Trevor @ TheYoungPages.com

Time for another gardening update.

Tomato plants are doing nicely.  There are six which have grown a lot, three of which have flowers.  I think that they are a mixture of plum and cherry tomatoes, but all will be revealed in the next week or two as the fruit develops.  I have erected wire cages for three of them, and will enclose the other three soon.  The wire is 6 inch concrete-reinforcing mesh.

Corn is doing very well indeed - definitely higher than knee-high by the fourth of July.  I can see the ears forming inside them.  They look great.  The beans are also starting to flower, which is exciting.  They are happily climbing up their bamboo canes.  The courgettes are flowering as well, although they aren’t looking too healthy really.  The best cucurbit I have growing is the pumpkin plant which I didn’t plant, but which grew from the compost I used.  That is doing great and has a very nice looking pumpkin already.  I’ll post a picture some time.

The potatoes are interesting, and haven’t really changed much recently.  I don’t know if this is a problem or not.  And if it is, I don’t know what to do about it.  They have basically stalled as well.  So I’m just ignoring them for now.  I don’t think that they are supposed to do anything until it starts to get cooler again.  We’ll see.  Sweet potatoes on the other hand are growing nicely.  Lots of new growth there, on my “hobbit graves”.  I’m excited about them.

I think pea season is over for now.  We had a few peas, which was good.  Pippa enjoyed opening them.  I’ll plant some more later in the year, once things start to cool down.  Strawberry season is also done.  We had a few nights of abundant strawberries.  There were also a few raspberries from the canes which I transplanted earlier this year.  I wasn’t expecting anything, so that was a pleasant surprise.

Unfortunately I lost a lot of my tree fruits.  My quince tree now only has one quince - the healthier looking one disappeared one day.  I think a bird stole it.  And there are only half a dozen plums left on the plum tree.  I think that it was too dry for it - since I started watering it, none of the plums have fallen off, compared with the dozens which fell before.  Oh well.  I’ll know for next year.

My flowers are also flowering at the moment.  I have cosmos and phlox, which are both adding a very small splash of colour to our garden.  So small that I don’t think anyone except me has noticed them.  The roses are also in bloom, which is a bigger splash, but I can’t take any credit for that.

The weather has been hot and dry lately.  Very dry.  The lawn is yellow, and the ground all cracked and dry.  I blame the poor courgettes on the dry weather, as I’ve not watered them at all.  Maybe there is another lesson there.  I’ve been watering the tomatoes and the sweet potatoes and the trees diligently recently, but the corn covers too wide an area, and the courgettes are all in that area.  The beans and corn both seem to be fine in the dry weather.  I’m going to have to try to improve the water-retaining qualities of my soil in future seasons.  Many days for the past few weeks there has been a 50% chance of rain, but we haven’t had any of it.  And it hasn’t even been that sunny.  Sunny enough, but cloudy.  I wish that if it was not going to rain it would at least be sunny, but it is not.  Oh well.

So anyway, things are finally looking up.  Tomatoes in sight (well, flowers anyway) - still a month behind everyone else’s.  And corn developing on target, as far as I can tell.  Just the potatoes which I am unsure about.

Six months to go…

My first job - a nice easy topic.  The only problem is what is my first job?  I guess that my first paid job was newspaper delivery.  The first paper I delivered was a weekly free paper, which gave me a small amount of pocket change (literally) every week.  I was paid according to the number of advertisement flyers I had to deliver with the paper - the more there were, the more I got paid, but the longer it took.  It wasn’t long before I moved to a real paper-round.  I got a morning paper-round Monday - Saturday.  I think that I actually quite enjoyed it.  It was fun being out and about in the “early” morning (I think that I started my route at 7 or something).

If newspaper delivery doesn’t qualify as a job, then my next proper paid job was working at a nursing home. I worked there one evening a week, for a couple of hours.  I think that I made more in those two hours than I made delivering papers (which I was still doing).  I had to collect dirty dishes from the dining room and the residents’ rooms, wash them in the dishwasher and put them away.  It wasn’t too bad, except for working with all the congealed soup and cold cups of tea which were half sugar.

I didn’t stay for long at that job, but got my first proper job.  My first job that I could still be doing now, and people would not look down at me too much.  My first non-high school student job.  I think people might not be too pleased with me if I was still working at Maccy-D’s, but it is probably the first of my “first jobs” which I would go back to, if I had to.

I worked at two different restaurants (actually three - I was a special guest / star chef at another one for a night).  One was in Cheltenham, where I lived with my parents, the other in Edinburgh where I went to university.  Working for Ronald was actually mostly fun and not too bad either.  I had some friends from school who did it, and I followed them, and have now passed on the tradition to my brother.  Some of the people who worked there when I did are still there - see! I could still be there too.  I only worked two evenings a week, starting at 6, and going until 11.  And that is a nice easy shift to work - I never worked a weekend day (maybe once) or Friday night (maybe once too) in my life.  Weekday evenings are quiet, and I knew what to expect.  It would stay busy until 7, when the earlier shift ended, and then remain quiet until it was time to go home.  Even by 9, we were only getting three or four customers per hour.  The busiest time I ever worked was just after a football match in Edinburgh.  Then it got very busy, and not so much fun.

To begin with, I worked in the kitchen, solely.  I enjoyed life in the kitchen, and got good at flipping burgers.  Not that there is any burger flipping at McDs.  But then I moved to Edinburgh, where someone decided I should move onto a till.  I didn’t enjoy that as much, partly because I was so self-conscious about being English in a very Scottish area of town.  I didn’t have any trouble with it though, and people tended to be good-natured about it.  A few of my co-workers made an issue of it, but nothing serious.

Oh, and yes, I would (and do) still eat under the Golden Arches.  I would much sooner eat there than go to a nursing home.

You can read all about Jodi’s first job at her blog.

I think that the USA in recent years has lost some of its republic nature. Many aspects remain - for example Al Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election, but the laws of the republic said that the election is not decided by the popular vote, and so, by the rules of the electoral college, G.W. Bush won. An example could be made of the recent Democrat presidential nomination. The rules of this nomination are not as rigid as federal elections, and the democratic (lower case ‘d’) nature of the primaries meant that it was hard for either Clinton or Obama to obtain a significant majority. Both tried to bend the rules to benefit themselves.

In general, over the years, the American public (and that of other Western countries) have ceded more and more of their personal liberties to the government, and this process continues as people want more and more from the government. Of course this is inevitable - everyone wants something for “nothing”, due to man’s selfishness - man is sinful and things tend towards corruption.

There is one final government system which has not yet been attempted. I believe that God will bring it in upon the return of Christ. It is another form of the now defunct theocratic kingdom, this time with a perfect, sinless, mediator between man and God. Christ will reign from Jerusalem over the whole earth - everyone will be under His perfect authority. But, in the end, even that will not be enough. Sinful man will still rebel and the final battle between good and evil will take place (Rev. 20:7-10). The reason for this is that natural man is sinful and no external controls can prevent his rebellion from God. After God has finally shown that however He “tries” to control sin, it will still manifest itself, He will destroy this world with all its sin and create a new, perfect heavens and earth where no sin will ever enter or influence.

So there you have my rather pessimistic (but optimistic in the long run) view of human history and government. With all that said, and believing that things are just going to get worse until Christ’s final government starts, who would I vote for (if I had a vote(!)) and who do I think will win? Assuming that the choice is basically either McCain or Obama, it would, obviously, have to be McCain. He is not perfect (even as an imperfect human), but definitely the better of the two. I hope that with a McCain presidency, the “corruption” (and I don’t necessarily mean bribes etc) of government would be slower than with an Obama presidency. Who will win? Obviously I don’t know, but I do think that McCain could do it. I do think that if the end of America’s influence in the world is near (as I think will happen eventually), then Obama will win. imho.

There have been many types of government since Nimrod, of course. Some better than others. The majority have been set up by man and developed and modified over the ages. God has had one more “attempt” at a government - the theocracy of Israel. This can be summarised as the rule of God mediated by man. The laws are God’s and He is “in charge”, but He conducts His work through a spokesman, someone who carries out God’s orders. The laws of God’s theocracy for Israel are given in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, and the “theocratic kingdom” began with the Exodus of Israel from Egypt. The first mediator was Moses and he was followed by a number of judges. The nature of the kingdom then changed and the mediator became a king. Of course this kingdom did not work either - Moses sinned and could not enter the Promised Land, the judges and kings sinned and the people sinned. Basically everyone sinned, and God showed that people would sin even when living under God’s direct rule mediated by a sinful human being. The people were judged for their sin and for the sin of their leaders (e.g. 2 Sam. 24:1-17), and in the end the theocratic kingdom could not be continued and God left it (Ez. 9:1-11:25).

There are people out there who believe, as I do, that a theocratic kingdom is the best form of government. They believe, unlike me, that it is our duty to enforce it here and now. There are two major problems with this. The first is that a theocratic kingdom has to be set up by God - when He set one up before it was after what one could call a major interference by God in human history - the Exodus of the Israelites. The Israelites did not choose to be a theocratic kingdom - God called them and set it up. And of course a man-instituted theocracy is only a stone’s throw from Islamic theocracies, and they can not be described as the “best form of government”. The second major problem is that it does not work. Israel proved that the concept fails, and if it did not work for them, why should it work for us?

It is my belief that the best form of human government is the republic, which I narrowly define as government by law, if that makes sense - the law is the ultimate authority, not the people (democracy) or an elite group of people (aristocracy, oligarchy) or an individual (monarchy etc). True republics are rare, and tend to be short-lived. The USA was originally set up as a republic, but I would argue no longer functions completely in that capacity. Republics need to have good laws and good citizens and good leaders to be maintained. The initial laws of the USA republic were not perfect, and therefore had to be “amended”, and continue to be changed, which is where the problem with a republic starts. In republics (my definition), the people are able to change the law, through their elected leaders. But their power is attenuated by the law. In the US, in theory, the system of “checks and balances” prevents true democracy - the majority exercising their “power” over the minority. The problem starts when the equilibrium of checks and balances is lost, and branches of the government become too powerful. This is cumulative - the more power a certain branch obtains, the more it acquires, because it can rewrite laws in its favour.

I wanted to write a couple of posts on the upcoming (in five months!) US presidential election - about the two main parties and their candidates, but I decided against it. Instead I’m going to write about my thoughts on government in general.

I’m going to start off (and remain!) rather theological. As far as I am concerned, human history is the story of man’s rebellion from God and God’s “attempts” to get man to obey His laws. I say “attempts” because obviously God could make us obey Him if He so desired, and because He knows that ultimately they will all fail - that mankind is inherently sinful and no external controls can keep him in line. Dispensational Christians (and I must admit that I am one, for lack of a better name) say that the age of government started with Noah. Before this was the time of innocence (Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden) and then conscience (which didn’t work too well - this age ended with the Flood - and every person knows ‘easily’ how they can ignore their conscience).

Libertarianism, as I understand it, desires to bring mankind back to this period of conscience - they want to minimise government interference and uphold personal liberties. In theory I think that this is a great idea - I would certainly classify myself as a small-government conservative, which is a small step away from being a libertarian. But in practice it doesn’t work. The problem is that libertarians are influenced by Pelagianism. This heresy basically says that man is not inherently sinful, but that he is still able to choose good over evil. But man is inherently evil, and cannot avoid sinning. I have to use the first of Calvinism’s TULIP points, and say: Man is totally depraved. Not to mean that he is as evil as he could be, but that his whole nature is evil and separated from God.

Of course most libertarians are not anarchists - they do believe in some sort of small-scale government to settle disputes which cannot be settled within a family or locally. They would say that the main role of the government is to protect its citizens, both from their fellow citizens and from other governments. People do not need to be protected from themselves, but should be free to make decisions for themselves, without government interference. There is no one to protect citizens from their own government, which tends to grow and interfere more and more, which is why it should be minimal. Basically libertarians believe, as I understand it, that each individual is capable of governing himself, and will make “the right” decision. God has already tested this theory, however, and found that it does not work.

The government which God instituted after the Flood was not democracy, as much as Americans would like to believe democracy is the perfect, God-given system. It was simply the right of a man to execute judgement over another (Gen. 9v6). I don’t know exactly how this worked, but it gave society the God-given right, indeed responsibility, to execute a murderer. The two stories of murder in Gen. 4 (Cain and Lamech) both indicate that if anyone killed the murderer then they themselves would be responsible for murder, and liable for punishment. The government set up by God had the ability to execute someone under the authority of the law (of course someone taking revenge without the authority of the law was still liable to be punished).

It did not take long however for this system of government to become corrupted. Gen. 10 and 11 give a little information about Nimrod, who is believed to have set himself up as a ruler in opposition to God’s rule. Again there is little information about the nature of his government, but we do know that he abused his authority over people and did not use it for God’s glory - God judged his work by confounding his people’s tongues and scattering them across the face of the earth. At no time since then have all nations come together to work as one, or been under one ruler.

For six months I have been cycling two miles each way as part of my journey to work. I cycle two miles to a colleague’s house and then he drives the remaining 20 or so miles to work. And then back in the evening. I started right after Thanksgiving 2007, just in time for the long cold dark winter. It is now June and the long hot summer is here.

This week is the first time when I did not wear anything over my t-shirt in the morning. It has been warm enough to do that on the way home a few times, but this week is the first time when the mornings were not chilly. It was only two weeks ago when I stopped wearing gloves to cycle - woolly winter gloves - I don’t have any proper cycling gloves. I would love a pair - I wear a large if you are need to know for any reason. Then it was only a week or two before that when I stopped wearing a fleece to cycle - three layers of clothing. And a face-scarf as well to protect my poor nose from the cold dry air. I don’t have any problems with the air being too dry at the moment. Well into March I was wearing four layers of clothing on top - the above plus a coat - and two pairs of trousers.  They were the days when my coffee would freeze if it got spilt.

Cycling is certainly more enjoyable at the moment, when the temperature is more pleasant. I’m not sure how much fun it will be when the temperature gets very hot and there are proper summer storms. But I cycled all through the winter - I think that there were only three days when I didn’t cycle because of the weather, generally because it was too windy - and I’m sure I can make it through the summer too. I like cycling in the daylight - the worst part of cycling in the winter months is that it is dark for both rides. Being able to see makes things much more pleasant.

I currently give the guy who drives me in $10 each week for gas money. $1 each journey. I calculate that if I drove, I would spend $5 per day on gas. The drive is about 20 miles each way, and I get about 400 miles to a tank, so I fill up every 10 days and, at $4 per gallon, it costs $50 to fill up. That is $5 per day, or 8 miles per gallon. I pay tolls on top of that ($1.50 per day) (the guy I travel with now doesn’t take the turnpike). And then there is the unquantifiable “wear-and-tear” on the car. I think that it is certainly fair to say that I save $4 every day that I don’t drive though. Which is $20 per week, or $80 per month. For the six months I have been cycling, I have saved over $500. Ok, so that is an over-estimate - gas prices have not been that high for the whole time, but it is close enough.

Is it worth it? In an ideal world I would like to get rid of the car completely and save myself another $70 per month - and save $150 every month, but this is not an ideal world and I’m not currently in a position to be able to get rid of the car. As things stand now, I save $80 per month, but I am out of the house for two hours longer than if I didn’t cycle. My colleague likes to get in early and works almost a ten-hour day every day. I leave every morning one and a half hours before I would otherwise, and get home in the evening 30 minutes later than I would otherwise. Are the four dollars I save each day worth the two hours I lose? That is the big question.

A few hours later than promised - here are some photos of my plants (click on them for larger view):

Here is one of my tomato seedlings.  This is the smallest of the four which are growing nicely. 

These are my sweetcorn plants (the grass-like ones). 

This shows the damage done to one of my sweetcorn plants - the leaves have been completely severed and just lie on the ground behind it.  What a waste.  There is an intact corn plant behind.  The plant with the lighter green leaves is a zucchini (speaking of which, I noticed a flower on one of them this morning - zucchini soon!).  The plant directly behind the injured corn is a bean plant.  A rather sorry-looking example of one.

Here are my potato plants in their trash-can.  I originally planted them about eight inches from the bottom of the container, and it is now filled with soil to about eight inches from the top.  The red container is, in theory, for peanuts, which are seeming reluctant to grow.  The plants which are visible are radishes.

It has been over three weeks, and a lot has happened since I last wrote. As usual I’ll give a quick tour of the garden and what is happening. I have some photos which I will hopefully post later today.

The first question everyone has is about my tomato plants. I planted them out about three weeks ago and four of them have some substantial growth. I am very pleased with their progress, considering how doubtful I was about them last time. Four have substantial growth and there are another four or so which are still deciding whether to grow or not. Unfortunately I am not sure which varieties the four growing plants are - I will need to wait until they fruit to know whether they are plum or cherry tomatoes. I think that probably even these four most advanced tomatoes are at least a month, if not six weeks, behind where they should be. They are currently about four inches tall. When I see other people’s tomato plants, they are at least ten, if not twenty, times the size of mine (in volume, not height), and have some flowers, if not tomatoes, already. I have definitely decided that I transplanted the young seedlings into too rich soil. Anyway, I seem to have at least four plants which are doing fairly well, considering the slow start they had.

Next on my list is my corn. I have over a dozen corn plants for sweetcorn, and about eight for popping corn. They are doing well. Interestingly the popping corn seems to be doing slightly better, which surprises me - I thought that it might have been in a shadier place. The popping corn is currently about twelve inches high, and the best sweetcorn about ten inches high. There is a wide variety in the growth of the sweetcorn - some is still very short, I think because it is too shaded. This corn has also had to battle some pests. I’m not exactly sure what this pest is, but when I first planted the corn, I would sometimes check on it and some seedlings would have been uprooted. I don’t know if this was a bird or a squirrel. And now, when the plants are more established, their leaves are sometimes mysteriously cut. I’ll post a picture later. I think that this may be due to cutworms - I read somewhere in agricultural advice that you shouldn’t grow corn in a field that was a grassland the previous year, because of cutworms. Which is exactly what I did, and now I know why.

I think that the cutworms also attacked my bean plants, which are part of my three sisters garden. I originally planted three or four beans around each sweetcorn, but now they number about one-to-one. Something removed all the leaves from some of these beans. But the remaining ones are growing pretty well.

The third sister in my three sisters garden is zucchini (courgette). This is growing well, and I don’t really have any news on it.

My potato plants are the biggest success story in my garden so far this year. They are now probably over two feet tall, and I have mounded them up a few times. I need to do it again soon, but they are in a trash-can and need a lot of soil to fill it up.

On Friday my sweet potato plants arrived. These are the last plants for going into the garden. I planted nine sweet potato plants on Sunday. I built up two ridges, in theory about a foot tall, but in practice probably closer to half that. I used a lot of spaghnum peat moss to add bulk. I covered the ridge with some planter’s paper - black paper which helps to warm up the ground. I don’t know how the plants will do - in theory sweet potato plants are pretty sturdy, but I am expecting a few losses.

I am slightly disappointed with my quince tree - despite all the blossom on it, there are currently only two quinces developing. I don’t know why this is. Maybe that is all I should expect for a tree at this age. My plum tree is doing better - plenty of fruit on that. It is attracting lots of insects though. The youngest tender branches are covered with aphids, which are attracting ants and ladybirds (ladybugs) and other things. They don’t seem to be doing much damage. I think we will begin our strawberry harvest this week - some of the strawberries are turning pink.

I also have some eggplants growing. These seem to have the same malady as the tomato plants - they aren’t growing quickly at all and are probably even further behind than the tomato plants. My peas are growing well, and are flowering at the moment. We might get a few peas from them soon. The broccoli and the brussels sprouts are still there. One of them is doing well (I can’t remember which) and is about six inches tall.

Everything really seems to have taken off since Memorial Day weekend. The lawn is growing nicely and, in the back at least, looks nice and healthy. The temperature has been up to around 80F (27C), and not dropping much below 55F (13C) at night. It has also been nice and sunny, although we have had a couple of thunderstorms pass through.

My perfect holiday is somewhere away from home.  Although actually, even that is not necessary.  My perfect holiday is somewhere new - somewhere where I have never been before and can discover.  I don’t get much enjoyment from sitting on a beach, or exploring shops (except for interesting shops), or visiting museums or art galleries.  I enjoy little more than just driving or walking around taking everything in.  I don’t really have the need to go somewhere where they speak a foreign language, or eat strange food, or have a completely different culture to what I am used to, although these can all be fun bonuses.

The “novel” aspect of my ideal vacation, and the seeing new places aspect, means that even driving down unusual roads a few miles from home is enjoyable to me, and feels like a semi-vacation, even if it just for a few minutes.  Of course this is only true in certain circumstances - if I am lost (the once or twice that has happened!) and late for something, then it doesn’t really feel much like a vacation.

I am not much of a sun junkie, but neither am I a snow addict.  The sun is nice, of course, but I don’t need to go somewhere hot for a vacation.  For scenery I love mountains and the sea.  Preferably both together.  I love places where the mountains are close to the ocean, with cliffs, but also with nice sandy beaches.  At this stage of my life I prefer sandy beaches to rocky ones - I have outgrown fishing in rock pools, for now at least.  History is nice, but not essential.  I wouldn’t enjoy a solely city vacation, or an amusement park vacation, but both of these are fun for a day or two.

There are two holidays which really stand out in my memory as my favourite holidays.  The first was to the north of Spain when I was younger.  It had the perfect blend for me of beach, mountain and city.  We stayed in Llanes and spent time at the beach and in the Picos de Europa and visiting prehistoric caves and picturesque villages.  It was great.

Another perfect holiday memory for me was my trip with Jodi to the north of Scotland (I wonder if all my favourite places are at the north of a country).  I can’t remember everything that we did, but we stayed for a couple of nights in a tent in Talmine, near Tongue.  We went for a lovely walk along the road at 10:30 at night and it was still daylight.  It was wonderful.  There was plenty of beautiful scenery and nice beaches, although it was too cold to enjoy them really.  Jodi also climbed her first Munro, Ben Hope.  We had the perfect day for it, and had views towards the Western Isles and could see Orkney too.  There were also plenty of historic cairns and castles for me.  I had a wonderful time.

You can read about Jodi’s perfect holiday here.