Hot and humid. We’re on the edge of a system so we could get rain or not.
Yesterday was certainly hot. I was very uncomfortable, even with a hat and my evap cooler vest.
I did mostly stuff around the house. Cut the grass, cleaned the pond filter, watered the gardens. Weeded.
Citrus is still all growing. Cabbages are doing well. I’ve got some cilantro coming in. Mint is going nuts. Grapevine is taking over the whole trellis. Harvested more peppers and then I traded some sweet peppers for some tomatoes with one of the other swim team families. MEATSPACE!! We’ve got the Thunderdome, we need a Bartertown too. Practice. The family also raises chickens and sells eggs, and they live near us. Probably good folks to know if things get thin.
It looks like all my potatoes have died. I’ve got one plant left in one ‘tower’. No idea what went wrong, just one by one the plants died. Acorn squash and watermelon are growing, well protected by the wire mesh. Corn stalks are getting taller.
My trash smells like death. 10 pounds of raw chicken and two gallons of milk. 100F heat. OMG. I dumped about a cup of bleach on the contents today and that helped. Holy hell what a stench, and the flies are THICK. The bleach did help quite a bit, but we’ve still got 4 days until trash pickup. I’m really glad we’ve got trash pickup…
I’m really glad we still have civilization, and I don’t understand the people who want to tear it down. I think they just don’t have any experience, knowledge, or imagination. I do.
I’ll try to keep my personal world at a first world level as long as I can, no matter what else is going on. Unfortunately, parts of this country and parts of too many cities have already fallen to third world levels. It’s tempting to blame the third worlders that live there, but they came once it got cheap enough. Of course they didn’t raise it up after they got there, either.
Today, I’m doing auction pickups. I was feeling better about the world and our situation, so I started back into my old life. Over the last week or so, it’s becoming clear that cases are rising, and the economic issues continue. I’m switching back to hunker down/isolation mode. I’m also going to be continuing to increase my stocks, rather than running down what I have. I don’t see things getting better for a long time. Trying to save money will have to take a back seat to resupplying. I don’t feel comfortable running down stocks, and hoping to replace them more cheaply later. I am still applying my number one rule, that prepping can’t negatively or irrevocably change our lives, ie. we’re not selling everything and moving to Idaho and buying a bunker. I’m not going to run up the credit cards buying pallets of Mountain House.
We will continue to look for opportunities during this time. There are always opportunities to prosper, but you need the resources available and the willingness and ability to act. You also need to recognize the opportunity. That’s the hard part.
So, look for opportunities to meet helpful people. Work on your skills and knowledge so YOU can be a helpful person. Keep your eyes and mind open to opportunities. And keep stacking.
nick