{"id":4383,"date":"2015-10-05T11:20:26","date_gmt":"2015-10-04T22:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/?p=4383"},"modified":"2016-01-30T18:30:59","modified_gmt":"2016-01-30T05:30:59","slug":"mammoth-and-housekeeping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/mammoth-and-housekeeping\/","title":{"rendered":"Mammoth (and some housekeeping)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Housekeeping here.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>First,\u00a0my apologies for the cliffhangers \u2014\u00a0in case you were wondering:<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/2015\/07\/22\/e-day-plus-5\/\" target=\"_blank\">the buggered burner<\/a>:\u00a0<strong>Dave the Chimney Sweep<\/strong> rebuilt the burner and re-installed it a fortnight later. The time we were without heating\u00a0was survived with little incident and few cross words, thanks to an oil column heater in the smallest room, and a steady supply of hot water bottles.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/2015\/09\/03\/mod-cons\/\" target=\"_blank\">the blown B1<\/a>: this, too, needed a stint in a workshop, but\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mcquinnpumps.co.nz\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Boys from McQuinn&#8217;s<\/a>\u00a0were terribly helpful with a loan pump to keep the water flowing, and generous with their patience and knowledge (like I <a href=\"http:\/\/dfmamea.com\/2015\/08\/22\/whangarei\/\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a>, the people up\u00a0this way are helpful and\u00a0friendly).<\/em><\/li>\n<li>the correspondence of D F Mamea, Esquire, newly of Northland<em>: those situation reports are of much interest to myself and\u00a0<strong>The Goddess<\/strong> but I bet they are of little interest to you, Beloved Reader \u2014 you&#8217;re here because I&#8217;m (supposed to be) all about the scriptwriting, and the last few posts, as entertaining as they may be, haven&#8217;t really been about that;\u00a0I thank you for your forbearance.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Having said all that\u00a0about the relevance of our new digs to writing\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>The previous inhabitants had let the property go to seed in various areas (q.v. burner and B1), the most visible sign being\u00a0the establishment of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Solanum_pseudocapsicum\" target=\"_blank\">Jerusalem cherry<\/a>\u00a0through The Wood and in the Green Zone. Although its green, orange and red fruit provide a splash of colour, its fruit\u00a0is\u00a0rather poisonous.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Solanum_pseudocapsicum04.jpg#\/media\/File:Solanum_pseudocapsicum04.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/3\/36\/Solanum_pseudocapsicum04.jpg\/1200px-Solanum_pseudocapsicum04.jpg\" alt=\"Solanum pseudocapsicum04.jpg\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Solanum_pseudocapsicum04.jpg#\/media\/File:Solanum_pseudocapsicum04.jpg\">Solanum pseudocapsicum04<\/a>&#8221; by <a title=\"User:Paul venter\" href=\"\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/User:Paul_venter\">Paul venter<\/a> &#8211; <span class=\"int-own-work\" lang=\"en\">Own work<\/span>. Licensed under <a title=\"Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\">CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a> via <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/\">Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So, most days since we took possession of this land, I&#8217;ve been pulling that weed out by hand (Fortress Mamea is\u00a0organic, thank you). It&#8217;s a simple enough job, mindless and repetitive (and immediately gratifying) but because\u00a0a considerable\u00a0part of the property is under this weed, it&#8217;s also an awfully immense task.<\/p>\n<p>The only way to handle the size of\u00a0the task at hand has been to a). prioritise the workload, and\/or b). do it a bit at a time.\u00a0Since the weed is fruiting right now, the priority is to pull out whatever&#8217;s fruiting because each of those fruit contain at least a dozen seeds, and any one plant can have as much several dozen fruit on them. Sometimes that gets boring \u2014 or overwhelming \u2014 so\u00a0I stake out a little 5 by 5 metre area and pull out\u00a0<em>all of the Jerusalem cherry<\/em>, and afterwards stand back and feel a little bit like\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sherman%27s_March_to_the_Sea\" target=\"_blank\">General Sherman<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Which is a typically long-winded way of saying\u2026 I&#8217;ve started writing again.<\/p>\n<p>The move to Northland, and the work required to tidy up the property and its surrounds for clear\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Field_of_fire_(weaponry)\" target=\"_blank\">fields of fire<\/a>, have consumed much more of my mind and energy than I expected. The blog posts \u2014 as you can tell \u2014 have been more about the new circumstances rather than trying to see the writing angle in things.<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;ve started writing again. Which meant I had to dig out my notes and files to try and remember where I&#8217;m at with various projects. Some projects are so large and\/or complex that I&#8217;ve had to prioritise my method of reacquaintanceship, or nibble at the edges to make sense of a small part of it. It feels a little overwhelming \u2014 a bit like a patient coming out of a coma and trying to come to terms with the time lost \u2014 but it&#8217;s manageable. I can prioritise. Or I can start small.<\/p>\n<p>Just like with the damned Jerusalem cherry.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Housekeeping here. First,\u00a0my apologies for the cliffhangers \u2014\u00a0in case you were wondering: the buggered burner:\u00a0Dave the Chimney Sweep rebuilt the burner and re-installed it a fortnight later. The time we were without heating\u00a0was survived with little incident and few cross words, thanks to an oil column heater in the smallest room, and a steady supply &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/mammoth-and-housekeeping\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mammoth (and some housekeeping)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,4,193],"tags":[1047],"class_list":["post-4383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-housekeeping","category-scriptwriting","category-stuff","tag-fortress-mamea"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4383"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4404,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4383\/revisions\/4404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfmamea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}