What is there to say? Be prepared for the focus here to get smaller, small to the count of my fifty-by-one-forty foot lot. I am going into nearly full news blackout mode, because I just can’t even begin to formulate a way to deal with this madman president and his end-time cronies who actually seem to want a war. I really thought we’d avoid this — perhaps it’s my tendency toward optimism, but somehow I though that millions of people marching in the streets all across the globe might make some impact on this president. But I’m now convinced that he’s such an elitist bastard that he sees all the opposition as proof of his own righteousness. Now let’s hope he doesn’t declare martial law and call off the 2004 elections. Now let’s hope the Democrats perhaps awake from their slumber and do something.

In the meantime, LivingSmall will concern itself with building a garden, growing flowers and vegetables, and the reading and writing of books.

On the garden front, the fabulous local hardware store, Kenyon Noble delivered the wood for my raised beds this morning. Delivered it for free, mind you, unlike a certain big box hardware store that has opened in Bozeman. Delivered by a cheerful man who assured me that he dug through all the 2″x12′”x12′ boards to find me nice straight ones that weren’t split. So, this weekend I’ll be building my slightly elaborate raised bed kitchen garden, with some help from the brother. I’m trying very hard not to be seduced by the warm weather. It isn’t spring yet. We’ll still have more hard freezes. This weekend I also pruned the remaining two apple trees, which was enormously satisfying as I got to both lop off enormous limbs with my handy little hacksaw, and got to climb the tree to do it. Other garden chores included moving rocks to dismantle the rock garden I built on New Years Day (changed my mind about that one), built a low stone wall/pile from the stones, and put up lots of wire fencing to begin training the dogs about which parts of the yard are garden, and which are yard. That is going to be an ongoing task, I’m afraid. They currently seem to think the dormant perennial bed is the place they should poop.

And today’s excitement is the arrival of my propagation heat mats … I hung the hand-me-down shop lights in the basement this weekend, and I now have two very nice 3’x4′ surfaces on which to start propagating seeds. Also another surface of the same size (old metal utility shelving units that were in the garage in California) that I’ve made into a sort of gardening desk. I’ve got all the books down there, and the calendar, and the notebook in which I’m trying to keep track of what happens when. It feels kind of like Ranger Rick science … like when I was a little kid with my microscope and chemistry set doing “experiments”. Although my degrees are all in English, I was a real science wannabe, and did a considerable amount of environmental biology as an undergrad. So I want to start building some data on my little corner of the universe. That is, of course, if our president doesn’t start WW3 and bring us all to nuclear (nuc-u-lar) destruction.