The Road to Mushroom Mountain

The Road to Mushroom Mountain

This morning I returned from the Georgia Organics Grits and Vigor conference.  I hadn’t taken my house keys with me, after all, Bond had stayed home and could let me in.  He didn’t answer the phone both times I called and only Stevie and Ernie came to the back door when I banged on the knocker. After I checked to see that the cat patio was locked (he hadn’t fed those cats yet) I went around to the garden gate.  I was delighted to go directly to the next gate, the Sunken Garden Gate, without dog company because I’d made a point to finish that project before the conference.  I entered the house to find Bond in his shower attire, why he hadn’t heard the phone or door knocker.  SO good to be home!

I moved my suitcase and 2 bags of conference booty into the house and shared the loot and good news.

After puttering all day, I tidied up the cat patio.  I discovered a chewed up plastic bag with a Mushroom Mountain label. WAIT! Where did the cats find this? Did they find an old bag from a past purchase? I’d used inoculant for legumes before. I’d better take a closer look.  Damn! It was the one pound bag of mycorrhizal granules I’d purchased yesterday to inoculate seeds I’m sowing on the Tilley Farm to help remedy years of conventional farming. I figured FlirtyGirl had nabbed it from my luggage while I was going around the house so I went to the back door.  I hoped she hadn’t eaten it; no telling what it would do to a mammal. To my relief, there was a little trail leading from the door, around and under the fence and ending under the oldest wood pile mixed in with all kinds of organic matter. I had no choice but to sweep it all up.  I’ll still use it.  I’d intended to make my own mixture from the abundant microbes here at home anyway.  Now I just won’t be able to compare them (unless I buy another bag.)

'Black Friday" in Parrott

As most Americans do, we cooked and ate a fabulous turkey, then took Thanksgiving Day off; just lazed around the house or walked the dog.
However, unlike most Americans we did not spend the next day with the bargain hunters; we battled a clog in the drain to the septic tank because water came out of the shower drains when the washing machine emptied. We fed a snake and then a garden hose down the former kitchen sink drain.  Mom finally told me (after I'd lived in the house 33 years) that they'd moved the kitchen because there wasn't enough pitch and the drain clogged up several times that first year. Their solution worked as this was the first time I'd had any problem with the drain clogging.  But WE were unsuccessful.  Our snake and hose couldn't go far enough.
The next day we decided to look for a clean out (or put one in), and found it after vacuuming a few gallons of fill dirt out from around the shut-off valve under the front porch, a brick patio.   Termites had eaten the plywood that held back the dirt. It didn't help at all that our stack of replacement doors rests against the wall over the hole.
'Finding' and 'getting into' are not the same thing.  None of our tools were big enough to fit the end plug.  We called Laing's Hardware in Dawson (still open as it was before noon) and Jim told us they had no tool too, and we may as well make our own.  Bond set to work designing and building the tool (upside down in the picture above) out of plastic 'wood' screwed to the ends of 2, 2x4's with a dowel handle.
We got the plug out but not the clog.
Until we rent a powered snake, we 'll put corks in the ground floor showers and keep laundry loads small.  Perhaps the clog will fix itself......
We are still puzzled why the darned thing backed up all of a sudden in this year of drought.  Water has come up in the lowest shower twice during heavy rains when the ground was too saturated for the drain field to work (BOTH ALSO DURING HOLIDAYS!)   And we'd had the tank pumped out one time, just six months ago.
In my research I found that the day after Thanksgiving is Roto-Rooter's biggest day of the year for emergency calls.  Looks like we WERE having the same kind of Black Friday as many Americans...or was that a "Brown Friday"?

I've Been Puttin' out so Many Fires My Back Burner is About to Explode!

Hidden in some application questionnaire is my secret power, "chaosification".

I didn't choose the power, it was a gift.

Maybe it came in my genes since my whole family has the gift. We just go about minding our own business and "whump! There's Chaos, usually because somebody else jumps to the wrong conclusion.

It used to bother me before I found out that chaos brings growth. It's a scientific fact.

Chaos is a GOOD thing.

Sometimes I can outwit Chaos by planning ahead, sort of control the growth. That way I spend less time 'puttin' out fires'. I'm also attuned to when people start little fires just to distract me. They're easy to take care of, or ignore. So I have time for the real ones.

My secret power is also why I can make wood and paint look just like polished rocks. But that's another story.

Fire #1.

So, last Saturday I was happily painting color washes on the shell of a Sound Play Animal Drum turtle, when our house renter phoned to say both toilets were backing up. I contacted Crimes Septic and Landscaping and met them within the hour. We had to break the line to snake it to find the septic tank to pump it out. We were lucky that both Bobby Pritchard and his family's back hoe could come to the rescue to dig for the tank. (And for a consultation as Bobby knows the right way to do any hands-on thing.) Supposedly the system had been replaced just before we bought the house in 1981. But it was an old fifty gallon tank! And no drain field!!!

We hired Crimes S&L to put in an new system on Monday. And then found out we needed the County Health Environmentalist to design (on Tuesday) and inspect it, even though it was technically a repair. Thursday we learned it won't be finished before next Tuesday when the inspector makes his next Terrell County rounds.

Meanwhile, as long as the Crimes S&L's back hoe was here to clear off bamboo and shrubs over the new system, why not keep clearing until they hit the fence? It took the bamboo about fifty years to reach the pecan orchard Grandmama Tilley planted before 1920. It took it twenty five years to take over the acre after we bought it in 1981. We couldn't get Mr. Dalton Davis to mow it anymore because he didn't want his tractor tire punctured by bamboo. The walk behind mower we used to tip up and come down on the stuff got set too low by the teenager who mowed for us and not even our professional mechanic friends could raise it. And then we always wished we had time to cut it and actually use the resource.

I never expected what a joy it is to see all the pecan trees all the way to the back fence! Now that tractor tires are punctureless we should be able to keep it clear- mowing and blasting all the stray bamboo with RoundUp.

Fire #2 is threat from City/County Fourth of July fireworks in the new Recreation Fields next door to our family's farm. People come from surrounding counties. No alcoholic beverages will be allowed inside the Rec Fields. Therefore, stray spectators will make a tailgate party along the surrounding roads....where the three feet tall dry grass fills the ditch and the mowed right of way is an inch thick in dry cut stalks. And our newly planted long leaf pines are along the road, and our renter planted soybeans into the standing wheat stalks. Get the picture? Add sparklers, pop bottle rockets and roman candles and you have a script for real disaster movie.

Even heat from a muffler can set off wheat straw.

I gave our County Commissioners a warning letter. Our farm renter got the Fire Chief to say he'll tape off the road inside our farm to prevent parking on the crops and baby trees. And we had the ditch top harrowed for a fire break in case the ditches catch fire.

AND we're praying for rain.

Fire #3 is just plane aggravating- the fridge in my last blog. To hold the frozen containers of fabulous Bond made Beans, we borrowed the tiny box freezer from our house renters. It was full of mildew. Maybe our home fridge knew it needed TLC and everything will be ok now. The fridge freezer seems to be working. BUT the runners are icing up so it's hard to open the drawer; a consequence of humidity in our naturally cooled house. The fridge, in middle of the draft, must be collecting water from the air. We'll know more when the refrigerator repairman comes on Thursday. I hope he has lots on his tool belt.

Have I covered all four of the Chaos Elements? Earth (septic system), Fire (they're going to burn the bamboo in a controlled burn, NOT a straw fire on the Fourth ) Air (cold, humid air), and Water (frozen water).

THE GROWTH: we have fabulous soil and sunshine for a garden!!!