Category Archives: Our Land and Home

Garden, Great Work, Our Land and Home

Rock Wool Seed Blankies

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36  bar steep fall 29.84 1mph SSE  Dewpoint 26  Spring

                Waxing Gibbous Moon of Winds

Ah.  Hands back in the soil, thinking and doing with plants.  We bought two stems of yellow Plumeria when we were in Hawai’i and I potted them today.  Just the act of finding a pot, putting in some potting soil and adding water immersed my soul deep in the earth. 

The hydroponics setup is underway, too.  Seeds don’t grow well in hydroponic growing mediums, so there’s a prior step that involves starting seedlings in small rock wool blankies, then transplanting them, blankie and all, into the large pebble-sized lava rock medium.  

A seedling needs a couple of critical tools to grow inside.  The first is a warming coil to make sure the temperature underneath the seed pack does not get below 60 degrees or so.  We have those, four of them.  The second is a grow light.  We have those, too. Two of them. 

Tomorrow lettuce seeds will go into the rock wool seed blankies and some herbs as well.  These are all heritage seeds Kate and I purchased at the Seed Saver’s Exchange outside Decorah, Iowa.  Potting soil will go in some small cubes made of molded peat moss.  In them will go a few heritage tomato seeds and anything else we need to have a jumpstart on for the garden. 

The lettuce and herbs will make the transfer into the hydroponics.  We’ll learn how to work with the temps, timing of the nutrient solution flows, the nutrient solutions themselves while growing an easy crop.  The tomato seedlings and the other seedlings will get planted in the raised beds we’ve turned over from flowers to vegetables.

There are still a few more tools we need like an electrical conductance meter, a turkey baster and an aquarium heater or two.  I’ll pick those up on Friday when I go in to do two Weber tours.

This manual labor balances the intellectual work I do and I’m glad to be back at it.  From now until mid-October the garden and our land will take up more and more of my time and happily so.

Art and Culture, Great Work, Our Land and Home, Woolly Mammoths

What Do the Shang Kuei and the Zhou Kuei Have In Common?

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39  bar falls 30.21 7mph NNE dewpoint 14

           Full Moon of Winds

Warren Wolfe handed out a sheet at the Woolly retreat, a project development sheet that involves identifying a project or activity that compels us in some way.  I missed his presentation since I left early for Hawai’i, so I have to fill it out now.  The answer that keeps coming up for me is the permaculture work Kate and I plan here. 

The whole notion of working with our land so that it grows healthier and we gain more foodstuffs from it attracts me, as I’ve said earlier.  With Warren’s notion I can keep this work both before a group who can help me with my accountability and have a built in audience, too.  I’m writing about it here to let those of who read this know.  You can enter my circle of accountability, too, if you wish.

As the notion becomes clearer, I write here, on the Permaculture page, what exactly we intend to do for this year.  I don’t know enough quite yet to put down objectives, but I imagine they will mostly be preparatory.  There are projects from last year that will get finished anyhow like the firepit and converting most of the raised beds to vegetables.  There are two that will get some work done on them this year, but will probably not finish:  the grandkids playhouse in the woods and the root cellar.  The Permaculture work is in addition to these already planned projects.  

Still deep in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, trying to decide how to present a large collection of bronze vessels that can be daunting for first-time viewers.  I’ve made a couple of decisions.  We’ll start in the Neolithic ceramics, the 1st case in the ceramics gallery and move to the Bronze Age ceramic case before we head over to the Bronze gallery.  This will place the development of bronze squarely in the material culture roots from which it sprang.  It will also show the mutual interaction between bronze vessel design and ceramics.  Bronze imitates ceramics at first, then, later ceramics imitate bronze. 

The Shang and the Zhou get equal treatment in my mind so far, but I haven’t selected actual objects.  The Shang kuei and hu, the Pillsbury owl (tsun), the ritual bell, the ting all seem likely to make the cut.  But, we’ll see.  Many more pages to read and objects to see.

Great Work, Our Land and Home, Politics, Travel

Kama’aina of the Heartland

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15  bar rises 30.17  2mph WNW windchill9

    Waning Crescent of the Snow Moon

“People who love soft methods and hate iniquity forget this, that reform consists in taking a bone from a dog. Philosophy will not do it.” – John Jay Chapman

I would add to Chapman, it often means a taking a bone from a vicious dog and a strong one.  That’s why it’s fun.  And dangerous.

Just made an attempt to sign up for the Sierra Club’s political committee for this election year.  I want to put my hand back in, but with Taoism as my mentor this time, rather than liberation theology or neo-marxism.  We’ll see what that means if I get selected.

Slept late today.  Still getting used to the center of the continent. 

One realization I had while in Hawai’i is that I am kama’aina of the heartland, the center of a large landmass, the actual geographic opposite of island life.  As a child of this land, I relish significant even sudden changes in weather.  The cycle of planting, growth, maturity, harvest and a fallow time is as essential to my Self as it is to the rhythm of life here.  I am, in every sense of the word, an American.  A Midwesterner.   A Northerner.  Each of those geographic identifiers impacts key aspects of my person, my approach to life and my deep values.

Memories, Our Land and Home, Travel

Back on Central Standard Time

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23  bar falls 29.90 2mph  NNE windchill21

     Last Quarter of the Snow Moon

Gonna get the weather changed back to Andover tomorrow.  Still a little fuzzy.  I stayed up all day to reset my biological clock and it feels like its worked.   I’ll be ready for bed around my usual time.

This was 6:30PM on Hawai’ian Standard Time.  Time to hunt for dinner and begin to wind down from a day of hiking or visiting gardens or beach combing.  It’s always strange, at least to me, that when we return from a place like Hawai’i that it continues, in the same rhythms, after we leave. 

Most of the year I don’t hold the distinct memories of two places in my mind as I do right after I return from vacation, but for now and the next few weeks Hawai’i will be as clear as if it were a short drive away.  This is partly a function of jet travel.  We walk down a jet way on Kauai, wander around a few mostly similar airports, walk down a couple more jetways, then we’re home again.  No landscape passes by as we travel.  There are only vague indications of cultural change.  OK, the banks of slot machines in the Las Vegas airport were not subtle, but you know what I mean.  No changes in cuisine, no different towns, license plates, grocery stores, just the world air travel culture and its modest inflections as we pass from one gate to another.

Getting to bed time here on good ol’ CST.

Memories, Our Land and Home, Travel

Just Another Day in Paradise

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12  73%  19%  0mph EEN bar30.06 falls windchill 11  Winter

                 Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

“Paradise is here or nowhere: You must take your joy with you, or you will never find it.” – O.S. Marden

Salient advice as Kate and I prepare for Hawai’i.  “Just another day in paradise,” is often heard when there, from tourists and locals alike.  There’s another one, too, “Lucky we live Hawai’i.”  Marden echoes Emerson, who said he didn’t need to go to Italy to see beauty, because he found beauty wherever he was.  

“Wherever you go, there you are,” from the world of AA makes the same point.  We take our conclusions, biases, and perceptions with us wherever we go.

A trap into which I have fallen in the past and no doubt will fall into again measures home against the temporary pleasure found in any distant destination, from Ely and Duluth to Kauai and Angkor Wat.  Home will always come out second best, because by definition it does not have what Ely does, ready access to the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area.  It does not have the perfect, year round temperature of Hawai’i, nor does it have the ocean.  It does not have the howler monkeys and ancient temples of Angkor.  The Napali Coast fires the imagination in a way different from the drive up Round Lake Boulevard.

True.  All true.  Compare these far away places, however, to home from home.  Hawai’i does not have my friends.  Angkor does not have the Minneapolis Art Institute and my docent work.  Ely does not have easy access to theatres, orchestras and the Walker.  Kauai, though it is the garden isle, does not have the garden and grounds on which Kate and I have worked for over 14 years.  None of these places have our house, adapted to our creative work and the daily life we live.  Could these other places accrue amenities like these?  Friends, maybe, over years.  The peculiar blend of artistic life enjoyed here in the Twin Cities?  Probably not.  A house like ours?  Probably not.

Also true.  All true.  Still, we also have, for balance, the testimony of Mark and Elizabeth, who cast off their worldly belongings (ok, they stored some of them.) to travel the globe.  So far they’ve hit Buenos Aires, Peru, Shanghai and head out next week for Bangkok.  Their home is where they are, though they return here episodically to unite with family and friends.

I had a peripatetic 20’s and 30’s after 16 years in Alexandria, Indiana.  I lived in twelve different cities and rural areas until coming to the Twin Cities metro area.  Even after arriving in Minneapolis and St. Paul I lived in twelve different apartments and/or houses in both cities and two suburbs. 

The 14 years in Andover has come close to setting a record for personal stability.   The minuses are written in the script of every foreign or domestic destination that has called to me.  They are also painted in lost opportunities to experience other cultures and locales. 

The pluses though are profound.  Daily life has a routine that frees the mind for creative work.  I know the microclimates and the soil conditions of each inch of our 2.5 acres.  Our dogs and our children have lived their lives here, the dogs their whole lives, the children important parts.  Kate and I know each other as stewards of this land, this house and these memories.  Lucky we live Andover.

GeekWorld, Memories, Our Land and Home, Travel

The Scent of Spring

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2  56%  22%  6mph W bar 29.54  steep rise windchill-5

                Last Quarter of the Winter Moon

Kate brought me a spray of yellow tulips two days ago.  They have opened now and have the scent of spring.

We’re seeking another dog, looking at Irish Wolfhound and  Scottish Deerhound rescues on the internet.  We won’t do anything until we get back from Hawai’i, but both of us have a sense of incompleteness in our family without a big dog.  I would like a mix with a breed a bit more long lived, since we still grieve the loss of each one of our eight Wolfhounds.  Grief underlines the bond developed with these dogs and, in a paradox, draws us back towards them in direct proportion to our sorrow. 

Getting ready.  I have the portable DVD player, which I’ve never used, plugged in and charging the battery.  I do have a fix it role, but it entails electronics, not internal combustion engines.  Those I manage through repair services, but often the electronic stuff I can fix myself.  Go figure.  A partial credential for Geekworld.

Sat down the other day and read a Taoism lesson.  As I read, I realized a strange feeling had crept over me.  It was contentment.  In fact, I feel it now.  I had, for many years, a knot, a frissón of unease lodged in the lower left of my gut.  Even when I felt otherwise comfortable, a gut check would reveal a free floating angst speaking to me, soma telling psyche all is not yet right.  Right now, it’s gone.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Our Land and Home

A Sacrament From Mother Earth

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35  91%  23%  2mph ESE bar29.06 steady windchill34  Winter

              Last Quarter of the Winter Moon

Something I’ve thought about for a while.

                                                   A Sacrament

water from our well, bread from local grain and cheese from Minnesota, candles

Light candle(s).

Say to all:  See this light, not as symbol, but as energy brought to us by fire from the sky and fire from deep beneath the earth.  By the light of this fire we see this water, this bread, this cheese.

On the table or altar have the pitcher, a cup, a plate with bread not broken and cheese not broken

Water in an earthenware pitcher. Pour into a single cup.

To each person as they take the cup:  take this and drink it, not as symbol, but as substance, the necessary liquid of all life as blood is the necessary liquid in our body.

Break the bread and hand pieces to each person

Say to all:  Eat this bread, not as symbol, but as substance, the marriage of earth and sun which gives birth to grain.

Break the cheese and hand pieces to each person

Eat this cheese as a gift from one mammal to another, food which sustains us.

 Say to all:  This water, this bread, this cheese transforms itself even now into your body, one link in the sacred chain stretching back to the one-celled organism, our common ancestor, and forward to our descendants, who may be as different from us as we are from that one cell.  This is a miracle.

Go now in peace. 

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Our Land and Home

A Sixty Degree Temperature Swing

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24  87%  21%  0mph  SSW  bar29.96  steady  Winter

           Waning Gibbous Winter Moon

As the winter moon wanes, a warm up heads our way.  Tomorrow the temperature will hit 40.  That’s a sixty degree swing within the week.  Not unusual for Minnesota, but impressive anyhow.  I’ve read that we have the most significant temperature and weather type fluctuations of anywhere on earth, though Siberia is similar.  That’s Siberia.  As in the place to which you were exiled as to the lonliest and most inclement place on earth from Moscow.  One of the most inclement places on earth.  So….

On this point Paul Douglas, local weather sage, whose long term eye is better than his short term one, has a website up that is worth a visit, www.climatespot.com. I’ve added it to the blogroll, too.

The sun shines today and small dimples have begun to show up at the base of trees, shrubs and the winter remnants of last year’s flower garden.  As the weather warms, the snow sinks away first at the point where something that can warm up meets the ground.  I hope that this warm up will bring a fresh snowfall, one that will fill in the dimples and freshen up the sagging snow.  It looks, and feels, like early March, deceptive though.  In March I can look out the window, notice the same changes and get the feeling, as I did momentarily this morning, plants have begun to stir underneath, that buds will open on trees and maybe a few early daffodils and the bloodroot will break the ground.  In March that is a fond hope, one with the chance of reality in a month or so, two at most.  In late January, not true.  February can have cold and snow like January.  March often has big snow, but the snow doesn’t last.  That feeling today only leads to dis-ease.  It is not a hope that can sustain itself in the near term future.

I continue my study of Taoism, look for some new additions to the Taoism pages. 

Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Put on the Mad Bomber, Baby. It’s Cold Outside.

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-3  78%  27%  0mph WNW bar30.16  steady  windchill-3  Winter

            First Quarter of the Winter Moon

“Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, or accept another’s dogmatism.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

La Ñina, el ñino’s cooler sister, has forced the jet stream to the south, leaving us without atomspheric protection from the frigid arctic air.  There is nothing but water and tundra between us and the North Pole, so when this happens our temperature plummets.  It was -9 at 7:00 AM this morning.  Though no one who doesn’t share our winter understands it, this is the weather that defines us as Minnesotans and most of us look forward to it.  It requires coping skills passed on from generation to generation and from natives to newcomers.  In the old days we brought our car batteries inside, bought engine block heaters.  Now we buy wicking thermal underwear, Mad Bomber hats, Sorel boots and put our cars in garages if we can.  When I moved to Minnesota in 1970, the seminary housing had electrical outlets in front of each parking spot in the student residence parking lot.  I thought, oh, my.

The snow cover has faded, though it’s still there. If we don’t get more snow, I’m going to have to lay down straw in a few spots, though the areas I had concerns about, mostly the newly planted garlic bed, already have their mulch.

Great Work, Our Land and Home

A Root Cellar in Andover

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19  65%  26%  1mph W  bar30.10 rises  windchill19  Winter

                Waxing Crescent of the Winter Moon

I like Sundays.  My workout schedule is 6 days a week and Sunday is a day off.   Much of my life Sunday, especially Sunday morning  was a work day, so to have the day off is a special treat in my world. 

Of course, like most Sundays, I will write today and spend some more time on the garden plan.  Might even watch a play-off game.  How ’bout them Packers?  Winning in the snow.  Northern football.  Brett Favre comes from Mississippi; must have been a shock when he first started in Green Bay.

Yesterday I looked over plans for root cellars.  Kate and I plan to put one in this next growing season.  I’m not sure where quite yet.  One book recommends digging into a hill, which makes sense, and I have a hill right outside the window here.  The problem is, if I dig it by hand, there are difficulties.  First order of business is to kill and remove the poison ivy.  Then, since this hill has seven oaks trees on its crest and a few stubby ash and oak there will be woody roots to remove.  Not to mention the actual digging.  That could be a good workout, though.

None of this is impossible, of course.  The question is whether I’m willing to do all the work by hand.  If we put the root cellar in the back, we could have a backhoe come in and do the heavy lifting, then all we’d have to do is frame it out, make steps and a floor, put in a roof and call it a cellar.  To get to the hill area I’d like to use, any heavy equipment would have to come over lawn and I’m not sure I want to do that.

 Noticed in the paper today that the election has world attention.  As well it might.  Having spent the last presidential election in Singapore, however, I can report that even then taxi drivers gave a damn about whom we elect as President.  Many foreign nationals are eager to see the Bush era come to an end.  I’m with them.