Adventures In Homesteading (Day 325)

Hello Everyone!

Broadband daydreams, A faux shed Psy-Op, Some unfulfilling hikes, Planting more seeds & Plenty of rain!

Alright, it has been a long day and before I finish this entry... I may well need a second nightly espresso... to make it through until the end. I will probably have to do that regardless of the fatigue... because I am trying to wait until my cellular service restarts (for the month) at midnight... so that I do not have to deal with the agony of posting at a whopping twelve kbps.

For as much as I have been having to spend on hotspot data lately... it would more or less amount to the same as getting fiber broadband as far as expenses go. It is actually the one thing that makes me look forward to getting a building... besides finally being able to get mail service.

Honestly, it has been a frigging logistical nightmare here in so many ways... simply because I cannot get mail service without having a structure on site. I know that I have remarked upon it before... but there are just so many things that I am accustomed to getting via regular mail... that I simply have not been able to get here due to the suppliers not using any other services.

At one point, not long after finding out the lack of a structure was why the post office was 'returning to sender' all my mail... I considered ordering a bunch of paint and trying to track down a heck of a lot of cardboard. It might sound quirky, but I figured that it would take me all of an afternoon to build a cardboard structure... and paint it to look like a shed just so they would start bringing me my mail!

Anyways, I spent much of the day taking care of some correspondences... and doing my usual thing of late online... reading a bunch of stuff and whatnot. It was not until well into the afternoon that I finally got outdoors and started and got active... which was fine... because by then it had cooled down a good bit.

With all the vegetation returning, I have been trying to get in at least one or two small hikes each day... but truthfully... it is not all that enjoyable walking up and down the hill... and never quite feeling like I am really in the woods. The exercise is nice and all... but between the vehicle activity, the high exposure on the hill, the general lack of privacy... and the creepy ass neighbors... it is nowhere near as therapeutic as the relaxing hikes that I am more accustomed to.

Once I was done ambling around looking at plants, I wound up getting a few more bags of those metal cans turned into flower pots... and I even got stuff planted in almost half of them before calling it quits for the day. I had foolishly left all that soil in the tote (from when I dug the fence posts) uncovered... and it all got rained on... so the bottom third of it was completely unusable mainly due to the high clay content.

Overall, I am actually unsure on whether any of that soil will work all that well (due to said clay content) but I figured that it would not hurt to try it in some of the flower pots. Much like I have been doing before, I sprinkled some bird seed across the top of the potted soil, covered it with a thin layer of loose soil... and then planted a black locus seed in the center of the pot.

With all the rain that we have been getting, even more of the seeds that I previously planted are shooting up green sprigs... but from the looks of things the chickens ate way more of the seeds than I originally thought that they had. The rain has also made all the natural vegetation put on quite the growth spurt... and in just a matter of days the native plants have grown quite tall pretty much everywhere.

Although I have yet to endeavor upon actually doing it, I keep thinking about going and digging up some more wild raspberry and blackberry plants from deeper in the woods... where I saw them growing last year. Building up a nice brier hedge around the entire property might not be a bad idea either... and perhaps in doing so I could also create the kind of habitat that deer like to bed down in.

I never mentioned it after noting that I had put out some bird seed for that squirrel that I saw... but I did happen to see two squirrels a few days later... and one of them was chomping away at the bird seed when I saw it. The best thing that I can see to do is to plant a bunch of stuff that the squirrels will enjoy eating... and only feed them bird seed until I can get some things growing for them as a more constant and 'naturally occurring' food source.

My only really concern with bolstering the squirrel population too much... is that I might inadvertently also bolster the rattlesnake population. It is one of those things that I will have to keep an eye on... but I think that there is enough hawks (and other birds of prey) around here that that should not be too much of a concern.

Well, I think that I have used up 'all the words that I have in me' for this entry. I hope that most folks are doing well. Ta ta for now and remember the newly cribbed adage: Never play leapfrog with unicorns or rhinos.