Seedlings

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebalou/888745855/

I'm one of those weird people who is either obsessively neat or over the top scatter brained. My seeds are neatly labeled on vibrantly orange sticky notes with the type, date, location bought or collected, and storage process on them. That's my obsessively neat side. I started my seeds inside in a preset gardener's delight humidome with peat pellets. I simply read directions then shoved the seeds to proper depth now my green beans are out growing the round holders and entangling themselves with my tomatoes and I don't know how to fix it because it hailed and sleeted today so that means it's too cold to put them outside. I do have a pot to put them in so they might end up there until it gets warm again. I wanted to use that pot for the cosmos and baby's breathe I planted and actually managed to grow though.

Weeds and worms

I'm celebrating weeds and worms today! I did a previous post on how to improve clay soil into loam. My soil last year was so heavy with clay it didn't grow weeds because without intense help the roots couldn't push through the soil. I spent two weeks turning corn cob which has a lot of little air pockets deep, upto two feet deep into the spaces where my plants would grow. I gathered worms after a storm to put into my garden. I imagined it would take a least two to three years of the intense work, mixing, raking, slowly and carefully irrigating to make my garden a stick plants in the ground, water daily and get vegetables space. This morning I discovered my worms are thriving under the rabbit and guinea pig litter I laid down last fall, and I have a mild weed problem! I'm so happy.

My boyfriend Rob and I helped a female hairy woodpecker who ran into a window two days ago. His wings were folded normally across her back, but she had a small head wound. Rob got gloves and some rags to wrap her in and I got my emergency kit for the bottle of witchhazel in it. The liquid extract you can buy at walgreens in a clear container is good for animal wounds because they can lick it off safely. Anyway we stuck him in flower pot turned open side to a chain link fence so nothing could get to him but he could still breathe. While he warmed up, we hurried to buy chocolate chips for breakfast. Then came home and shifted the flower pot so she could get out he hopped from planter to tomato vine until he reached the top of the fence and then took off like she was playing instead of flying.

Reconsidering food options.

Okay, no morality talk for me. I'm avoiding issues of cruelty in this post and talking straight numbers. Ever heard of Jumbo X Cornish Rock chickens. These are your big chickens that can make a single meal for five people sitting at a table in the US. The chickens reach full size in 40 days approximately which means 9 life cycles from birth to slaughter occur in a year from a single "crop" shed anywhere on the planet. In each of these crop sheds half a million birds die in a rotation from starvation or illness. That's 4,500,000 meals a year not going to people across the world where four out of seven continents have 20% to 100% percent of their population living for under two dollars a day. And yet we allow this waste and stupidity to continue as even more food is wasted because of the ill, not dead animals we slaughter that later contribute to recalls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Percentage_population_living_on_less_than_$2_per_day_2009.png

http://paleodietnews.com/1675/eating-animals-ethically-on-the-paleo-diet/