Hello Everyone!
Making flower pots, Harvesting more topsoil, Avoiding some roots, Planting squash seeds & Silkies like to dog pile!
Alright, I am staying on schedule with the writing again this evening... but might nudge the timing forward (to earlier in the evening) over the next few days. Last night I noticed that by the time that I got everything written, edited and posted it was super late... and I had to 'push through the fatigue' a little too hard to finish it all.
Today, I also continued to work on that fictional material... and although I did not give it as much effort as I have on previous days... I feel good about the progress nonetheless. Lately, I have been really stretching the capacity of 'how many words that I have in me each day' and although I want to avoid burning myself out... I also want to see if I can expand said 'capacity' and maybe start really churning out some words!
The day (overall) was a rather productive one... and I actually managed to overcome my 'executive dysfunction' in regards to making flower pots... enough to actually make them. In the end, I wound up fishing a large bag of old plastic water jugs out of the tent that I only store water containers in... and turning all the larger jugs into flower pots by cutting off their tops and poking holes in their bottoms.
That entire process went rather smoothly and the only annoying part of it was having to listen to the 'crumbling/crunchy' sounds of plastic as I cut into it. Thankfully, the labels on the jugs came off rather easily and were not that challenging to completely remove... which was probably a result of them being in that tent for so long given that it gets a lot of sun... resulting in the glue that holds the labels on getting repeatedly heated.
Once I had all the new flower pots made, I carried them downhill to that new area (near the outdoor shower) where I have been gathering topsoil from. All total, I filled sixteen containers with soil... and got all the soil from one tiny (roughly two meter wide) circular area that honestly I did not even disturb that much during the soil harvesting process.
As nice as that area is for gathering soil, I think that I am going to find another spot... because the current area has way too many roots from the big hemlock tree and I do not want to accidentally damage any of them. If anything that area needs more topsoil to help fill in (and cover) the roots of that tree better... given that it is precariously growing from the middle of the gulch's bank.
Back to what I was getting at, I decided to use all the new pots to plant squash in... and although in a few of the containers I planted two seeds... in most of them I only planted one seed. Since the soil that I used already had a good bit of moisture in it, I did not add any water to the newly planted containers... but if it does not rain over the next few days I might wind up needing to.
Without anywhere else seeming like a good option, I wound up stacking all the new flower pots atop the chicken coop... and surprisingly there is still room for more of them up there. While working in the area, I noticed that the top of the coop actually gets pretty good sunlight for much of the day... so perhaps my idea of (once the plants get larger) trellising some of them onto the upper portion of the dog yard fence might work out.
For now, I have way too many flower pots way too close together atop the coop... and will have to relocate the majority of them to somewhere else once the plants start growing. Before that happens, I am hoping to have figured out (and built) some other places for the plants to go... but I gotta admit that I am doubtful about finding enough sunny locations for them all.
We will see how all that jazz works out and if it comes down to the proverbial wire with it all... I can probably build some sort of shelving for them near the studio. The reason that I am trying to avoid doing that to start with, is because the hugel mound is located there... and I am wanting it to get as much sun as possible so that more native vegetation will grow in on it.
Anyways, by late afternoon I had wore myself out piddling around with all that stuff... and wound up getting in a nice long nap without oversleeping into the evening. As I was saying in an earlier entry, I just feel fatigued nearly constantly and doing pretty much anything (even if it is just hiking up and down the hill) tends to leave me feeling worn out... so on actually productive days the fatigue is quite a bit more intense.
At first, I was thinking that maybe I am just out of shape from the winter... but thinking back on it I have been feeling like this since before the winter. There is really no telling what the heck is going on... but most of the time I just think that it is stress, nutrition and hydration related... which yeah have been major factors during this particular (mis)adventure.
Fortunately, I do not keep pushing myself once I start feeling 'worn out' and wind up pacing myself rather well when I notice it happening... and I wind up taking a heck of a lot of breaks to boot... so no complaints there. Aside from not being as 'productive' as I want to be, the truly annoying part is my thinking gets way too dang sluggish... and I start looking for shortcuts on how to do things.
On a different note, I had noticed that the silkie roosters were not really roosting at night and were instead sleeping atop each other... so I looked it up online and come to find out... that is how they sleep. Apparently, they need a very low 'roosting bar' but even then they are more prone to pile on top of each other on the floor than to use the roosting bar.
Having noticed that roosting oddity early on, I made sure to setup the small animal crate (that I keep inside the chicken coop) with some fresh straw... and made sure that they could easily get in and out of it. They really seem to love sleeping in there and there has only been one evening, where I went out to close the coop's door and found them sleeping outside the coop... but even then they were next their usual sleeping spot.
Well, the hour is growing late here and I need to wrap this entry up. I hope that everyone is doing well. Ciao for now.
