To The Surbiton Manor Born

  It was about 45 degrees, sunny, and almost no wind today, so it seemed like a good time to put the strawberries to bed for the winter. This is a first time event, so I hope it works. The theory of how to do it came from University of Minnesota Extension. They suggest clearing the bed (though they counsel waiting until the leaves have turned brown and floppy), cutting the plants back to the crowns, and then putting them under 4" of straw mulch. I suppose - and it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch - that's where they get their name "strawberries."  Anyhoo, this was the first bed that I surrounded with chicken wire last spring, and as a test case I made a series of mistakes that make it look pretty tacky. As I worked my way around, I kept thinking about whether or not I'd have time to re-work the wire. It turns out that it takes more time than you'd think to take an 8x4 bed from this: To this: To this: It's also not the most attractive wire cover

The first proper snow of the season has started for fall. 3" are expected overnight. The morning was spent in a final attempt to gather up the leaves we wanted gathered up. You can only mulch so many of them into the yard before they start with the killing of the grass. It is bitterly cold, and there is a ripping wind, as I learned on a 6 mile run this morning. It is time now to move to spin classes and to take things indoors.  The beet juice worked brilliantly as a dye on the guitar, taking it from a piece of wood: To this (which was quite deep after...I actually lost track of how many coats, after I lost track of how many times I sanded the wood): And a wipe-on poly finish sealed in the color: This little project has ended up making my most expensive guitar. As the bits and pieces (Seymour Duncan Hot Rails for Tele pickups, string trees, output jack, 500K ohm pots, bridge, copper tape for making cute little Faraday cages for the electronic bits) it's added up...especially wi

  Strictly speaking, the guitar I'm building isn't precisely the garden. I'm going to stain the body with juice from beets that were grown in the garden. I guess that does make it garden related after all. Usually, the deep red staining quality of beets is a nuisance. But it's precisely the opposite of that in this application. It's amazing how toxic some of the stuff that they coat guitars in is. Nitrocellulose - don't even get me started. I had this custom pick-guard with the honeycomb pattern worked up by this guy in Canada with this business, Rusted Relics , and I've got a set of bumble-bee control knobs for it.  This is going to be a big weekend for closing down the garden. After last week's mostly hiatus because of the half-marathon I ran leaving me in some pain and without a lot of extra energy, it's time to dig down and wrap it up. The Crimson King maple dropped most of it's leaves yesterday, and a strong wind is finishing it off this mor