrooms which I may go back for and harvest for dinner tonight. It was really good to find them and I think that I might pile more oak logs in that area in the hope that more will eventually grow there. Considering that they are so tasty I might even try doing some 'log stacks' in an effort to maximize the space used but I am not fully committed to that approach.
On a different note. I am still trying to figure out how to buy this land that I am living at and if the person currently looking at it fails to do it I might resort to some extreme measures like doing a fundraiser for it or something. I still toy with the idea of setting up some kind of DOA (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) for it (as an alternate means of purchase) but honestly that seems just as daunting as the other options. I have yet to give up on my 'Hive Homestead' idea but a few years ago (while pondering it) I realized I am just not the person to spearhead such an endeavor no matter how awesome the idea is.
Currently, I am 'hoping against hope' that the party that I am working with can pull through because when it comes down to it they are someone that I can trust... and someone that I have known long enough that I feel good about working with them to get this place up and running as a farm. Which yeah would 'take some doing' but honestly would not be all that difficult considering the current infrastructure that is in place as far as the water and electric systems go.
Well, I best call this entry 'good enough' and get on with the editing and posting phase of things!
Thanks for reading!
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