HST Day

In a sense - er, - in most senses, it is wrong to celebrate a suicide. But one must die sometime, right? And to die - to follow this terribly silly logic to the end - one must first be born. We see nothing wrong with celebrating birthdays, do we? So there are two inevitable things for any “person”, lest taxes. Why not celebrate death? Do so no matter how it comes, right?

So back to it. One year ago today, at the outskirts of Philadelphia that is the Suburban Farm, we had snow that would rival the great State of Michigan in her grandest hour. I built a snow pyre to Hunter that day. Today, as miserably muddy as this day is, I couldn’t. I built a small fire instead. It was comprised of some branches that fell from the recent winds and the top layer of leaves from the compost pile (not composted, or course). The chickens all bowed in homage.

The police and the fire department both showed. Seems a fire after dusk is against the law…

Dear reader… Did you ever

Senior Moment

Remember the GM Card? There was a huge advertising campaign for the card that would earn you points toward a GM vehicle. It had a website on the commercial. That’s the first one I can remember. That was 15 years ago. All young teenagers right now have no memory of a time before websites. Probably many 18 year olds, for all intents and purposes, are the same way.

Around that same time gas hung around a dollar a gallon. It first went over a dollar back in 1979, of course, but then a barrel of oil cost just of $15. So those 16 year olds that have always had websites have also always known gas to be more than $2 a gallon.

The average price of a house sold in 1995 was a little over $150,000. Today, it’s $270,000. The average U.S. wage has gone from $25K to $40K in that same time. But that’s only for those people with wages to begin with. And, of course, legal wages reported to the government.

At a very rapid pace, the youth are smarter and have more skills then the middle aged. “But we,” say the middle aged, “have more experience.” Yes, but our experience has lead to a very long war, huge deficits, and a failing infrastructure. So we must ask, does our experience count for anything?

50F

And yesterday wasn’t bad either. The feet of snow that fell weeks ago has taken the form of glacial ice sheets covering the land not trodden. The land that is trodden is mud. It would have been smart to require all houses built with a mud room off the back and the front, but that didn’t happen. If you pay attention going down the road, you’ll notice people trying desperately to keep their socks clean while removing shoes on the front porch.

But my normal infatuation with mud rooms is lax today. It is so because it is Sunday and it’s 50 degrees. I’ve had to run a few errands, but the day has been spent daydreaming up what this summer will be…

Yesterday, I did some cleaning in the greenhouse. Yes, greenhouse. The chickens are now on borrowed time. Maybe two or three weeks left and they’re back outside. I opened up a minimal amount of space on my heavily-lacquered workbench and planted the cabbage seeds. Standing there in the sunshine and hot greenhouse, I believe that I have decided on the following:

This Summer’s Project: The Back of the Farmhouse. It ain’t broke, but she sure is ailing.

Here’s the rundown. One side of my house faces the road. Another faces the driveway and my neighbor’s house two car-widths away. The other side is shared with the neighbor. Then there is the back of the house. The three outside walls all have a lime green siding on them. One neat thing is this, though: you can only see one side at a time. The narrowness of the roads and yards cuts the field of vision down to one side at a time. So this year, I start on the back of the house and remove the siding. This begins the great learning curve of teaching myself how to repoint brick and fill the holes left by lath in my brick. And why not? I spent far too little time outside last year.

This happy day was needed, friends. One of the links I shared previously was… well… it was a damn lie. The cot I purchased, upon assembly, presented a tag to me. It said, “made in china.” And then what else? Well, as it was already together, I decided to keep it. I sat on it and fell through to the floor. But let’s not focus on the negative…

We’re just over a month out from the dry run. We’re six weeks to plants in the ground. We’re two months to some new chicks to add to the brood. And we’re staring down the barrel of a masonry project that will have the early summer blow by like it was never even here.

I hope your plans, dear readers, are just as exciting to you as these are to me. Feel free to share!