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Mid Season Garden Replenishment, Gardening for Stroke Patients-- Plus Bonus Graph on Pellet Rifles and Rodent Control,

Halfway through the 2009 gardening season, and I’ve cleared about one-third of my vegetable garden.

That’s the sad news. Most, but not all of my potatoes are now in cool dry storage out in a closet in my garage where they’re safe from most insects and all rodents that might flee the sun by running through my open garage door on hot days.

The bare spots in the garden will be filled the end of this weekend, which explains the young vegetables in six-inch tubs I moved from my shaded potting table to the edge of my garden early Saturday morning.

Through experience, I’ve learned replanting my garden mid way thorough the growing season here in rural San Diego County is the perfect way to monitor soil conditions (mineral content, ph levels and the like) before setting hybrids I like to grow. Gradually, I’ve come to appreciate that little things—notably the presence and content of trace minerals and nutrients in the soil as well care in replanting vegetables such as fast growing beefsteak tomatoes, cantaloupes and honeydew melons and pumpkins (all of which transpire in the morning) make a huge difference in my garden.

Mid-season replanting always leaves me with the rhetorical question “Can you really grow too many tomatoes).

But what the hell, no one in my family has ever once turned down a basket of big vine ripened beefsteak tomatoes or six ears of fresh yellow corn and a couple of sweet melons.

So the remaining hours gardening hours this Saturday will be spent with a shovel turning earth, buckets of rich compost, my mighty Mantis tiller and vegetables I’ve started from seed. All of which is a good thing.

I’ve successfully stopped the burrowing rodents from invading my garden so far tghnis year, but I have my scoped Beeman pellet rifle and a small tub of jacketed long range pellets within  arms reach in case a furry brown head pops up anywhere near my garden.

Gardening is something I’ recommend for stroke patients. It’s near impossible for me to be angry at anything when I garden and I love growing the ingredients for my own salads and the dinner table.

Oh and channeling your anger through the scope of a good pellet rifle as its cross hairs come to rest unwaveringly on a voles head near your garden is a very good way to deal with stroke related anger born of frustration or a simple twist of fate. Besides, your local hawks will scream their thanks at the protein you contribute to their diet.

 I recommend gardening to other stroke patients. It gets us out into the sun, reddens our necks, builds mobility and agility by making us use both hands and forcing us to get up and down from a kneeling position and it creates satisfaction and commitment that you just don’t get from walking the aisles at a local farmers’ market.  And, as you walk the displays it gives you the rare opportunity to make snarky comments about someone else’s’ tomatoes.

I’m far from perfect, some of my beefsteaks may be bursting from their skins and my neck is definitely red, from another day working in my vegetable garden. Jim Farmer Forbes 07/11/2008.

I was Right; Stupidity Should Hurt--My Murderous ATV

I’m limping proof of the axiom: “stupidity should be painful.”

Last week I started to take my trash containers down to the street. Seated on my ATV, I reached over to pick up the plastic yard trash container with my left hand. Whereupon, forgetting that I have serious left side weakness, I fell off my Kawasaki quad, which promptly returned the love and excellent care I provide it by running me over in low gear.

Lying on the ground I distinctly remember thinking “Uh Oh, this is going to hurt” as the quad’s rear wheel chugged up my left leg, starting at my foot. It hen motored over my left ankle, continuing past my knee and finally coming off my body after it ran over my groin.

At 6 am in the morning no one was awake here at Rancho Bizarro to hear my plaintive bleating “Help, help!”

So I crawled slug-like over to my quad, pulled myself up, used my right leg to mount the quad, sidesaddle and complete my morning chores.

I drove my murderous ATV up on my porch and hobbled through the door to my home office.

I thought “hell, I have pretty good motion in my ankle and knee so nothing’s broken, I’ll just man up and deal with the pain of two strained joints. Besides. I have some Vicodin left from my last injury,”

By last Thursday the pain in my watermelon-sized left foot convinced me to go see my Doc.

My self-diagnosis was wrong; a slender bone on the top of my foot had a hairline crack.

And guess what? There’s not much they can do for such stupidity induced injuries, so a nurse showed me how to use a compression wrapper to girth my foot and told me to put an ice pack on it several times a day.

Oh they also refilled my seriously depleted bottle of Vicodin.

So for the last several days I’ve spent my days watching bad comedies, sniveling, and hobbling around my house with a cane.

The one upside to all this was the bad color combinations on the tie-dyed t-shirts I made yesterday and the fact that a high wheel; Caterpillar DH-5 was mysteriously left on a nearby vacant lot two days ago.

Damn the warning on the side of the bottle ”Do not operate heavy machinery while taking this drug!”

Well duh.

Like I said stupidity should be painful.—Jim Forbes 06/28/2009

Lordy, I Love my garden and Potato Tubs.

My garden is really taking off. All of my tomatoes-- including my french heirloom beefsteaks have set fruit, my potatoes are weeks away froom harvest, and i've been puting beats, cabbages and green onions for the last month.
Gardening in San Diego is fun and  I replant almost as fast as i harvest.

Disregarding the gardening implements and plant containers, here's my garden so far.

If you've never grown potatoes, try putting four  or five seed chunks on top of about 4 inches of potting soil or hay in a 15 gallon bucket. Water and feed regularly.Add more compost or hay as vines appear and keep adding more until the vines produce flowers. you may also want to consider feeding sparingly wih bone meal.

Can you really have too  many tomato plants? I don't think so.

Photos taken on 05/12/22009.

Retirement; It's What You Make it-- Growing Vegetables, Fruits or Pretending You're a Big Old Otte, Anchored in the Kelp

This may be the prettiest Spring since I retired.  My rose garden fully blooming, my vegetable garden is in and set and all of my stone fruits have blossomed and are laden with tiny peaches and apricots.

How good is life when your most pressing problems are: a line of voles advancing abreast on your new avocado trees; or, your beloved peach tree has a slight case of residual peach leaf curl that’s proven resistant to dormant season treatment with a copper sulfide solution?

In retirement you don’t obsess about minor things, you work on them gradually. That’s part of the reason, My tack-drilling hyper accurate pellet rifle is out on my porch,  just in case  I see one or two voles pop up for afternoon sightings of their objectives—my three new Reed avocado trees down in the front yard. If they pop their furry little brown heads up, then one set of problems abruptly ends and their carcasses become hawk protein.

Life is tough on the down hill side of the food chain, but I really don’t want to waste $150 worth of prime orchard stock as burrowing rodent victuals.

Treating peach curl requires more faith and much greater patience. I’ll continue to spray my Avalon peach with throughout this season, paying close attention to its root ball and the lower 2/3’s of the tree. But this fall, I’m going to buy two new freestones, and make sure they’re resistant to peach leaf curl.

The best part of my life is my view of retirement and how I’ve used it pursue things that I’d only dreamed of in my first life.

Today,  I fish whenever the mood strikes or  feel there’s sufficient evidence that species people in my household prefer—halibut, yellowtail, tuna and much under fished perch are finning around down in San Diego Bay or off the La Jolla Coast kelp forests. I seldom stay out for much more than two or three hours at a time because I don’t like towing my boat through bumper to bumper traffic on the San Diego Freeway. And when I come home I’m sunburned, salt crusted and happy I’ve had another opportunity to be on the water.

Another great change in my life that’s happened in retirement is moving my aged mother out of the house she lived in for almost 60 years and into my home here in Escondido. Before MaForbes came down here, I made the 200-mile, round trip trek to my ancestral home sometimes twice a week. Today, the commute is  about 60 feet and we have dinne together most nights.

In retirement I’ve started to feel like I’ve finally “come home.” (a sensation I never experienced in the 30-plus years I liv0ed and worked in Silicon Valley).

Continuing education is also something that’s become important to me in my new life.  My one wish is that California state colleges offered junior and senior level distance learning-based classes in California history and its associated economic and sociological systems. They don’t, so about once every two or three months I go up to LA or the SF Bay Area to attend lectures that interest me.

Post retirement education is a hot topic among many of my friends from high school, college and military service.  Several buddies have planned their retirement based on proximity to universities or state colleges.

My continued interest in computer technologies is also a big part of my retirement as well. Because I’m now partially handicapped, I try to stay abreast of interface and user experience technologies and trends, which I occasionally use as the basis of blog material.

Computing in general has become a huge part of my retired life. A stroke several years ago left me unable to write legibly with my left hand (I am left-handed) so I use notebook computers everyday to do things others do with a pencil and paper. My anger over my condition has subsided at last because I’ve accepted not just where I am and but have become quite thankful to be above ground, able to still write, smile and fish by myself off the Southern California coast as the mood arises and the fish appear.

Today I sometimes find myself anchored on the edge of calm kelp beds, like an old contented otter, tanning in the sun and waiting for a tug on my fishing  line.—Jim Forbes 03/29/2008.

Spent four Days Tie Dying-- here are some results

Six of the 16 shirts and dresses I tie dyed last week battling writers' block. First Roses of 2009  coming up in background

here's a sun dress I dyed. blank sun dresses suck up a lot of dye.  This one took about 3 quarts in three colors. I buy my dyes and sundress blanks from www.Dharmatrading.com. i recommend them highly.

Thoughts on the 2009 Gardening Season, two-stroke motors and Continuing Stroke Recovery

 

Nothing says "time to start gardening" quite as vividly as a febryary blossoming peach tree

I spent about three hours putting around with my 2009 vegetable gardens this morning. First thing I always do for the new season is remove the rocks that mysteriously grow in my gardens between October and late February. Then I test the soil, keeping my fingers crossed until I see the results. I was unpleasantly surprised by the readings in my upper garden.  There are still significant amounts of heavy metals that leaked out of the construction debris box that subsumed this plot until late May of last year. My lower garden, on the other hand, fills my heart with hope. It has a near perfect ph level and no detectable traces of evil chemicals. The one thing both of my gardens need though is calcium, so I evenly spread about 40 pounds of crushed seashells from the seashore on top of both gardens.

After emptying the bags, I pulled my much beloved Mantis Tiller out of the garage, put fresh gas with premix into it’s tank, primed its carb, gingerly adjusted the choke,  and gave a might tug to the starting rope. Again, and again and again.

After two hours of sweaty screaming on my part it still refused to fire, so I unlimbered my can of ether. Of course it started on the first pull and promptly died again. No amount of praying to the gods of powered garden appliances seemed to work, so I threw it in the back of my massively manly SUV and will deliver it to Guenther at the lawn mower repair shop on Monday.

You’d think I would have learned about two-stroke engines by now. They just cant be relied on.  My first version of this lesson took place three years ago when my 70  horsepower Tohatsu (aka Nissan) just up and died in the outbound channel of San Diego Harbor just as a large guided missile frigate was steaming out  to sea. I distinctly remember how large the bow of that frigate looked coming at me, as I was frantically waving a brightly colored tie-dyed shirt attached to my boat’s oar.

It was the week after that incident that I became the new owner of a 40 horsepower Suzuki outboard. It starts first time, every time and will cruise all day on six gallons of gas.

Meanwhile, back to the reality of my gardens.

I already have set 64 chandler strawberries that I propagated here. They’ve flowered and begun to set. In addition to the strawberries, I also have three rows of fast growing Early Girl tomatoes and one 12-foot long patch of yummy French beefsteak heirlooms. Tomorrow, I’ll take a shovel to the rest of my upper garden, turn the soil and plant two potato beds, plus two long rows of lettuce and broccoli and about ten Brussels sprouts I germinated earlier this year.

There’s almost nothing about gardening I don’t like.  It keeps me in touch with my land and reminds me of the joy in simple labor, and in husbanding resources.

My other buig project in my front yard has been setting avocado trees. I have three species going now; Pinkerton, Reed, and Haas. And I may buy a Fuertes to provide a year round source of ‘cados for my family and friends who live in places where it snows.

My Reed and Pinkerton trees have already blossomed, which proved the value of buying good stock from a great nursery.

But what really blows me away is my Avalon peach tree, now covered with pinkish white blossoms.

Looking at my life today, I smile. It took a stroke to slow me down but in easing off the gas pedal, I reconnected with my deep Southern California roots and learned that I could gain back some of what I lost by puttering in dirt, and taking the time to watch and help simple vegetables grow. I may have lost most of my fine motor control on my left side, but with every gardening season I get better at eliminating small weeds in my garden with my left  hand.  Rewarding hobbies; they’re a good thing.—Jim “Farmer” Forbes on 02/21/2009

 

Tiny buds on this four year old Reed avocado tree mark it's first fruits-- Due in July or August

Gardening Season Ends (almost) for 2008; The Great Kelp Extract Experiment

The vegetable garden in the plot down by my front yard has expired. The end of the season in my primary garden is always bitter sweet.

            This morning, I’ll go down there and collect the reusable tomato cages, completely excavate my potato patch, pick my tobacco leaves, harvest the dangerously red chilies and begin the task of cleaning out my garden.

            I started cleaning out the patch yesterday by uprooting and measuring plants in the part of my garden where I experiment with different types of organic plant food. This year’s experiment was to see which type of plant food was better for my beefsteak and other large tomatoes; steer manure or cold-pressed kelp extract?

For the last five years I’ve used $.88 per bag steer manure applied fortnightly to my garden. Of course as most gardeners will tell you, manure is a good source of nitrogen, which boosts vegetative growth.

For my experiment I created two 20’ by 4’ beds tilled 18 inches deep with soil chemistries that at the beginning of the season were nearly identical.  I tilled in 50 pounds of compost in each bed and began planting my tomatoes in March. Both beds used drip irrigation delivering the same volume of water at the same time of day. 

I applied the kelp extract mostly by ground drenching, although I used it for foliar feeding twice in the first half of the growing season (in mid-June).

When I pulled my kelp extract fed tomatoes and (

Havana

) tobacco plants yesterday, the results were glaringly obvious—plants fed with the extract had root balls that were up to 30 percent larger than those fed using steer manure. Moreover, the kelp extract nourished plants grew larger and produced bigger vegetables.

I suspect the primary reason for the better performance of kelp extract  is  due to two factors,  compared  to steer manure it has: higher concentrations of water soluble potash and greater concentrations of trace minerals. But the ultimate proof of this plant food are the baskets of tomatoes I give every other week to my family and neighbors.

            And at about $5 a bottle, it’s not particularly expensive, and the products I’ve grown this year are all the proof I need to continue using kelp extract in the coming years.

            It’s almost the end of another gardening season for Farmer Forbes in rural northern

San Diego

County

. That means it’s time to rip out the remaining plants, crank up my mantis tiller and return some nitrogen to the soil. But I still have 10 big green leafy beefsteak hybrids in myupper garden next to my  driveway. They’re about two weeks away from their ultimate destiny as vessels for tuna salad lunches and I’m in a neck and neck race with a rapacious, ravenous vole to get my fruit to the table.

            And when those tomatoes get picked, I’m off to the Los Angeles County Fair to indulge in my secret vice—betting on gigantic thoroughbred horses whose thunderous hoof beats in the home stretch is music to the ear I keep pressed to the ground, listening to the big old horses coming  on around.—Jim Forbes 09/01/2008

Life's Lessons: Focus on the task at hand-- Flying using a Sam's Club and Costco Membership Card

There I was, packing up for my flight home to San Diego.

       Putting my neatly folded boarding pass in my wallet, I noticed that my driver’s license wasn’t in it’s appointed place.

            “Oh crap!” I thought and quickly called the airline. I told them my tale of woe and we discussed my  options on the phone. Fortunately, I did have some membership store identification cards with my picture on them, as well as a preprinted itinerary and the boarding pass from my flight north from San Diego to San Francisco

.

At Virgin America’s SFO ticket counter the agent looked at my reservation record and saw a note about “I lost my driver’s license” phone conversation. She calmed me down and reassured me I would most likely  be able to make my flight  and wouldn’t have to spend two or three nights living under a bridge in Millbrae,CA

. I knew I would have to go through a couple of extra security steps because of my lost license and the TSA screeners at the check point told me a body cavity search in front of God and a planeload of LaJolla trophy babes probably wouldn’t be part of the procedure

I got puffed in the TSA air booth, my luggage got a good examination and the top and bottom of my Thinkpad X300 got wiped down.

“Yes, Mr. Screener” I know that there’s spilled Coca Cola on my notebook’s exterior.

10 minutes after I got through Security I was hoofing my way down to gate A4 for my flight home.

And my license? Well, when I took it out of my wallet to get checked in at the Intel Developer’s forum, I left it at the registration desk. “What a dummy!”

I made it back to San Diego using my Sam’s Club and Costco membership cards (which have my picture) and was greeted at my door by “I’m so glad you’re home and not out running with some sleazeball  pack” yips from my ihuahua

. It was a great trip,. I got some fodder for my blog from Intel and I’ve settled on a new Airline, —Virgin America—because its agents walked me through a process and reassured me “every thing would be OK.”

The most important lesson from this is to not let myself get distracted and to focus on the task at hand.  I’ll file this post under two categories “stroke blogging” and “Great Customer Service.” Intel’s registration staff is incredible and so are the Virgin America’s call center and airport ticket agents. I came home smiling, everything worked out very well and I learned something too.  Jim Forbes 08/20/2008.

How a Stroke Opened New Topics For My Writing

One of the many useful pieces if advice I got when I was in a rehab ward following my stroke was as simple as it was daunting: “Try to find happiness in relearning things that you did before your stroke.”

The one thing that I feared would be absent from my post stroke life was writing. I made my living as a reporter for 35 years and as I was lying in bed on the sixth floor of a hospital in San Mateo, California, not knowing when I would be able to go home, I realized that my career was over.

That singular truth hurt a lot. No more racing deadlines. No more contests to see what color I could find in simple stories to make them livelier. No more racing to interviews and most of all, no more feeling like I had accomplished something really important by making a deadline and moving on to the next story.

By the time I was a year post stroke and still above ground, I noticed I didn’t miss my old life as much as I thought I would have. And, at two years I had moved away from Silicon Valley and settled into a much more pastoral life on my little mountaintop in rural northern San Diego County.

But to be brutally honest, I still miss reporting. And that brings me to the advice I got from my rehab specialists all those years ago ”…find happiness in relearning things you did before your stroke.”

And part of that mantra has become a theme in my stroke blogging. Quite honestly, I really enjoy writing. I haven’t given it up. But today, thanks to Six Apart’s offer to give me a space to blog, I can write about things I care a great deal about, on my own schedule.

Lordy, I love blogging. Where else would I be able to write about the extreme efforts I’ve gone to in my quest to eradicate the hated gophers? And, if it weren’t for blogging, how else could I introduce new generations of city-bred trout fishermen to the wonders of the San Gabriel River’s East Fork, my natal stream? And a weekly feature on lawn tractors?

Be still my scarred heart!

Part of what’s happened to me since my stroke is that I’ve been able to expand the things I want to write about. And that’s come about because now I get to write about things that interest me, not just the things that are defined by a marketing driven tag line on an industry publication.

If you’re one of my stroke blog readers, my message couldn’t be clearer; take the time to pursue your passions!

That’s what has worked for me. Besides, writing about full contact gardening, getting even with gophers, portable and pervasive computing is a hoot. And every so often the wild weasels come calling. And that’s just too perfect an opportunity not to blog.--Jim Forbes 04/21/2008

Stroke Recovery--On Becoming Your Own Guru-- Laughing My Way to Wellness

One of the questions that gets directed to my blog via Google from other stroke patients is: how long does it take to recover from a stroke?

            It’s a great question but it’s hard to answer. Strokes, or cerebral vascular accidents (CVAs), seem to be pretty randon and not everyone has the same results or is left with the same lasting, permanent, effects.  I wish I could honestly say that I completely recovered from my stroke.  If I did, I’d be lying.

            I’ve noticed a big change in my personality. I get frustrated that I can’t do things that I use to take for granted and my frustration turns quickly into anger. The local gophers and voles as well as my favorite 3/8’s-inch socket driver have all run afoul of my anger since I had my stroke. The gophers paid dearly for invoking my anger, the socket driver only went about 15 feet before it ran out of forward energy and fell to the ground in my driveway.

            But the one permanent stroke effect that disturbs me a lot is losing my sense of spatial relationships (like those needed to back my boat on its trailer into a slip at a launch ramp in San Diego). The loss of this same skill and ability has turned me into an idiot when it comes to things mechanical, and the frustration I feel around this issue is exacerbated by my memory of enjoying working on my ‘68 Volkswagen bus. Some of my abilities to solve problems involving spatial relationships have returned to the point where I can safely work on my lawn tractor without damaging it irreparably. For me that’s a big advance.

            But this giant step forward has only come about because I still work on the small stuff of stroke recovery—specifically rebuilding fine motor skills in my left hand—every day.

            It’s taken me a long time to accept several permanent stroke effects that I view bitterly:

One, I can’t write legibly with my left hand (and I am seriously left hand dominant) and have been unable to change to my right hand for writing;

I was mildly claustrophobic before my stroke and now that condition is worse. Much worse. The really good news about how I deal with claustrophobia is that I spend a lot of time outdoors working in my two gardens and although it’s barely mid-April, I’m already tanned and fully freckled from hours in the sun.

            I have attention deficit disorder and minor difficulties remembering some things. Since I can’t write legibly, I can’t use Post It Notes or handwritten reminders. But I can and do use my computer and programs like Google Notes and Microsoft OneNote to write things down and I happily check off those tasks as they are completed. Of such small things, a new life can be made.

            It’s unlikely there is no single answer to how to “overcome stroke-related problems.” What’s worked for me is getting outside, forcing myself to remain physically active and most of all, mentally involved in my life.

But without going all metaphysical: I’ve discovered that I can put together a pretty good day by just accepting that I had a stroke and going on about my business, occasionally taking the time to share a few smiles with good friends and basking in the occasional yips of joy from a small dog with a big heart named “Perro” (Spanish for “dog” and an appropriate name for a one-time feral Chihuahua).—Jim Forbes on 04/19/2008 from a small mountaintop in Escondido, CA.