Cataloging the Detritus of my Life
Two weekends ago I was up at Lake Berryessa with the rest of my Masters Swim Team, Davis Aquatic, putting on our annual mile swim event. I’ve swam the mile swim before and I had decided that before we moved away I should go full bore and do the two mile swim event. FYI this post contains pictures of me in a Speedo. Hot, I know.
As you can see from the picture above things are really starting to happen! Everything except the eggplant is flowering and we’ve already begun harvesting zucchinis and bush beans (a tally can be found below.) I’m somewhat surprised how many beans we’ve taken from our three plants so far considering how small they are. I’m hoping they grow a little more before they make anymore fruit or else, despite their productivity as tiny plants, we won’t be getting very many beans this year. The edamame plants are super tiny but have begun producing as well, they have the same problem as the bush beans though compounded by the fact that one of the zucchini plants has overgrown them and is robbing them of sunlight. The tomato plants have lots of fruit on them and I’m hoping they starting turning red soon! Cucumbers have begun ascending their net and our flowring quite profusely as well.
HARVEST TOTALS
Zucchini: 5
Tomatoes: 0
Edamame: 0
Bush Beans: 12
Cucumbers: 0
Eggplant: 0
It’s only been two weeks since the last update and most of the plants have doubled in size the zucchini might have tripled (they aren’t done either, zucchini gets big!) The zucchini and the tomato plants have started bearing fruit as well! It’s not edible yet, but it by this time next week I imagine we’ll be eating homegrown zucchini and our salads will have cherry our very own cherry tomatoes in them!
The beans, cucumbers, eggplant, and basil aren’t as energetic in their growth as the tomatoes and zucchinis have been but they’re coming along as well. the bush beans have flowered and the cucumbers have found the netting we put up that they’ll eventually climb up and over. I’m hoping by this time next month they’ll both be as productive as the rest of the garden. I don’t know about the eggplant though, it is only my second year growing it but it just doesn’t seem to like the Davis summers.
D and I are moving in the fall to the San Diego area; she got a job doing science stuff at the University of California there. The move is still a few months away but the two of us have started looking around at all of our stuff and asking ourselves, “Do I want to cart this across the state?” For a surprisingly large amount of things the answer is, “no, I don’t.” This is especially true for books now that I have a kindle. As I looked over my bookshelves I noticed that a great deal of the books on the shelves were over 100 years old and they were now in the public domain. With the kindle (or my computer) I can have access to those books without having them take up all this physical space. I did this over a decade ago with my music collection and had been putting it off with books because I love them so and the technology just wasn’t there yet, that isn’t the case anymore. So, I started sorting…
I know what you’re saying! Getting rid of books is a crime. I used to think so to, but what I really love about a book is not the binding, or the paper, or the ink though with some books those are very nice things. What I love about a book is that it allows me to experience another person’s thoughts and ideas. That is what makes books amazing and for their time they were the most efficient and effective way to spread ideas. That isn’t the case anymore though.
For every book that I knew I wanted to keep I checked Amazon’s Kindle store and Project Gutenberg; if a free copy existed I downloaded it and set the book aside. For every book that I wanted to keep but there wasn’t a free version available on-line I looked for a $0.99 version. If there was one I purchased it. I splurged a few times and spent $1.99 or $2.99 for a digital collection that would replace multiple physical books. After I had downloaded all the books I was going to I went back to the stack of books and started entering them into Amazon’s Trade-in store to see if Amazon was interested in buying a copy from me. Every book Amazon wanted went into a box to ship to them, every book they didn’t went into another stack. At the end of that process I had one 40 pd box of books to send to Amazon and another stack to put up on Freecycle.
Amazon offered me $78.81 for all those books. I spent $12.93 picking up digital editions. That’s a net gain of $65.88!
EDIT: I made a second pass through my library and found more books that are available digitally, so I repeated the process and sent off another box to Amazon! This time they’re giving me $27.42
In the last week I’ve eliminated two entire bookshelves worth of books! The now empty bookshelves have gone up on Craigslist.