The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey May 17, 2020

17 May 2020

So, since we last were here together, we had several more overnight freezes. Sadly, at least one of them was a surprise. So one night I didn't tarp the garden beds, and everything died. Yup, all of it. So I started over. Rototilled again, raked it all out flat again, bought new plants again, and got ready to put them in the ground, again: We're not due for anything below 48F in the next ten days, so I expect that we're actually done with overnight frosts. (Famous last words). But the plants look good, and since I did that work…

Brian Bilbrey May 3, 2020

3 May 2020

Seriously. Boring is great, by comparison with the many things that could be going wrong. The garden is alive. We're alive. Life is (distantly) okay. That's good enough, right? Be well.

Brian Bilbrey April 20, 2020

20 April 2020

Note - this is a discussion and solution for a technical problem for a Wordpress instance that uses an SSL certificate signed by a non-public CA. If you don't care about this sort of thing, please move your eyes down to the next section. The error text that I saw in the new-to-me Site Health page following upgrading to WordPress 5.4: cURL error 60: SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate The error above was generated because WordPress/PHP couldn't verify the site certificate. When this is broken, the impact can be significant on a WordPress instance. Some features…

Brian Bilbrey April 13, 2020

April 13, 2020

We're continuing on the bored, stir-crazy, and physically healthy trend here. We hope that all is well with you and yours. Aside from working from home, and some indoor chores, most of my "spare" time has been given over to further yard work. During the week, I took half a day off. The first hour of that was conveying the dog to her second round of annual shots at the veterinary clinic. The rest involved picking up some veggies and a tray of flowers, then getting the veggies into the raised beds. I started by removing last year's landscape fabric…

Brian Bilbrey April 5, 2020

5 April 2020

Turns out that the seasons roll by regardless of stay at home orders... Late last fall, during the cleanup, it was clear that the spruce that adorned the left side of the front yard was just about done. By February this year, there was no green left to it. This weekend: last rites were administered. Using the pole saw and the small electric chainsaw, I took the tree and both small shrubberies out, along with doing a fair bit of other spring front yard cleanup. Today, my big hope was that the odd angle of lean was indicative of a…