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Saturday, October 16, 1999
Pruning
With the expectation that this would be one of the last
saturdays with nice weather before the winter comes, I
decided to do something about the garden.
I discovered about five different kinds of mushrooms
on the grass. I do not know the exact number, as I am not
an expert on the determination of mushroom species.
I made a nice video recording of all the different
mushrooms.
(follow-up)
I pruned the holly plant in back garden, and found that
many of the branches had little white flowers at the
foot of the leaves.
Next, I did some pruning in the front garden. Actually,
not real pruning, just reshaping some of the fir like
plants.
Then when I was cleaning up, and our container for
compostable waste was almost full, I decided to cut
of some of the lower branches of the willow tree in
the back garden. But this ran a little out of hand,
as I ended up with a stack of branches that could
easily fill the container by itself.
Saturday, October 23, 1999
More mushrooms
When I looked at the grass today, I saw that some of
the mushrooms had died away, but
also many new had appeared of a kind that I had not
seen last week. I immediately decided to take a picture.
(follow-up)
It seems that the curly kail
season has started again, because
we found it in our supermarket. Without hesitation we bought
one bag of freshly cut curly kail, and all the other
ingredients: gherkins, pork cut in cubes, and smoked sausage.
The recipe for curly kail hotchpotch is simple:
peel the potatoes and cut them in small pieces. After having
washed them put them in a large pan. Rinse the freshly cut
curly kail once, and add them in the pan with the potatoes. Put the
pan a little water on the fire, and start frying the pork.
Ten minutes before the potatoes are ready, add the smoked
sausage in the pan (alternatively you can also put in the
microwave).
When the potatoes are ready, remove the sausage, add the
fried pork cubes, some milk, and smash everything into
a nice hotchpotch. Serve with the smoked sausage, the gherkins,
and some vinegar (if you like).
(follow-up)
Escaping the global energy crisis
Lately, I have been caught up by thinking about how to
escape the global energy crisis.
More and more, I feel that the source of our riches lies in
the availability of cheap energy. Just try to imagine
what would happen if energy would cost hundred times as
much as it would cost now. Because of this, I believe
there will be a global economical crisis as soon as our
main source of cheap energy, fossile fuels, will dry up.
And sofar, no alternatives have been found.
Even the so called environmental clean sources
of energy are not really clean, because to create them
fossile fuels are used. The main reason why solar cells
are that expensive, is because of the amouth of energy
that is needed to create them. In a sense solar cells
are just like batteries: not producing energy, but storing
fossile energy, and releasing it when lit.
Many attempt have been made to reduce our current energy
consumption, but without success. They may have only
slightly reduced the speed at which the consumption has
increased, but that is all. The misleading thing is that
energy has only become cheaper and cheaper in the past
decades. But will it continue like this? How hard will
it hit us, when we are running out of fossile fuels.
Will we see a complete collapse of our society, or will
there be a gradual transistion from a the golden age of
cheap energy to what follows? Will future generations
refer to us as the generation that burnt it all?
I fear that transition will not be gradual. I have often
said to myself, that I might end my life with farming.
I also believe that we will see horses again appear in
our streets. How can I, with my family, escape this
global crisis? Should I build an energy saving home?
Should I buy a farm, and try to become self supporting?
But what if society collapses, and I find hundreds of
people at the gate of my farm, begging for food, or worse,
kill me for it. Should I emigrate to another
part of the world, far away from the western world, such
that people cannot reach me whenever disaster strikes?
I have been thinking about whether it would be possible
to build a home in the middle of the desert, where there
is plenty of solar energy. But what would be the costs
of such an undertaking. Just think about the cost of
Biosphere 2.
Wednesday, October 27, 1999
The latest trend in home decorating products is called
Eastern Mysteries. Yesterday we received
two advertisers displaying products (like candles and
photo frames) decorated with Chinese characters.
It looks like the artistic value of Chinese characters
has been finally discovered in the west.
When I came home, Li-Xia showed
me a tea-pot she had bought which had the word "Tea" printend
on opposite sides in English and Chinese. A few weeks
ago, I by accident dropped our tea-pot, so she did have
a good reason.
(follow-up)
Feeding Andy with a tube
Currently, Li-Xia is rather
successful with feeding Andy
food in his mouth using a small 2.5 cc injection tube.
But only when he is watching his favourite video
about the adventures of a small car called "Brum".
The video contains several stories. Whenever one of
the stories is comming to an end, he refuses to eat
(swallow) more, until the next story has started.
Until now, he only accepts the regular tube feeding
milk, and nothing else. It seems to be some progress compared
with before, when we could only feed him through a nose
tube, but there is still a long way to go.
New kind of Chinese tea
I brought some tea with me from the area (home town,
they say) where my mother-in-law was born. It's a
kind of tea with very light coloured leaves. Some
almost look like white in their dried form.
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Random memories.