Math is hard and I ordered too much dirt. Now I have a series of beds that I need to figure out how to plant. I’m working off of two books: The Urban Homesteader and Square Foot Gardening. I don’t have the time or the inclination to try and start seeds indoors (next year, I hope), so I’m drawing plans to figure out what will grow where.

In the meantime, I’m trying to get two water barrels going. I had purchased empties from an ad on Craigslist, which led me to discover a cool business in Maryland and an invitee for school, but realized that the internet plans that abound for this sort of thing aren’t exactly practical. For example, the most popular link, from the city of Bremerton, suggests that you drill a hole and then use a pipe tap to create threads for your faucet. Two issues with this: the big box stores don’t sell the big pipe taps (the kits at Lowe’s and Home Depot all stop at 1/2″) and I’m dubious that the walls of a drum are thick enough to support these threads without collapsing or bursting. Could be wrong.

I went to my local hardware store — Monarch — which is a great store, mostly because the owner is as interested solving problems and will talk through anything with you. (I worry for the long-term health of this store because he is the show).

Our solution: copper faucet, piece screwed in, pieces of rubber to cut as a homemade gasket, and a bolt on the other side. Pictures coming soon.

I also discovered that the lids to the two food-grade water barrels I’d purchased did not come off easily. Apparently you need to tool called a “bung wrench” to get them open. A “bung wrench.” I wish I had taped the conversation I had with the person who answered the phone at Harbor Freight; he could not believe that such a tool existed and that I wasn’t simply making a prank call. The interwebs suggest that you can open the valves with pliers, something I’ll try later.

Tuesday night Underdog Landscaping delivered eight cubic yards of soil: six cubic yards of top soil mixed with two cubic yards of mushroom soil.

Note that my labor force engaged in a union action after loading exactly one wheelbarrow. They said something about dinner. Anyway, eight cubic yards is an immense pile of dirt. I shoveled from 6:30P until 11:00 P. (One of my students asked why I was so quiet the next day). Then I moved more on Wednesday and again today. All three beds in the backyard have been filled; I had so much dirt that I’m going to create a fourth flower bed in the back. I had enough dirt to re-do the side yard AND to fill the front.

My math: one cubic yard covers 27 cubic feet or a 3x9x1 bed. Eight cubic yards covers 216 cubic feet.

I filled three 4×10 beds, one 2×8 bed, one 3×8 bed, and the front yard, which was 5×9. That should be 205 feet, which makes sense because I have a little pile left. I should note that I used boards that were 10″ so I lost some on each bed.

Still, an absolute immense amount of dirt moved in four days.

I need dirt for my three raised bed gardens in the backyard. And I need dirt for the 4×9 patch I cleared in my front bed where I hope to plant an obscene amount of basil.

I call a couple of terrific landscapers each of which tells me that it will be more than a $1000 to come and clear the dirt in the front bed and deliver the eight cubic yards I need to fill the beds. I figure I’ll do it myself.

I know that the Fairmount Recycling Center has screened compost at $36 a ton. Some of my students had waged war with the internet to figure out exactly how much a ton of dirt covers. I know that I have three beds that each need 40 cubic feet of dirt and front bed that needs 45 cubic feet for a total of 165 cubic feet or about 6.1 cubic yards. (I divided 165 by 27 (which was my understanding of how many cubic feet ONE cubic yard of soil would be)).

One of the landscapers recommended a company that would deliver soil. Here’s the timeline:
1. Call Thursday; they take information and promise to call back. Quote me price of $385 for top soil/mushroom soil mix.
2. Call Friday (we’ll call you back).
3. Call late Friday (we’ll call you back. We’re almost out of soil. I’ll call you Sunday.)

Guess what? They didn’t call.

Reading Storms of My Grandchildren (awesome — highly recommended!) and encountered this quote:

“Be most careful about accusing the opponent of wickedness…Those who we regard as wicked as a rule return the compliment.”

I couldn’t find a direct source. I did find an edited volume, The Essential Gandhi, which offers the following citation:

Statement from New Delhi, Young India, December 26, 1994.

“Now I have to work hard not to show my active discomfort when graduate students come to me and say, as they often do, “I have worked in schools for a few years, and now I am ready to shape policy.” Every fiber of my beings wants to say, “Use your time in graduate school to become a better practitioner and get back into schools as quickly as possible. You will have much more profound effect on the education sector working in schools than you will ever have as a policy actor.” (page 34)

Elmore, Richard F. I Used to Think..And Now I Think..: Twenty Leading Educators Reflect on the Work of School Reform. Edited by Richard F. Elmore. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press, 2011.

Ryan Adams, Lucky Now, Ashes & Fire (2011)
Bruce Springsteen, Used Car, Nebraska (1978)

Love both songs. Love how the melody from the first two lines of each verse is basically the same and how different the choruses are.

“Waiting outside while you find your keys
Like bags of trash in the blackening snow
City of neon and toes that freeze
We’ve got nothing and nowhere to go
We’ve got nothing and nowhere.”

vs.

“Now the neighbors come from near and far
As we pull up in our brand new used car
I wish he’d just hit the gas and let out a cry
and tell ’em all they can kiss our asses goodbye…”

…with my students.

New Yorker: An Inspirational Letter to My Students

Terrific piece; wonderful antidote to the “why do I have to” line of questioning.

Yesterday, President Bush quoted the first few sentences of the Gettysburg address:

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

I wish he had continued:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.