Archive for June, 2009

Oh hello, There's really nothing cuter than a box full of ducklings, unless its a tiny flock of them roaming around your orchard weaving in and out of the motherwort forest under the protective scrutiny of mama duck. They're about ten days, maybe two weeks old. Takes about that long for the mom to let them out into the open. There are eleven of them and methinks more to come as there has been a whole lot of boinking going on through the late spring months. Why even now the hornyness continues in wild displays of porkitude characterized by things like over the back beak to wing stabilizing tactics and wild wing flappage while threading the needle. It all takes place in mere seconds which in duck time is the equivalent to how long it takes me to remember what a sex life was like. I called Doc Bebockboc and nurse Sally to have them come have a looksee. He said that if they're alive and well and out the nest, chances are that most will make it to maturity. Nurse Sally said to just approach them as though I was walkin' tippy toe on thin ice and talkin' in whispers like they was some biker nazi lookin' dude at a bar who's asking for my phone number. That actually happened to me once, so I knew exactly what she was talking about. Here's what passes for fun around the Rancho. Fill up a one by three foot seedling starter tray with water and pull up a chair. Before long those little ducklettes will find their way to the medium they were born to and hoist themselves up over the side of the tray to test the waters. Its not so deep as to keep them from standing up, but deep enough that they can retract their perfect little webbed feet and test their floatation and aquatic maneuvering skills. Roll up a phatty and take a couple of hits and accept the fact that you have nothing better to do and you've got yourself a perfectly fullfilling waste of time. Why nurse Cassie almost went into a swoon upon seeing them for the first time. I just looked at her and asked, "first ducklings?" "Oh my, yes", she said, fanning her face with her hand.. We've got a good crew on hand at the moment and getting a lot of work done. The jovial Jeremiah can't seem to help himself when it comes to being selflessly imbued and generous with his skills. Not for nothin' but if he keeps it up i'm gonna have to think of ways to piss him off just to make me appear less strident. The no till areas are looking great owing to the care and nurturing of "garden girl"  Noemie, newly arrived from France where she is attending agricultural college and is our latest prize on the wheel of fortune that is the w.w.o.o.f. program. She is tending to the chickens and ducks as well as watering and prettifying the vegetable gardens. Her english is weak but her joi de vivre is strong and what a lovely presence. Fortunately my pals over at Greenleaf Farm have a frenchy wwoofette on board as well, giving us limitless excuses to get together and swap lies over good food and drink. Having boxed my ears like the mercurial bantam weight that she is, nurse Lindsey has gotten through the inch of lead surrounding my common sense. Her web design ideas and skills have finally trumped my need to be the surly, insitant individualist, hell bent on building it My way which would have caused approximately 82% of the people who browse the world weird web to fall to the floor in paroxysms of laughter over viewing my messterpiece. "He used comic sans as a font fer' chrissake. What a maroon." We're respectable enough to be up on the web now with some spit and polish to come. There will be a slide show of my trip to Tiahuana in 73' because there's just no way to put such acts of animal husbandry into words. Go give us a hit at www.ranchorelaxzo.com . The mindorrhea will be archived under the blog tab and i'll probably be posting a page or two about this and that. We're working with vertical spaces these days. Comes a time when fencing takes on more tasks than just keeping the deer and pigs out. Putting down some eighteen inches of straw mulch about two feet out from the fence kills off the grass and weeds in about ten days. Takes a bit longer for the gnarlier roots to break down. Once a couple of weeks go by, we take our bean or pea starts and move away some of the mulch, dig a puka, plant the legume, water it and tuck it in with straw. Stays nice and moist, inhibits all but the most tenacious weeds, looks cool and lasts for many months at which time a cosmetic layer of four or five inches serves to keep the area weed free and damp. Looked like we were going to get a free mimi wheat crop out of some of the straw which was sprouting grain plants left and right from some residual seed, but the rodents had their own ideas about dealing with this unexpected gift. I'd enter one of the gardens anticipating that the plants i'd been watching for weeks would be swolen with wheat berries and every seed head was chopped off with a mini mulch pile of chaff surrounding the barren stem. Brash little fuckers. Then i got to thinking that they do about the same thing as me during the course of the day. Browse around spocking out the best grinds and harvesting them at their tender juiciest. I know for a fact that smartypantz was eyeballing the strawberries i picked today. She missed out because I got there first, had protected my territory and reigned in the bounty. Rats and mice are just better at it than me. Raticus Maximus, i slaughter thee with respect in my heart. We've also got lilikoi climbing the trees that can support their weight and beans climbing the papaya trees. Throw in a few melons and squash at the base of the papaya trees and you've got the trifecta. I am constantly reminded of how many layers of space there are to work with and how many plant guilds are begging to be tried. Lets see, what else? Oh yeah, we've got some Jatropha curcas seed coming in from India. It is a drought tolerant bush that produces seed very well suited to the extraction of bio diesel fuel. My thought was that it would be a good understory plant in the fruit tree orchards. We just got a 55lb. bag of organic cacao powder so the froozie crew will be in full swing pumping out the fruity treats as well as another batch of chocavopousse. Our first round of cocobanapousse should be coming up soon since we just cut a few stalks and are itchin' to try out this new treat on the unsuspecting public. And so it goes with nary a dull moment, routines that don't get old and a never ending series of natural soundings that speak in silence to the heart. Roger that. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, jp

Well howdy, Spoke with my good bud Grimes the other day and we decided that we weren't going to call our parties parties anymore. We're going to call them "Grimelocks". "Why?", you might ask. Well because we're really the only two guys we know who do this year in and year out for no particular reasons save the usual ones, i.e. desperate cry for attention, unyielding narcissism, free food, love of house cleaning and the ever present possibility that playing music for ourselves and our friends will somehow subdue the tide of unrelenting weirdness swirling about like smog from China and L.A. colliding over Haleakala. Music has that power to connect us in a place common and comforting. A place hopeful and in the groove. So, o.k. cool, second Grimelock of the season happening on July 5th, barring wicked bad rain, to be held at the Rancho from fourfiveish 'till I begin wielding a garbage bag, a broom and a scowl. Since it is fourth of July weekend, bring a pot luck dish that explodes, or bears the imprint of a patriot emptying his flintlock into some unsuspecting redcoat. Or just a flag will do. Woeful tales abound these days and I say rather than put on a happy face we should kvetch, kvetch, kvetch and then bllecchhcchhcchh some more.. It is catharsis, not optimism wandering blind that will move us toward dispersing the fog of fractured and fatuous consciousness masquerading as normal. It is empathy and dispassion that can both empty and fill our hearts with receptivity free of motive and virtuous in intent. Musicians worth their salt give freely, in the truest sense of the word. The joy is in the doing and the doing clings to nothing, like the blooming jasmine filling the night air and boldly going nowhere. So lets celebrate our tweensy little lives again and remind each other that truth is worth preserving and that kidding ourselves destroys all hope. When I was a kid, me and my bff's Reggie Logan and Tommy Whitmore had the great pleasure of spending some quality time on the links at Bethpage State Park out on long island. It's a beautiful spread of a couple of thousand acres carved out of abandoned potato farms. gently rolling hills and grazing land that got turned into five well maintained and increasingly difficult golf courses, four of which were eminently playable, especially if your prime directive was to goof off, smoke cigarettes, drink sodas, eat tuna sandwiches and those little cheesy crackers with peanut butter filling and pray for the one good shot that would bring you back with elevated norepinepherine levels. We had it made. Reggies older brother Bruno tended a string of vending machines and stocked them out of his garage at the hacienda del Logan. Talk about a score. He serviced every kind of machine known to modern man in the 50's and 60's. There were hot and cold drink machine stuffers, cigarettes of every cough, and the broadest selection of candy bar, cheesy poof, potato chip and packaged cookies in the known galaxy in case after case, stacked against the walls of the garage eight, ten feet high. Now Reg knew what the big sellers were and consequently knew that a few missing packs of unfiltered Kool menthols and Luckys would hardly be missed and that skimming the inventory was really doing Bruno a favor because hey, he was being a terrific big brother without even knowing it and Reg could kinda imagine liking him even though he was something of a schmuck. So we'd be cut loose at the clubhouse by a carpooling mom and walk the verdant fields armed with Arnold Palmer autographs, scuffed up golf balls and the luscious larcenous loot from the garage. We'd spend five or six hours wandering around in a nicotine fit hoping we had enough balls to last the round and enough matches to keep the chain of smoke going. Big fun. I can still remember some of the shots I hit. The courses are color coded and the yellow, red, green and blue courses had the least wait time in ascending order. We'd usually have to wait an hour or more to even get out on the yellow, which was considered the home of the hacker. Enter the legend, Bethpage Black. The hard core guys would come predawn to sign up for a three hour wait to tee it up on this masterpiece of a course. Designed by A.W.Tillinghast, it is the course on which the U.S. Open is being played this week. I played it in '01 when it was being groomed for the 02' Open. The rough was tall as Bobby Jones' nutsack and tees to greens seemed to span zip codes. I saw exactly where several of my balls disappeared into the primary rough and never found them. It is a brutal test of golf and even the worlds best will be left mumbling non sequiturs. The weather may be a factor as some rain is forecast. I will be couch bound and surrounded by a reminisence of garage goodies as I celebrate Long Island rowdy, course management, six hours a day of world class grimace and dismay and a few perfectly executed shots. Fairways and greens baby, fairways and greens. By the way, nicest greens i've ever seen. I've often thought about the notion of golf course retrofits or new buildouts that utilize the areas normally considered out of play and plant those areas with valuable tree crops and useful plant guilds. Water hazards could house and breed fish, fresh water shrimp, ducks and aquatic plants used for filtration and food. Foraging animals could be integrated slowly to provide weed control, fertilizer, eggs and meat. Communities that are planned around common park areas or golf courses or wooded lakes could easily plan for some measure of sustainability by simply choosing the right species of flora and fauna with which to work and then hiring a bunch of illegal aliens to take care of it. In many ways a move toward decentralizing giant industrialized systems of agriculture and energy is inevitable but the kicking and screaming is already evident and the firmly entrenched will not be easily moved. We're a culture of lip synching slogan slingers who rarely make moves designed to transcend self interest and who more often than not will take legitimate and urgent issues and turn them into t-shirts, coffee mugs, political slogans, bake sales, butt plugs, protest songs, wildass polemics and an upcoming movie of the week. I tawt I taw a puddytat. In the end its all the same, really. It's Humpty after the fall. Speaking of which, we've got nice eggs. Greens too as well as some fruits and a frozen foods section as big as Wyoming stocked with free range deer, turkey and pig which were flash frozen using the breath of a hundred ex girlfriends. They're just standing there, wide eyed and caught in mid thought as if its graduation day and the words to their speeches have gone begging. You'll find them to be great eating or lovely low maintenance pets. Also, in celebration of the U.S. Open we will be giving away t-shirts depicting a guy wearing a hat that says "I heart long island" and pointing at his balls with a caption that reads: "golf these." Nurse Lindsey is pounding away at the construction of our website and if one looks carefully , one can see the steam rising off her dimples, so intense is her effort. She sits there, hour after hour, pouring over layout, color scheme, pictures to import, links to create and ways to get me to quit changing my mind. While not actually saying it, she thinks "ohmygod, you are soooooo retarded". True enough. So, as I watch the crab spider who has spun its 3-d web in my office window wrap up a couple of morning gnats and then bite the head off an ant I bid you good day. Give us a call any old time for food or plants (878-6287), we'll check your credit rating and negotiate terms. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp

Oh Halo, There's a bit of magic happening in the lower orchard. I am reminded each morning as i make the rounds feeding the knuckleheads and watching the ducks emerge from the underbrush or fly down at me from all sides and apply full flaps at the last minute to land in less than classic fashion. Note to self: get "Ducks at War" flight simulation software.

The magic begins when I get a whiff of the scent of the Malabar Chestnut flower. There is nothing tangible about scent. It's a molecular phenomenon and as such not something we can grab or hold on to, but my, oh my, oh my, can it ever stop us in our tracks. Malabar Chestnut (Pachira aquatica) is a water loving, palmate leafed and spreading tree that can reach thirty or forty feet in the tropics and produce pods full of seeds that are nutlike, yummy and full of good stuffs. The creamy white flower projects hundreds of golden tipped four or five inch stamens in a showy display of seduction to any flying insect passerby. Sort of like walking by the open door to a bakery with a craving for eclairs and a sawbuck in your pocket. The flower is very short lived, and here's why. I can pick up the scent released by the dawn sunlight and carried by a mild zephyr at upwards of a hundred feet away and because I've forgotten that i had the same experience the day before at dawn, it startles and enraptures me anew. So potent is the seduction that it need only express itself for a short time to accomplish its goal. Like a Lola Falana lap dance. Such is the nature of molecular matter to infuse us with inspiration, to envelop us without clinging and disappear without a trace. Springtime brings so many scents. It should be inherant to any "complete" design model that scent adorn the proceedings at every possible opportunity and make us turn our minds to the expansive and inclusive nature felt in these interfaces with the molecular world. Speaking of which, i had an o.o.b.ex. once. I have this old bud name of Curly Clamberok who had a house in the coastal mountains south of San Francisco, out La honda way. I'd go visit from time to time to escape the smog of Menlo Park and commune with the trees and the bees and the buds. Now one time i was up there and we had commenced to playing some music and burning some gage and quaffing some chianti. It was one of those nights where the border between bodies and the space between bodies began to blurrrrr. There was a fire going in the wood stove and Curlys dog Peabrain was lying there doing his fetal position impression and an inch away from burning his tail off, as usual. As the evening wound down with the glowing embers, we all drifted off to our cozy spaces, leaving the warmth of the fire for goosedown bags and foam softened floors. As I lay there like one of those embers, i sat upright in a body made of tingling energy. There was no mistaking the fact that this other body was having a bit of a stretch, and no mistaking the fact that it was made of much finer stuff than the meatsack. It was still "me" and still vaguely defined, but liberated from any and all sense of limitation, like a scent on the breeze. So of course i freaked and as quickly as "i" had sat up, i lay back down, but with the sure and certain knowledge that embedded in this fleshsickle resides a flashy new ride just itchin' to cruise the galaxy. Comfort food for the Fear. The late Spring heat is coming on like a histamine cascade after a pollen release. What little firmness imparted to the surface of the soil by the recent rains has turned to dust and things start looking droopy by ten, ten thirty. Most of the green gardens have trees or edible hibiscus planted that will eventually provide shade for the more delicate stuff, but for now it's hand watering and quiet encouragment. Have been grateful for the late morning cloud cover and the mild winds. The big news is that the naranjilla tree which has been flowering for quite some time now, is beginning to set fruit. Boooya. Indigenous to Peru and points south the fruit, which looks a bit like a small orange, is used mainly for its juice but also eaten out of hand. It is a remarkably beautiful plant with large fuzzy green leaves bordered with dark violet piping with midrib and veins accented purple and white. I'm looking forward to the first taste of yard juice made from naranjilla mixed with mango or white sapote or papaya or lemon or surinam cherry or jaboticaba or tangor or lilikoi or duck pond water. Nurse Lindsay, a.k.a. genius girl, has us on the verge of entering cyberspace with a brand spankin' new website. We're working out the details and hope to be up and strumming in a week or two @ www.ranchorelaxzo.com. We've had a changing of the guard here as the couple from Iceland has departed, leaving eleven of their bereft of money suitcases for the burn pile (they look so deflated and sad). If i had a nickle for every piece of brickabrack that the neo-hips leave in their wake, i'd have about three fitty. They've been replaced by some old timers pushin' forty. He's a moose of a man with bright eyed energy brimming over and she, a lovely refugee from the world of painted faces. Since they only have to put in four hours work a day, they walk around afterwards in what could be described as a dither over what to do next. I suggested the usual things: pickin' and grinnin', smokin' and jokin', snoozin' and cruisin'. Told them to give it two weeks and they'd be figuring ways to shave their hours when I wasn't looking. I'm nothing if not the kindly modern day feudal lord who treats his serfs well. I remember asking a history professor what he thought the best form of government would be and he said, "a benevolent dictatorship with me at the helm". Me likey. Nurse Lindsey has fashioned the perfect replacement for the chocavopousse when we're running short on avos and long on bananas. After hours of painstaking sampling, she's come up with the chocbananpousse. A marriage of flavors which in some ways surpasses even the scent of Pachira aquatica in sublime olfactory reverie. One of those combos so pleasing to the palate that a pile of it the size of a t-rex turd wouldn't phase you. You'd just ask for a bigger spoon. And so it is here at Rancho Relaxzo where brainstorming is the soup du jour and anything goes comes a la carte. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp

Oh don't go, First off, I would like to issue an apology for getting some of the facts wrong in my letter of last week. My mom tells me that i started chasing ice cream trucks at the age of two and a half, not five. I'm not proud of it, I'm just saying. It's been looking like we were heading into one of those dry, brown, dusty summers, when three days of afternoon showers came to the rescue. The hills are greening up while i spend part of each day looking for the hidden containers that got filled with rain water and are now spawning hundreds of mosquitoes. There aren't too many things more irritating than a squadron of mosquitoes drillin' for the sweet red crude. They're little winged geologists, mining the gobs of viscous resources hidden just beneath the surface of our sparsely forested and pockmarked landscape. It's a matter of species security. Without blood, populations decline, the work force is decimated, depression and anger take hold, and nobody likes to do the zampoo-oogee angry and depressed. Populations decline further, water supplies dry up as global warming increases and eventually they're doomed. I dare say there's enough blood to power up the reproductive cycles of these frenzied flighted marauders for millenia to come. Question is, how to live in harmony, or is murderous rampage the only path worth pursuing when dealing with such a succubus? I will continue to seek out their source water and with one swift kick, end their tyranny. In the meantime, swatton. So me and nurse Lindsay did some shopping the other day and while walking around a certain downtown upscale hippy watering hole noticed a sign in the produce dept. that said, "tropical mango", blah blah a pound. So i checks it out with my " Nerdlingon Eye of Discrimination" and the liddle steeker on de fruit say, credido en Mexico. So i put two and two together and come up with the image of a field of Tommy Atkins mangos, maybe in Michoacan. The image expands to include a bunch of indonesian workers picking full but under ripe fruits. From there they get gassed to accelerate ripening and boxed up for cold storage and eventual shipment. Once shipped, they travel thousands of miles to put huge doofus grins on the people who overpaid bigtime for a mango that tastes a bit like crap if you've ever eaten one fresh picked and tree ripened . Now don't get me wrong, if you're some fruitophile from above the 43rd parallel and just have to have a "real" mango in the middle of winter, then what the hell, go down to Trader Joe's and see if they have any Kensington Prides in from Oz. If not, at least you can get some of the dried stuff from Thailand and soak it in Jaegermiester. These were fruits exported from Mexico to Maui where it's MANGO SEASON, fer' crisssake. How profoundly fucked up is that? Only thing I can figure is A: senseless commerce and the criminal insanity of "free" trade combine to befuddle the populace into the deepening illusion of endless growth and nonstop consumerism. B: The owners of said store are Mexican or C: half the cases of mangoes were injected with cocaine and heroin to be made into speedball juice for the local Yakuza and other government officials. There is a D. involving the implanting of alien spooge into a good portion of the populace (facilitated by the coca cola bottling company),imparting a state of indifferance to the truth so profound as to make people think that buying mexican mangos on Maui in June is really the bomb, but that one's a little far fetched. We are five percent of the worlds population, consuming twenty five percent of the worlds energy, made possible, at least in part by an infinitude of subliminal displays of uncompromising boneheadedness such as this. Worse yet, the world aspires to be like us. Lawwwd have moycie. Here's what i see. Same ol' rampaging political hyperbolic bullshit with the few deciding the fate of the many. Same ol' societal hypno/apathetic slumber from which awakening is the dream. Same ol' revelation that lemmings, according to ancient legend, can actually fly. Here's what i don't see. A "mainstream" definition of "sustainable" that makes even the slightest sense (permaculture theory and practice have provided this for decades but are far from mainstream). The collective will to move toward that illusive definition by reinventing ourselves in a fashion suitable to the powerdown to come, and a decent knish, i don't even need good, just decent. We've been planting the summer gardens and watching the late spring greens glow. The basil starts are woven in and around the seasonal greens and will be looking leafy good in a few weeks. We're planting enough to have steady supplies of pesto. The acorn squash is starting to set some fruit and I anticipate a good harvest to come. Bean starts are beginning to yield and melon runners are making a move. Almost past atemoya and cherimoya harvest and the avos are thinning out on the Sharwil tree with probably two or three weeks of yield left. We've got ten or twelve banana stalks filling out and good healthy looking papayas coming along. Our EGGS are smashing ( i like a two egg omelet with pesto, cheese and Mae Ploy drizzle) and if I can figure out how to keep Smartypantz off the deck where she reaches through the railing and steals the strawberries right out of the hanging baskets, we'll have a nice season coming up. Its funny to watch her manuevering around with her good eye, checking out the baskets, pecking at thin air, talking to herself. What a movie. Two clucks up. The nursery is freshly stocked with fruit, nut and spice trees sporting the best prices on the island and Jennifer will be happy to help you out (205-0430). We're open to food sales pretty much any time by appointment (878-6287), so if you need a full moon midnight salad with a side of avocado and a yard juice chaser, book it and don't forget to bring your bong. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp