Category Archives: Garden

Dogs, Garden, Weather +Climate

The Wolf Came Out

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Spring                                                                 Bee Hiving Moon

The sun is as high in the sky now as it is at Labor Day.  That means warmth is coming. Today we’re supposed to hit 70.  Then, maybe get some snow on Sunday.  Back and forth. With the sun high, the snow from winter will be gone by then, except for those heroic dirty mountains that rose up in large parking lots.  I remember a few years back when they hung on until well into May.

The dogs heard something this morning around 2:30.  And set to howling and barking to get at it.  Kate finally got up and let them out.  She later heard a high pitched scream and a while after that the dogs retching.  Whatever it was, they caught it.  She also said the owl was in fact hooting last night.  It was, however, quiet when I wrote the post below this one.

Not often these days, but on occasion, we get reminded that these gentle loving creatures remain red in tooth and claw.  Underneath that indoor sweetness lie genes borne of wolves, most often not aroused, but last night.  The wolf came out.

Garden, GeekWorld, Great Work, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses, World History

An Afternoon

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Spring                                                             Bee Hiving Moon

Moving deeper into Book I of the Metamorphoses.  Next week I’ll set a schedule for translating, so many verses a day.  Plus I plan to set a schedule for certain additional research that will go along with this task, things like comparing Ovid’s stories with other accounts of the same myth, investigating key grammatical or etymological points and, the big one, getting deep into Roman history of the late Republic and early Imperial era, Ovid’s time.  Over the last couple of years I have purchased books about Ovid and his poetry, Roman poetry and comparative literature between and among Ovid and his peers.

(Deucalião_e_Pirra   Giovanni_Maria_Bottalla)

I’ve not been too willing to get into these areas in any depth until I felt the translating had reached some point, though I didn’t know what that was.  Well, now I’ve reached it.  And I’m ready to go the next step.

I spent a half an hour today and translated 5 verses, so my speed is picking up, though to be fair the difficulty varies, usually with regard to the length of a sentence.

Also in the mail today.  The nitrogen for the vegetable garden and my new Lenovo laptop. This replaces my old Hewlett-Packard, a sturdy and reliable machine that has been outstripped by cheaper processors and memory and the retirement of Microsoft XP.  It doesn’t have enough juice to run Windows 7 or Windows 8.  Tomorrow I plan to start it up and see what’s what.

Garden, Our Land and Home, Travel

Returning to Normal

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Spring                                                          Bee Hiving Moon

Finally beginning to settle back into home life.  Exercise back on track, though not quite up to pre-trip standards, but close enough.  It will get there.  Concentrating on Latin and then Kate’s pacemaker maintenance on Thursday kept me from getting back into my usual rhythm, but I did get substantial work done in Ovid.

We had our business meeting this morning and our finances are on track, as they have been, but it’s nice to see they are still after a long trip.  Travel is the budget buster in our house and we have to keep close watch over it.

So, a couple of deep breaths, the weekend and back to it.  Then we leave on the 23rd for Gabe’s birthday weekend.  Kate and I are going together, driving this time.  As I said the other day, I’m hopeful the soil will be workable enough to plant the cool weather crops before we go.

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work, Our Land and Home, permaculture

What Is Your Kiva?

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Spring                                          Hare Moon

Santa Fe.  Staying in a reasonably priced motel right in the heart of adobe filled Santa Fe.  The cathedral featured in Death Comes for the Archbishop is only a block or two away.  I came to Santa Fe after seeing Chaco Canyon.

Due to a weird late night mix up I checked into a motel-cheap-no phone, no wi-fi she said.  I didn’t mind.  She forgot to add no heat.  This in Holbrook, AZ high up just past the Mogollon Rim.  49 when I pulled in. I was too tired to hassle it so I went to sleep.

Fortunately, years of living with Kate have taught me cold sleeping skills.  It was fine until I woke up 4 am. I’d never shifting my bed time from home, nor my rising, so the 6 am Minnesota equivalent had me awake.  I decided to get in the warm car and drive to Chaco Canyon.  Which I did.

This is a haunting place, difficult to get to now as it must have been difficult to get to in the period between 850 a.d and 1150 a.d. when it flourished.  It was, for that time period the ceremonial for the pueblo peoples.  The architecture of Chaco County shows up in many other pueblo peoples sites, though much more modest in scale.

The Chaco folks built big.  And they built stone on stone, with a mud mortar.  The construction technique reminded me of dry stone fences in the East.

The part of each person’s inner life that reaches out to a particular patch of mother earth has created thousands of small kivas, I’ll call them.  The pueblo people go into the below ground circular stone structures called kiva’s as if returning to the womb. Each time they come out, they’re reborn.  So a kiva is a patch of earth where you feel reborn.  For me it’s our gardens and woods and orchard, for the pueblo people its Chaco Canyon and the Four Sacred Mountains.

Each patch of earth needs a kiva that holds it dear and feels responsible for its care.  And who, in turn, are reborn in the giving of that care by the earth.  This is a faith with so many worship sites and the worship is different for each kiva.  What kiva do you belong to?

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work

The True Apocalypse

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Spring                                                     Hare Moon

Tucson.  The Horse Latitudes.

The second of the three workshops, this one focusing on depth work, finished this afternoon.  Again, because of the nature of the workshops, they’re hard to summarize and its difficult to convey their spirit except to say its most like a contemplative secular retreat.  Which is, come to think of it, just what it is.

I can convey the spirit of this workshop by transcribing here the results of the next to last exercise. This one was to create a spontaneous statement, a testament, of what we believe to be true right now.  This was written following a long meditation, with no forethought.

Here are the things I know to be true:

Love forms the cross on which we all live.  The soil is the foundation of life. Our ancestors hold us up, have our backs. (FYI: those of you at Frank’s will know how this came to mind.)

The sun is a god who gives of himself wholly.  The light of the sun is holy and blesses what it touches.

The soil embraces the sun, marries the sun, goes into throes of ecstasy with the sun producing, producing, producing.

As the earth turns the soils embrace of the sun weakens and strengthens, weakens and strengthens and from these rhythms we get life eternal, abundant, gracious and undeserved.

We celebrate each other as moving, loving sons and daughters borne of the sun and the soils embrace-nothing more and nothing less.  We owe ourselves fealty to these two, our parents, our true god and our true goddess without whom we are nothing-brittle, cold, frozen, shattered.

We need no other religion, no other philosophy, no other politics than fealty to sun and soil.  They have given us what we need, they will give us what we need-unless we change their marriage to one which can no longer include the human family.  If we do, it will be the final anathema, the true apocalypse and the end of a long love affair.

Art and Culture, Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Garden, Latin, MOOCS, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Now

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Spring                                             Hare Moon

The first of three workshops has finished.  This one, life context, positions you in the current period of your life.  It’s been, as always, a moving and insight producing time.  These workshops move below the surface and defy easy summary, but I have had one clear outcome from this one.  I’m in a golden moment.

I’m healthy, loved and loving.  Kate and I are in a great place and the kids are living their adult lives, not without challenges, but they’re facing those.  The dogs are love in a furry form.

The garden and the bees give Kate and me a joint work that is nourishing, enriching and sustainable. We’re doing it in a way that will make our land more healthy rather than less.

The creative projects I’ve got underway:  Ovid, Unmaking trilogy, reimagining faith, taking MOOCs, working with the Sierra Club, and my ongoing immersion in the world of art have juice.  Still.

I have the good fortune to have good friends in the Woollies and among the docent corps (former and current).  Deepening, intensifying, celebrating, enjoying.  That’s what’s called for right now.

Anoka County, Garden, Weather +Climate

Melting

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Imbolc                                                                Hare Moon

It’s melting! It’s melting!  Yes, like the wicked witch in the land of Oz the snow built up and preserved for so long has begun to melt.  It runs down gutter spouts, leaves crusty holes in the various hills of snow around the house.  The sun smiles and as it has grown higher in the sky its smile has increased in warmth.  The Great Wheel may have been slowed a bit this winter, but it seems to have gotten better purchase.

This does not, though, for those of you far away in warmer lands, release us from the grip of winter.  The ground stays frozen as long as there is snow on it and after the snow leaves it takes a while for the soil to warm up.

Outdoor gardening work won’t start for at least another month, maybe a bit longer.  Some forestry tasks might get done after I get back from Arizona.  The momentum has shifted and the new growing season is struggling to get born.

Garden, Weather +Climate

Warmer

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Imbolc                                                                  Hare Moon

50 degrees yesterday.  Dripping ice created a torrent in our downspouts, as if a hard rain was falling.  This is still, I think, a gradual melt, so I’m ok with the temperatures.  Not that I can do anything about them anyhow, of course. That rain forecast for today? Not so happy about that.  Slow melt good.  Fast melt bad.

Waking up to moist air, warm (over against -15) and carrying the scent of the woods and the soil, moves me forward along with the turning of the Great Wheel. My body begins to synch itself with the change, pushing me toward the outside, a part of me unfurling with the sun’s changed angle, the increased warmth.

A lot to do this week before I leave for Tucson, so I’d better get to it.  Finish the climate change course.  Send off my query letters.  Always more Latin.  A couple of putzy tech things. Call Enterprise. Get my packing organized.  A two week plus trip on the road requires different packing than a weekend flight to Denver.

Garden, Our Land and Home

Seed Orders

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Imbolc                                                                Hare Moon

The Great Wheel has been nudged forward, beginning to turn toward spring: the light in the sky today and the moisture in the air, the sudden grittiness of the once pristine snow. The temperature, even now is 36 degrees.  Above freezing.

The seed orders, filled out a couple of weeks ago, went into Harris Seeds and the Seed Savers Exchange.  Plant orders too.  The garden map for 2014 came out and I figured the square footage for certain kinds of vegetables.  This information went out to Luke Lemmers of HighBrix Gardens.  He’ll send me nitrogen specific to the various beds.

Each one of these steps is gardening.  Gardening is not only hoe and rake, seeds and soil. It’s planning and knowing, sourcing.  This is the gardening work that can be done while the snow is still on the ground.

We did start our own seeds for a few years with a hydroponic set up, but the space it requires and the fussy of it didn’t appeal to me.  So now we buy transplants.  A bit more expensive, but much less hassle.

An important next step comes when the soil becomes workable and we can put in those hardy vegetables that like the cold.  Then, after May 15th or so, the usual last frost date for Andover, we’ll plant the tomatoes and peppers and egg plants and kale and chard and collard greens.  After that, it’s caring for the plants as they grow.

Look for our Beltane bonfire, May 1st, the official opening of the growing season.

Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Winter Time Archaeology

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Imbolc                                                                   Valentine Moon

Finished first draft of my query letter.  It includes a synopsis of Missing, about 1,500 IMAG0365words, and the first five pages.  Missing itself, after revision 5.5, is at 103,000 or so.  I want to get some feedback on the query letter, then start sending it out to agents.  My plan is to get it out to 10 agents before I leave for Tucson and other points south west.

(June 5th, 2013)

That took the morning.  Tomorrow I’m putting together our seed and plant orders, calculating the kinds of nitrogen they will need based on the bed sizes for specific vegetables and getting an order for the nitrogen off to Luke Lemmer in Plato, Minnesota.  This is in plenty of time since our vegetable beds, raised about 18 inches off the ground, are invisible now.  It would require winter time archaeology to find them.

The Vegetable Garden
The Vegetable Garden

This is part of why I like four distinct seasons.   Planning a garden while 3 feet of snow lie in our yard and the temperature is in the teens headed toward the teens below makes the full cycle of life an experience rather than abstraction.

(February 21, 2014)