Almanac March, 2009

1 March

Gainfully Unemployed

Life has been interesting the last few months. The school I worked at nearby closed. Laura and I have talked about me going full time into tree farming for over a year, so this seemed like the time to do. Little bird getting kicked out of the nest. "Fly, little bird, fly!"

After putting the trees to bed, fall saw a bathroom/bedroom reno that L and I had discussed for some time. Doing it myself, it came in at about 4 grand instead 12.
Sure it took me two months instead of a week, but that's good return on my time.

Lately, I've been working on the web page. I now can automatically add a small table at the bottom of each species page showing what inventory I have of that species, what size pot it's in, and how big it is.

Spruce Trees in Snowstorm

As you can see, it is not yet spring here. March pretty much comes in like a lion and goes out the same way.

3 March

Like the white rabbit...

...I'm running late. Usually I've got got half my bedding plants started by mid February. Today, I brought in all the bags and buckets of soil mix. Stashed them under the stairs. In a couple days they'll have thawed out.

5 March

Inventory

I spend a week replacing various binders, memo pads, spreadsheets, and old envelopes with notes on them about inventory with an actual database for tracking inventory. (Ok, it's a simple MS Access file that just barely deserves the name 'database' for the first time all of my inventory is in one place.

I can sort it by species, which makes it easy to know if I have enough when someone calls wanting 300 three foot spruce. (I don't. Is 2.5 feet enough?) I can sort it by location, so I can walk the yard next spring and check the paper against reality. Way cool.

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.

Winston Churchill