Category Archives: Family

Bees, Family, permaculture, Politics

Water and Politics

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Lughnasa                             Waning Harvest Moon

Kate took her ailing sewing machine up to St. Cloud.  She bought it there.  On the way home she brought maid-rites, a taste of Iowa burger.  Maid-rites have a crumbly hamburger instead of a patty, a little bit like sloppy joes without barbecue sauce.  Kate had not been far from home for several days with this illness.  She’s on the mend now.

The new plantings, shrubs and trees, need water these next few weeks, before it gets cold.  Their roots will uncurl and extend into the soil, go deeper and wider.  By next spring they should need no extra care.  That’s part of the idea behind permaculture, a maintenance free or low maintenance landscape.  Permaculture achieves this in several ways.  Plant guilds, plants that complement each other planted together, and plants native to the eco-system are two primary strategies for achieving this goal.  Productive plants, aided by plant guilds, and native to the region make them naturally disease resistant and adapted to the particular moisture and soil requirements of your site.

Even so, they still need to get established, just like all those college freshmen throughout the land, uprooted from home and having to become part of a new place.

All this meant really long hoses since we have now begun to plant beyond the range our irrigation system.  Since these plants won’t require additional water in the future, it doesn’t make sense to provide new irrigation.

A few limbs and one tree also had to come down to make sure some of the new plants thrive.

I checked the bees today, too.  Still little honey.  I’ve provided the hive and the bees have worked all season, so I’m not unhappy.  Even so, I hope next year I can get some honey.  Don’t know right now what I need to do differently, if anything.

A good part of the afternoon I’ve spent reading Politics In Minnesota weekly reports, a subscription service focused on the ins and outs of Minnesota politics, especially at the state level.  On Monday I’ll attend a Minnesota Environmental Partnership meeting that will try to assess the political context for environmental issues at the legislature next year.  I’m reading ahead.  The context is critical when considering electoral and legislative politics.  Not so much when pushing issue campaigns, at least not in the early stages.  To win, though, requires sensitivity to the political context in which the issue must be resolved.

Dogs, Family

Family

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Lughnasa                              Waning Harvest Moon

Alert:  more dog stuff below.

These dogs.  They have a sense of playfulness,  athleticism and a joy in each others company.  And we’re ruining that right now.  We have them on leads because they jump the fence.  They get tangled up in them and have no fun outside,  inside they’re uncertain what all this means and they act unhappy.  Inside, too, their energy, unreleased from vigorous play (and, it must be pointed out, fence jumping) gets expressed.  This is two 75 pound + animals baring their teeth and jumping on each other.

We love it that our dogs have the run of the woods.  They have a shed to hunt under and one to sleep under.  They have woodpiles filled with critters that interest them.  There is a plastic swimming pool they can jump in when its hot and water to drink when they’re thirsty.  They organize themselves into a pack and enjoy each others company.  Being on leads cramps all that.

Right now we’re sad because we can’t figure out how to give these big puppies the freedom they need while keeping them safe and us out of trouble with the law.  A conundrum.  This situation exceeds our doggy knowledge by a lot.  We need help and we’re seeking it from the dog’s breeder, our vet and others who have coon hound experience.

Aging, Dogs, Family, Our Land and Home

Life Busting Out All Over. Much Better Than the Alternative.

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Lughnasa                           Waxing Harvest Moon

My thoughts on Enlightenment were cut off mid think by this world, Rigel on an adventure outside the gate.  Now I’ve secured the gate (I think.) until it can be repaired and I’m about to return to research for the Liberalism series.

We have many tiny strands of life breaking out:  Kate’s spine, Rigel’s venturesome spirit, Vega’s big gallumphing crashing presence, a gnarly conceptual piece that needs to be written by September 6th, the oncoming harvest, driveway seal coating on September 8th and the next round of Ecological Gardens work starting on September 9th.

I also have a tour today at 1:30.  Thank God, it’s only Sin and Salvation.  Ha, ha.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Memories

Surgery?

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Lughnasa                        Waxing Harvest Moon

This was a doctor day.  Kate and I went to see a spine surgeon she has seen before.  She leans now toward some surgical intervention since the various palliatives:  drugs, nerve root and facet joint blocks, exercise and stoicism no longer provide sufficient relief.   Surgery is the last option and in the case of matters spinal one usually chosen as such.  Her surgeon is positive about the chances for success, success measured as a substantive reduction in pain, though not cessation.

We stopped at Burger Jones for a delayed lunch.  3200 block of West Lake Street.  If you want a trip back to the late 50’s early 60’s, but updated with booze and choices in shakes and burgers you didn’t have back then, Burger Jones is the place.  Fun.

Long nap.  Just now getting roused for the remainder of the day.

Liberalism and the liberal tradition is much on my mind since  have to write a sermon for the 6th of September.  Reading, reading, reading.   Thinking.  Pondering.  Like that.

Aging, Dogs, Family, Friends

Barriers and Transitions

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Lughnasa                               Waxing Harvest Moon

The day so far.  Bought 55 granite blocks to use in constructing barriers to the dogs.  Bought 10 straw bales to reinforce a barrier to the dogs.  Do you see a pattern?

A nap, then a workout and some Sierra Club work.  The day has sped past with work and play, now winding down toward the evening when I sit with the dogs, read or watch television.  Eat supper.

Kate’s in a definite transition mode this year, perhaps even in the next few months.  The pain causes her increasing difficulty, sometimes she spends her non-work hours recovering from work.  Literally.  Not a situation that can go on forever.

The neighbor whom I have mentioned in the past, though, has bigger issues.  His mental decompensation seems to track with his physical.  He grabbed his daughter’s arm and bit her.  His wife had to call the police to come take him to a psych ward.  He returns home tomorrow with nothing different.  A sad situation.

Family, Garden, Our Land and Home

Down in the Trenches

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Lughnasa                             Waxing Harvest Moon

Kate’s pain continues.  “I don’t even  feel guilty about not going into work today,” she said.  Whoa.  That says it all.

Her condition creates  a moving target, how to balance therapies and activity with the pain and newly emerging symptoms.  We’ll find a place for her to be, at least until we have to find another one.

The gradual slide toward fall, now most noticeable in the changed angle of the sun and the decreasing average highs, has energized me.   The trench for the electrical wiring linking the honey house (in process) to the grandkids playhouse has soil over the wiring now.  The trench had to be redug where Vega and Rigel had prematurely pushed soil back into the trench.  That was work for an adze, work done while kneeling spread wide over the trench.  A wide stance, I guess you could say.

I checked the bees this morning, too, sending them love as Queen Latifah suggested in the Secret Life of Bees.  Though I love them and they seem happy, that is plentiful and busy, there is not much honey, maybe a frame and a half at most.  Why this is, I don’t know.  It seems the learning curve here will be long, but that’s ok.  I’ve got time to learn the way of the beekeeper.

Bees, Cinema and Television, Family

Pain and Work

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Lughnasa                         Waxing Harvest Moon

Kate came home early from work.  Not working, not pulling her load is hard for her to bear, psychically much harder to bear than the physical pain.  She goes to work when she is in pain, partly because that’s how doctors have been socialized, but also partly because she wants to do her share, or pick up another person’s, if necessary.

This is not a fun way to live her last full year of work.  My hope is that we can find a way, with the help, perhaps, of the two surgeons and the PM&R doc.  She is, as a co-worker told her, a strong woman.

Just watched the Secret Life of Bees.  A fine movie, feelings popping out all over the place and at unexpected moments.  “Just send out love to the bees,” Queen Latifah’s character says.  Yeah.

Aging, Family

Happy Birthday, Kate

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Lughnasa                            Waning Green Corn Moon

Kate turns 65.  Once in our culture this birthday was as important as 21.  It meant the date when retirement began for most workers.  Now it is another birthday since the retirement date has been sliding gradually forward as one of the “fixes” for social security.  Kate and I both have a social security retirement date of 66.  Those born after 1960 have a retirement date of 67.  The consensus of things I’ve read suggest that age will have to get pushed to 70 in any new fix.

It still seems like a milestone of sorts, halfway between 60 and the three score and ten of a good life in the Jewish tradition.  Wonder if they’ve upped the age, maybe to three score and fifteen?  I read a great sermon on aging by a rabbi.  He is 92 or so.  When asked how he felt about having lived so long, he said, “Surprised.”

It will be good when Kate comes home for good.  Her back needs the rest and her heart can use the freedom.  We have a life here that is full and complete, one that needs the both of us with our increasing gardens alongside our creative and volunteer work.  She’s worked hard all her life and earned good money, so our retirement will be fine from a financial perspective.

Early on when she told me how money she made, my mouth dropped open.  It didn’t occur to me that people I knew might make that much.  Now I know she’s on the low end for docs, but it’s still a lot, plenty.   I said then and believe now that taking care of children is a morally unambiguous way to earn a living, one of the few I know.  So there are no regrets with her level of income for either of us.

Her gifts are much larger than that however.  She’s kind, generous, imaginative and patient.  She’s a great cook, a highly skilled seamstress and quilter and has a green thumb.  I’m lucky to have found her in this big world.

Cooking, Family, permaculture, Woolly Mammoths

Kate the Cook

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Lughnasa                                  Waning Green Corn Moon

It was fun to see Kate get compliments on her cooking.  Her cooking skills are remarkable.  Her nutmeg sauce melts the heart of the largest Mammoth.  We had a ceremony, a brief one, in which Kate passed to me the new wedding ring she purchased for me in Jackson Hole.  We also acknowledged the reason for the ceremony, Vega.

Though we have not done our work here for a public or any public, it gratified us both to have genuine interest in our permaculture efforts.  Having said that I need to get and plant some fall crops right now.

Cooking, Family, Woolly Mammoths

Mammoths Trek North

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Lughnasa                          Waning Green Corn Moon

Today the Woolly Mammoths put themselves on the ancient trail to the north, a gathering of the herd happens here in Andover starting at 6:00 p.m. or so.  Kate has helped me with the meal the last two meetings, or, better, I have helped her help me.  The menu includes two brined and roasted free-range chickens.  It also includes potatoes from our garden with our parsley, roasted beets, turnips, and carrots, and possibly, tomato and onion salad from our garden.  I say possibly because three of our Cherokee Purples began to turn last Friday, all the rest of our tomato explosion are still green.  Kate will also make her signature dish, a rhubarb pudding.

I have to go out this morning and retrieve my new wedding ring from the jewelers so Vega, Kate, and I can have a small ceremony during the meeting blessing the new ring.  Then there’s a chain to get to keep Rigel out of the damned orchard.  Ice.  Bones to keep the big dogs happy during the meal.  The little things that have to get done before a large meal.

So, I’d better get to it.  Talk to you later.