It’s been a tough couple of weeks complicated by a lingering and persistent impulse to void the rheum of excess mucus. I don’t feel ill for the most part, but the coughing has been terrible.
Missing work without sick pay means less income and a further exploration of the life of low wage workers. Well into the experiment in alternative lifestyle, I don’t see how people can make ends meet, even working three jobs as I have been doing this spring. That said, I won’t give up and expect to continue hacking through this rough patch—literally.
I picked lettuce, spinach and radishes from the garden the last two nights and made a frittata for dinner with greens from the CSA, spring garlic and onions. It was satisfying served with a salad, and there were leftovers. Already garden production is worth savoring. Between now and Memorial Day, the focus is on getting the spring planting done.
For the moment that’s all there is to say except change is coming. To make this life more sustainable, to improve our economic base. How change will look is an open question. I look forward to seeing how it comes together.
A persistent cough prevented me from working at the warehouse Friday and Saturday. My schedule included preparing and serving food, and it would have been bad to go in sick. Instead I felt like crap at home and tried to focus enough to get a few things done, including writing an article for the newspaper, interviewing someone at the Iowa City Farmers Market and planting radishes and green beans in the garden.
Thrill is gone for me at the farmers market. I did not go one time last year and yesterday bought a bag of lettuce for $3 and that’s it. The market has become more of a flea market with crafty stuff, prepared food and vegetables imported from outside the county. It may be a seasonal alternative to the grocery store for city dwellers but unless my garden goes big and there is excess to sell, I have little reason to return.
Speaking of thrill is gone, I was saddened to hear musician B.B. King is in hospice care at his Las Vegas home.
Garden
Apple blossoms peaked and their petals are falling into a snowy carpet over the grass. Because it has been warm, calm and sunny for much of the week, I am hopeful the pollination was thorough.
Hardening indoor seedlings began yesterday when I put the first batch for planting in the outdoor sun most of the afternoon. Broccoli will be first to plant, followed by basil, celery and three kinds of kale. The next wave will be tomatoes, followed by peppers.
Two neighborhood kids and their puppy invaded my garage space yesterday. The puppy got loose and decided to see what I was doing. Right behind him a young brother and sister crawled down the retaining wall and chased him behind the table saw without regard to anything else. She collared him and took him home. While they accomplished their mission, my take away was that part of youth involves less awareness of the broad context of our actions. That may be okay for children, but not for adults.
Life has gotten busier. Not too busy to take in the scent of lilac and apple blossoms, touch the soil with bare hands and interact with children, but busy enough.
The sound of children playing reached through still air to the parking lot where I distributed shares to CSA members. The sky was clear and children were having fun chasing balls, swinging on a swing set and playing in the grass. It lifted my spirits for that hour.
Grass Clippings
Lilacs are in bloom and apple blossoms are dropping petals as spring’s course runs through our lives. Flipping the calendar to May, there is much to get done before summer starts in three weeks.
A neighbor noticed I left the grass clippings after mowing. They wondered if they could have them, prompting this response.
Thanks for the compliment on our grass clippings.
I plan to use them on our garden as mulch in years one and two, then as compost after that.
I always delay mowing in Spring until the yard gets green and starts going to seed. Then I cut first with the mower, let them dry in the sun a couple of days if possible, and beginning tomorrow will start picking them up with the grass catcher attachment on my mower, or with a rake.
I admit they are nice, but you and I are likely the only people in the neighborhood who view them as an asset.
Over the years I stopped using lawn chemicals so there wouldn’t be runoff to the lake, and the clippings would be as artificial-chemical free as possible for the garden.
You might notice I stop mowing in October to let the grass get long for the spring mow.
I have been collecting up stuff for compost, and if I find extra, I’ll keep you in mind.
Thanks for asking, and see you around.
Cleaned Up Yard
It took two and a half hours of work collecting the clippings, including a spate of time tracking down some bolts to attach the top of the grass catcher. I took a bolt, nut and washers into the hardware store in town and said, “I’d like two more of these.” Within minutes, the clerk had them and charged less than three dollars. Once home I made short work of prepping the equipment.
The sun-dried clippings went into the grass catcher easily. The secret to preventing them from clogging the intake is drying them several days and driving the tractor slowly so the right amount go into the mower each pass.
The best part of the work, other than the economics of grass clippings, was the varied smells in the yard. Apple blossoms and lilac; the sour smell of the apple pomace; spring garlic; and the waft of fertilizer from a neighbor’s recently treated yard. Not everyone eschews lawn chemicals, although maybe they should.
It’s important to schedule work days at home. Our lives are busy enough, so retreat by setting aside concerns and being at home interacting with neighbors, doing chores and working the soil can’t happen often enough.
That was my Easter Sunday—the second work day this month.
It was a perfect day to burn the brush pile. At one point, I had three fires going. My neighbors to the south were also burning theirs. Once the fire got going, I cleared a space to pile mulch until the garden is planted.
I have six garden plots and label them as north or south and then E (East), W (West) or M (Middle). Plot NM is the composting center. There are four peach tree stumps there, and a locust tree—mistakes all. There is also a patch of daylilies. I set the brush pile on top of one peach stump so the coals would burn the remainder away. Mission accomplished. One is below the boxed in compost pile and the other two will be a project for once the mulch is moved to the garden.
Plot SW was covered with grass clippings last year. Having been fallow, I plan to put some of my favorites here. I removed all of the clippings with a fork and moved them to Plot NM for storage. Then I raked the surface, and worked enough soil to put in two rows of Napoli F1 Early Carrots. I haven’t finalized the plan for this plot, but it should be fertile soil.
Plot SM has the early lettuce and turnips I planted on March 20. I removed the fencing and put in a row of last year’s Emperor F1 savoyed spinach seeds. The space where the lettuce, turnips and spinach are will be second planted, and I considered putting in peas next to expand the second planting area. I need to get the peas in the ground before it gets too warm.
I ended the gardening by getting the hose out of storage and watering the seeded areas.
There are always household chores and I cleaned the outside glass on the French door so we could see something through it besides spider webs. We hang a bird feeder there and I filled it with seed.
I swept up the remaining sand from the street in front of our house filling a bucket kept in the garage for next winter. It’s free and it looks nice once it’s removed. There is plenty around the subdivision, but I only take what I need. I used two buckets last winter and the inventory is five.
The kale seeds planted April 2 have germinated and soon I’ll remove the clear plastic cover from the tray. The pepper seeds planted March 21 are beginning to germinate and they will stay under a cover until all of them do. All of the indoor seedlings are growing nicely.
After finishing up chores, I prepared a pasta dinner and read a book. The next work session is scheduled on Tuesday.
The full moon eclipsed before disappearing behind clouds in a predawn sky. It reminded me of the vast and quiet universe and how small our lives are in comparison.
I like to think we are somewhat important. Not so important that people would start saying how much we suck. But more than a piece of animate dust in the universe. Somewhere in between.
Looking for a while, I went inside and got about the day.
It’s been a dry March and El Niño has begun.
“A drier March and a drier first one-quarter year was last recorded in 1994,” said Harry Hillaker, state climatologist. “Much of Iowa, the upper Midwest, and the central and northern plains states have been very dry over the past five or six months.”
The good news this year is above average precipitation is expected during the first year of El Niño. We’ll see what happens. The second year is expected to be drier.
My work at the warehouse included a shift near the floral display. I could have spent the whole day watching women choose cut flowers. Tulips were popular. Young girls favored inexpensive, colorful bouquets. One can’t but wonder what lived behind the looks, gestures and touches as bouquets left with them. I noticed many adult women wore a pair of sunglasses on top of their head. They say it was sunny outside.
Tomorrow is Easter.
The sign at the Catholic Church proclaimed, “He is Risen!” When it comes to the risen Lord, I don’t believe that any more.
I believe in redemption.
It is hard to believe we can be redeemed from the sins and errors of our lives. There is a god and we fall short of his standards. We are sinners and it would be surprising for a deity to redeem our transgressions. It would deprive us of our humanity. Redemption must come in another form.
Each of us wants to go on living. Some may despair, but if I believe anything, it is in the persistent desire to go on living on Earth. To go on living, something is required of us.
Wanting, we reach for tomorrow, never to touch it. If that’s all we do with our lives, we are lost to a fate worse than eternal damnation. Deliverance will come by releasing tomorrow in favor of today.
Relief to isolation caused by an eclipsing moon; hope like cut flowers blooming briefly before the compost.
We shall be released of our mortal debt too soon. If we are lucky, not before we go on living—here and now.
It’s working folks who pay taxes and each year there are life lessons learned through this necessary intrusion.
We fund our government and help produce income that proceeds obviously and directly to the richest people on the planet. We make a life for ourselves while doing so.
As businesses have driven out operating expenses over my lifetime, the notion of security escaped into the ether. Everyone is affected, although there is a tremendous advantage to those whole own capital. When a person has capital, there is less worry about security from anything except populist uprisings.
For the rest of us, to sustain a life one must embrace living without security. It’s likely been that way for most people.
Our tax rate is 20 percent this year, including federal and state income tax and local property tax. It seems high and it was hard to come up with the cash despite a frugal lifestyle. As a result of hard work lasting decades, the checks are written except to the state where the filing deadline is April 30. I’ll likely pay that soon so the bill is not hanging over the household for another month.
This year’s tax cycle brought some learning.
Hidden from the analysis is the cost of health insurance. Because of our projected 2014 income level, we were eligible for a tax credit to subsidize our policy payments. Including the tax credit and what we paid, the premiums for a policy were $13,756 for 2014. Luckily I made more money in 2014 than projected. Unluckily we had to pay back part of the tax credit because of our success, creating a cash flow issue.
According to Medicare.gov, Medicare covered 48.7 million people in 2011 at a cost of $549.1 billion. Do the math and the annual cost per person was $11,275. Assuming health insurance providers have a better ability to manage their business, and the cost to provide care is substantially lower than what Medicare pays, the gross margin of providing health insurance must be about 20 percent or more. That is way better than being in the transportation and logistics business as I was for 25 years.
The numbers don’t include the billions of dollars being taken out of the health care system by the reforms of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The ACA should have reduced costs for health insurance providers. It is fair to say health insurance companies were handed an opportunity to do very well under the ACA, especially those that held firm on initial premium rates.
The other learning has to do with the life I led that year. At one point I worked eight part time jobs. In the end they did not produce enough income to make ends meet, which favors working less jobs that each pay more if that’s possible.
It felt unjust that for those that generated a 1099 I had to pay a flat self-employment tax, while those that paid me as a contractor but didn’t generate the form were taxed at a lower rate. Operationally there was no difference, but tax-wise, it was better when I didn’t receive a 1099.
Bottom line: more is not always better when it comes to working multiple jobs.
I like the ownership brought by contributing to society in the form of paying taxes. What I didn’t expect was that providing health security would be such a large part of our budget, or that compensation for doing the same work would be so uneven. As they say, live and learn.
I predict there will be more lessons as we sustain our lives in a turbulent world.
Ice covers my car— one of the risks of getting spring started in the garage. It looks like it hailed pellets the size of salt crystals, and they froze in place creating a bumpy armor on everything.
I’ll run the car engine for a while to melt enough for the drive to the warehouse.
It’s all good because the lettuce and radishes planted in the garden haven’t had moisture until now.
Richard III Cortege
Yesterday began the procession of the remains of England’s King Richard III to his re-interment on Thursday in Leicester Cathedral. The story holds my attention like few others in the corporate media.
From the time his remains were found under a parking lot in 2012 until Leicester University packed them into a lead ossuary inside an oak coffin built by one of his descendents, the stories released provided one interesting bit after another of a part of history I knew only vaguely, and almost entirely through Shakespeare.
Shakespeare was in part an apologist for the Tudors who succeeded the last Plantagenet king. Leicester University’s DNA analysis and forensic study of the wounds incurred during the Battle of Bosworth Field revealed much about Richard, including identification of the blow that likely killed him—a sword or spike through the base of the skull that penetrated to the other side. While the video and photographs of scientists interacting with the old bones is pretty clinical, it told a new story of Richard unlike what we have come to believe—in my case from seeing performances of one of Shakespeare’s best plays multiple times. There are resonances in Shakespeare, but the emerging new story is more powerful.
There has already been a fight over the final resting place for Richard’s remains. The Plantagenet Alliance, a group formed by distant relatives, pressed to re-inter Richard III in York Minister. Even though a three-judge panel ruled in favor of Leicester Cathedral and said, “it was time for King Richard III to be given a dignified reburial, and finally laid to rest,” it seems unlikely we have hear the last dispute.
On Sunday, more than 35,000 people lined the route of the cortege, many in period clothing. There was a reenactment of the Battle of Bosworth Field. On Thursday, a statement from Queen Elizabeth will be read as part of the order of service, and Richard III will be laid to rest near where he died and, to many historians, brought the Middle Ages to an end.
Richard III Remains
There is a reality to history we often forget in our book-lined studies and very busy lives. The scribes, historians and writers who tell stories in our media have mostly good intentions, but are possessed of an inherent bias. They are in the business of writing.
“In a world where children are still not safe from starvation or bombs, should not the historian thrust himself and his writing in history, on behalf of goals in which he deeply believes?” asked Howard Zinn in his book The Politics of History. “Are we historians not humans first, and scholars because of that?”
This episode of discovery of Richard’s remains and their re-interment is very British. There is also a long back story that includes the search for Richard’s remains in Leicester. With their long line of kings and queens, a special interest arose, even if the monarchy becomes less relevant with each passing generation. Nonetheless, some shirttail relative of mine likely attended yesterday’s activities, although one wouldn’t know who it is by our very sketchy family tree going back to the Middle Ages.
We live here and now. Whatever intellectual curiosity was stimulated by these events, it is like the ice covering my car. A thick crust through which we must break and get on with our lives in society much closer than that famous death on Bosworth Field.
The weather was perfect on yesterday’s first day of spring/work day. While it was below freezing in the morning, by mid afternoon the ambient temperature had warmed to the 60s.
It was a fine day—with a gift of maple syrup.
The maples have stopped running sap. Before we know it, what we waited for so long is done. A friend had already pulled his taps. When I picked up three barrels of composted horse manure, he gave me two bottles of the amber liquid which will be doled out for special and when I need a pick-me-up. Considering the work that goes into making maple syrup, it was a generous gift.
Maple Syrup
I placed the bottles carefully on the shelf with local honey and hot sauce—to wait for an occasion to crack one open. I expect it will sweeten steel cut oatmeal on a cold morning.
There is a lot to think about while hauling manure. Our family, it hopes and aspirations, figure prominently as the scent filled the car. Having cracked the windows, it wasn’t so bad, and truthfully, most of the odor was out of it. Still, it was present—a reminder of the fate of living things. While hauling manure one values what we have in this life for good or for ill.
Growing Burn Pile
I saw in social media that the local Community Supported Agriculture project is getting along without me. This will free time for my own garden and yard, which could use the attention. For the moment there is no farm work, and that’s okay.
My work at the warehouse doesn’t start until late morning or afternoon most days. This allows time to write, and a two hour work session in the garage, garden or yard. It is the beginning of a new pattern as I get into the groove of this season’s worklife.
Green grass and flowers poke through the brown leaves and dead cover. Soon it will dominate the landscape. In hours captured from a too-busy day, I’ll make something of the brown spring days before flowers bloom and summer arrives. Bits and pieces of sustaining a life on the Iowa prairie—with essential ingredients of manure and maple syrup.
The garage retained enough heat to make predawn work tolerable. The ambient temperature is 31 degrees, climbing to around 45 by the time I leave for the warehouse. There is much to get done before starting the car.
Over winter tools get piled on the workbench instead of being put away. Perhaps it is too cold to be mucking about behind the table saw, wheelbarrow full of walnut firewood, and wagon full of junk. This morning everything is put away where it belongs, clearing a new space for new work.
Tomato Seeds
Yesterday was tedious work of trying to understand our health insurance plan. Phone calls to the hospital and insurance company yielded partial understanding at best—at least enough to understand how our doctors applied charges. It is distasteful work, but the specialists to whom I spoke were cordial and professional enough and I made progress. Would that I never had to go to a doctor, not even for routine checkups.
And today is a day of hope for making a difference in life. Now that the tools are put away, it’s time to get them out again and make something of this brief interval between sleep and departure.
After filing eight stories for the newspaper this week, and a freelance job, I’m ready to work on the garden. Before I do, a few bits and pieces from Big Grove.
Breakfast this morning began with my new favorite—home blended yogurt. We buy a large tub of plain yogurt at the warehouse and I mix it in a stainless steel bowl with spoonfuls of homemade jam or apple butter, dried fruits and nuts. It’s a simple pleasure and a boost of protein.
I decided to read 1381 next, for those who follow this blog. Just closing the loop on that.
At a fund raiser for Ed Fallon, I secured some horse manure for the garden. A friend keeps horses fed organically raised hay and he has plenty. As soon as I get my schedule from the warehouse, I’m planning to take some big black tubs over to their farm in the western part of the county to fill them up.
Speaking of filling things up, I began my street sweeping project to collect sand in buckets to use next winter. The first was filled yesterday and I hope to finish the project today. Some of that sand has been spread on the driveway multiple years.
Finally, with the warmer weather, I hope to built this spring’s burn pile on a garden plot. There was some damage over the winter, and with what’s left from the fall, it should make a big pyre, returning some minerals to the soil.
Journey Home 
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