Category Archives: Garden

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work

A Coarse Spirituality

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Lughnasa                                                                   Harvest Moon

Yesterday in the midst of wet raspberry canes, plucking fruit from thorny yet fragile IMAG0955cropped1000branches, the spirituality of the moment grasped me.  The canes stuck to my sweatshirt sleeve; the water soaked into my jeans.  This was the real in all its obstinate presence.

Last February Kate and I did some winter pruning and I cut last year’s canes down to the ground.  We were late getting this done, but the timing was alright.  Now, eight months later, those same plants had burst up, some over my head and drooping with golden and red-purple berries.

The garden, the orchard, the bees each reward us: tomatoes, carrots, onions, apples, cherries, pears, honey.  A virtuous circle, we care for the soil and the plants and the trees and the hives, they in turn offer something we can eat.  Eat.  Think of that.  This is the true and definitive instance of transubstantiation.   Eat this cherry and remember me.  Eat this IMAG0956cropped1000carrot; it becomes me.  It becomes me to eat this carrot.  The soil and the plants here give of themselves that I may not perish.

Thus, to be among them, feeling them pluck at me, rain water dripping off them onto me is a coarse prayer, a baptism by holy water made clean and pure in the clouds then delivered unto us by the morning rain.

Amen.

Garden

The Sweet Scent of…Bugbane?

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Lughnasa                                                          Harvest Moon

Bet you’ve never heard of a perfume called bugbane.  It’s no name for a fragrance and IMAG0960probably not a familiar plant, but it is one of the joys of early fall.  It’s fluffy white racemes give off a scent that brings to mind gardenia and jasmine, scents of a late night drive along the Kona coast with the top down, coming back from a day exploring Hilo and Volcanoes National Park.  Yet here they grace a plant named like a weed.  If you see one somewhere, stop a moment.  The bugbane will transport you somewhere, somewhere pleasant.

One more run at the creeping charlie this morning, utilizing that fall plant habit of storing food in the roots.

To be outside in the morning, a cool morning, in the dying garden, rejuvenates me.  The deaths of the plants follows a long and, should I say it, fruitful life, so no unusual grief, just the bracing sense death gives to those of us who continue to live.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Myth and Story, Writing

The Springtime of the Soul

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Lughnasa                                                               Harvest Moon

This northern soul breathes easier when the mornings are cooler, even cold.  The bright blue Canadian skies or the dark gray roof of low cumulus clouds make me happy, too.  As we tilt toward September 29th, Michaelmas, the springtime of the soul holiday in my sacred calendar, my inner life revs up, or perhaps better, cycles down.  The humus built up over the growing season sees the first shoots of ideas sowed either long ago or just yesterday.

Right now I’m in the grip of Loki, trying to wrestle a believable and exciting villain from his myth and legend.  He and his kids get their own book, this next one, Loki’s Children, so Dad is important.  He’ll come clearer to me as the fall progresses.  (Death of Balder)

 

Cooking, Garden, GeekWorld, Woolly Mammoths

Friends

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Lughnasa                                                                  Harvest Moon

Woolly meeting tonight.  Kate baked a ground cherry pie and a raspberry pie.  Big hits.  “All hail, Kate!”  There was applause near the end for the desert.  Yin served her wonderful variations on Chinese originals, tonight a noodle and pork and vegetable dish.

Scott introduced the topic of the Singularity and we talked about technology and change for the rest of the evening.  Mark Odegard brought up a good point about advances in technology contributing to a digital divide with digital haves and digital have nots.  This divide will tend to reinforce class and racial divisions.  He said this in reaction to me saying I wasn’t particularly worried about the Singularity.  His point was that the rapid advances in technology can and will have unintended social consequences.  He’s right.

In this argument I find myself on the conservative side, that is, I believe there are so many fundamental activities that make us human from painting to poetry, music to novels, athletics and theatre.  They are not reducible to code nor products artificial intelligence can reasonably be expected to create. There are also the incredible complexities of life itself, human relationships, the intricate interlocking webs of ecology systems that will always, I believe, outstrip any technological advance.

And I love technology, gadgets, the new.  Just don’t see them hanging out with me at a Woolly meeting as full participants.  Ever.

 

Asia, Bees, Garden, Woolly Mammoths

Tea Making, Merchandising

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Lughnasa                                                              Harvest Moon

I set the timer for the Zojirushi water boiler for 6 hours last night.  When I came downstairs this morning, it had heated the water to boiling and allowed the temperature to descend to the holding temperature I selected, 175 degrees.  This allows me to take water from it at that temperature all day, filling my pitcher, my teapot as many times as I wish.

Earlier this morning I made a pot of Yunnan White Jasmine Tea and am now on my second pot.  Each pot brews about 8 ounces which I drink from a tiny Chinese style teacup my sister purchased for me as part of a set.  I use the pitcher and water table from that set, too.  I can make 4 more pots of tea before I have to switch tea leaves.

Did a spray of brixblaster this morning (reproductive plants):  raspberries, tomatoes, IMAG0876ground cherries, broccoli and carrots.  The vegetative plants left are leeks, beets and greens, but not enough to mix up a batch of qualify.  After the spraying, I picked ground cherries.  They will fill out the amount Kate needs for the pie she’s baking for the Woollies tonight.  She’s also making a raspberry pie.

Tonight I’m taking as well a box of Artemis Honey for sale.  The first time I’ve actively marketed our honey.  I feel strange doing it since I have an almost Confucian attitude toward merchants, but I’m trying to learn to honor my labor.  Marketing Missing is the next, similar, activity.

 

 

Garden, Great Work, Our Land and Home

Herbicides

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Lughnasa                                                                     Harvest Moon

I use herbicides sparingly, for problems I can’t eliminate by hand.  Those problems include an invasion of rhizomatous creeping charlie, poison ivy and the stumps of felled trees.  The creeping charlie (no relation) was a mistake on my part.  I didn’t recognize it and advised Kate not to pull it when it could have been controlled.  Somehow it got over a large section of ground.  I sprayed it this morning.

Poison ivy.   My earliest adventures with industrial strength herbicides (triclopyr) began soon after IMAG0944our purchase of this property.   Doing research I discovered Rhus radicans likes the ground around oaks.  We have lots of oaks in our woods.

My first efforts with roundup (glyphosate) had no effect.  Ha, ha.  Like rain water to me.

The first time I used triclopyr, as brush-be-gone, a dilute solution sold for ornery shrubs and could-be-tried as adult weeds, failed, too.  Back to the research.  Ah.  The best time to spray them is in the fall when the plant stores energy in its roots for the coming winter season.

(Gog and Magog)

Today (it’s fall, you may notice) I sprayed the creeping charlie because of this information.  I also went hunting poison ivy. I’ve been after it off and on for 15 years.  This year I had trouble finding any.  A good sign.  The ones I did find I coated leaves and stems.  The word on triclopyr is that it vanishes after three months in the soil.  You don’t want to use it around things you want because it’s effective.

Last I’ll use it on stumps.  The problem with stumps, especially ash and black locust is IMAG0949that the tree immediately sends up new treelets to replace the missing one.  Unless you grind the stumps, which I no longer do, you’ll have a clump of new trees instead of an eliminated old one.  I don’t cut down many trees, but when I do it means I have a specific purpose in mind:  more sun for a growing area, more space for the bees, an area for our fire pit.  New trees are not part of the plan.  Using a paint brush to coat the stumps with triclopyr, a less dilute version than brush-be-gone, solves the problem.

(in our woods near the big oaks, Gog and Magog)

In all cases I use integrated pest management to reduce and/or eliminate the need for pesticides.  I use hand removal, physical barriers like landscape cloth and careful selection of plants to reduce the need for herbicides.  I don’t like using them, but in some cases I’ve not been able to come up with other solutions.

Garden, Great Work, Our Land and Home, permaculture

Soil Test

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Lughnasa                                                                     Harvest Moon

Soil tests create the information base for deciding on what products and what amount of soil testthem to use next year.  Fall is the best time to do them since the broadcast fertilizer can be laid down before winter.

I used a clean trowel, a plastic bucket and my knees.  To do a soil sample involves a clean cut into the soil of six inches, then a small slice of that cut, top to bottom, into the bucket. This process repeats several times in different areas, then you blend the soil and take 1.5 cups of it and put it in a plastic bag.  I did this twice, once for the vegetable garden and once for the orchard.

A soil test sheet, provided by International Ag Labs, takes down garden size and what kind of testing you want done.  That all gets mailed to lab in Farmington and a while later, a recommendation comes back with very specific amounts and products.

My dealer, Luke Lemmer in Plato, Minnesota, will compile the broadcast according to the labs recommendations and will also supply the other products.  The soil test goes in today.

Asia, Garden, Literature, Writing

Dismiss what insults your soul

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Lughnasa                                                                         Harvest Moon

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

Walt Whitman, Stanza 52, Song of Myself

 

The journey into gong fu cha continues.  Today I bought some new teas at Teavana.  Still have made no tea in my yixing teapots.  I want to be ready to do it, able to be in the moment with it and there’s been too much going on.  Probably tomorrow, too, since I plan to take soil test samples from the orchard and the vegetable garden. Maybe Wednesday.

Today has been a modern and contemporary poetry day, focusing on pre-modern poets, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.  The class proceeds by reading a poem, then a video of the professor and six U. Penn students doing a collaborative close reading of it.  This is a very rich process.  I’ll post one of the videos here along with the poem, so you can see how much you can get from careful attention.

This morning I sprayed brixblaster for the reproductive vegetables.  Maybe one, no more than two more.  No more drenches.

 

Asia, Bees, Garden

Gong Fu Cha

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Lughnasa                                                             Harvest Moon

Kate and I were out before 8 am today harvesting raspberries, tomatoes, cucumbers and IMAG0898ground cherries.  The tomatoes and cucumbers are in their last week +.  The ground cherries seem set to keep on producing through the first heavy frost and the raspberries have only begun to ripen.  We still have peppers and leeks, a few greens left.

During our weekly business meeting we melted more bees wax and this time attempted to fill the mold.  Only I had not melted enough wax so I had to melt some more.  That means the molds which didn’t fill ended up with two layers of wax.  That worked out ok in a couple of cases, not in two others.

Discovered that the wax has to be washed since the remnant honey, which has a different specific gravity than the wax, gathers and in two cases created a plug of honey between two layers of wax.  Those two have gone back in the bowl for remelting.  I have seven beautiful sweet smelling candles and will have a few more, probably made this time in half-pint canning jars for gifts.  Rendering some more wax as I write this.

After the business meeting, I drove into Verdant Tea and bought two yixing tea pots.  This Zhu-ni-teapot_is a present to myself for finishing Missing and getting ready to write Loki’s Children.  They’ll be in constant use.  Yixing teapots are perfect for the Chinese way of tea, Gong Fu Cha.  Each teapot goes through a seasoning process (at home) and then makes only one type of tea.  The porosity of the yixing clay fills up with the oils of that particular tea and enhances the flavor.  This is a centuries old tradition in China.

 

 

Bees, Garden

Candles

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Lughnasa                                                 New (Harvest) Moon

Sprayed Enthuse on all the remaining crops this morning.  Next week I’ll take the soil md240asamples from vegetable beds and orchard, get them sent off to International Ag Labs.

Kate got out the double boiler and the meat thermometer.  After I cleaned rust off the candle molds, she threaded the wick through the two molds we’re using for a test run.  With the double boiler I melted the beeswax, got it to 160 and poured through a plastic funnel.  A bit messier than desirable, I imagine, but we got it done.  Now we’re waiting to see how the mold releases the candles after they cool off.  We used a chopstick to hold the wicks in place.