Category Archives: Family

Family, Garden, Great Work, Health, permaculture

Dinner Straight From the Plant

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Summer                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

Dinner with vegetables straight from the garden is a treat and can be a surprise.  It was tonight.  We had potatoes, new potatoes-709042potatoes, dug just before cooking.  They had a distinct flavor, a nutty earthy  tone unfamiliar from the long since harvested potatoes typical of both home and restaurant cooking.  This meal included our garlic, our kale and chard, the potatoes garnished with our flat parsley and a bowl of sugar snap peas as an appetizer.

Digging potatoes involved a spading fork to loosen the soil, then searching around under the earth for these lumpy  treasures.  They grow well in the sandy soil here in Andover.

(pic:  potatoes before harvest)

Kate takes off for the Grand Teton’s tomorrow, a CME conference.  BJ is also out there, playing in the Grand Teton music festival as she has for the last several years.  The Tetons have an incredible beauty, the American Alps, a very young mountain range.  She’s back on Wednesday, then we go to see a micro-surgeon who has perfected the technique for cervical vertebrae.  He’ll evaluate Kate’s candidacy for that surgery.

Lots of weeding today and more tomorrow.  A normal task in late July, early August.

Art and Culture, Family, Politics, Weather +Climate

A Good Day

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Summer                         Waxing Green Corn Moon

A good day to work outside.  Still gotta fix the netaphim since other matters interfered the last couple of days.  Lots of weeding to do.  Even in a drought our watering supports the weeds just as it does the vegetables and flowers.

The Minneapolis Art Institute balanced its books.  That’s a good thing.  Those who work and volunteer there know the last year saw colleagues cut from the work force and strain was present.

Sierra Club legislative work is in a quiet spot right now.  The legislative agenda setting process kicks into high gear next month, then moves like a freight train rolling down hill right through May of 2010.  The work requires attention and building of new relationships.  That all takes time.

solomonThe kids have a new puppy, Solomon, continuing the theme of traditional Jewish names for the German short-hair in the house.

It’s funny the way camera angles often emphasize the head.  This shot looks like Solomon has the head for making wise judgments put on the body of a Chihuahua.

Herschel, Solomon’s elder, has cancer and is not expected to live much longer.

The Star-Trib weatherblog has gotten less attention than it deserves this last month and a half.  Three blogs  Sierra Club, weather and Ancientrails proved too demanding.  Even two can be a lot.  Giving up the Sierra Club blog made sense when the Legislative Committee Chair position came along.

Family, Politics

Vega. Still.

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Summer                             Waxing Green Corn Moon

Vega the wonder dog continues to add mischief and joy to our lives.  She climbed up on the kitchen table after treats we foolishly left there.  Yesterday she took the door-stop we use to lock our sliding door at night and happily chewed on it.  Yesterday, after the mulberry tree went down, Vega picked up the downed branches, chewed them and distributed them widely.

All this and still no ring.

Obama has fallen from grace a bit, his poll numbers have gone down.  This makes sense and shows a president of color, or the eventual first woman president, will have to perform.  That is as it should be.  No one gets a pass when the health of the nation is on the line, no matter what.  Does this mean Obama has failed to live up to expectations?  Yes, but the expectations represented the type of governance no person can achieve.  Now we have to learn how to adjust our understanding of who he is and what he can accomplish.  Just like we’ve had to do with every president of every era.

Tomorrow more work outside.

Family

Eyes (and nose) on the Prize

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Summer                      Waning Summer Moon

I’ve now pressed into mush several deposits from both Rigel and Vega, hoping to retrieve my wedding ring.  No joy so far.  Kate says I should put on gloves, pick it up and feel carefully with my hands.  Hmmm.   I mean, the wedding ring is worth it, but the search methodology?  Yuck.

Right now Topline fence guys are about half-way through installation of a fence around our orchard.  Vega the wonder dog has proved an expensive $200.  She also chewed up my best hose.  I had it attached to the sill cock to run the sprayer when I worked on the air conditioner.  I forgot to remove it after I finished.  Vega did not.  This morning one of Kate’s tennis shoes lost a heel. Even so, Vega has an irrepressible personality, a joyful exuberance that makes the worst she’s done forgivable.   A great trait.

I have to get a picture of this animal in action. The one’s I have so far are not so hot.

Aging, Family, GeekWorld

Waving As They Left

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Summer                        Waning  Summer Moon

Duffel bags and cloth grocery bags went into the plastic Yakima carrier on top of the Colorado state car, the Subaru.  Ruth got in her car seat with the two spongy plastic balls Grandma bought her.  Gabe crawled through the morning grass and got some cutting on his Gap jeans and his pale blue shirt the color of his eyes.  Herschel came out, bounded up in the front with Ruth, then went, reluctantly to his place in the rear where he has a small fan to keep him cool.  Finally, Mom and Dad got in the front seat and the Olson family headed out for points west.

Grandma and I stood, waving as they left.  We were sad to see them go.    Jon will have surgery on his shoulder on August 12th, surgery made necessary by his joint crushing fall now over two years ago.  Jen starts her work in a new school at the end of this month and she’s excited about that.  Ruth and Gabe will continue to head across to Marcella’s, or Humphrey’s as Ruth calls her long time day care provider.

We’ll seem them again sometime in the fall; I may go out for a visit after Jon’s surgery to help out for a bit.  It still feels a bit odd to be the Grandparent, the one visited by the kids after a long drive away from home.  Odd, but good.

Last night I scored a minor geek triumph.  My photoshop elements ceased functioning a good while ago, over three weeks.  This is a program I use a lot.  I got so frustrated with it that I took it to the Geek Squad.  They fixed my disappearing optical drives, sold me two more gigs of RAM but said pass on a photoshop fix.

The guy suggested a repair install or a remove and reinstall.  I did both.  No joy.  I went through all the diagnostics I know the machine has available.  None there either.  Finally, late last night I went back to the chat rooms and found, on an Adobe forum, a possible fix.  I tried it.  Damn.  It worked!  Satisfaction.  Felt pretty damned good.

Installing the two gigs of RAM was the first time in my long experience using computers that I had cracked the shell and done any work inside.  It took a bit of time and care, but, by god, I got them in and now this computer has three gigs of RAM.   More satisfaction.

Aging, Family

You And Grandpop Are In My Heart.

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Summer                         Full Summer Moon

Jon finished building and insulating a wall dividing our furnace room.  Behind this wall will go the produce which can keep over the winter:  potatoes, squash, onions, garlic, carrots, turnips and parsnips.  It will be our green grocer when the weather tips away from the summer solstice toward the winter one and beyond it.  In addition we will have canned tomatoes and greens, pickles, canned gazpacho, dried beans and canned beans, grape jelly and maybe currant.

Jon has done a lot of construction for us, utilizing skills he learned while working for a remodeler after he finished Augsburg.  He built the garden shed near the house, put together the playhouse for grandkids, built the platform I work on in the computer room (where I am right now), a five stall dog enclosure in the garage as well as shelving on the walls.  He’s a talented guy, an artist, a teacher, a father and an expert extreme skier.

The visit has been filled with sweet moments, but tonight at the dinner table there was this exchange between Kate and Ruth (3):  I love you Ruthie, you are in my heart.  I love you, too, Grandma. You and Grandpop are in my heart.  That stopped the conversation for a minute.

They leave tomorrow morning for a drive across the Great Plains, one I’ve made many times since Jon first moved to Colorado.  It is a long drive, but a good one.  We’ll miss them.

Aging, Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Family

Innocence and joy

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Summer                                     Full Summer Moon

Ruth (grand-daughter, 3) has a voice that is innocence.  Her pitch, her earnestess and her imaginative conversation all draw me to a time when life proceeded with leaving home in the early morning, going down the street to pick up my pals, deciding whether to go to the field, play baseball, ride bikes or hunt for pop bottles to turn in for spare change.  Her voice carries the sweetness of cotton candy sold under bright lights at a county fair, pink dresses with lots of frill.  When I hear her, I remember the garden before the fall when we walked with the sacred unclothed and wide-eyed.

Gabe has a smile that lights up the room and makes everyone glad.  Innocence and joy are great gifts children offer to adults, reminders of what the world has on offer if we can shed the mantle of maturity, even if only for a little while.

Today I’m going to put the finishing touches on my pre-Raphaelite tour.  I’ve changed my focus a bit with more attention to Hunt’s evolution as an artist and as a spiritual seeker than an examination of pre-Raphaelitism per se.  In that regard I will start with his Light of the World, started when he was only 23 and finished a year later.  This painting made him famous and rich, but, more important, it ignited a life-long spiritual journey that took shape in his art.  This is a trial run for this tour, so we’ll see how it goes.

Aging, Family, Great Work

Zoos and Us

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Summer                              Full Summer Moon

Zoos have their detractors, but to this guy they stir a sense of wonder.  Two star tortoises walked their sandy space at an elegant trot.  Made me wonder what speed seems like to a tortoise.  Were they flyin’?  Hey, dude, slow down.  Not sure, but when the tortoise in front slowed, the other, tail-gating so close that his head was under the rear of the others shell, would bite the leader on the right leg.  This always made the other guy surge ahead.

Not far from these guys a lone komodo dragon hung behind a tree, his forked tongue flicking in and out, carrying scent inside to his olfactory sensors.  He looked ornery and ready to act on it.  Just beyond him otters slept next to each other, a couple belly up, legs splayed out, the picture of contentment.  Gibbons swung on their impossibly long limbs from branch to branch, occasionally letting out their ear piercing and maniacal cry.  Right next to them was a tree kangaroo.  You’ve never heard of them?  Neither had I, but there he was, up in the tree no less.

On the Minnesota Trail the wolverines were active.  They dug in a hole with great vigor, one pacing in the stream while the other worked, then shifting places.

Ruth and Gabe loved  the coral reef tank filled with all manner of fish in colors so exotic no painter could accurately depict them.  They would be called slaves to bright colors if they did.

After lunch we went on a mono-rail ride.  That’s ok, a novelty, but better for the little ones than for me.

Our last stop was the Grizzly Coast exhibit, a batch of animals native to the Kamchatka Peninsula.  The grizzly bears captivate every one.  One guy swam in the water, making a play for the salmon at the bottom of the pool, but not a  very serious play.  He had been fed earlier.  Just keeping his reflexes sharp.

We were there right at four hours which wore Grandpa out.  Now a nap.