Category Archives: Garden

Garden, Health, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Sowing A Fallow Field

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Spring                                                                                Bloodroot Moon

And the Latin keeps on coming.  I’m sure I’ll reach a plateau here at some point, but I seem to be learning faster and faster.  Of course, it’s taken me 3 years to get to this point, so it’s not like it’s an overnight phenomena.  Still, it feels good. Session with Greg tomorrow.

Jason plowed a fallow field, seeded it with dragon’s teeth and an army sprung up, only to take after each other with weapons grown with them.  Men.

My shoulder pain retreated a good bit while in DC.  That was after the third week of rest, including two before I left.  Today I started back with the same exercise routine, trying to discover exactly what’s going on so I can have good data for my visit with the orthopedist on April 17th.

Kate and I have on our calendars garden clean-up starting April 1.  April fools!  We’d have to shovel snow off it to get started.  We may straighten up the garden shed, clean and sharpen tools.  That we can do now.  Of course, I still have that book and file moving/removal project that’s about half done.  No dearth of things to do.

 

 

Garden

Garden Notes for later

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Imbolc                                                                             Valentine Moon

sugar snap peas

Green Thumb Tip
Sow seeds outdoors 3-4 weeks before last spring frost or as soon as soil can be worked. Tamp soil firmly; keep bed moist until emergence. Germination is slow and uneven, so be patient. Using spun polyester row covers may improve germination rates.

Cucumber, A & C Pickling OG

Green Thumb Tip
Sow seeds outdoors in 12″ diameter hills after the last frost when soil is warm. Space hills 6′ apart in all directions. Can also be started indoors 2-4 weeks before the last frost for an earlier harvest. Cucumbers benefit from consistent moisture. Provide support for vines to save space.
± 1,100 seeds/oz
Bees, Garden

Removing Roadways. Of the Treekind.

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Imbolc                                                             Valentine Moon

In two separate deconstructive moves the squirrel arboreal highway into our orchard disappeared.  First, last fall, the small ash that had a branch brushing the fence came down; the first tree felled with the new Gransfor Burks ax.  Today, the Swede saw cut off a long limb which also dangled invitingly near the fence and, literally, a hop and a jump away from our Honeycrisp tree.  This four-inch thick oak limb had to come off now to avoid the possible of oak wilt getting transmitted through the wound.  That could happen if the cut were made even in early spring and any time from then until the end of the growing season.

Now the little buggers will have to scale the fence, grab an apple, rescale the fence with the apple, not so easy, and carry the apple up a tree trunk to get into the branches.  Again, not so easy.  But, as we are well aware, hardly impossible.  Squirrels, rabbits, deer, turkeys and dogs all create serious problems for the exurban gardener, problems to which they, I’ve discovered, no permanent solutions, only barriers that can restrict to our moveable feasts of fruit and vegetable.

Also, sadly, I checked the hive that had live bees back in January.  They are now dead.  My management practices were not the best last year, so I imagine I didn’t help them much, but it’s still disheartening.

 

Aging, Dreams, Family, Garden, Latin, Our Land and Home, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

The Life Ahead

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Imbolc                                                                Valentine Moon

So.  66.  Tomorrow.  How that long-haired, green book bag carrying, dope smoking political radical could be turning 66 is, I admit, a puzzle.  Yes, he looks a bit different in the mirror.  Well, ok, quite a bit different.  Instead of long hair, little hair.  Instead of the book bag, a kindle.  Not smoking at all.  Hmmm, still a radical though.  Guess the other stuff is detritus of past fashion.

After passing the last great social milestone before the final one, that is, signing up for Medicare, my life has taken on a new cast.  I’ve written about it here, a change that came gradually but with a strange persistence.  That new cast has home, writing, Latin and friends as its core.  It entails reduced traveling into the city, a much lower profile in terms of volunteer work in either politics or the arts.  A word that sums it for me is, quieter.

Quieter does not mean less energetic or engaged, rather it signals a shift in focus toward quieter pursuits:  more reading, more writing, more scholarship, more time with domestic life.  Unlike the pope I do not intend to give up my beloved theological writing. (Kate believes he’s suffering from dementia.)  I intend rather a full-on pursuit of the writing life, novels and short stories, a text on Reimagining Faith.  This full-on pursuit means active and vigorous attention to marketing.

The primary age related driver in this change is greater awareness of a compressed time horizon, not any infirmity.  How many healthy years will I have?  Unknown, though I do actively care for myself.  Still, the years will not be kind, no matter what I do.  So, I had best get my licks in now, while I can still work at my optimum.

So, the man turning 66 has a different life ahead of him than did the man turning 65.   An exciting and challenging life.

 

Garden, GeekWorld, Great Work, Holidays, Our Land and Home

Pruning Weather

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Imbolc                                                                   Valentine Moon

Last of the furnace vendors.  Get your hot one, right here!  Red hot and cozy!  Discounted. Tax credited.  Rebate worthy.

We’ve made a decision.  We’ll go with Centerpoint, a dual-stage, variable speed motor operating at 95% or 96.5% efficiency.  A bit more with these options but they optimize the conservation of both natural gas and electricity.  Once we get it in that’s one less matter we’ll have to worry about over the next few years.  A good thing.

After Brad left, an interesting guy, knowledgeable about food as a former catering manager for Lunds, we put on our winter gear.  I got out the Sorel’s and clapped my work gloves on, wool hat and down vest.  Kate got ready.  She has less stringent requirements for work in the cold than I do.

Outside in the deep snow, bright with a clear day’s sun, we first cut back to the ground all the raspberries.  In clearing the snow with a coal shovel, I discovered that I could clear snow and prune in the same motion.  Kate went in afterward and cleaned up.

When I finished in the raspberries, I went to the tangle of grapevines that have grown on our front 6-foot chain link fence.  Originally a Celt (our first and dearest Irish Wolfhound) escape prevent barrier, it now serves mainly to give us an ample supply of wild grapes in the fall thanks to the volunteer vines.  Last summer though there were few grapes.

Lots of leaves and vine, not many fruit.  We’d never pruned it before, or if we did, it was a while ago, so it had overgrown.  I whacked away at the orchard side today;  I’ll finish it tomorrow.  Kate got after the bittersweet.  It was a good day for this work.

Back inside I had a snack of bacon and blue cheese with chestnut flower honey, the first installment in my birthday gift, a monthly specialty bacon club.  How cool is that?  Thanks, Kate.

Bees, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Our Land and Home, permaculture

Considering the Lilies of Our Fields

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Winter                                                                  Moon of the Winter Solstice

Greens.  Peppers, especially those sweet hot peppers.  Leeks.  Garlic.  Onions.  Shallots.  Beets.  Collard greens.  Tomatoes.  Carrots.  Herbs.  Then, we’ll have the apples, plums, cherries, pears, raspberries, strawberries, goose berries, currants, wild grapes.  And honey.  That’s our plan for next year.  Most of it anyhow.  We’ll probably sneak a few things in just to see what happens.

Three or four years ago we began a gradual winding down of the flower beds as annual events, turning them gradually toward perennials following one another, growing on their own.  We have to do some major work this spring along those lines, especially the garden bed on the house side of our front path.  That one I’ll dig out, amend the soil, and replant altogether.  Gonna take out the Viburnum.  It’s never done well.

We have pruning to do yet this winter.  And I still have more trees to fell.  Winter’s a good time for both.

There is, too, the fire pit and its immediate surround.  Mark helped us on the fire pit when he was here.  This year it will become functional.

Indulging the mid-winter sport of garden planning.  An indoor prelude to the outdoor music of the growing season.

Garden, Great Wheel

Summer’s End

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Samhain                                                       Fallowturn Moon

All the leeks have left the earth.  I pulled them out, chopped off the roots and the upper green leaves, stripped off the outer layers of soil cover and put them in the bucket that held the pro-sweet syrup I fed the bees in September.  The carrots, too, have left the earth.  Fat, long, orange, soil clinging to the delicate roots sent out for more nutrients, they come up with the leaves intact.  Soup ingredients and ingredients for leek au gratin that I plan to make tomorrow.

After this final harvest, summer’s end at last for produce, I took my Gransfors-Bruks felling axe over to the elm tree, a small one.  It had begun to impinge on the gardens sunlight and Kate wanted it gone.  Warming up to my aerobics for the non-resistance days, I began to chop.

This took 20-25 minutes and saw me chopping, resting, breathing hard, chopping again, resting again.  At one point it seemed the tree would remain upright with only a small layer of wood holding it up.  Then, as trees do, it began to lean gracefully and fell slowly down, right where I had planned.  The ax work is intense.

Aging, Family, Garden, Health

Heavy Lifting

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Fall                                                                               Fallowturn Moon

Unanticipated consequences.  Kate’s upper body, shoulders and neck, screamed at her yesterday and are still doing it today.  Why?  She’s had to do all the (more or less) heavy lifting since my surgery.  One of my jobs in our marriage is to do the heavy lifting, literally. Now, I have my limits, too, of course, but they’re much higher than Kate’s.     Singapore

We’ve had to buy dogfood in 20 pound bags rather than 35 so I can carry it.  I made sure the water softener got it in, finally, before the surgery.  40 pounds per bag.  When Kate weeds, she takes the plant out roots, soil and all.  Puts them in plastic buckets.  They get heavy quick.  She had to empty her own this past month, using smaller buckets to empty the larger one.  I had the surgery in late September to be sure I could move honey supers if I needed to.  No need this year, unfortunately.

There’s also laundry and groceries.  Various items to take up and down stairs.  We’re done with our Excalibur (geesh) food dryer so it goes back in the basement.  Jars of canned tomatoes, peaches, apple butter go down, too.

Today I’m going to split a bag of composted manure in half so I can carry it down to the bed where I’m to plant the lilies and iris I have left to put in the ground.  I’ll be glad when this is done and I can get back to doing all these things plus my resistance work.  One more week.

Garden, Myth and Story, Weather +Climate

This and that

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Fall                                                            Fallowturn Moon

Put my 500 word essay on a reducing diet and got it down to 350.

Spent much of the day trying–again–to reorganize my space so there’s room for all my books plus art plus travel souvenirs plus computers, desk and me.

Kate and I harvested greens today, the last of them, and Kate put up another large batch of low country greens.  We’ve got onions and tomatoes in the refrigerator plus carrots and leeks in the ground.

Looked out back today, south, up toward the poplars, the tallest trees on our property.  A big gust of wind blew threw them and a rain of yellow-orange leaves flew into the air.  As the air filled with dancing, falling leaves, a bird flew through them, headed west.  With the gray sky it was a perfect fall moment.

Cinema and Television, Garden, Great Work

Off Mission

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Fall                                                                  New (Fallowturn) Moon

Was gonna plant lilies and iris but got stuck on the computers, shifting stuff around, getting a new computer setup, then into writing my essay for the mythology class.  Discovered after creating a 500 word piece that I’d read the instructions wrong, 250-350 words.  Condensing is another matter.  Will take some time tomorrow.

Then I went into the Sierra Club for the Legislative Awards.  Each year we give awards to our champions, up to 4, in the last session.  This year we gave them to Frank Hornstein, Alice Hausman and Bill Hiltey. Hiltey, who retired this year, gave a downbeat assessment of our odds in the future unless “reasonable” people get elected.  He sighted corporate control of legislators and the anti-science attitudes as difficult barriers to advances in environmental legislation.  The environment is, he said, and I believe, too, collateral damage of the economic and political culture we now have.

Cutting the cable news:  right now Kate and I are watching the Poirot series on Netflix.  There are 55 episodes and we can go through them at our own pace.  Never regretted the decision to bounce Comcast TV.  Well, with one exception.  Sometimes the picture quality suffers because of non-HD transmissions.  That’s too bad when we have a good HD setup.