Weekend Update

Eve purchased two sampler bags of garlic from the Boulder Farmers' Market a week or two ago. Over the week and days I have prepared the soil for their planting. Today I am happy to report that using wide row and closer spacing, I set all the garlic separated into cloves into a foot-wide, shallow trench. I ameliorated the hard, clay soil over a week ago with sand dug into the trench area, on the south-side of the garden space, and amended the soil with "green soil", a marine mineral potassium source, along with wood ashes for a more immediate source of K and bone meal for phosphorus, P. Both nutrients are essential for root growth and general vigor. I worried about wood ashes adding to the alkalinity of the soil, but I might add garden gypsum for P and S later, in the spring. A nearby trench is ready for wide row planting of spinach. That crop will withstand and thrive in the cooling temperatures and even overwinter under the snow!

Mary asked me to help her with some mandolin scale notations. I shared that the 5ths tuning allows easy open string scales on the open, 2nd, 4th and 5th string with the neighboring string fretted the same way providing the rest of the major scale. She practiced strumming those frets for half of the major scale on the open strings. I also looked at the major scale chords printed on another sheet she'd downloaded from the web. I was writing out the ascending and descending major seventh (M7) chords on paper when she thought to ask for help. I am glad to have been able to help at all. Her wrists being more supple and fingers more extended should let her explore the fret board and sound patters, major scale halves and chords, for some time. I will get back to the saxophone and the bass as well. Stay tuned (har - couldn't help that one...)