Author Archives: Carl

day 63: growth report

Bud on a pea plantThe peas continue to grow quickly.  I’m now pinching off their tops because they are reaching the maximum height of the artificial greenhouse.  There appears to be a small bud on one of the vines.

The tomatoes continue to grow slowly.  The one with the ruler is now almost twelve inches tall.  That means it has grown about two inches in the last nine days.

Twelve inch tomato plant

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delain radio

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a fan of Pandora and use it all the time.  Lately, one of the stations I’ve been listening to is a new one I recently created based on the band Delain.  It ranges all the way from soft Celtic ballads with gentle vocals from bands like Blackmore’s Night and Celtic Woman all the way to symphonic metal (orchestral gothic metal?) with dramatic choruses and death growls from bands like Leaves’ Eyes and Epica.  The surprising thing is Pandora has managed to choose songs with enough similar characteristics they actually sound good together despite being from such a wide range of styles.  I’ve found if I’m paying attention to something else I don’t even notice the song changes much of the time.

While that station does play some slow, soft music it tends much more to the harder end of the spectrum. You can get a similar station on the other end with much more soft music by basing it on the band Sleepthief.

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day 54: growth report

It’s been fifty-three days since I planted the seeds for the cellar garden experiment. Some of the peas are now five and a half feet tall.  It looks to me like the peas in the end pots closest to the lights are doing much better than the peas in the middle.  The peas close to the lights are taller, have larger leaves, and have thicker stems. However, there are some in the middle that are doing well.  All of them are still growing. Ten inch tomato plantIn the crowded pots, some of the vines are smaller than their siblings in the same pot.

The tomatoes are a little different.  They don’t seem to care how far they are from the light.  On the other hand, they do seem to care how many plants are sharing their pot.  The tomatoes sharing a pot with just one other plant are larger than the ones sharing their pot with several other plants.

There are no conclusions to be drawn yet, but I’m guessing the peas in the middle won’t produce much if any.  I’m also guessing the tomatoes in the crowded pots won’t produce much if any.

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adventure living

My 16th skydive - 1995

My 16th skydive – 1995

I haven’t posted much here lately, because the vast majority of my online time has been spent porting Adventure Living to WordPress.  It was a nightmare to get that done while making sure all the old URLs continued to work, but it’s up and running now.

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fruit christmas tree

Fruit Christmas Tree - 2012

Fruit Christmas Tree – 2012

From time to time my wife will get involved with one of the kid’s school parties.  When she’s asked to bring a snack, she can’t bring herself to bring sugary treats such as brownies the way the other mothers do. Instead, she needs to be a little creative using fruits or other healthy snacks.  It turns out the kids love them even more than the sugary treats.  Every time all the fruit is gone in a flash.

She started this practice with a fruit peacock back in 2006 for a party for our daughter’s kindergarten class. She made a fruit turkey for a class Thanksgiving party one year. This year she made a Christmas Tree for our son’s first grade class.

Fruit Peacock - 2006

Fruit Peacock – 2006

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the north pole

Jim as Santa Clause

The Waters kid’s Christmas Party is the best day of my year – I got to visit with over 250 kids; it was fabulous! — Santa “Jim” Clause

At the building where I work there is a grid of support columns labelled with letters and numbers. This makes it easy to find people because they can say something like, “I work on the second floor in the cube at Pole F95.” Pole F95 is at the northern edge of the building. Sitting in the cube on the second floor at Pole F95, or The North Pole as I like to call it, is a guy who dresses a little weird at this time of year.  I can always tell this time of year is coming when I see his beard growing longer.

At the company holiday parties each year hundreds of kids stand in line just for a chance to sit on his lap and tell him of their dreams. He refers to these parties as his favorite day of the year.  He truly enjoys bringing a little happiness and humor to the lives of all those kids.  He often stays long past the scheduled end of the party to ensure every child gets to sit with him and be photographed.

Those of us working with him sometimes have to struggle to remember to call him “Jim.”

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day 30: growth report

Mottled colors on a pea plant leafIt’s been thirty days since I planted the seeds for the cellar garden experiment. The plants are doing quite well. I did have a bit of a scare when the leaves on the pea plants became mottled. Fortunately, the good people over at GardenWeb calmed my fears and let me know this is perfectly normal.

Ken at GardenWeb also made me think about various things such as temperature.  These plants are growing in my cellar which is currently hovering in the mid to high sixties.  Tomato plant 30 days after planting the seedThe soil is trending in the low to mid sixties.

The tomatoes are coming along.  They are getting bigger and developing more leaves.  They haven’t stunned me with their growth, but they are still growing.

But the real star of the show are the peas. Remember this photo showing the same pea plant on November 21 and 22?  The yard stick on these photos is buried 4 inches into the dirt, so on Nov 21 the topmost leaves were 13 inches above the ground.  Pea plant photographed on November 21 and 22On Nov 22 they were 14 inches up.  Now on December 3rd, just eleven days later, they are 25 inches above the ground. That’s one inch per day. This yard stick is in one of the middle pots, it is not in one of the ones near the lights.

I find I need to tend the peas twice a day. Every morning and every evening I stop by the cellar to wrap the peas around the strings. Pea plant 30 days after the seed was plantedEven doing it that frequently they are often grabbing onto the plants around them. In a real garden I’d train them up a trellis and wouldn’t worry about them tangling up with each other. However, in this experiment they are packed in pretty tight and I need to be able to reach through them. Also, every pot has at least one tomato plant and I’m going to need to be able to tend them as they grow. I need to keep the peas to their own string in this experiment.

I am quite pleased with how well these plants are growing.  I’m also a little surprised the ones in the middle are growing so well. The impression I had from some of the things I read online was that they’d have to be right next to the lights to grow well even in the beginning.  I guess that is debunked.  The question now is, will they continue to grow well as they get larger and as they block more of each other’s light.  Once that question is answered I’ll be looking to see if they produce any food.  If what I’m reading on the net is right, only the ones at the end of the row should produce any significant amount of food, but you don’t know until you try…

The four packed pots on day 30

(The yellow leaves aren’t actually yellow, the lights are just making it difficult to photograph them.)

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may it be

I’ve been posting some pretty heavy stuff in the music category here, so maybe I should play some softer music as well. Hayley Westenra’s redition of Enya’s May It Be is one of my favorite slow, soft songs.

I actually prefer Enya’s voice a lot more, but I find in Enya’s version the music covers her voice too much. At times it sounds muddled. Try listening to both and decide for yourself.

The Lord of the Rings soundtrack is full of interesting music. It’s not something I listen to every day, but once in a while when I’m in the mood I can enjoy it.

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i love rock and roll

Do you listen to Pandora?  If not, you should.  It’s an awesome service, especially if you are willing to pay for the commercial free service at $36 per year.  I use Pandora on my commute via my iPhone and at home on my PC.  You can also get it through various set-top devices, tablets, etc.

I got so sick of listening to commercials and talk on the radio during my commute.  I am so glad I now have a way to listen to music and just music as I drive.

The idea is you provide a song, album, or artist you like and Pandora plays a bunch of similar music.  You can create as many of these “stations” as you like.  To expand a station’s selection of music you can add more songs, albums, or artists and Pandora will add a bunch of similar music to your station.

I create new stations all the time, whenever the whim strikes me.  Many of them I listen to for a short while then discard when I find something more interesting.  Some of them I keep coming back too from time to time. For example, I have one named “Hard (Leaves’ Eyes)” based on the band Leaves’ Eyes that I enjoy visiting now and again.

I also visit “I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll” whenever I’m feeling nostalgic since it covers songs from many different times in my life. It has music I’ve heard on the radio, Solid Gold, Friday Night Videos, MTV, VH1, or I’ve heard on friend’s 8-track, tape, record, CD, or mp3 players. If you don’t know what an 8-track is or you think of vinyl as a soft, rubbery material instead of a hard, black disk, you may not recognize many of the songs on this station. This station covers so many decades and is so wide it does have some crap in it, but hitting fast forward a time or two usually gets it back on track.

In addition to getting to listen to all sorts of commercial free, talk free music, Pandora introduces me to lots of new music I never would have heard otherwise.  Most of the music I listen to now I discovered on Pandora.  I periodically just pick another song or band I like and create a new station.  Every time I do I get introduced to music I never heard.

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moldy fertilizer

Moldy fertilizerThere’s mold growing on the fertilizer piles. I should have just sprinkled a little fertilizer on at a time. In addition, the soil is probably too wet. I really wasn’t prepared for how much water this potting soil would hold and how long it would hold it. It acts like a sponge and doesn’t let go and dry out. I’ll clean up the mold as well as I can tonight and hope for the best. I think it probably won’t be a serious problem, but I don’t have enough experience to know for sure. Argh.

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