Garden update - 12/27/13

Fava Beans

- Doing well and healthy

- Growing much higher at far end (5") vs. Middle (2"), due to sun exposure

Veggies

- Doing well and healthy

- Some slugs found on leafy greens

- No yield yet other than large leafy greens picked from outside of plants

Greenhouses & Cold Boxes

Prune date - 12/25/13

Cherry tree

Grape vines

Notes from "Grow Biointensive: A Beginner's Guide in 8 Easy Sessions" DVD

Cover crops:

Fava beans

Cereal rye

Vetch

Triticale

Barley

Alfalfa

You can plant cereal rye and fava together. They last through winter and take off in the spring. 

Alternate grains and legumes YoY. 

Diakon will burrow into the soil and the roots will compost. Improves soil in addition to crop yield. 

Parsley and Celery attract beneficial bugs. 

Tree collards can be grown year round. 

Seed beds:

Can be any size, either 3" or 6" deep, depending on crops. 

First bed: scatter seeds by hand. Transplant healthy seedlings to second bed, evenly spaced apart in hexagonal (off-set line) pattern. Transplant to garden when ready in same pattern. Use a small stick to measure distance between plants. 

Prepping soil:

Double dig

Rake to level

Add fertilizer

Add compost

Aerate with rake

Water unless you a replanting right away

Nudge

British Nudge Unit - http://www.inudgeyou.com/category/posts/uk-nudge-unit/

Book

Freakanomics podcast - Fighting Poverty with Actual Evidence - 11/27/13

TED Talk - need to find the link

Rasta Elton John (signing "Daniel")

Garden update

I planted our first winter garden this year. A few notes and dates. 

Oct 26

- Pulled everything out of the summer garden

- Could have done this sooner

Nov 2 

- Planted half the garden (closest to the cherry tree) with winter crops

- Snow peas

- Broccoli

- Colliflower

- Brussel Sprouts

- Mixed Greens

- Lettuce

Nov 24

- Planted Fava Bean seeds

- Should have got these in the ground in late Oct/early Nov as sprouts

- Start germinating fava bean seeds in early Oct next year

- Used about 1.5 lbs of seeds

BART Bob Dylan

Harmonica and a bike

Young Country Guy drinking a Monster

Stand-up Bass Jazz guy

I wear my sunglasses inside...

My guitar case is just for show...

Montgomery BART musicians series - bluesy floor player edition

Everyday there's a different street performer in the Montgomery BART station. I'm amazed at how concsistent the scene is. There's never more than one performer, and I don't recall seeing the same performer twice in the two months I've been taking this route. The next series of blog posts will be a visual homage to them. 

Ken Robinson Quote

I listened to Ken Robinson's TED Talk recently and went out and purchased his book, The Element. I'm about to start reading it now so I watched his talk again. I liked this quote:

"If you're doing the thing that you love  time takes a different course entirely... If you're doing something that you love an hour feels like 5 minutes. If you're doing something that doesn't resonate with your spirit 5 minutes feels like an hour."

http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html

Vegetable Update

I harvested the first crops from the garden today. 3 hot peppers, 2 sweet peppers, 4-5 jalapeños, a bunch of green beans, and some cilantro. 

I used a jalapeño and the cilantro to make poco de gallo for the tacos we ate for dinner. I can't wait to be able to add our own tomatoes to the recipe as well. We'll eat the green beans for dinner tomorrow, and Lisa is going to pickle the peppers for me to make pepperoncinis. :)  

Harley & Aiden bonding time

Harley met Aiden as we got home from the hospital today. We went for a family walk shortly thereafter. Seems like these boys will get along well. 

Welcome Aiden!

Aiden Timothy, born 6/11/13 @ 3:20 PM, weighing 8lbs. 1 oz.  Baby and mom are happy and healthy, and we are elated!

We're staying in the hospital through tomorrow, then heading home to Harley!

Thinking about Creativity and the Risk of Failing

Risky Innovation: Will Starbuck's Leap of Faith Pay Off?

• "We do not want to sit on our hands," Brotman says. "If we feel excited about something, we'll get it out there, learn our lessons, and correct the mistakes. It's not always the most stress-free way to launch, but it's the fastest."
• "We don't think it's okay if things aren't perfect," Brotman says, "but we're willing to innovate and have speed to market trump a 100% guarantee that it'll be perfect."
• "You can't move forward and be a leader and an innovator if you're only worried about the downside," Brotman says, "but please don't mistake that for being cavalier."

     - Adam Brotman, Chief Digital Officer

TED Radio Hour: Making Mistakes

• "Most of the greatest successes in medicine come from failure. They don't get planned out and executed perfectly the first time. There are wondrous treatments that exist today off the backs of people who died."

     - Brian Goldman

• "Vulnerability is the birthplace of Innovation, Creativity, and Change. To create is to make something that has never existed before. There is nothing more vulnerable than that.

  Adaptability to change is all about vulnerability. If we're going to find our way back to each other, vulnerability is going to be that path.

  And I know it's seductive to stand outside the arena and think, 'I'm going to go in there and kick some ass when I'm bulletproof and I'm perfect'. But the truth is that never happens, and even if you got as perfect as you could and bulletproof as you could possibly muster, when you got in there, that's not we want to see.

  We want you to go in, we want to be with you and across from you, and we just want for ourselves and for the people we care about and work with to dare greatly."

     - Brene Brown

• Dr. Alice Stewart worked with researcher George Neil, whose job was to disprove her. It was only by not being able to prove that she was wrong that she could have the confidence to know that she was right. This is a fantastic model for thinking and collaboration - thinking partners who are not echo chambers.

  The biggest problems we face and the biggest disasters we've experienced haven't come from individuals, but organizations. Most organizations can't think because the people inside of them are too afraid of conflict.

  If top people acknowledge mistakes it makes it much easier for everybody else to do the same. Some of the worst disasters come about because mistakes are made and buried. Mistakes are a fantastic way to learn. No matter how bad a mistake was, nothing makes it worse than covering it up.

  Our fear of mistakes hugely impedes our creativity. When we create conflict we enable ourselves and those around us to do our best thinking. Open information is fantastic, but the truth won't set us free until we develop the skills, the habit, the talent, and the moral courage to use it. Openness isn't the end, it's the beginning.

  Don't take conflict personally. When people attack the logic they are not attacking you, but challenging the idea. If you're wrong then you've all learned something.

     - Margaret Heffernan

Education TED Talk - Sir Ken Robinson

From TED Talks Radio Hour: Building a Better Classroom

Quotes:

1. "Our current education system squashes creativity.  It's an industrial model that promotes conformity."
2. "A 3 year old is not half a 6 year old."

Other Resources:

• IBM CEO Study 2012 - How to promote companies that are creative.
• Ken's Book: The Element, How Finding your Passion Changes Everything

Tree Pruning

I volunteered to help prune trees around Kennedy Middle School on May 18th with citytrees.org. They gave a crash course in pruning (see below), but do a full three hour course in the early spring. Hope to sign up next year. 

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something

Quote from Thomas Edison: "Hell, there are no rules here — we're trying to accomplish something."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

Every Leader's Job: Discover Tomorrow Today

Equally important, we must avoid the trap that befalls many big companies. That is, they bulk up their delivery muscle while letting their discovery muscle wither. Instead of innovating and doing the things that will help them discover the next growth opportunity, they devote an inordinate amount of resources and focus to getting the work done, on time and on budget.

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130507163249-25745675-every-leader-s-job-discover-tomorrow-today?_mSplash=1

Bees!

I took a bee keeping class at Round Rock Honey in RWC last Saturday. Learned a lot, had fun, and crossed something off my unofficial bucket list. 

Turkey sausage recipe

Made turkey sausage today using breast, 

wing, and thigh meat. 4lbs. The flavor is good, 

but the sausage is a little dry. Next time I 

want to try adding onions for moisture. 

http://thespicysausage.com/recipes/italianstyleturkeysausage.htm

First Mother's Day

Garden Pic - 5/5/13

http://instagram.com/p/ZChrJfRQHq/

It happened later than I wanted, but feels good to get the garden planted this year. 

8 tomatoes

4 corn

8 green beans (new this year!)

2 cantaloupe 

2 watermelon

1 eggplant

4 bell peppers

3 peppers

1 zucchini (next to the fence)

16 marigolds (to add color and divert bugs)

I have the comments to convert to a drip system, but haven't had time to do that yet.  I'll need to get this in before the plants get too big. 

Also planted 6 herbs in the wine barrel, 2 herbs in the planter below the barrel, 5 herbs in mini-pots, and 20 seeded veggies (5 plants, 4 of each).

http://addicted2success.com/success-advice/why-successful-people-leave-their-loser-friends-behind/

The article is about surrounding yourself with those you want to emulate. 

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." - Jim Rohn

Three essential people in your life at all times. 

1 - A person who is older than you and more successful to learn from

2 - A person who is equal with you to share ideas with

3 - A person below you to coach and keep you energized

“Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes”- James Froude

Hsieh of the Day - 2/13/13

Walk and Talk

TED Talk by Nilofer Merchant. Host walking meetings. We spend 9 hours a day sitting. Sitting is our generation's smoking. 

Record Store Day

Record Store Day - 4/20/2013
Vinyl Solutions Records - San Mateo

Garden - 4/21/13

Soil

• pH - Neutral (7.0) to Slightly Acidic (6.5)
• N - Deficient (N1)
• P - Sufficient (P3) to Surplus (P4)
• K - Surplus (K4)

Activity

• 4/21 - Weeded
• 4/22 - Weeded, Rototilled, 1.5 bags of Bumper Crop, 6 Cups of Fertilizer, 6 Cups of Nitrogen Supplement (Blood Meal), Watered

How to think about Big Data

Big data differs from traditional information in mind-bending ways. For one thing, the authors write, "society will need to shed some of its obsession for causality in exchange for simple correlations: not knowing why but only what. This overturns centuries of established practices and challenges our most basic understanding of how to make decisions and comprehend reality." Quote from the WSJ on 3/27 - "Why 'Big Data' Is a Big Deal Analysis showed that prematurely born infants with unusually stable vital signs correlates with serious fevers 24 hours later—enabling physicians to take preventive measures."

Steve Jobs quote

"Stay hungry, stay foolish."