Category Archives: Our Land and Home

Our Land and Home

Big Brown, Pulling Away

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56  bar falls 29.73 4mph dew-point 29   Beltane, sunny and cool

                                Full Hare Moon

Cut down three blooming buckthorns before they could fruit.  This radically changes the seed distribution pattern. My goal is to get to each one just before it blooms and whack it down, paint it with brush-b-gone and monitor the site for the next 3-4 years.  Also finally cut down the rather large green ash that had long prevented the truck gate from opening all the way.  The tree came down more easily than I had imagined.  It had grown into the chain link and I thought I might only be able to cut part way through the base due to the imbedded chain link.  Not so.  It cracked and split, after I used the steel wedge to free my stuck chainsaw, leaving a clean stump inside the fence line and a fallen tree outside.  Progress.

Kate, meanwhile, has taken the pruning charge seriously. She’s whacked, sawed, pulled, torn and lopped limbs and canes off Amur maples, red twig and grey ossier dogwood.  When she gets going, get outta the way.  An impressive pile of branches have mounted over the fence line. They need to go to the Habitat for Furry Animals site.

A glorious Sunday. 

Watched Big Brown win Pimlico yesterday afternoon.  Amazing.  On the outside, running third at the final turn, I saw the jockey loose the reins a bit.  It was a signal for a downshift, then accleration that took him past the others by the beginning of the straightaway.  As Big Brown pulled away, the jockey rose up in the saddle and checked between his legs to see the rest of the field.  They were way behind.  Fun to watch run.

Our Land and Home

Three Oak and One Elm Bite the Dust

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72  bar steady 29.56 4mph WSW dew-point 27  Beltane, cloudy

                     Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

The younger folks, Steve and Aimee, worked the whole morning on the buckthorn.  I worked nearby on a 14 year old project, thinning the woods.  When we first moved to Andover, I had a state forester come out and advise me on how to manage our woods for wildlife.  His major advised involved taking out trees growing too close to each other, opening up the understory and getting rid of the buckthorn.  He also suggested creating brushpiles because small critters love brushpiles for home building.

I’ve made some progress against the demon buckthorn and we’ve created many brushpiles over the years.  The thinning of the woods, though, has taken a back seat to gardening, creating beds, planting, nurturing.  Last year I began to thin, starting in the northwest corner of our property.  I cleared it of buckthorn and black locust, cut out some other understory and now have it 3/4’s cleared.  I also began, again last fall, to develop midden heap park.  First I cleared out a whole variety of a plant life that had grown up on our compost pile.  Then I cut down and debarked three diseased elms.  I also removed buckthorn, cutting down the larger ones to 2′ stumps (which Steve and Aimee pulled today).  In addition I began removing, thinning trees.

Today three oak and one elm bit the dust.  Literally.  After limbing them, I cut them up into smaller sections–log sized–and lugged them onto a pile.  I slept well during my nap.

Our Land and Home

The Weed Wrench, a Well Traveled Tool

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67  bar steep fall 29.59 2mph W dew-point 32

          Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

“O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!” – William Shakespeare

The origin of schadenfreude.  A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.  When happiness turns about for others, then we discover this difficult side of our Self, the corollary to Shakespeare’s observation.

Steve and Aimee came over today.  They wanted to thank us for the loan of the weed wrench.  They returned the favor by showing us their moves for the morning, wrenching out buckthorn after buckthorn in the area where we have a fire-pit and midden heap park under construction.  They also cleared out the area where we will put in Ruth and Gabe’s playhouse.

Bright, good work ethic, a pleasure.  

Now for a nap.

Our Land and Home, Writing

I Think That I Shall Never See

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71  bar steady  30.00  1mph SSW dewoint 35  Beltane

            Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

A morning at the Rum River Tree Farm.  Kate and I went wandering among the trees up for adoption.  We looked at fruit trees for our orchard apple, plum, pear and cherry.  We also looked at some willows, Niobe for example, with a wonderful yellow gold bark.  Great accent trees.  The larch look great, too.  Both of these require a wet environment, so we might have to change our irrigation system around a bit.

River Birch clumps go for around $260.  I figure 3 or four would transform the lower part of our front yard into a shady grove.  One or two other trees, running up the slope, would follow the elevation.  Kate wants lanes of grass among the trees.  I want more trees, so I imagine we can come to a compromise.

We also will buy some tree lilacs, trees for our grandkids, planted in their honor.  All of this comes from the permaculture thinking.  I’ve added some to that page if you follow that part at all.

Now it’s 72 degrees outside.  This means it might be a good day for morels.  It also means some of those seeds we sowed will begun to germinate, some more of them, I should say.

Spent an hour last night editing Superior Wolf.  It’s a keeper, needs expansion, filling out and elimination of one whole story line, but it’s a good one.  So’s Jennie’s Dead. 

Art and Culture, Our Land and Home

A Failure of American Education

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46  bar rises 30.08 0mph N dewpoint 32 Spring

            Waxing Gibbous Moon of Growing

“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.” – George Santayana

Santayana liked football, but only practice.  While at Harvard, he attended practice faithfully, but never went to a game.  His philosophical wisdom has a firm place in American letters though he retained his Spanish citizenship until his death.  Here’s a sample of his poetry:                    

I give back to the earth what the earth gave,
All to the furrow, nothing to the grave.
The candle’s out, the spirit’s vigil spent;
Sight may not follow where the vision went.             

As Americans we too often forget our own poets, philosophers and people of letters.  We scan back over the literary and artistic output of Western civilization to find exemplars.  If we’re truly catholic, we might even include Asia, but how many among us know Santayana?  Dewey?  James?  Emerson?  Thoreau?  How many have read, say, Moby Dick?  Whitman?  Emily Dickinson?  Even Frost and Sandburg beyond their iconic poems?  Willa Cather?  Have we heard of Charles Hartshorne?  How about Ambrose Bierce?  Wallace Stevens?  John Dos Passos? Sherwood Anderson? American has produced great artists like Pollock, the Hudson River School painters, John Singer-Sargent and Whistler, but again who knows them?  Only a few.

This is a failure of American education and of our willingness to learn our own heritage.  This is not trivial.  A people who do not know where they come from, as Santayana famously said, are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. 

I will add a brief bio here from time to time of more American persons of belles lettres.  Our future depends upon us becoming more than casually acquainted with them.

Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Tulips and Daffodils, Oh My!

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54  bar steady  29.77 3mph ENE dewpoint 32  Spring

                            New Moon

This is a fecund time.  I spent a couple of hours today putting down pre-emergent weed prevention in the flower beds, moving some mulch completely off now, the garlic, and putting Cygon on the Iris to prevent borers.  Cygon is now a prohibited insecticide so my stash is pretty much it.  Our beds are not near running water and we have a storm drainage basin to catch run off so I don’t see my limited use of Cygon, once or twice a year on about 40 Iris, as a great health hazard.

Just being outside is wonderful.  Where the snow melts back, as it has begun to do even here, we often  find tiny tunnel systems in the grass.  Voles dig these under the snow all winter.  At first it seems that they might kill the grass, but in fact, I think the opposite is true.  Where they go, the soil gets aerated and the grass continues to grow.  It looks strange and possibly harmful when you first see it. 

The Iris have grown about six inches and now is the time to get those damned Iris borers.  If you raise Iris, you know what I mean.  If you don’t, well, they’re slimy and icky and eat the rhizome.  Yeck.  

Tulips and daffodils have also begun to press through the snow and frozen earth.  With the showers we get this week I wouldn’t be surprised if we get some blooms, especially if it warms up, too.   

Our Land and Home

The Ex-Urb

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37  bar steady 29.89 0mph SSE dewpoint 34 Spring

           Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

Still absorbing the arguments from the Brueggman lecture on sprawl.  I want to write more when I’ve integrated his thoughts and decided fully how I feel about them. 

The exurban life, the one I’ve lived for the last 14 years, has some distinct pluses.  We have enough land that we can alter the landscape in positive ways.  We can contemplate, for example, adding ponds, a gravity driven stream, an orchard, changing out our lawn for prairie grass and wildflowers or fruit and nut trees, even vegetable gardens.  I don’t know how far we’ll go with all this, but the more I learn about permaculture, the more it makes sense, not only for us.

Also, the relatively isolated nature of our land, both in terms of our neighbors, who are least 2.5 acres away, and  our distance from the metro, over 30 miles, creates a sense of privacy that nurtures creative activity.  As an introvert, I have found this life a perfect fit.

Anyhow, gotta go.  Discovered late last night I do have a tour today.  See ya.

Great Work, Our Land and Home

Is There Such A Thing As Good Sprawl?

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56  bar steep fall 29.97 1mph NNW Spring

         Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

More trees survived.  Two White Pines planted near the road have made it through their first winter as well.  I love seeing plants grow, but there is something different with trees.  They alter the landscape and create memories.  I suppose grass does, too, but not in a way that I like much.  Yards have not made sense to me for many years and I hope this year or the next might be the time when we finally rid ourselves of the damned thing and put in something more attuned to the land and to possible benefits to us.

Forgot to mention during that during our business meeting we have tentatively decided to go ahead on the generator.  As  climate change acclerates and more and more housing gets built up out here, our exposure to significant periods of power loss grows.  We’re trying to sequester certain large cash expenditures in these last years of Kate’s employment, so they will be out of the way after she retires.  We also have a car fund that will have enough money to purchase a hybrid the year she retires.  These are, in many ways, peace of mind issues, but no less important for that.

We got the annual notice from the vet about the dog’s physicals.  Something to look forward to.

At 3PM I’ll leave for the University to attend a lecture on sprawl by Robert Bruggeman.  I bought his book at the Walker last week.  Since I live in sprawl by almost any definition, I’m interested in understanding it better.  He has a different drummer approach, taking a historical look that emphasizes sprawl as a natural occurrence related to urban development.  This makes sense to me since I know the Minneapolis story includes “sprawl” that is now the neighborhood surrounding the Minneapolis Art Institute, Kenwood, and several of the neighborhoods south of the city along Chicago, Portland, Nicollet, Lyndale and other streets.  His question is how to separate “good” sprawl from “bad” sprawl.  More on this later.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Natural Rhythms and Time

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53  bar falls 30.03 omph W dewpoint 32 Spring

            Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

Over to IHOP for some of that down home country fried food.  Always a treat.  Kate and I did our business meeting, deposited several thousand dollars in Wells Fargo and came back home.  Lois was here.  She commented on the amaryllis which have bloomed yet again for me.  I do nothing special to them except take them outside in the summer, then back inside in the winter.  At some point they decided its ready to bloom, so I put them in a window and water and feed them.

I have no tours tomorrow and so have a good stretch with no art tour work.  I like that. 

Went outside and looked at the trees.  Looks like at least five, two Norway Pines and two River Birch got trimmed back to the hose I used to protect them from sun scald.  Those rascally rabbits I presume.  In the other area, though, two white pines thrived during the winter, as did a Norway Pine, an oak and, I believe, a River Birch.  Feels good to see them growing.

The garlic has begun to push through the soil, a bit pale under the mulch, but I removed it and they will green up fast.  Garlic are hardy plants that like a cold winter and they had one this year.  They come to maturity in June/July.  Drying, then using our own garlic will be a treat.

Wandering around outside gets the horticulture sap rising.   I’m itchy to do stuff.

Signed up for a Natural Rhythms and Time course at the Arboretum.  It’s a symposium put on by the University’s Institute for Advanced Studies, a real find.  If you live in the Twin Cities, I recommend getting on its mailing list.

GeekWorld, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Kohler Generators

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32  bar steep rise 30.22 4mph dewpoint 24 Spring

               Waning Crescent Moon of Winds 

“I simply cannot think that human beings will be able to discard their desire and need for something that is sublime, something that transports them, takes them out of time, takes them out of the banality of the everyday world . . . to make something is tremendously powerful in and of itself.” -Sean Scully

“Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long they live, although it is in the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.” – Seneca

One last snowblowing adventure.  The snow has already melted off the driveway and the sidewalk.  It will remain longer on the yard and in the woods, but the days of the snowcover are near an end.  Even so, it was nice to get out one more time and see the arc of white curving up then fall toward the earth.  Good to be outside. (We’ll set aside being there with a two-cycle engine.)

Roger came out today from Allied Generators.  When we went through a spate of disaster planning last fall, we realized our home would not fare well in a power outage.  Why?  No water since we get our pump from a well.  That’s the big one.  We could be here with all the water we needed 180 feet below us and no way to get it to the surface.  Dumb.  Then, of course, there’s powering up the cell phones and the computers for necessary communication.  If Kate is to survive in a reasonably mellow state, we need the air con to work, too.  All of our appliances have electric starter switches.  And so on.  

The result of this got me to looking at generators.  Consumer reports pointed out an obvious problem with gasoline powered generators.  If there’s a problem with the electricity, filling station pumps don’t work.  So, how do you supply the generator?  Gas gets old, too, so storing much at home is problematic.  Anyhow, the Kohler line of generators run on natural gas which solves that problem.  They also supply enough power to manage the whole house.  Roger will send us an estimate this afternoon.  It might be a sledge hammer to take care of a mosquito sized problem, but we’ll see.

Piece of trivia:  Kohler got into the generator business in 1918 so customers could use their flush toilets and their bathtubs.  What da ya know?

I got on a tear this last week or so, completing several major tasks in a short period of time.  It reminded me of the way I used to work, juggling many complicated tasks over long periods of time.  Back then I was productive, really productive.  The old work method felt good to slip into for a while.  Don’t know that I’d want to sustain it anymore.