This is more of a practical update, a just recent experiences trying to find a balance and live in harmony with these morning visitations that have been going on for the last, probably a few weeks.
Every morning, from about sunrise until about eleven-ish when it starts to get even too hot for them.
I've seen and heard up to about four bees at a time.
I am not an expert by any means and I have not yet had the long awaited experience of keeping bees for honey but I have been a gardener who is always trying to provide a means for them to have access to water and certainly plenty of different types of flowers and give them plenty of peace and freedom to operate within, favoring there right of way over mine very often.
This is a very interesting relationship now, because this pack of bees have become one of the most significant recurring interactions with wildlife that I've had since I've been out here over two and a half years now.
They've actually almost upstaged the red ants as far as how much real estate they consume in my mind, about what I gotta do to respect them and stay out of their way and not get attacked by them.
I say red ants. But they’re actually, I believe, seed harvester ants. They bite, they sting, they they do both, and it's relentless.
The only way it could be much worse is if they were any more organized than they are, as far as attack formations. I know that they're able to assemble, they seem to be more organized around attacking any potential food sources than attacking me.
If I end up having to defend myself against one of them, I have noticed at times what I would interpret as a a mass response to distressing signals when I've had to defend myself against one of the ants and then observe mobilizations.
The amount of strikes against me that have landed have been successful. The majority of them have been the ants. There are certain circumstances where I cannot avoid being in contact with them, certain circumstances where I can mitigate contact.
Generally over the cycle of seasons when they're out and about which is mostly during the warmer months and not the colder months, they've got a few choice opportunities to really get at me real good.
But as I've learned to adapt over time, I've just been getting better and better at escape and evasion and just minimizing my attack surface.
I feel pretty good about that balance so this Wild card factor of having these luckily non wasp, they're not hornets or yellow jackets that have the capacity to sting individually, to sting repeatedly, without exhausting their ability to sting, which is the opposite for the honey bees and the bumblebees to my understanding.
I've read about tiny bees. There are bees that burrow in the ground, bees that build hives, honey bees, non honey bees that are similar.
I think what seems to be the most important distinction is to be able to identify the dull yellow, hairier, bumble and honey bees, as broad categories separate from yellow jackets and hornets.
But basically, in terms of mitigating attacks and situation awareness, what seems to be the rule of thumb, is to be able to identify from as far of a distance as you possibly can before it's too late, the difference between the brightness of the yellow and the slenderness and shapes of the bodies of the of the wasps versus the bees, hairy and dull yellow versus shiny not hairy and bright yellow those are the things that I'm training myself to look out for. So far, nothing wasp like has appeared to me out here, and rarely but once in a great while, over these last two and a half years, would a random bee would show up if there was ever water accessible to it which is rare, if I spill something or leave something out, but I wouldn't normally see them.
Certainly never seen a swarm go by. But I was thrilled just to know that well if one can be attracted, then more can be attracted.
Even if they're not honey bees, I like to be a friend to all life and acknowledge the role of every organism and ecosystem, and try to not play favorites.
But I would have to say that certainly being alone and being at high risk of the worst possible outcomes of a medical emergency, given the remoteness and the aloneness, I'm going to pray that the pests that I have to learn to live in balance with are not the worst of the worst.
The risk is manageable. So ants and scorpions, black widows, and now what seem to be the more benign of potential bee threat vectors.
So they've been few and far between just random, one off visits.
Though the other day I did leave a valve open to incrementally add water to the fish pond so that they have an adequate amount of somewhat oxygenated fresh water being resupplied because of the evaporation rate.
This time of year it is so high that if I turn my back on it, sometimes, even for a day, they can be almost at the lowest point of the the galvanized tank that I'm doing the aquaculture in and that's bad because I'm on an extreme water budget.
There was a financial collapse, then a climate collapse. A lot of my crops have died and had to be scaled back.
The struggle to survive is me and the fish trying to survive until until the sun angle changes to where the evaporation rate drops off drastically, and I'm not sweating out all my water, and the fish aren't losing all the water that they're trying to survive in on a daily basis.
So between keeping myself alive and keeping the water level adequate for them, it's a razors edge of survival for both of us.
But then I realized that I was cutting it too close for them.
I had a very shocking revelation that one day where I realized I can't even turn my back on this for a day.
So I decided I better just accept the trade off if I'm storing water in a way where it doesn't evaporate, how much at a time do I want to surrender to extreme rapid evaporation to buffer the fish versus metering it out as slowly as possible.
Maintaining the lowest minimum survivable water level. I have to do the scientific study to get it perfectly understood. But let's just say, by filling it in smaller amounts more often versus in larger amounts less often, I'm preserving some percentage at some ratio of water that is not being frivolously evaporated.
So the trade off is the amount of vigilance that's required.
You may be saving some water, but by doing that, you're also putting all of the fish's lives at great risk.
So at a certain point I realized I was pushing it too far.
None of them were dead, and there's plenty of them in there.
The population is thriving and it has throughout the seasons, I'm very happy about that.
It's zero maintenance, other than just not letting it dry out.
They eat mosquito larva if it ever appears. And they thrive on algae and all types of bottom feeder fodder for them in the 200 gallon stock tank that I grow island gardens in during more mild seasons.
I use that fertigated water to irrigate other garden pots out in the vicinity within this dome situation.
I call it the bonsai food forest dome. But that tank, it grows the fish, the fish add nutrient to the water. They're self sufficient and require no inputs other than water. The trade off is that I get nutrient rich, living, clean, filtered water.
That's a million times safer to put on plants or to to irrigate plants with and a million times more nutrient dense and therefore more production happens, and more plant health, disease resistance, etc.
The perfect low tech type of aqua culture, and not hydroponics or aquaponics, rather, in the sense that there's no need for aeration, there's no need for filtration, there's no need for pumps, there's no single point of failure.
There's not a lot of plastic and glue and PVC and things that can go wrong in terms of the health of the ecosystem, mass sudden fish die off.
To me, the absurdity personally, and no offense if you're a big aquaponics person, but I look at that and I go, that's some Frankenstein over engineering.
I'm trying to get back to nature, and I'm trying to get back to simplicity.
So why not just do island gardens inside of a fully integrated and not disintegrated pond with no electronics and no pipes and prosthesis and pumps just literally choosing the right profile of fish and plants in the right ratio of organic versus inorganic growing media to grow plants.
Pond builders call it an ecosystem pond. What they mean by that, it's an industry term, and it doesn't really compute well outside of the industry, because everything is an ecosystem, even if you chlorinate it.
It's still an ecosystem of organisms continually growing and fighting and adapting against being poisoned by whatever chemicals we try to poison them with.
There's really very few scientific laboratory environments that can be considered completely absent of any form of the interactions of life.
But when they say ecosystem pond, they don't mean, out of an ecology textbook ecosystem pond, they mean that it doesn't have interventions like chemicals and filters and pumps or aeration, that it just is basically in a more derogatory sense, what you would call a stagnant, what sometimes would be called a stagnant body of water, or stagnant pond.
But I like the more forgiving term the ecosystem pond. What I learned in my early days of experimenting with chinampas, was that you kill the fish, you create a toxic anaerobic environment where the anaerobic breakdown process of organic material under water, it consumes all the oxygen, robs the fish of oxygen, causes them to die, and then creates this bog of eternal stench effect.
After an epic failure, or partial failure, of having gotten that ratio of the growing media to be planting things in these island gardens, where you could have all your veggies and herbs and fruits and basically your whole kitchen garden and perennials and whatever else is appropriate, given the scale, can be grown in some form of basket or pot.
Or I've used bamboo circles, bamboo circles of bamboo poles lined with burlap filled with growing media.
I've used clay pots, even sad to say, at times, temporarily plastic pots.
Also at a tiny scale, with nurseries, I have even used soup cans, which eventually will corrode, but anything that will hold growing media, meaning something to hold the roots in place.
The nutrient effect is happening, wicking through and up to the gradient of moisture saturation into the island where the island is, an island is obviously partially submerged and partially above water.
It's in that above water zone that has a gradient of moisture where you're planting into with what you would plant into a dry bed.
So it could be greens, tomatoes, but anything you would grow, the differences, rather than watering it from above, the roots are basically always having access, like a straw, to whatever amount of moisture they want.
If they wanna grow all the way into the water, they're able to do so.
If they wanna grow an inch above the water line and just be in that zone of saturation or partial saturation within that gradient, they're free.
They're free to do so. So just like air pruning, they can moisture prune if that's an acceptable way to frame it, to their heart's desire.
Then they never have a moment of being stressed for lack of water.
I failed at getting that ratio of inorganic to organic growing media in one of my early experiments.
Growing media is great when it's fully aerated and mostly dry and only partially wet when, during cycles of being pulsed through watering and rain.
But if that material is under water and trying to be the growing medium in an island garden system of sorts, then what happens is that it's an overload of organic material in the aquatic ecosystem.
That anaerobic breakdown process, consumes the oxygen and creates toxic and foul smelling outputs of biology.
Then you end up with this noxious bog, and there is life in it but it's not the life you want, your plants die, the fish die, and what remains is stuff you would not want to eat.
It's the most repulsive smelling life. Even if you have a healthy aquatic ecosystem that's highly aerated, even with pumps and aeration machines and everything, still that muck at the base, that's where that layer of much smaller scale anaerobic activity is happening.
When you cycle it through or flush it out, so you can harvest that muck, which I've done, then you get that potent, nasty bog of eternal stench.
That's something that is normally or properly contained at a certain scale, at a certain level to a limited degree.
But then just imagine that if you overdo the organic material, then the whole thing turns into that type of ecology.
So it's a disaster. So that happened to me one time.
I learned my lesson. I went back to the drawing board and from one of the most prominent suppliers of water gardening supplies in Southern California, which I've been loyal to for many years now, over ten years now, I refer to them because I remember seeing the way they do it, the way they have their whole indoor and outdoor or semi outdoor and fully outdoor showroom of all of their aquatic plants that they sell and they've got this I don't know couple acre epic water garden theme park.
They sell all kinds of fish, all kinds of plants, all kinds of equipment, everything you could ever want, pretty much, one time I went through and said, can you show me everything here that is potentially human edible and it was surprising, there are quite a number of things that we think are ornamental that are edible.
They have many ponds some with and some without pumps. But generally they all have mosquito fish in them, I would say about half of them, no, no pumps, no aeration, just potted plants, water and the mosquito fish and then of course, other forms of all kinds of microscopic life, but then also, duck weed and azolla and other floating plants between the potted plants that they sell.
They also will sell you by the handful duckweed and azolla, which is great.
But because I was haunted by the memory that they were able to pull that off, this is not asking too much.
People in the permaculture movement said it can't be done, that you have to have these prosthesis materials, you will have the problems that I had unless you have pumps and aeration.
I knew that they do it and it's just fine, and it's not a nuisance, and that's not a mosquito pit.
They're a business with all kinds of liability and insurance, and customers rolling through every day year round.
They know what they're doing. They're the pros. So what was the secret?
What they said to me is that if you have a certain percentage of water filtering oxygenating floating plants like water hyacinth, water lettuce, etc.
I’m gonna cite the exact number because I think it's gonna vary based on climate and whatnot.
The main consideration is keeping the fish alive.
If you're not gonna have pumps, aeration, choosing the right fish that can survive in low oxygen, having plants that introduce oxygen to the water and filter the water. Obviously, habitat and playground for the fish as well.
But the assemblage is to have a good filtering, oxygenating fish feeding, fish habitat enhancing, floating plants, along with the fish.
Then most importantly, to be having the submerged portion of the growing media for the potted plants that are the islands within the system, for that to just be dead sand, or some kind of dead growing media that has no organic matter that can possibly be underwater biodegraded to where it's gonna consume oxygen in that process of decomposition.
But that doesn't mean that you can't have the most rich organic matter above the water line, because as long as that sand buffer is there it’s fine.
There's a picture of it that I recently came across that I have where it shows me taking a seedling out of one of my mini chinampa nursery trays where I'm taking a seedling out of a pot and basically just the time that pot was underwater, and the just the way that the sand and the sand layer and the compost layer kind of held together making a protective moisture gradient from submerged to saturated to moist to dry.
That system worked very well. Then I would be able to harvest and prick out and plant out those seedlings as they would grow.
I took a picture that showed that layering effect of there being this half of the cup being being wet sand and the other half being wet compost, but that wet sand not being penetrated by or contaminated.
They weren't all mixed up and mushed up and mixed together so that the organic material would leach into the actual basin of the water.
So the water would stay clear, because it was only in contact with the sand, and the sand was allowing the moisture to wick upwards, but it was preventing the particulate material of the organic matter to actually percolate into the water supply and start to rot underwater and therefore flip the balance of oxygenate and turn it into an anaerobic bog.
So that was the secret that I learned from them and that I implemented.
Now, that whole story, it doesn't show where it went horribly wrong, but it shows the whole process.
But the before and after was that once we optimized that and did it correctly, and we replaced the submerged organic material with submerged inorganic material, essentially just dry, baked, non living dirt, with the high sand content.
Then it worked like a charm, and it just blew up in productivity, and it was unbelievable.
Never seen anything like it in my life, and it proves the theory and the concept, but I gave this whole tangent in the context of this be story, because I'm haunted by those memories and seeing this razors edge of keeping the fish barely alive in this scorching hottest year on record, hottest summer on record cycle, where all I can do is try to keep myself alive, keep the fish alive.
The only flora that I'm growing are in my fermentation jars, with wine and brine and, and I'm okay with that. This is the first time out here, even that I haven't had anything green growing outside during the summer before, I would have kept something going but between financial and climate collapses, I have to stretch this budget a long way and stretch very thin over time.
But because I know the perils of letting the water get too low in that ratio of rotting organic material versus plenty of water that's got gradients of contact with the air and with the wind, and just the normal stirring up of oxygenation through wind turbulence on the surface and whatnot.
There's all kinds of effects happening. But I don't want these fish to struggle.
I certainly don't want them to die.
I was generous finally with letting that valve stay open from that enclosed water tank, so that so that I could let the, the stock tank, water level go up much higher and just say I know I'm gonna lose a lot of it to evaporation.
I have to stop growing any crops. I've gotta just barely keep the fish alive.
I've got to sacrifice that water that could have gone to growing crops to evaporation, just to guarantee that I don't let the fish die because of one day going by, that's a couple degrees hotter, and it just wipes it out, and it just evaporates them down to the ground.
That would be too heartbreaking. I can't imagine how I feel, I don't even I want to think about it.
So I let that valve go and actually I left it open and went to sleep and woke up the next day and it was luckily the perfect height of where the silicon half inch tubing coming off of the water tank, the height of it going into the two foot high stock tank ended up being literally at basically the perfect level to where it filled.
It almost filled it up. This six foot long, two foot tall, two foot wide, galvanized stock tank, leaving that valve open overnight.
It ran down to the level that was where the tubing was resting, about 2 ft up. So it left about 2 ft. Of water in that storage tank.
So I didn't lose any water as far as it overflowing and being lost it just put in more than I intended to. I would have put in less than half that much if I was paying proper attention, but at least despite my negligence, I got lucky.
It bought a lot of time for the fish. I don't know how long, at least it lasted a month before I had to start adding more water back in.
But, the funny thing was, and this is where it turns into this permaculture, thriller, comedy of errors...never before in this scorching heat, had there been that much of an abundance of water.
There had always been quite a bit less and then all of this year, up until that point. even when it was totally full, there were no bees there.
There were no bees that were being attracted to it in the cooler months when it was mostly full.
I suppose because it’s just their seasonal cycles.
I haven't learned them yet. I don't know much about them yet.
But guess what happened within a day of that mishap of it being topped off more than I intended to.
I did not expect this random side effect. The water on the landscape in this baking desert it became an attraction point for bees.
I normally favor that, I normally think that's great.
In my heart of hearts I think it's great no matter what and eventually I will be building such an epic oasis that there will be a bee population to keep a reserve for the whole world based out of my one property.
That's the goal. I love bees and how much I wanna build homes for them and accommodate them, but right now, it's trying to do everything one step at a time.
But of all that water supply available to them attracted them.
Then however many weeks, probably over a month, that every single morning, from the moment the sun comes up till when it gets too hot, around 11:00 a.m., where they have to go back to, probably, if they are ground dwellers…I don't see them go back to a hive.
They're right under me, or right on top of me. They're not far wherever they're posting up when they need to be in the shade, and overnight when it cools down.
But for those few hours in the morning, they've been terrorizing me non stop.
And I don't know why, because I took extra measures to make sure they had a corridor to get from the outside, secure perimeter of that dome, which is secured by quarter inch hardware cloth from top to bottom, wrapped around the whole dome, so that rodents and lizards and scorpions and whatnot don't get in there.
I had noticed in other times, previous times, when they would show up before randomly.
I was really bummed out. I'm like, man, I wish that they could fit through that quarter inch mesh.
Maybe I should eventually figure out a way to create a bee port for them to get into the dome mesh that would, basically, by design.
I did eventually build that to where there's basically a tube with a small entry and exit point where bees can go in and out and I've them use it so they have no reason now that I've given them that corridor to even have to squeeze through the quarter inch mesh.
Though, I'm thrilled to say that I've seen them do it, so I know it's possible.
I'm excited about that because that means that I haven't just been driving them crazy by teasing them with a with the water supply that they can’t access.
I went ahead and made sure, guaranteed they had access by building access for them specifically.
But then I also know that they didn't even need that technically, because they're able to squeeze through the mesh.
However, they've got at least those two options. So I figured that they would not need to bother me at all, because they would be thrilled to have full access to that water.
And I also know that they really need little landing pads, because they can't just hover and drink very well.
They need to be able to be secure with their footing, to be able to comfortably drink.
I've seen that work in a number of ways. And so there's enough material in that ecosystem now for them to be able to basically just post up on this harbor of bamboo that's in there, that should work fine for them.
And I know they go in, and out of there so it seems like it's fine for them but then for some reason in addition to that they like to just terrorize me and and just and ravage me nonstop.
And certainly, if I'm doing anything like drinking tea or water, or pouring water, or interacting with my water supply, where I have to replenish it and filter it every day, and I have to do it when it's light because of scorpions, and I have to do it in the morning because it's too hot and I'll die otherwise.
So my pattern of life intersects with their pattern of life, and they can't get enough of me.
So I'm doing this kung fu dance, not swatting at them, but just doing chops and kicks and jumps.
It looks like I'm doing kung fu fighting, hula hooping, and I don't know what else disco dancing to when they're in my field.
I make sure my eye protection is tight, make sure my shirt is tucked in, and I even sewed up the base of my shorts so that they wouldn't be able to fly up where the sun don't shine.
I think I've only gotten stung once, and I don't want them to sting me because that's not good.
If a non wasp stings me, I don't want them to waste it on me. There's no need for it. I'm not hostile them, not threatening them.
I'm providing for them. And I hope they hear me pleading.
But you know it doesn't really work that way. They get attracted to whatever get attracted to.
I imagine it's just basically the moisture signature that is emitting from my skin, that's invisible, but that they sense and that attracts them, and it stands out in the desert.
Then anything, obviously, that shines though, whatever it is, I don't know all about how they perceive it, but they're all over my business, all all morning, every morning.
They've even started to creep into my office, which is porous by design, at which point I've had to have a more robust set of actual, hardcore protective goggles just on hand, ready to slap on, because it's a little darker and I can't move around hardly at all.
The worst, I don't even wanna say it, but there's only a few things that could happen to me that would be a medical emergency to where I would have to tap out and at great expense, crippling, just totally, totally catastrophic, irreparable financial damage, medical emergency tap out.
I've got to avoid that. So I wear eye protection at at any time where I'm where I'm out, basically outdoors.
I've got the clear eye protection, I've got the sunshade eye protection.
I'm always wearing eye protection for a lot of reasons, but that has become the most acute. Now, is just that it's like, sting me anywhere, but a couple of places, because there is one place where, if I get injured, I can't just be like, oh, I'm just gonna ride it out and tough it out.
That would be so foolish and negligent that I could never be taken seriously or forgive myself and I would lose all my credibility if I get injured in certain really dumb ways that were preventable then I lose all credibility so I've got to risk mitigate as much as possible.
So for me, this dances with bees phenomenon for now, it's a growing pain, because eventually it won't be such a medical financial high stakes game, meaning if I'm better off financially, I won't be so risk averse.
I can be a little more risk tolerant the way I would normally be.
Not that I wouldn't wear eye protection, but I would be, if I have to get rushed to the hospital, it's not gonna break the bank at that point.
Then I can be a little bit more relaxed. But until then, I've got to be on high alert and in extreme risk averse mode.
So even the most benign thing, which is these bees, they're not aggressively attacking me.
They're not ganging up on me. They're just very curious and very up on my business and get very close.
But when I set my boundaries, they will respect them for about 5 seconds, and then they'll come back and test them again.
But I'm not trying to swat at them. I'm not trying to hurt them. I'm just trying to preemptively create this sort of magical perimeter that they will sense the force of airflow of me just chopping the air in front of me, and that whatever it's visual or the airflow fluctuation, whatever it is, it's not taken as such a threat that they have to they to sting in response. It's just something that that dissuades them, and they go away.
But it's chronic and consistent. And it's every few seconds for all those hours of the morning.
It's got to the point where I can't listen to anything I listen to on earbuds.
So it's a form of meditation. It's a form of mind fullness practice. Because I can't disable my ability to perceive the distance of their presence.
Certainly, when I'm in my office, I've got to know the difference between them being outside and far away outside and approaching outside and right up on the perimeter, and then ultimately, inside.
I've got to be able be acutely aware of all that, and I almost have to drop everything to do it.
So if anyone has a hard time shutting their mind off, there’s no better way to turn your thinker off and get into your body and get into your primal mode, call it meditation if you want, you gotta remain calm. You can't panic. So there's that aspect of controlled breathing and having your wits about you.
But talk about being in the zone and being in the moment, if it was wasps, I don't know what I would do. I would be in really serious trouble.
I guess the ultimate backup plan is that I would go into the cab of a truck, hopefully without them close enough, tailgating into the door.
But I have removed obstacles, so it would be as smooth as possible of an emergency evak to seek shelter in the truck.
I have to hope that they're gonna not be persistent once it starts getting hotter because I will just cook in there and die if I have to hide out in there.
But luckily it hasn't been a swarm. It's been no more than a maximum of 4 at a time.
They've been very persistent and very curious and very up in my business, but they I may have only been stung once and it wasn't that bad and now that the sun is starting to come up, you might actually hear them. But probably not. It's still pretty dark.
But I use this moment of opportunity, of the best temperature of the 24 hour cycle is now 05:27 a.m.
As I'm wrapping this up, which means I started about 04:30, and I was able to have my wits about me before the sun comes up and starts baking me senseless.
I heard an interview discussion about the effects of heat on the workforce and the economy.
And so half the show was talking about being able to understand the scope and the impact of different forms of heat illness and this climate crisis induced heat illness on the economy.
A lot of really solid metrics on that. So super fascinating that first half of the show and then the second half of the show basically totally reaffirmed and substantiated all of my loose claims that I made in a recent show, all about heat syncope and blood pressure, blood volume, capillary, heat dissipation effects, all the things that I was fumbling through in my personal experience and research, it was far better explained, and it all lined up and matched and validated what I said.
So I was very pleased to know that I did a decent job, and that I can refer to that episode as an even better reference point.
One of the stats that was very useful, it was very affirmative for me to forgive myself for being so debilitated by the heat, because they said that just to get an idea of how much of how far behind OSHA is on regulating workplace temperatures, because most industrial warehouses were built before the climate crisis and therefore had no forethought about how costly it would be to retrofit with air conditioning ability.
So most people don't work outside, most people work inside, and a huge percentage of those people work in conditions that are impossible to climate control.
That's because of a more blissfully ignorant, pre climate crisis era of industrial architecture and design.
So now we have plenty of data to understand what the effects of unmitigated heat are on people who have no way to escape from it and still have to do their jobs.
And great detail has gone into in that episode, talking about all the different nuances and effects.
But the take away for now is that they said that, that the rule of thumb is that at 90 degrees Fahrenheit, the productive capacity of any given worker is gonna drop by 25 %.
Okay. And then at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the productive capacity of any given worker is gonna drop by 70 %.
So I've been surviving at up to a hundred and 25 degrees for big chunks of each of the days from July through now, starting to mitigate finally, in early August, to between a hundred and five, a hundred and 15, versus a hundred and 15, to a hundred and 25 for about a month leading up.
So that means that, based on whatever math that scale is on, to go in ten degrees, from 90 to a hundred and go from that being 25 % productivity loss to a 70 %.
That means at a hundred and 25 degrees on that scale, my productivity is probably like 500 % negative.
That's obviously not rational, humanly possible.
It would make no sense, but I would have to say that I'm not only incapacitated, 100 % incapacitated.
I'm, like, 500 % incapacitated, and I've got atrophy to deal with, all kinds, I mean, all kinds of tore up is what this does to me, psychologically and physically, at every level.
But this is my third rodeo. And even though it's gotten worse in terms of temperature, my strategies of adapting have improved.
There have been some moments that have been the most psychologically difficult.
But physically, my strategies of mitigation have been more effective this year than in previous years, and without being more expensive or more high tech.
They're still simple and still low cost and still low tech, but they're optimized to a significant degree to where my general comfort level my general baseline, you call it vitals, my vitals are doing okay, better than they had in previous years, in terms of electrolytes and hydration and just urination and bowel movements and all the metrics that matter.
I don't have all the equipment to measure it. I just have the experience of what happens when any of these things get too far out of whack, and then I experience the sort of incipient disease stages until I correct it.
I've had a number of them over the last couple years, but this year, I've been able to stave them off through better mitigation efforts.
So that said, I don't know how long these these bees are gonna be coming around but I have the tools techniques and procedures to risk mitigate I have the personal protective equipment and it's probably a net benefit that they have me do a little bit of calisthenics in the morning so that I don't completely atrophy from lack of movement.
I get a little bit of a warm up, and I do stretch, and I do a bit of maintenance, walking while I can, just to keep some amount of muscle mass, almost like an astronaut, just starting to atrophy immediately.
It's a similar situation out here. I'm experiencing horrific effects of different types of atrophy.
So thank you to the bees for helping me fight the atrophy by surviving.
And someday I'll have more help and more finances, and we can grow together.