organzation 004

organzation 004, a photo by heptide on Flickr.

Made some simple shelves out of cinder blocks and wooden planks.

Composting 2

Currently I am managing 3 compost bins. This will have to increase over time but right now 3 is enough.

The first bin was the leaf composting bin to handle the leaves from the fall. If you want to check it out, my first post on this process was here: , since beginning, the leaf pile has dropped over a foot in height and is now mostly broken down and ready to use. At one point I sifted out about 10 gallons of compost, sanitized it and used it in my potting soil.  I set this bin up and let it go, giving it a good turn weekly.

This is what it looks like now!!!

The second bin was for lawn waste, I used the cheapest 32 gallon garbage can I could find, drilled a bunch of 3/4 in holes.

The bin is about as full as I can get it right now, I think it will be fine for a while, I don't foresee having to add a lot of waste to it in the future more than kitchen waste. 

This bin had some leaves, pine needles, kitchen waste, lawn clippings, and dead plants. The bin is made to turn on it side and roll to help mix it up.

I still have to use the fork to make sure food waste stays covered but It is easy to mix. I add kitchen waste to this bin when it won't go well into the worm bin.

So the worm bin, I have used worm bins in the past and found them very useful and fun. My first bin can be found here. I give all my instructions there. I use the same basic system only I have done away with the deep 18 gallon bin. I really only ever used the bottom 6 inches anyway. 

The shortened bin helps me guard against flies. This bin is also kept outside. So far that is not a problem though I will have to find something to do with it the two weeks we get cold weather in the winter. The bin started slowly after I overfed it but time, dry material, and some crushed egg shells helped with my beginning mold problems. So now, the bin is going extremely well.

I covered the top with two pieces of corrugated cardboard, I have noticed the worms will come more frequently to the top layer if they are still covered by something. It think it helps break down the stuff under faster. 

Nice and sloppy. 

Anyway, everything is breaking down exceedingly well. I find it exciting. 

AE 2

AE 2, a set on Flickr.

This is just a picture update from 5/2/11

The View From the Back Door

AE_1, a photo by heptide on Flickr.

This is, what I said it was up top.

Letter To Judas

Dear Judas,

It has come to my attention you are having second thoughts about your help. I know it is not necessary for me to remind you that we have been paying your “expenses” now for some time. I feel I must also remind you that you came to me, I did not seek you out. You were the one who came in fear of what could happen if this mans power continued to go unchecked. We both agree that the Romans must be maneuvered around not removed forcefully. You were there when 5000 men picked up their swords to drive out Rome. You were filled with fear that day, fear that he would not be able to control the mass, fear they would drive the Roman Footmen out. We both know what would happen if men rise too early. We both know that it is not “If” he will lose control of them but “when.”

Believe me your patriotism is well tempered by wisdom, you were right, this man could ruin everything. His speeches must be stopped if we are to hold to God's plan for our country.

I know that you care for him, and I assure you, he will be handled well. We all care for him he is one of our own, but we must save him from himself. I wish no Jew to fall to the hands of Rome, but you know as well as I, that is what will happen if he continues his spectacle, if he continues to rouse the masses. Rome will not be able to stay silent if he continues and many will die.

You must help us Judas. We want what is best for the people. Annas and Herod both send their encouragement, and hope you will help us. You are our only hope, we have no man closer and can not get one closer before Passover. I and many like me fear that if we cannot have him under control before then Israel will be steeped in bloodshed. The Zealots are massing outside of Jerusalem, and they will use Passover to have their way, but if we can bring him close to us, if we are given the opportunity to guide this carpenter we may be able to use him toward our advantage to pacify Rome. Annas and Herod both agree with this plan. We must have him in our care before Passover if we are to save him from himself.

Oh, and we have increased your reimbursement to 30, don't worry you will be well cared for. You will be an important patriot when we finally do rise against Rome.

Yours Truly

Caiaphas, High Priest

PS. It is important you destroy this letter by fire to protect your cover.  

Rainstorm 001

Rainstorm 001 a video by heptide on Flickr.

This is a test of my rain barrel, It took about 30 minutes to fill the night before, I have to make some edits for the sake of the eye, however, it is completely functional.

From Pole to Shining Pole

The current landscape of religion is changing. 15 years ago a conservative and progressive could sit together on a pew (though I understand that 50 years ago they could not). They would disagree in Sunday School and agree to disagree during the worship service. The disagreements were not small either, but the faithful understood being faithful was more important than being right.

Since that time the Christian church has polarized from Conservative to Liberal. Conservatives talk as if Liberal is a curse and Liberal's as if Conservatives are all evil. Remember though this was also the time before the internet and before 24 hour news channels were popular. There has been a unification of the religious and political poles, and no one respects a moderate. The Christian Church has forgotten there are two sides to every story, and we are generally not the progenitors of the story, we are but hearers and opinion holders.

No one knows that many churches still do good work, work with the poor, and work toward peace. There are still many Christians who believe that, “We can agree to disagree, and still fellowship together.” It is a problem when the conservatives loose themselves of liberals and vice versa. Polarizing topics can create a moderate base or polarizing topics create different churches. The Christian church is separating Liberal and Conservative like we used to separate black and white. This time though the demonizing takes place on both sides.

It is possible for someone who believes that God Inspired means 100 percent accuracy to sit next to someone who believes God Inspired means that God was behind the writing. It is possible for two people who disagree on the governments role in our lives to sit next to each other and sing Amazing Grace. It is possible for someone who disagrees with gay marriage to sit next to someone who does. Why do I believe this?

The church service, Christian faith, and God, have little to do with individual. We love to talk about the polarized issues, then hate one another for them, and the poor still go hungry. We love to phrase questions to figure out if someone is Liberal or Conservative, but it doesn't change the fact church and community members are losing loved ones due to illness and crime. We love to demonize the other side as evil, but our children refuse to come back to church.

I believe that we focus on these topics because we are scared of doing the actual work of the church. Feeding and clothing the hungry is hard, complaining about the Liberal Agenda or the Tea Party is easy. We spend all this time getting “our house,” in order, and look up to see the neighborhood has fallen down around us. Do we forget that two like poles in magnetics can't touch? The north cannot touch north and south cannot touch south, they need their opposites. Why do we reject ours?

I would rather work with a church that bore fruit with imperfect doctrine than find a church with perfect doctrine surrounded by death. The American Christian church is like a whitewashed tomb. Pretty on the outside, and filled with bones. We hurt others because we can't get our shit together.

Uh oh did you just see that guy typed shit?

Is This Writers Block?

Lately I have had a lot of ideas and thoughts. Today I sat down to write my thoughts on the current state of Religion and options that might help us reach those who need some kind of religious faith. The other day I sat down to write a story about something or another, and before that I tried to sit and write about some political topic of late.

The problem is, every time I sit to write my ideas, I get to the third line, reread what I have written, and understand it for the rubbish that it is. Not the idea, but the cohesion of the essay. I have some massive writers block, I have plenty of ideas and it seems I lack the ability to put them in to prose.

Arghh... Maybe I will post some more pictures of my damn plants.  

Robert Jordan's Opus

[Important Note: contains spoilers for the Wheel of Time series]

[Another Important note: No matter the tone of this post, remember I think these are wonderful books, and Robert Jordan is a wonderful author]

[One more Important Note: It is tragic that Jordan never got to finish the work he had put so much effort into, if I sound otherwise it was not my intent]

Okay so I am going to rant (That means, this essay was not well thought out, in structure and the grammar and mistakes may just be atrocious, prepare for many mislepsings).

I remember reading Robert Jordan's “The Eye of the World,” in college. It was a large book but a wonderful book. I could not put it down. I loved it, as I did the two books that followed. The story was gripping and I was hooked. However, by the time I got to Crossroads of Twilight, there had been a good 9 months since fighting through the last book that was out at the time. I swore after finishing book 10, that I would never touch another Robert Jordan Book. That is not to say he wasn't a good writer, I just knew I would have to reread the entire series to understand book 11 which was to come out AFTER he finished a prequel. My worldview states that prequel's shouldn't come out until after the series is done, because it doesn't matter if they are finished before the author dies (Too soon?).

Well, I got this ereader for my birthday from an amazing woman, and found the EPUB's for the entire Wheel of Time series, so I hate admitting it but, I started reading the series again, thinking, he HAS to be finished by now.

I quickly moved through the first three books, the Stone has fallen, we now have a Dragon Reborn, I go to look and see what the last book is called to find out that, the series remained unfinished when the Author died. So I sound cold. Let me explain why I am so cold when it comes to this. Robert Jordan's series, what was to be his greatest work remained unfinished. I am cold about it because if I connected any feeling to this situation I would probably cry. He worked so hard and left something incomplete.

I am glad the series was picked up by another author whom I read was chosen by Jordan's wife, and based off of Jordan's notes and outlines. But it is still unfinished. Maybe I started reading them too soon because the release date for the last book is 2012 and at the rate I am going I will have knocked this series out, including the book I never read, by summer. Then I will be in the same situation as before. I excitedly pick up the final book with very little memory of the intricate story, only the general, and if I have learned anything about my mistakes in the past it is this, to follow a Jordan series you must remember EVERYTHING. I just don't think I am that smart, let me tell you why.

There is a set of readers out there that love to follow multiple stories within the same story. I got lost reading Jordan the first time, and I put The Arabian Nights, down halfway through. I can do three or four stories in the book, don't get me wrong, if the books are well contained and the series short. But Jordan's attention to detail is a little too grueling for me, that is why I love Stephen King movies but don't read Stephen King books, as opposed to someone like Kathy Reichs who is very detail oriented but leaves us to one woman's story at 300 pages.

I now begin to clime the great Oak Tree that is the Wheel of Time series a third of the way through the fourth book where:

Rand still hasn't told us what he is going to do

Nynyeve and Elayne are headed to Tanchio with Thom

Mat will be heading to the Waste with Egwene

Perrin, Faile, and Loial are into the Ways Back to two rivers

Min is at the White Tower which is about fall (if I remember correctly, which I may not)

All I really remember about the next series of books is that reading them was like pulling teeth and each branch seen above is going to fracture into two or three stories itself. I do not look forward to books 5, 6, 7,8 and, 10. These books were written for men and women with a great mind for details, I am am neither one of these men or women.

But what does it say that picked the books up again. Any story that touches so much emotion, both in the story and the writing style is worth fighting through. Sometimes I long for that fight through a series, to me it helps make the series worth reading. I am forced to confront myself not only in the characters themselves but in the manner in which they are brought to life. We will see how it goes from here.

Having said all that I feel it is important to reiterate my important notes.

1. This is a very good series especially if you like multiple story lines.
2. I feel sad that Jordan worked so hard and never finished
3. I am glad that the new writer was picked the way he was, and that he uses Jordan's notes to complete the series, I am driven to get to the joint novels to see how he does.
4. I plan on fighting through the series, and will probably be glad I did.   

Composting 1

Well Spring is here in Mississippi. Ha ha, it's just February. However the temperatures in the 60's and 70's have given me the opportunity to take care of the yard work I put off in the fall. For avid readers of my blog (I think there are sometimes two of you) it is important to notice how my life has changed. Without going into details, I have completely relocated to Jackson Mississippi, and have some extra time on my hands.

Now that I live in Jackson nothing keeps me from doing my girlfriends yard work. Some of you might be thinking, “Wow, that sucks.” but if you have read about my vermicomposting or looked at pictures of the patio outside of my old apartment in Southaven Mississippi, you will probably not be surprised when I tell you that I look forward to the space to work more closely with nature. I feel blessed with a Girlfriend who supports my eco-habits.

I found the opportunity to try my hand at something exciting that I have always wanted to try, composting. Not just with the worms or something small like I had done but real live composting. As “The Boyfriend,” I figured it was my duty to rake and bag the leaves from the four gigantic Oak Trees, and the many many little trees in her backyard.

So at the halfway mark I ended up with 20 full garbage bags of leaves.

While I was bagging I couldn't help but think about the wonderful process God has set forward to take care of this issue naturally, and I couldn't help but consider how avidly I was trying to ignore that process. So I did a little research. I found this webpage from the University of Missouri: http://extension.missouri.edu/publications/displaypub.aspx?p=g6957 and since I believe that Eco-friendly should also be fiscal-friendly I went for the cheapest enclosed bin (Enclosed because of how close the property is to woods and the family dog Gizmo that would probably enjoy the pile as it heated up)

I started with four posts and some hard plastic construction netting, stuff.

The plastic, is also from recycled materials.

Some little helpers and I fashioned the net into a circle. And if I was thinking in advance I would have taken a picture of the bin empty, but I was not, so all I have is bin, two layers within.

Then I found this webpage from the University of Illinois: http://web.extension.illinois.edu/homecompost/building.html This page taught me the basic idea of green, brown, green, brown.

Everything on the internet has mentioned that chopping leaves make them compost better, in later pics you will see that I didn't always follow this, however as a general rule I thought it was a good idea. I chopped the leaves with my Girlfriend's mulching mower. I collected them in the bag and dumped them into the bin. This made up most of my brown sections. For green I went to a small tree that had to be removed and at first by hand removed the leaves, I realized later that I could just run it over with the mulching mower and it would actually chop the leaves up, and save me a lot of time.

Each layer of organic material was separated by composted manure (I bought it cheap because that's how I roll) and old potting soil, from last years container garden. I am sure there are many nay sayers that will tell me it was wrong to use the leftovers from the container garden and then tell my I chose the wrong fertilizer as a starter, to them I say, “Hey, I am new at this, so back and and lets see how it goes.”

Regardless I am sure most of you are wonderfully happy readers to give me credit so lets move on.

I completed the pile to about 2 inches from the top, with about 4 organic layers, as I said each separated by a layer of composted manure and garden soil. I tried to follow a 4:1 brown to green ratio. I have read it exactly opposite too, however, in the opposite version I notice they weren't using a nitrogen starter.

Oh yeah for people who don't know what I mean by brown and green. Brown represents things like dead leaves that are full of carbon, and green represents things, in this case like green leaves, that represent nitrogen. I also have some kitchen scraps in there. This might work and it might not, but if it does not I will just start over, the plastic netting was 12 dollars, the posts were $2.20 a piece, and 3 bags of composted manure were $1.30 each, and if it doesn't work I will empty it and start over or add what I need to get it to work.

My goal as always is to help facilitate the natural process, in this case it is a process of decomposition.

And this is a Lizard I saw later that day.

A Girl to Take Home

The hero had forgotten the most important absolute, that when he wakes he is no longer a hero. The sad reality of dreams is that they are dreams and that worlds in which they take us do not exist as we toil through the day. Too many times our hero had woken from a dream of love, connection, and hope into the world he loathed. Sadness filled him the moment he realized the people around him weren't there.

It happened so cruelly, it would be in the midst of a kiss or conversation, his partner would become none responsive and he had to begin working harder to get them to hear him. He would rush behind them through a door and find himself lying in a dark room with only the remnants of the world in his memory. There was no feeling like that feeling the hero has in the shower the next morning remembering only a shadow of the glory for which he lived in the dream, preparing for a job he hated, and hoping to find a girl to take to his parents.

It has been years for our hero since he felt that feeling. It had been since he met Jane. A short buxom woman who's love out shined any dream he had once had. Her touch, thrilled him to the point of ecstasy, and though that carnality did fade he never turned down her touch, not even when they were angry at one another. Our hero knew that he finally had a girl to take home to his parents.

He noted early on the wonder of lying with her. He joked that her feet were freezing and her body was like fire, but secretly he enjoyed it. Wrapping his arms around her while they lay like two spoons interlocking he would wake in the middle of the night whispering in her ear when she was half asleep. He loved the way she rested against him in bed. He could talk for hours of the ways he had enjoyed her body, the look and feel but that was not the place where he rested his thoughts only. The support she had given him when he lost his job, sitting next to him during the death of his sister. She knew, not only, how to comfort him in pleasure but also in pain. When he met Jane he had almost lost hope, he expected to be alone the rest of his life.

Love was the reason they married. A small service, family present, and the hero's brother stood next to him, while Jane's sister stood next to her. Of course the hero can't say that the moment the preacher pronounced them man and wife was the greatest day in his life, there were too many great days. The honeymoon, their first Christmas as man and wife, their children. Finally the hero had found the thing he'd been looking for, love that met him daily and nightly never forgetting him, to never wake alone again. All these days brought him joy, so much happiness that he could never name one best day. Of course, some days the hero rested in fear, fear of the greatest rule.

However, fears just like rules can be forgotten, and for our hero this was the case. It was a Friday, the kids were now old enough to ride the bus home from school and he waited anxiously for them, having come home from work early so they could leave for their family vacation to the beech. Jane was busy packing in their bedroom. He was so excited it felt like it was taking forever when the hero noticed that is was getting dark early, “There must be a storm coming,” he said with chagrin.

It began to get dark so dark in fact he could barely see out the window. The rain beat against the shutters, and the drops sounded loudly from the overflowing gutters in the house, the power lines hummed as they always did when it rained. He waited and waited and waited for the bus to come but it must have been running late, the power lines buzzing now.

He ran to the bedroom to find Jane sitting alone in the middle of the bed. He called to her but it seemed like his voice could not carry, his feet were like iron and he finally made it to the bed and lied next to his wife. It took everything to choke the words “I love you” from his mouth. He was afraid that she couldn't hear him over that asinine buzzing. Why is the buzzing so loud, and why did he feel paralyzed, unable to rise or talk?

Finally after a minute, he realize he had to urinate badly and popped out of the bed, turned off his alarm, and remembering little of the life that he knew as the hero he got out of bed. He went to the bathroom, relieved himself, got in the shower preparing for work, and thinking maybe today he would find a girl to take to his parents.