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Let's if this attached picture shows up...
It's like some punishment from the Gods.
Modified by eDrek at Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 16:58:36
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I kept telling the governors of these Western states that legalizing recreational marijuana would lead to ruin in the most Biblical way.
And now look what has happened! Lo and behold. All caused by those left coast stoners and greedy legislators and lobbyists.
Modified by eDrek at Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 17:56:27
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so sorry to see how bad the fires are, it was on the news last night. it's awful isn't it. ash on your car is a bit unnerving, makes me think it's close by - are you being told to get prepared?
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we, our town, already went through the get ready and leave phase and parts of the town did have to evacuate. But, they kept the fire from moving down the mountain and our town, so we're in the clear of being burned out.
The bad air and the ash is from, I think, fires past and present where the air is not dissipating out of here to somebody else's air problem.
Just yesterday or was it the day before or both, the sun was unable to warm us up over 70 degrees (F).
There's a mariachi band playing at someone's backyard party across the way. The AQI (air quality index) is about 170, which is on the unhealthy side. So, these guys are playing the instruments and singing and I think that they will pay for it later in the day.
The air is just not good at all.
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Here in Eastern Washington the wind changed and all the fire smoke from Calif. Wash and Ore decided to hang out here so we went from AQI 35 one day to AQI 495 the next. In three days of hazardous stay-inside air it is now down to 305. Still the low end of the purple zone. Temp was supposed to be in the upper 80s but now is only in the 60s. Still didn't stop my neighbor from sitting on his patio at night smoking and coughing! I was thinking about all that the smoke contained, burned homes, belongings loved ones and it made me feel the sadness that it contained and I wrote this poem:Sad Air South winds cover skies with smoke, blown
north as the west coast burns, particulates
of food, shelter, clothing, memories, loved
ones, leave dust on our cars, lawns, hands. Palpable sadness coats this world . .sky is
the color of an abandoned YouTube channel.
Dystopia no longer imagined but manifest:
consequences of the American Dream turned nightmare. We fall to our knees & beg
forgiveness as oligarchs use our bodies—steps
to mount a Jacob’s Ladder rising to the god
of greed, still out of reach. They ignore our pain. I run my fingers along the roof of my Prius, rough
brown dust stays, visible, tactile, full of sadness.
We are refugees, Dreamers, looking for our
inheritance, finding only sadness, as our children
somehow embodying hope, pick through the rubble,
searching for their future. 9/12/2020
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Yeah, the AQI is about 60 (yellow) where I am in the Bay Area. First time in like weeks. I opened my door to get some fresh air in the house.
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I liked the poem, Quirky, particularly the last verse - very evocative of our generation.
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thanks Lesley
Yes, seems as if the world has less to inherit these days.
Quirky
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Quirky yes - I remember as a teenager thinking that the whole world had been explored already and nowhere left for us to explore and now two generations later and the young ones are 'picking through the rubble' it feels very much like that.
Less to harvest and the weather isn't looking good either.
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Ah Lesley...to be a teenager again (NOT) LOL
This current time seems like it is filled with
"Nodal Points." I first heard that used in one of William Gibson's older Cyber Punk novels. One in the Bridge trilogy. It is a point in time when certain people and events end up connecting and some energy then shifts the future or history into a new direction. RBG's death seems to be one of those nodal points. The future could go any old way. I am weary and am just an observer for now. I will vote. do my tiny bit. Not sure why but there is a seed of hope lingering in me somewhere.
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yes it's struck a chord hasn't it. maybe it is a nodal points moment in time, our local bridge club opened last week - three tables at someone's house with all the social distancing and sanitiser you could imagine. Three tables, just three tables and it was a complete cock up with people going the wrong way and ended up with everybody wanting the same boards at the same time. How is this possible?? and you still have hope??? 
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I laughed out loud when I read your story of the bridge club wandering around. I pictured old people on drugs, bumping into each other!...a metaphor somewhere there. Of course I'll be 72 in a few weeks so I can't really judge!
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well that's pretty accurate - the pair who went the wrong way round are in their 90's and another 90 year old was telling me about how she had been tripping after accidentally ingesting one of her son's chocolate hash cookies. 
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It's not personal. I've parked my van by the hundreds of trees here that have been baked to death this summer. Locals said it was 46 degrees this summer, that's real degrees. You can translate if you need to.
Something's got to change. I guess it is.
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13, you said 'It's not personal.'
Oh, but it is.
I thought this forum was for helping us each feel good about ourselves. And now you're telling me that I am personally responsible for climate change because I drive my car to the beer store and to Burger King to get my refreshing beverages and sustenance.
And, yes, 46 degrees is quite hot.
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Yeah well it's personal to just about everyone, which makes it impersonal. Except those feckless people who through laziness and lack of ambition don't have any climate changing devices. You can't blame the climate crisis on them, but that's alright, you can blame them for just about everything else.
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46 degrees is very hot John. Hotter than it gets round here. It's classified sub-tropics. Traditionally we have had 2-3 days in the hottest month which are horrible - ie 41-42 degrees. I think it was 43 this last extra horrible Summer.
Now we are thinking where's the rainy weather predicted for this year and we haven't had a lot of rain yet but we've been having such nice weather - a whole mix of cold and warm and sunny and rainy, perfect for the garden - that it's hard to complain. still it is a worry. please don't let next Summer be like the last one.
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I reckon that 46 degrees was recorded in the town square, where the stone and concrete would help build up the heat. Still, it has been 36 degrees today and yesterday, a temperature taken with my own thermometer, in the field in the shade. That's very hot for mid September.
If we had just one 'normal' summer, the kind that I expected when I looked at the last 30 years of climate data for this area before I bought the land, lots of my trees would get established. Only a few are growing. Most are just surviving.
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oh blimey that's still hot! It sounds like your forest is in the balance but still lots of hope it will establish in time with so many surviving?
we went on to have some cooler than normal temperatures over Winter, been lovely weather. And they are predicting a cool rainy Summer but we are all scared it will be another scorcher. My next task is to get that rainwater tank installed.
I am tired enough to rest for a week after these last few days - moving my studio upstairs, such a big job either it would take weeks or days and I only have days as I have rented it out. Fortunately she wants my big table and lightbox and we are swapping for a new table for me, smaller but still the same height, she has a friend who will make it. In some respects we have some real similarities - we both think living in your studio is a dream come true!
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So, 13, only some of your trees are doing ok? The rest are distressed at best?
That rough and disappointing.
Could I suggest you start a video or a podcast? It's a very compelling story. I really like trees. Always have. Climbing and tree forts and swings and tire and bag swings.
Modified by eDrek at Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 17:48:59
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My intention in March was to plant nearly 800 trees and then stick around to water them until they were established.
It poured with rain the whole time I was here. Often I'd make a hole for a tree, turn round to pick the tree up and in that time the hole was filled with water... Anyway, the pandemic started, ferries between France and the UK stopped and with the impending lockdown,I decided to get locked down at home rather than in France.
The rain stopped when I left and there has hardly been any since. Almost all the bare root trees I planted died, about 400. Almost all the rest, trees I had propagated in pots survived.
I did a blog for the boat, first with resale in mind, and later, for family and friends to see what was going on. I enjoyed that. But this, I plan things out, do them and then don't feel inclined to write it up. Actually I wrote an app which uses gps to log each tree I plant, so I already have a record of every tree, where it came from, what variety, which grafts, which rootstock, when it was planted and where to within 4.5 metres. That's enough data for me. It doesn't leave much time to sit around watching the insects and bats and birds and lizards.
And I have a lake to dig... ,
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oh! 400 trees, 400 holes dug is all I could think of - what a lot of work and to lose it. But I guess that happens to us all a fair bit, doesn't it - I put a lot of hours into a statue and I was moving it and did it carelessly and broke off a bit. I'm not dismayed very much tho, it's a commission and it wasn't right for that so she's in the garden now and a little bit of me is relieved. I have a new one on the wheel, a mermaid.
so anyway the point is I always really like hearing what you are doing and how it goes, and interesting that the ones in pots survived.
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Were you growing the trees to help reduce climate change? Or were you going to harvest them or something like that?
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The most valuable trees are the fruit and nut trees and vines, about 30 species. They're nearly all ok. Some I have lots of, like 120 pomegranates, some just a few and some singles, like pineapple guava. I have peaches ,plum, apricots and many myrobalan. These last have nice plums themselves, but they seem to do particularly well here, so I'll probably use most as rootstock for the other stone fruit.
Then there are support trees, that fix nitrogen and feed the fruit trees, or provide shelter from the wind or sun. Italian alder, black locust, mimosa. And then there are hedging plants to provide shelter, create structure increase diversity. It's these that I planted as bare roots that mostly died.
The pasture in the middle of the valley is where I'm planting, but I'm also leaving intact much of the pasture where the wild flowers are most prolific.
I hope it'll end up as some kind of park where the a lot of good food available.
I doubt the trees will compensate for the driving here as regards climate change, but in the long run it should help.
But mostly I just like the place. I hope to add useful trees without wrecking the biodiversity that is already here. The next few weeks I intend to spend on the tractor, digging a pond, for the salamanders in particular and dragonflies and the rest.
It might end up like a park, but full of nature and good food.
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13, would you mind if I set up a GoFundMe page for you?
I'd also like to create a documentary film about your work and have Liam Neeson play your part.
How's that sound so far? I've got more ideas, too.
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I don't know how gofundne works. Presumably I'd have to explain to someone where the money would go (I'd have to guess) and then explain where the money went (I'd have to remember). Sounds unfeasible.
You know how slow trees grow, right, especially when there's no water. It would be hard to get a compelling narrative for the documentary. There's another nut in the ground, here's a twig, ooh, here's one with leaves on. It's very quiet here...
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Ok, growing trees is boring, but Liam Neeson would make it exciting.
And forget about the GoFundMe worries. I'll take care of all of those pesky details.
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Dialogue: "I need your help. There's a lot of trees to plant."
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that Liam Neeson pic is really funny.
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I should use it on the GoFundMe site 
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It could be a very cool space in the years to come. I love aboretums and such.
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Arboretum. That's the word. Better than orchard. An arboretum of edibles.
Anyway, plenty of my trees will be free. Here's a neat site where people are making grafting materials of different varieties available for free.
Many trees, I can plant seeds, and then graft onto the seedlings to produce trees. Like I have quite a few myrobalan cherry plums growing here. The seeds came from a tree in my garden and some others down the road. They grow well here despite the drought and heat. I can graft onto them peach, apricot, almond, plum, from twigs of my own trees or from suppliers like this for other varieties. https://www.fruitiers.net/ Today I'm going to try to estabish a postal address for my hut, so I can accept deliveries...
If that doesn't work, I might need Liam's number 
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The idea of grafting fruit onto hardy rootstock is so good but one generation down the line and we have the situation where I buy a bag of Fuertes avocado fruit and grow the seeds but it will be three years or more before I know whether I am going to get good fruit or not.
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Then find a tree that produces good avocados and graft a twig of that onto your rootstock. You'll probably get the good avocados the following year, though you might have to support the branch so as not to stress the graft joint. Any avocado trees you have that don't produce well you can 'topwork' to switch to a better variety.
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ah, yes okay. I'd rather have a whole tree which I can germinate from and grow an army of Fuertes.
It's one of those devastating fashion things - I guess someone must have been growing an army of grafted Hass avocado trees. I can still remember it happening, Hass are better, Hass has more oil content and somehow everyone planted Hass. It has a thick knobbly skin it has a way of being not ripe, ripe and nice to eat for one to two seconds and then over-ripe. and it never has the same taste of a Fuerte with it's fine green skin, and generous sweet spot of ripeness, and large shapely fruit - I mean it beats the Hass in every regard. Maybe if you were growing them to extract the oil it might be a different equation, don't know.
There is a beautiful grown itself from seed large Fuerte avocado tree where I used to live. This is a tree whose seed should spread and multiply. But I remember at the time of the Hass planting feeling worried that it was an inferior tree because it was grown from seed and it took years for me to slowly make the comparisons and realise how superior it's fruit really was.
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If you grow from seed, you'll get some natural variability in the avocados you end up with. I don't know how much variation there is in avocados. But I know in Spain at least, the avocados are all grafted. That way, you know what fruit you'll end up with.
Not sure what you mean that you'd rather have a whole tree.
I have grafted some apple trees here so that some of them have several varieties. If I decide if rather have just one variety, it's just a matter of cutting off the branches that bear the varieties you don't want.
Google top working trees. You keep the roots and switch varieties... Quicker to get fruit and more predictable than growing from seed.
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Grafting is fun, I admire the skill and the orchards that can be made. But it's right on the edge isn't it - can you imagine how you'd feel with another arm grafted onto you - would you feel like a whole person?
yes, I remember now that was part of the whole idea that came with the Hass avocados - that the grafted tree was superior to one from seed, you could guarantee a good fruit. So what happens when you plant the seed off a grafted tree?
I'm guessing the seeds I have planted are from grafted trees. One of them looks very different, I guess it's a sort of Siamese twin the stem is like a double stem stuck together and now there are two crowns forming.
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The seeds from a grafted tree is no different to the seed from a tree growing on its own roots. Grafting is a way of propagating trees asexually, so that genetically, above the join with the rootstock, the trees are identical. All Bramley apple trees are clones of one original Bramley which was selected from a sexually diverse group of trees for the qualities of its apples.
One other benefit of grafting is that you can choose to use rootstock that won't allow the tree to grow very big, or that has resistance to some soil borne disease.
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oh that is good news - I had this idea in my mind - I'd been told not to use seed from grafted trees way back when. Really all that information I absorbed about gardening as a young thing has proved excellent but maybe not this one - the idea was that you didn't know what you were getting in the seed, was it from the rootstock or the graft. I have had the first fruit off my mango tree grown from the seed of my big mango tree which being a Kensington Pride is likely to be grafted and it was very good too.
I was watering my avocado seedlings today and the Siamese twin is a double double - each side has now split into two, there are 4 crowns developing and fascinatingly the stem is reshaping into a solid round shape instead of the fluted look lower down.
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