With the great sunny weather on this New Year's day, it only made sense to get some badly needed yard work done. Not that sunny weather is rare here in Northern California in January, but it does seem to only happen on the days I'm stuck in the office. Once the weekend hits, it always changes, or so it it seems. The yard work needing to be done today was to clear and burn the brush from giving our cypress tree a long overdue haircut. As you can see from the first picture, it was beyond overgrown. I know the picture is from Google street view, and not very flattering. The truth is, I searched for a picture with this tree in it and could not find one. It was so ugly that we always made sure it was not in any part of the pictures we took last year before starting on the renovation work. That's pretty bad because we did take some very unattractive pictures to have as a point of comparison for when we finished some of our projects. This tree was beyond unattractive though, so I had to resort to stealing a shot of it from Google street view so you can see what a big difference there is from trimming away the many years of undergrowth. With all of those lower branches removed, you can actually see the whole front of the house from the street now. It's such a nice, stately looking house, it was a shame to have over half of it hidden behind ugly vegetation. The second picture shows how nice the yard looks from the street now.
The downside to doing this much pruning is the leftover branches and other debris. The Farmville work crew (including Roxy, the border collie, who has a story of her own about this tree and its underbrush) spent most of the day on New Year's Eve cutting down and dragging superhuman sized branches over to the orchard, into piles. When I went out there this morning and looked over what we had accomplished the day before, it became pretty apparent I better start burning these branches while the weather was nice. So that is what I did today on New Year's Day, 2012. I didn't want to attract the attention of the local fire chief, so I built a small burn pile and fed it a few branches at a time so the flames never got too crazy. And yes, I did make sure to have a water hose close by just in case things got out of hand. We always employ good safety practices here, well, for the most part we do. It was during this phase of the work day that I had ample time to think and come up with my goofy logic about stuff. That's what inspired this post. All that thinking had to result in something!
OK kids, follow closely because this might seem like a bit of a stretch. After you hear the logic behind it though, you will understand and hopefully get busy "creating" your own good luck in future years. Pay close attention because like most things I try to explain, it can sometimes be a little complicated. Eating a robust meal of blackeyed peas on New Years Eve provided the necessary energy to get out in the yard and work hard. During this hard work of clearing branches from around the cypress tree, I discovered the ground was covered in a few inches of decomposed cypress needles from all the years of these branches drying out and shedding as the newer branches grew over them. In earlier discussions on what to plant around the yard, the topic of blueberries had come up. As a matter of fact, we had pretty much decided on trying out a hedge-row of blueberries across the front of the yard since it faces north. The north side of the front yard gets the morning sun but is shaded from the intense afternoon sun during the summer months. As I looked at the piles of cypress needles, a light bulb clicked on. Cypress needles, much like the needles from any member of the pine family, are very acidic when composted into mulch. It just so happens that blueberries are acid loving plants and they recommend adding pine needle mulches to blueberry plantings to help get the soil to the pH that blueberries prefer. Even a slow learner like me saw the opportunity in this situation. The plan is to start composting these cypress needles shortly so that later this spring, we can work them into the beds the blueberries will be planted on. Some of the blueberries will be planted in the area the cypress had hogged with all of its underbrush, so that soil is probably already perfect for them. I know everyone is is still wondering what all this has to do with good luck and I started to explain but had to take a little detour to explain blueberry cultural practices. Believe me when I say that it was necessary for context. The good luck part goes like this. The blackeyed peas provided the much needed energy to clean up the cypress prunings. During that endeavor, the jackpot of mulch was discovered and dedicated to the future blueberry plantings. Everyone knows blueberries are one of the super-foods and eating them daily will help you live to be at least a hundred years old. If I get to be a hundred years old, that will certainly be the ultimate in good luck because I will have been able to spend those years with Lynda, and I could fill another blog with why that is the ultimate in good luck. So if you have been paying attention and following my ramblings closely, you can see how eating blackeyed peas can lead to the very best in luck. Get out there in 2012 and plant some super-foods and you too can have the good luck of living to the century mark, or beyond. Happy New Year!!!!
