My Bit of Earth

Ode to a Fallen Comrade

My trusty 'puter died this weekend after spending many months in decline. We did our best to save her, but in the end it became apparent that continuing efforts to keep her alive were going to be expensive and ultimately futile.

It's been a little sad for me, and I'm wondering if it's bad to be so attached to an inanimate thing? But maybe it's not the actual object so much as it is the marking of time that's passed. It seems like I was a completely different person when I got that computer.

It was the summer before I started law school. I was working insane hours and living with my Mom. I was so incredibly optimistic (not that I'm not optimistic now, just also a little more realistic as well). I got the green cover because I thought I was going to school at Tulane. When Sweet Husband (who was then just barely Sweet Fiance) and I changed our minds and ended up in Lawrence, I was the only person with a green cover in a sea of KU red and blue.

I remember sometime during my first semester of law school, someone asked me to name five things I couldn't live without. I listed Sweet Husband, my family, Porter House, my computer, and my Harry Potter collection. Yup, that's right, my computer beat out Harry--that's no small achievement!

She was a source of entertainment when class was boring. She carried all of my notes, and despite my potentially catastrophic habit of not backing them up, I never lost anything important. She was a champ through more all-nighters than I want to remember. And the abuse, oh the abuse! She even picked a reasonably good time to die--a month after my last round o' finals.

The need for reliable access to certain bar review software meant that as soon as the old computer was officially pronounced dead, earlier this evening, we has to find a new one. I think I've finally gotten rid of most of the pre-loaded junk I don't need, and I've found a few new bits of software that pretty soon I won't be able to live without. I'm also so, SO incredibly glad to be back online--the first day of no internet I was like a little lost soul wandering around blind. No email, no tracking things, no being able to come up with answers to completely random questions in a matter of seconds. It was awful!

But the new computer isn't "home" yet. I think it will take me awhile to get used to not having to pick stray fluff and dog hairs out from between the keys...the basic navy blue, where my "Bamboo green" once was. But, the dust bunnies will come, and as Sweet Husband said when he was trying to console me earlier--there's always spray paint.

Moe Speaks: An Exciting Day

Today was SO busy. Mom and I went three different places, just the two of us.

First, we went for a "meet-and-greet" at doggy daycare. I'm going to start going there in a few weeks (says Mom) so I had to go and let the people there watch me to make sure I knew how to play nicely. Mom said I did well, but the people said I had too much energy to be in the little dog room. I wasn't sad about that at all though--that means I get to play with the big dogs, and they seemed like lots more fun.

Then, we went somewhere not quite as fun--to the Vet. I've had scratchy ears lately and Mom decided it was time to see what was up. Turns out, I had a teeny-tiny ear infection, and I have to have drops for a few weeks. It could have been much worse--Mom was afraid the Vet was going to say no more showers allowed! That would have been terrible! Thank goodness we go to a nice vet who understands that water-loving dogs have to have their fun. She only suggested that Mom dry my ears with a dryer on low when we get out--I'm not sure what a dryer is yet--maybe I'll be able to tell you tommorow.

Last we went to this new doggy store called "Pawsh Wash". They had lots of treats there, and they carry the new food that Porter and I are eating as well. They also had several big bathtubs in the back, and I was really jealous because Mom said she might bring Porter there for a bath this weekend. Porter doesn't even like baths! Why does she get to go for one in the special, escape proof tubs?

A Hot Date

Last night Sweet Husband called on his way home from work and asked if I would like to go to a bronze pour with him. One of his co-workers at the jewelry store (who shall be known hereinafter as Nice Kim) also casts large bronze pieces as part of a family business that he runs with his father. If you've seen the huge Jayhawk in front of Strong Hall on campus, you know their work. A "pour" is the step in the process where the bronze is heated and "poured" into the mold.

I almost decided not to go. Standing around watching people play with hot metal (as punny as it may be) is not necessarily my idea of a hot date. But, in the end, I was persuaded, and I was glad that I went. Nice Kim and his family really make it into an event, and it was interesting to watch.

When we got there they were moving the molds into a sand pit. Sweet Husband explained that the molds are placed in the sand partly for safety reasons. If the molds should break or something should go wrong, the hot metal will be absorbed into the sand instead of spraying out onto people. The people in the picture are Nice Kim (down in the pit in blue) and John, the designer of the sculpture.

Sweet Husband was quickly put to work tamping the sand in tightly around the molds.

When they were done, the molds were almost completely buried.

While they were getting the molds situated, an underground furnace was heating up a large crucible of bronze.

Before taking the crucible off the heat, everyone donned protective jackets, gloves, and face sheilds.

The crucible was lifted up with a tool that looked like a big set of salad tongs. Two people on each side steadied it, but the lifting power was partially provided by a chain hoist on the ceiling.

The crucible was then placed out onto the floor so that the temperature could be measured. To fill the mold properly, the metal needs to be about two-thousand degrees. Too cold and it might harden before it fills all the spaces, too hot and the structure of the metal won't be right.

Then, again with the help of the chain hoist, two people lifted the crucible up using a long handle. A third person used another pole to keep it all steady.

Then the entire team carefully moved the crucible over to the molds.

They carefully poured the hot bronze into the tops of the molds. I thought that it might be kind of gloopy, but the metal flowed out of the crucible just as easily as water would have.

Here you can see the whole team working.

They filled two molds first and then had to melt more metal in order to fill the third.

After waiting a few minutes for more bronze to melt, they filled the third mold.

Sweet Husband says that a crucible is usually made from "a high temperature clay-silica mix, but it might have been graphite". (I don't think he's really sure!) Whatever it was, it was hot!

Once all the molds were full, Nice Kim poured the remaining metal into trays to make bronze ingots that could easily be used for something else later.

It made me think of really hot ice cubes.

The end result was three filled molds and three leftover ingots. I talked with the designer a little later and he said that the molds were for three of the legs of a twelve foot bronze deer that was going to live in Andover, Kansas, when it was all finished.

Once the work was over, it was time for fun. After a toast and introductions, one of Kim's daughters pulled out a basket full of popcorn. It turns out that the residual heat from the furnace makes a great campfire substitute.

It takes a certain technique to properly cook this way though. In order to keep everything from falling off, the last piece on the stick had to be meat. If you wanted a slower cooked kabob, you could hold your stick just over the hole on top.

But who has that much patience? Sticking the kabob into the fire cooked it in seconds, and spinning the stick made neat "fireworks" as the grease caught on fire.

Moe Speaks: Ambitions

Now that I'm a whole year old and a grown man (even though Mom says I'll always be her "little man") it's time to set some goals. There are so many things I'd like to do, sometimes I feel like if I don't write them all down I might forget.

For starters, Mom signed me up for school again. We went once before, but I was really little and Mom said she didn't think I had the right kind of focus. (I was focused on sniffing out the pretty little Dachsaund that always stood next to us, and Mom wanted me to focus on other things!) This time I want to do better. Mom says if I get through a few classes well and we work really hard, she'll let me try for my CGC in late spring or early summer.

Number two--earthdog. Finding events that are close enough to go to has proven to be a big problem, but I want to try out a few of the Missouri Earthdogs Fun Days once they start up again in the spring. I'm really good at sussing out where Poppy and Crocus (my mice) have been, and I can't wait to practice on a real course.

Last, but not least, Mom has discovered a group called "Dog Scouts". The nearest troop is an hour away, but we're going to go to a few meetings and see if we like it. I think it might be just the thing for us because they do lots of activities instead of focusing on just one. I'm hoping it will be a way that I can learn lots of new things. At the very least I want to earn the Dog Scouts backpacking title. Mom has ordered me a new pack, and today we gathered up all the stuff that has to go into it. I'm excited to try my pack on when it gets here and to start logging my miles.

So, those are my goals--wish me luck!

Eagle Day

Today was "Eagle Day" in Lawrence.

We probably wouldn't have even taken notice, but Nice In-Laws went to Milford Lake--which is a few hours West of Lawrence--for New Years and saw the bald eagles that winter there. They brought back some great pictures, and Sweet Husband and I decided we would make a point to try to see if there were eagles in Lawrence.

Apparently, every year bald eagles migrate into this area and build nests at Clinton Lake and on the banks of the Kansas River, as well as at other various lakes around the area. I've read that the eagles stay from the first of January until sometime in March, but many of the towns around here have "Eagle Days" (including tours and informational lectures) at the end of January.

Accordingly, early this afternoon we tried to go out an see the birds at Clinton. We ended up being unsucessful. We had the dogs and we didn't want to wait with them to take a tour (or subject the other members of the tour to our little four-legged monsters) so we walked a few trails to see if we could find any eagles on our own. No such luck.

A friend told me that there were also eagles nesting near the river, so we decided to take the dogs home and try there. First, we walked out onto the Mass Street bridge. Facing east from the bridge, we could definitely see two, but they were really far away.


Then we wandered into the Marriot, which is right next to the river, and asked if there was a place we could see them more closely. We weren't sure if we would be allowed out onto the walk right next to the river, but the lady at the front desk told us to go right ahead.



As you can see, facing back west, we were able to get a few decent shots off. We were hesitant to get too close, because we didn't want to scare them away, but we were able to see two pretty well with our binoculars. Sweet Husband even saw one eating a fish.

I've never really been all that into watching birds in the past. It always seemed like a lot of looking and waiting for very little reward. But the eagles were so easy to pick out, and really beautiful to watch. I would recommend it if you ever get a chance.

Moe Speaks: My Day-Late Birthday Field Trip--Eagle Days With No Eagles

Mom, Dad, Porter and I went to Clinton Lake today for a field trip. We were looking for some bald eagles that are spending the winter there. I wasn't sure that I even wanted to see an eagle to tell you the truth. Mom said they're really big birds and I was secretly a little afraid one might try to carry me off! 

As it turned out, there were no worries. We couldn't find the eagles so we just had a nice walk in the woods on one of the trails. I really like walking in the woods--lots of good smells--so it was a great happy birthday trip.

Later Mom and Dad brought us home and went to the river to try and see a different set of eagles. They found two, and Mom said they even got a few decent pictures. She posted them on her blog (see link on the right) if anyone is interested.

Moe Speaks: Happy Birthday to ME!

That's right--a year ago today I was born. We're not having a lot of celebration today, but Mom said if it's nice tommorow we'll go on a surprise field trip. I can't wait! I hope it doesn't rain or snow.

I'm actually at the groomers right now. Mom took me to the good people this time, so hopefully I won't come home looking silly. I barked my head off when she left me. Poor groomers! "Rapid fire"--as Mom calls it when I do my "pay-attention-to-me" bark--is a little painful on human ears, I've been told.

Growing an Avocado Tree

I read an article in the Lawrence Journal World the other day about growing avocados and dates from their pits. The dates will have to wait until another day, but Sweet Husband and I had tacos the other night, which left a spare avocado pit lying around ripe for experimenting.
I'll skip linking to the article in the paper. It borrowed very, very heavily from this article on diy.net which has better instructions anyway. It's basically the same idea as keeping a cutting or forcing bulbs in water. You suspend the pit over a glass of water, with the water just barely in contact with the bottom. Eventually it will put out roots and begin to sprout. Many, many years from now it will bear fruit, but in the meantime it supposedly makes a nice little plant.

I really like the shape and texture of the pit. It looks like it would be really hard, but it actually has quite a bit of give. The toothpicks pushed right into it. The outside skin has a very silky texture. It's almost like the avocado meat itself, but more substantial. I think it looks like a little peach and green colored space ship hovering over my jar.

A Prayer

I finally bought the book Bringing a Garden to Life by Carol Williams, and have been reading through it bit by bit every night as a kind of gentle, relaxing sedative (in a good way, it's not the least bit boring). When I woke up and saw this teeny peek of one of the chilled hyacinth blooms, it's shape made me think of a passage at the end of her chapter on bulbs.

"Planting spring bulbs is exercise for the imagination. Gardeners push wheelbarrows filled with bags of bulbs...over the dead leaves and black flowers of autumn, looking for good spots to plant. Skeletons of sunflowers hang their heavy seed heads to feed departing birds wheeling overhead. As they bury those gnarled onion shapes in the earth, gardeners gaze across half the year to green leaves, white stars, and golden trumpets."

Geraniums That Pop

I potted up my little geranium cuttings this afternoon. (To see their complete story read here and here.) The roots of both were beginning to look quite cramped in their respective water vessels so I decided it was time to move them onward.

I found the idea for these nifty pop bottle planters--that's soda to the non-Midwesterners--here. This site gives great instructions for making them and includes pictures--always good for the slightly construction-challenged. They're completely recycled and make the plants self-watering. And they were free!

And as for this last picture--we got a tripod last weekend so I've been playing with all kinds of lengthy exposures and other fun things. I love the detail that shows up on this leaf. I could almost start a little catalog for myself if I didn't have anything else to do!

The Garden of Me

Every year Sweet Husband's grandmother gets him a subscription to Popular Science for Christmas. He is to Popular Science as I am to Martha Stewart. When he comes home and sees it lying on the counter waiting for him, it does no good to ask him to do anything else before he's read the whole magazine from cover to cover. The perk for me is that I get a nice synopsis of all interesting things Popular Science-y, without having to muggle through the stuff I couldn't care less about.

This evening he read to me an article about different things you can have done to your body after you die. Being the semi-responsible couple that we are, we have disscussed this, just in case. Sweet Husband wants to be made into a diamond (Yes, they really can do this) and up until this evening I wanted to be creamated and have my ashes spread, oh, a little here and a little there. But the article proposed what might be a better solution.

"Promesion," a body-disposal method developed by Swedish biologist Susanne Wiigh-Masak lets you return your body to the Earth in a way that gives plants more nutrients than cremation. Apparently, the body is put into a container and then dipped into a vat of extremely cold liquid nitrogen. When the body is pulled out, it is so dehydrated that a jolt of vibration will shatter it, turning it into a nitrogen and phosphorus rich powder. The powder is then put into a potato starch box, which will disintegrate in less than a year. The cost is estimated to be about $1000, much cheaper than a traditional burial.

This is SO cool. Even if I didn't think that cemetaries are a huge waste of space (which I do), and even if I didn't think coffins are creepy (which I also do)--I'm going to be a garden someday! What could possibly be a better way to go?

Tentacles

No bloom on the chilled hyacinths yet, but I'm enjoying the roots as much as anything. They're like some form of exotic sea creature floating in the glass.

Poppy and Crocus

Meet Moe's new pets--the bold and boisterous Miss Poppy, and the shy but sweet Miss Crocus. Moe is soon-to-be competing in earthdog, so we had to get a pair of mice (ok, ok, they're rats, but it makes me feel better to call them mice) for his training. We got them out of their cage for the first time tonight for some playtime. They're actually pretty tame. I've been kind of worried because they hide everytime I come in the room, but once we fished them out of their little igloo they seemed pretty happy to see us.

It was funny, after we were done we put them back into their cage and went to wash our hands. Then I went back to refill their water bowl and I noticed that they were cleaning themselves too--just washing off the human cooties I'm sure. ;)

But I love to watch their little movements. Their hands are so tiny and delicate, and they can almost spin their little torsos all the way around to clean their backs. They're almost like tiny cats.

I'm a little worried about how they'll react when we put them in the training cage for Moe. The cage completely protects the mice, and everything I've read says that the mice don't even really pay attention to the dog. Despite all that, a little voice inside my head is still saying, "What the hell am I going to do if they freak out?" I kind of like the wee ladies, I can't fathom scaring them on purpose.

Sweet Husband's been down with the plauge--aka a horrific chest cold--and I've been playing good-student-studying-for-the-bar so we haven't had time to finish constructing the training cage and tunnel. Hopefully sometime this weekend all questions will be answered.

Moe Speaks: My New Pets

Mom and Dad brought home some new pets the other day. Mom says they're my pets, but she won't even hardly let me look at them. Their names are Poppy and Crocus and they're rats (but Mom calls them mice because she says it sounds better). Mom says they're going to help me learn to be an earthdog.

Moe Speaks: A Nasty Green Thing

Mom dropped a little piece of green food on the floor today (later I heard her tell Dad it was called a "pickle"). Usually the rule it that stuff that's on the floor is fair game, so I went over and picked it up for a snack.

And I spit it out as fast as I could! It was a yucky, nasty thing! After I spit it out I decided that it needed to be killed--or at least scared--so I ran circles around it and growled at it. I think Mom must have been scared of the green thing too. When I started barking at it she put her head in her hands and shook and made a funny noise. When she lifted her head back up she had tears in her eyes.

But then Porter came over thinking she could steal it from me. Well, I can't have her thinking she can just take my stuff. So I was really brave and swallowed it whole.

Urban Chickens

After agonizing for a few minutes about which he really wanted, Sweet Husband swapped me his Hastings gift card for my Borders gift card so that I could buy the book, Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Spaces, by Barbara Kilarski.

I read the book yesterday evening (don't worry, Mom, I did my bar review homework first) and I am completely inspired! The author keeps a three chicken flock in her small yard--which also includes landscaping and flowers and veggies--in Portland. I had always thought my imaginary flock would have to wait many, many years before becoming a reality. And while we would definitely get evicted for having chickens now, I think it will be possible much sooner than I thought.

The trick, according to the author, is to keep the flock small--she says her three chickens provide plenty of eggs for her family and even some to give away. Also, she emphasizes keeping the coop clean and getting your neighbors involved in order to minimize complaints. Lastly, although a cursory glance at the Lawrence city ordinances seemed to say that they aren't illegal in Lawrence as in Portland, she says absolutely don't get a rooster. They aren't necessary if you just want eggs, and they're loud.

And the pictures of creative coops at the end are very groovy!
They inspired me to do a search online. I kind of like this one as a base, but I'd definitely want to add some whimsical details. The website I found this on had the option of adding a green roof (i.e. putting grass on the roof) which would be a fun place to start. I also think I'd have to paint it a wild color--maybe a nice grapey purple.

I think I'm going to make finding more designs a winter evening project--an imaginary coop for my imaginary flock.

"Encouraging" Mold

I checked on the tulips and daffodils in the fridge today. I had wrapped them in aluminum foil to keep things from the fridge from falling into the pots and visa-versa, but I don't think that was the right thing to do. When I took off the foil, I discovered that instead of just encouraging bulbs, I was also encouraging some fuzzy, white, catepillar-like mold.

I watered the pots, to rinse away the mold, and also lifted up one of the tulips to make sure they weren't just rotting. The tulip I lifted had about two inches of thin root growth, but no sprouting on top at all. The bulb book says I should be able to pull them out of the fridge about now, but I think I'm going to put them back in for a few more weeks--covered with ventilated plastic this time--just to make sure they've had long enough to chill.

I also potted up the Muscari, but I think I'm going to have to go back to the library and recheck out the bulb book to make sure I've done it right. The notes I made for myself say to chill for eight weeks and then put them in rocks and water, but the rest of the world says to chill longer and pot up in dirt. Until I have time to get to the library, I'll trust myself and leave them in the water, but I may be doing some fiddling soon.

Pink-ety Pouf Pouf

Silly title? Yes. Accurate? Well, see for yourself.
As you will recall, I bought five "Woodstock" hyacinth bulbs, back at the end of October. I chilled three, but left these two unchilled as an experiment. The bulb book said they should be blooming towards the end of January, so the unchilled bulbs have bloomed about a month earlier than they really should have.

Also, as of right now at least, they really are just two little poufs. The stems haven't really grown at all. I thought that unchilled bulbs would grow just stems, with no blossom, but instead I have all blossom and no stem. But maybe they just haven't hit their growth spurt yet.

As for the color, eh, pink isn't so much my thing--Sweet Husband actually picked these out. If I remember correctly, we'd been in the store for quite awhile. I couldn't decide so I told him to just pick something. He grabbed the first bulbs he could get his hands on, and, well, when you've asked someone to decide for you it's not nice to second-guess.

But, even though I probably wouldn't grow this variety again, they are kinda cute.

Just In Time

We got home just in time to save the amyrylis from itself via timely use of a garden stake. Sweet Husband said that it bloomed during the week between Christmas and New Year's (for future reference), and by the time we got home today the base of the stalk was about to break from the weight of the flowers.

I have to say I'm a little disappointed that there isn't any smell, but she's gorgeous all the same.

And while I'm talking about forced bulbs, next year I need to plant a few less paperwhites in my dish. They've gotten brown and scraggily looking much more quickly than usual, and they look like they're all stumbling into each other. I planted 15 in a large shallow bowl, and I think 10 would have been plenty.