Late Fall Garden 2009

The Gilliam's from Garner have had a nice fall thus far. Our trip to Cape Hatteras/Frisco, NC was fabulous in many respects, disappointing in others. The weather in October can yo-yo between cold and mild. During our annual beach vacation it was mild and the water was still warm so surfing was a near daily activity. The waves were real good on several days. The disappointment was the fishing, but hey you can't win em' all. Our vacation rental had pool and a game room with a foosball table. Cecilia's favorite part of the vacation was playing foosball believe it or not. Unfortunately I did not take many good pictures to document our trip, but here are a couple. Cecilia out by the pool at night with the dogs and a self-picture on the drive with the wolf pack chillin.




The fall garden is one of our most productive this year. Broccoli has grown like gang busters, enough so that we've been eating it several times a week and already frozen a bunch for later in the winter. A new crop has been swiss chard, which is very much like spinach in taste, use and nutritional density. I made a swiss chard and kidney bean soup that was very tasty. I started to love greens in soup. Friday night I made two swiss chard, jalapeno and cheese quichs that turned out near perfect. We also have a little spinach and lettuce for salads. Collards are another significant crop that will be available all winter. These plants reach their best sweetness once hit by frost. Since we've yet to have a good frost they have not been harvested yet, but after next weekend we'll start eating collard greens. Here are some pictures of our humble aboad and the garden and pets.

Fall Garden

I decided to plant at least parts of the fall garden earlier this year, in particular, the broccoli and collards which are both power foods. Both took advantage of the high sun angle and as a result, are much larger than the plants last year. Improvement in the soil fertility has also played a part. Here are a few pictures. We have broccoli, collards, swiss chard, lettuce, cabbage, spinach, brussel sprouts and some cool season herbs like cilantro, parsley and shallots.

One Garden of Gilliam

On the menu tonight, filet Mignon, garden fresh tom-cuc salad, green beans and grilled squash!

Banana Peppers

These peppers are really the first significant pick from little summer garden so far. We're about ready to get into the squash within the next week. We've also had a few cucumbers and I made a batch of petso, so the fun begins. Finally found a pressure canner, but I had to go with a new one at Husdson's ACE hardware and have it ordered.

Sunday Garden Blog

Crops are doing fine. The peppers are doing much better than the last few years. I think the dirt is improving. Tomatoes of all varieties are growing like weeds, many just started producing small fruit as well or better than last year. I completed my potato trough shown in one picture... Hope it works. Enjoy!

Disingenuous and Hyperbolic

Disingenuous: Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating

Hyperbolic: exaggerated

We experienced quite a bit of hoop-la ragarding the historic nomination of Sotomayor to the SCOTUS. It's my view the attacks on her are a bit disingenuous and hyperbolic.

A big claim is that she's a reverse racist. If so you'd think her rulings would support that claim. Another is that she uses empathy on the court that may impact her decisions. We'll here are the facts from her rulings where race/discrimination were present.

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/category/commentary-and-analysis/

It seems to me that there is an infinitely simpler and more accurate way of figuring out whether Judge Sotomayor decides cases involving race fairly and dispassionately - read her decisions. So I did: I am in the midst of reviewing every single race-related case on which she sat on the Second Circuit.

There are roughly 100. They cover the gamut from employment discrimination to racial bias in jury selection. I decided that I would stop and write an interim report once I got through her 50 most recent race-related cases other than Ricci because the numbers are sufficiently striking and decisive. Here is what I found.

In those 50 cases, the panel accepted the claim of race discrimination only three times. In all three cases, the panel was unanimous; in all three, it included a Republican appointee. In roughly 45, the claim was rejected. (Two were procedural dispositions.)

On the other hand, she twice was on panels reversing district court decisions agreeing with race-related claims - i.e., reversing a finding of impermissible race-based decisions. Both were criminal cases involving jury selection.

In the 50 cases, the panel was unanimous in every one. There was a Republican appointee in 38, and these panels were all obviously unanimous as well. Thus, in the roughly 45 panel opinions rejecting claims of discrimination, Judge Sotomayor never dissented.

It seems to me that these numbers decisively disprove the claim that she decides cases with any sort of racial bias.

Just a few personal thoughts on the comment that Sotomayor made regarding a Latia woman making better decisions than a white male. If you believe this is controversial then it may be wise to read the several paragraphs surrounding this statement, and we should consider very similar, if not the same comments made by one of the most conservative members of the court.

In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

I also hope that by raising the question today of what difference having more Latinos and Latinas on the bench will make will start your own evaluation. For people of color and women lawyers, what does and should being an ethnic minority mean in your lawyering? For men lawyers, what areas in your experiences and attitudes do you need to work on to make you capable of reaching those great moments of enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been able to reach. For all of us, how do change the facts that in every task force study of gender and race bias in the courts, women and people of color, lawyers and judges alike, report in significantly higher percentages than white men that their gender and race has shaped their careers, from hiring, retention to promotion and that a statistically significant number of women and minority lawyers and judges, both alike, have experienced bias in the courtroom?

Here are the same comments made by Alito:

ALITO: I don't come from an affluent background or a privileged background. My parents were both quite poor when they were growing up.

And I know about their experiences and I didn't experience those things. I don't take credit for anything that they did or anything that they overcame.

But I think that children learn a lot from their parents and they learn from what the parents say. But I think they learn a lot more from what the parents do and from what they take from the stories of their parents lives.

And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.

And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result.

But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country."

When I have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me.

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who's been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I've known and admire very greatly who've had disabilities, and I've watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn't think of what it's doing -- the barriers that it puts up to them.

So those are some of the experiences that have shaped me as a person.

Spring Gardening V2.2009

Temps have really risen in the last few weeks. The ground must hit and activation temperature that sets the right environment for plant growth. The more direct sunlight does not hurt either. In the last couple of weeks all spring and warm season crops have taken off big time.

What you see here are radishes popping out of the foreground... Spinach in the midground... And Bok Choy/Kalirobi in the background.









We're starting to eat salad for most meals now that the planter with new chicken poop compost and leaf lettuce mixture has matured. The arugula is tremendous.











Fence


Potatoes

Porpoises

We had a wonderful weekend at the beach. Steve and Mel invited us to Oak Island, near where Mom use to stay, for the weekend (Yaupon Beach). Steve, Doug (Steve's good friend) and I hit the inlet in Steve's brothers 23' boat. We punch in a number and the distance registered 67 miles. We took accepted the risk and pounded our way out for 3 hours in reasonably calm seas. We caught 6 mahi-mahi before the porpoises (porpie?) showed up. I took some great pictures as the water was clear and the sea calm. I made the attempt to touch one, but could not reach that far, but came within a few inches. For about 15-20 min there were 20 or so surrounding the boat, jumping and swerving through our baits, and many more out across the horizon feeding on bait fish. It was one of the best encounters I've had the pleasure to observe.We left at 5 pm and barely made it back before dark; a total distance of 150 or more miles.

Trips to the beach when I was little must have seared the ocean on my brain; I love the marine environment :-)

New Fence

Thanks Dad!

Dad gave me a number of black locust post for a new fence that I'm building around the rest of our back yard. This is the area where I have our garden and chicken coop. I wanted to protect the garden, compost pile, cats and chickens from neighborhood dogs and or other animal threats. Plus there must be some primal thing of marking one's territory that's going on :-) I used Dad's posts, but had to buy cedar cross rails to make the split rail look that I'm after. Here's a couple of pictures of the progress thus far. It's taking a bit longer than I expected, but for the most part all I need to do is put up the welded wire fencing now.



Bees... A friend is into beekeeping and he had extra hives, so gave me one. I picked up a box of bees last Sunday. It was quite exhilarating to say the least dumping a box of swarming bees into a hive. Not one bee stung me though, so they must like the Gilliam's. Evidently Tulip Poplars have a ton of nectar and we have a ton of poplars in our forest, so the bees are coming back to the hive so full of nectar that they can barely fly.

Spring Gardening V1.0.2009

Cilantro is a favorite (bright green stuff middle left). This stuff came up from seed last fall and survived all winter. Diced tomatoes, diced onion, chopped cilantro, little lime juice, salt and pepper is great with chips, eggs, burritos, etc. An easy cheap app.

We're waiting for the white Delewares to start laying any week now.

Atilla the black hen is reliable though! She lays an egg with a deep golden yolk that out sizes the large category grocery eggs.

Wahoo

I went fishing this weekend and caught one of the most sought after game fish in NC. Wahoo make a great run and are one of the top 3-4 best tasting saltwater fish, although lasts night it was at the top of that list in this household. We had blackened wahoo steaks on a bed of spanish rice, black beans, pica de gallo drizzled with chipotle ranch.

Here's what turned out to be a pretty good picture. The fish was 55 inches and 40 lb.




Here's a an old picture of the last wahoo caught about 5 years ago:



For kicks here's a mahi-mahi we caught last year. On the trip this week we caught about 8 mahi-mahi like this out of 15 strikes. Also picked up on blackfin tuna.

Snow and chickens

I'm writing this morning because we have a couple hour work delay because of the March 1, 2009 snowstorm. I'm waiting to here back from the Marion family to see how much accumulated in Marion and Morganton. From the radar it looked like a nice 4-6 inches, maybe?? We ended up with a couple inches last night. If the atmospheric temperatures were a couple of degrees cooler it could have been an epic 12" + snow considering all the cold rain we had, but that's NC snow for you. Here's a few pictures.



In other news... I finished the chicken tractor and bought 4 Rhode Island Red pullets and two other mixed breed hens that were suppose to be laying already. I got the two older hens first and promply made the poor choice of moving the tractor while the hens were in the run and they both got loose. It's been 8 days and have not been able to catch the darn things, and have not even seen them this weekend, so they could be gone for good. Oh well. The other four are still several months from laying. I found a local chicken farm that has a couple hens that are laying and plan to get one this week, so we don't have to wait any longer for our fresh eggs. BTW, 8 week old chickens are so cute. Here's a few pics of the tractor and little chicks.

Update: I meant to post the blog above once I took a few pictures. I just got the pictures, but a few things have occurred since the post above. 1) Our dogs were so excited by the chickens that they found a way to open the gate so they could get a closer look. After a whole day alone they dug out around one side of the chicken coop and the little chicks got out. Our younger dog Cady killed all four, or at least I found the carcasses of three of them. A few days prior I did get another older hen that is laying, so I moved the coop so there is no chance the dogs can get to it again. Since this occurred on Friday our new hen has laid an egg every day, so we're finally have tangible returns on our investment. In the last picture you'll notice I put the coop near our garden. I'm using the hen to till and fertilize the soil, and in a month or so, I'll extend our garden to include this area.

Chicken Tractor

What the heck is a chicken tractor? Well, thanks to Mother Earth News and a few web resources I decided to go with a portable chicken coop often referred to as a chicken tractor. The main advantage of course is the ability to be transient. Moving this every few days gives the chickens fresh ground to forage through and a natural fertilizer treatment. We plan to make several trails through our forest; I think pulling this through the forest slowly will help create trails.

Taking a cue from Dad, the entire tractor was made from reclaimed or scrap wood, minus the roof, chicken wire and hinges that I had to buy from Lowes. I found an scrap pile of wood on a lot down the road and looked online to see who owned the property. It was some investment group out of Louisiana, so decided to just take it. 5 pallets were bought for $5 and used as the base and side paneling of the hen house. I was even able to reuse the nails. I'm off today and will install the chicken wire to form the run.


BASE, 2x10 green treat split in half and a pallet at one end to make the base structure.


Hen house built. You'll notice the wheels at the rear. It looks heavy, but actually rolls nicely on the lawn. The roof has hinges on the front, so it lifts up from the rear. I plan to put the nesting boxes along the back wall, so I can lift up and easily retrieve eggs, or clean.

Projects Complete, Projects Started

We've been rather busy over the last few weeks. Cecilia has been feeling much better over the last month since she's started taking a suite of vitamins. This is the busy season at Progress Energy, so the stress level is a little high at work, but she's handled it well. She's looking two months out when the work level drops, and she'll be able to take a week off for her own personal enjoyment.

Speaking of time off, our group at work accomplished two goals last year. 1) We successfully implemented some physics modules in a new weather model and tested, so we're ready to transition from an older model to this "next generation" weather model for use with our air quality model. 2) We developed what is termed a coupled meteorological-air quality model. Basically, the weather model above was connected "in-line" with our air quality model, so they are both running in synchronicity. The weather model passes atmospheric conditions to the air quality model, then the AQ model uses that to move pollutants around as it steps forward in time, then the AQ model passes pollutant information to the weather model, which impacts the amount of radiation, it steps forward in time and passes the new info to the AQ model. At any rate, this was a big project and although our computer science expert did most of the programming, I helped with various parts around the edges. Back to time off, my boss came to me this week with a piece of paper and told me I got a bonus for last years work. I thought it would be a little money or a day or two of payed vacation. When I read the bonus it said 40 hours of time off. Needless to say, I was estatic to get a whole extra week off this year. I looked at what I have saved up now and have 60 hours already in the bank this year.

On to the projects underway... I should have my fence complete today. After work this week, the prep work on the last section of fence was done. All that needs to be done today is laying out the woven wire, stretching and driving the metal posts. Here is the section of fence I completed last weekend.



A couple other projects done over the last few weeks are my worm bin and seed starter table. Thanks to Mother Earth News and my neighbor who's sister is really into worms, I decided to turn our scrap food into prime fertilizer. We have been composting our scraps for the last few years, but it just seemed you have to wait too long to get the good soil. So, I got a couple of rubbermaid containers. Holes were drilled in the bottom of one container, food scraps, minus any meats is placed in the bottom and covered with a mixture of loose soil and shredded newspapers (I have a lot of newspapers that need to be recycled). 4 dozen red wiggler worms were bought at the local bait shop and placed in the bin. The worms dig down and process the scraps then turn to worm castings. After one week all the food was gone, so I dumped the next load of scraps and covered. Evidently, after a few months the bin will have thousands of worms and a harvest of worm castings I can use for starting my plants. So, with very little effort you can basically nourish new plants that you'll eventually eat with the scraps of the plants you just ate. It's a neat sustainable and efficient system.

The other small project was to make use of a table we bought a while back only for the top. Part of the top (butcher block) was used for the back splash in the bathroom I did a year ago. Last year I tried to use the table to start seed with one small grow light, but it did not work that well. My neighbor told me his Dad always used flourescent lights to start seed. We had a 2 ft flourecent light fixture in our bedroom closet that was replaced. This was the perfect size for the small table. My problem was two fold. 1) A reflecting hood to focus the light downward was needed and 2) The light needed some type of bracket that would allow for easy adjustment as the plants grow. The fun part was trying to figure out how to do this at minimal cost. My answer to the hood was a cheap aluminum vent pipe, and for the bracket, PVC pipe and parts. All of the parts were less than $10, but the bulbs with correct light for plants did add $12. Here is the final product. The light is hooked to a chain that can be adjusted.

Snow Day

What a great extended weekend! We were off work this past Friday and I had Monday off for the MLK Holiday. I woke Monday morning and the computer models indicated the likelihood of a nice snow storm Monday night into Tuesday which verified. Snow fell hard from early Tuesday morning through 1 pm or so. Our storm totals here, just south of Raleigh, ended up being the greatest in the whole state at around 6 inches. It also worked out nicely that we were able to watch the inauguration!

Here are some pics of the house during the storm.





Our dogs had a snow day as well. Since roads were closed for the most part and there was no worry about them running out to the main road, they were allowed to run free in the neighborhood for several hours.





I worked hard all weekend and Monday, and achieved my goal of putting all the posts in the ground for our back lot fence. My neighbor Greg Petersen has the fence left over from his effort a few years ago, so once the cement sets this week, I'll be able to stretch the fence. He's selling me the the fence for $100. I spent $150 on posts and required tools like post hole diggers, spade and fence pliers. That puts the costs of the fence at less the $300.

Here is the fence line along the very back part of the lot as indicated by the red line in the previous blog entry.




Here is the fence line closest to the house. This was my first ever shot at setting fence posts, so you'll notice it's not perfect.



Here are some pretty pictures of the snow in our little patch of forest and the neighbors farm.