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Remembrance
Remembrance A.V. Walters Growing up in Canada, we called it Remembrance Day. It was the day you bought pin-on poppies from brittle old men, and wore them to recite In Flanders Fields, which all school...
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This Is How It Goes
This Is How It Goes– A.V. Walters– Up north, in the U.P. where my mother lives, folks are getting Lyme disease. These are hearty, out-doorsy people, who spend a lot of time in the woods. Lyme disease...
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Winterizing
Winterizing (from November 1, 2013) I haven’t done this since I was in college, renting cheap housing and doing everything I could to make it habitable for the cold months. We didn’t move in time to...
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War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds– A.V. Walters– We’ve had a couple of gorgeous days, low to mid-thirties (F), warm by winter standards, some sun and wind. It’s given us some lovely hikes, before the nippy temps...
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Cabin Fever Paranoia
Cabin Fever Paranoia A.V. Walters Police Blotter For most of the locals, this winter is a little long in the tooth. They’re tired of it, and getting a little crabby. It’s showing in the local paper. At...
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PunxsutawneyPrognostication
Punxsutawney Prognostication A.V. Walters Phamous Phil –Everyone is waiting for Spring. The signs are here: the days are growing longer; the cats are shedding, and my mother’s seed catalogs have...
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Marshmallows or Popcorn?
Marshmallows or Popcorn A.V. Walters– Surprisingly, it turns out that Rick is making the California to Michigan transition better than I am. I still have a foot in each world. I’m still on political...
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Marching Through the Seasons
Marching Through the Seasons A.V. Walters– Still Closed. Most of the country is experiencing Spring, in all its glory. Some, in the northern reaches (like my mum) feel the warmth, see the birds, but...
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e) All of the above…(every little bit helps)
e) All of the above…(every little bit helps) A.V. Walters– INVEST IN SOLAR AND WIND POWER! Now that we have warmer weather–we can all do our bit to save energy and enjoy the best the season has to...
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Garden Surprise
Garden Surprise Michigan Meets the Bucket Garden Another Bucket Garden A.V. Walters– I had resigned myself to not having a garden this year. There’s just too much going on. We have building to do—and...
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Good Enough Gardening
Good Enough Gardening A.V. Walters– Now, a good gardener would have done things differently. A good gardener would have had the soil tested and would have amended accordingly. This year, I’m going to...
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Okay, Work With Me Here…
Okay, Work With Me Here… A.V. Walters– The unfortunate placement of this volunteer spruce begs the question. It kicked on at 10:20 in the morning, and it got me thinking. It’s a beautiful day. Clear...
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Right Plan…
Right Plan… A.V. Walters – A walk in the woods It’s said that, when the Europeans arrived in Michigan, a squirrel could cross the state, Great Lake to Great Lake, without its feet ever touching the...
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Killing Fields
Killing Fields A.V. Walters The view out our window. We knew. We’d even talked about it. Our landlady rents the acreage around her house to a local dairy farmer. He grows corn to feed his cows. We...
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Bugged
Bugged– A.V. Walters My California friends can’t believe that I moved to a place that has snow in the winter and bugs in the summer. I usually put it right back at them—both of those features are a...
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Slash and Burn
Slash and Burn A.V. Walters We learned about it in grade school. It’s a “primitive” agricultural practice of cutting down the forest, burning the “slash,” any unused timber products, and then planting...
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Learning the Language
Learning the Language… A.V. Walters– I had the best of intentions this spring. We walk most days, and my plan was to try to identify all the new plants as they popped up through the leaf litter in the...
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Two-Legged Hazards…
Two-Legged Hazards… A.V. Walters– People just don’t walk. In Two Rock, Rick and I had a reputation. If we went to feed the emus, on the other side of the farm, we walked over. We walked when we visited...
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Ripples–Cuyahoga
Ripples… Cuyahoga Ripples– A.V. Walters I was the number-four kid. As is often the case in big families, the younger ones are eager to catch up to the big kids—We wanna do it, too, whatever it is. We...
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Sundays and Making Wood
Sundays and Making Wood… A.V. Walters– We’re busy building. I suppose, given how late it is in the season, we could/should just power on through and build every day. But there are other priorities in...
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Autumn Olive
Autumn Olive… A.V. Walters – With olive-like leaves Also known as Russian Olive, the Autumn Olive is considered a pest species. In the want ads of our local newspaper, guys advertise that they’ll pull...
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Good Night and Good Luck
Good Night and Good Luck— A.V. Walters— There was a time when I recognized the gentle, diplomatic art of compromise, back when pragmatism seemed like a viable solution to the tensions inherent in any...
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Feed the Soil, Not the Plant!
Feed The Soil, Not the Plant! A.V. Walters– It’s the organic gardener’s mantra. If the soil is healthy, the plants will be healthy. If the soil isn’t healthy, there’s little you can do for the plants,...
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Timing the Jump
Timing the Jump.Filed under: agriculture, California, climate, climate change, climate disruption, country living, drought, environment, life changing events, Quality, safety, season, skating Tagged:...
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And, The Winner Is…
And, The Winner Is… A.V. Walters- Home, sweet home. Where is winter? We have no snow. Though the ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) typically gives us a mild winter—this is the most extreme in forty...
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Snow Cats, Hot Cocoa and GMOs
Snow Cats, Hot Cocoa and GMOs -A.V. Walters- It’s snowing again. We’re expecting seven inches by tomorrow and then it will really feel like winter. Yesterday we were out clearing. Snow shoveling leads...
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Follow the Money
Follow the Money– A.V. Walters– That’s my rule of thumb, whenever there is a whiff of scandal. I remember California’s Energy Crisis—the one that ushered in billions in debt as the state struggled to...
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Minding Our Bees and Qs
Minding Our Bees and Qs A.V. Walters Ah, The Sweet Smell of… Failure?! How can that bee? We’ve just spent the better part of the weekend processing honey. The house smells sweet and clean from honey...
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Friction Fit
Friction Fit A.V. Walters I’m sorry that I haven’t been posting. I have been busy with everyone’s favorite task in home building. I’m insulating. For good reason, Michigan takes insulation seriously....
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Ah, Spring
Ah, Spring A.V. Walters In our minds, our little house—our work in progress—is picturesque. All winter, we could hardly wait for spring to get back to work on it, in earnest. I’ve been asked to send...
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Musings on Planting Trees
Musings on Planting Trees– A.V. Walters– And that doesn’t even include the trees we bought from Benzie County! Professional “re-foresters” can plant hundreds, even thousand of trees each day. Depending...
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It’s Working
It’s Working— A.V. Walters— I asked my landlady for the contact information for the farmer who leases the fields surrounding us. She reacted badly to the request—assuming, for some bizarre reason, that...
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Food Fight
Food Fight A.V. Walters It has come to the attention of Big Ag that the fastest growing sector of agriculture is organics. 2016 saw well over four million acres under organic cultivation. The total...
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Winter Wonderland
Winter Wonderland A.V. Walters It seemed like a no-brainer to me. We’ve been cooped up with winter for months, so the idea of fresh line-dried laundry was like a breath of fresh air. We’re having one...
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Crop Registry
A.V. Walters They’re hounding me to renew the registration of my hives. In theory, it’s a good idea. If beekeepers register their bees–how many hives and their location–farmers will know to alert them...
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They’re Here!
They’re Here! A.V. Walters– I don’t celebrate Earth Day. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice idea. But it annoys me no end when folks known for driving down the driveway to the mailbox “celebrate” Earth...
View ArticleSpring?
Spring? A.V. Walters– Don’t get me wrong, I love winter. But we’re nearly halfway through April. We’re having a blizzard. There’s no point in posting a picture–it’s all just white. In less than a week,...
View ArticleEarth Day Sale
Earth Day Sale A.V. Walters Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade. But really? I have a little trouble with the whole concept of ethical consumerism. Consumerism is the problem....
View ArticleSpring, Not for the Faint of Heart–
Spring, Not for the Faint of Heart– A.V. Walters– We celebrated today. The trees are in. It’s a little late, but then, spring was late. My hands are rough and raw and I ache, but all 100 trees are...
View ArticleVictorian Cool
“Victorian Cool” A.V. Walters– And I don’t mean steampunk. I’ve never lived in a home with air conditioning. Of course, that’s easy for me to say, most of my adult life was in Northern California,...
View ArticleA River in Egypt
Last week was the hottest week in recorded history. This is no Chinese hoax. We’ve known for decades. Still most are unwilling to make “lifestyle” choices needed to avoid climate catastrophe. What can...
View ArticleWaiting for the Storm…
We didn’t get much done Saturday. We’ve broken ground on the new barn, and we have digging to do. Still, the weather report called for heavy rains–it’s not a great idea to dig on slopes, in our sandy,...
View ArticleIn-box Exhaustion
In-box Exhaustion Oh, will it ever end? I make excuses–oh it’s the end-of-quarter reporting period, or the end-of-the-month, but that’s really not it. In fact, the constant alarm, the never-ending...
View ArticleFive Stops
Five Stops I have advantages. I work from home. Though we live rurally, it’s only twenty minutes from “town” –and only a mile from the little village that gives us our postal address. I am freed from...
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They Mean Us!
Most of the country is suffering a serious heat wave. The temperatures are up–though not searing. The issue is this new measure, the “heat index” that combines heat and humidity for a new measure of...
View ArticleDear EBay Seller
Thank you for your prompt shipment of my order of vintage jeans. I’ll give you favorable feedback on all counts…but I have to ask. What on earth did you do to them to give them such an ungodly stench?...
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Celtic Not!
We purchased our washer and dryer some years ago, used, on craigslist. They are supposedly “high-end” machines, but we bought them because they were high efficiency and water saving. The story was...
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Anecdotal Winning
The problem is that there is no money in it. We’re struggling to find effective treatments for the various six-legged monsters that attack our fruit trees. We vehemently refuse to consider ‘standard’...
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Nervous
We knew they were around, you’d catch a whiff from time to time. And, comet or no, we haven’t been wandering around outside in the evening. Last night, just before dusk, we saw clear evidence...
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Adjusting the Center
As in all things, if you start with a proper “center,” the rest should fall into place. It’s a little different with a modern log home. In pioneer times, you built with stacked logs, often green...
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