Category Archives: Garden

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, Great Wheel

A Force of Nature

Leave a comment

Spring                                                              Bee Hiving Moon

In these months, when I go to bed, the full moon shines in our bedroom window.  It keeps me awake sometimes, gazing at it, feeling it, absorbing the ancient wisdom it offers.  All those prayers and hopes and wishes flung its way over the millennia.

The last two nights the full bee hiving moon has lit up the magnolia.  Its white blossoms have begun to droop and fall away but in the glow of the moon its fire blazes up again, a quiet torch illuminating the dark.

It’s cherry blossom time too.  One of our cherries blossomed yesterday afternoon,

Kate has been pruning, weeding, clearing away debris as I visited the eye doc, did tours and today worked on Latin.  She’s a full gardener now with her own expertise tied to her energy, her wonderful work.  She gets a lot done.  A lot.  And always comes inside with a sense of having left it all in the orchard or the vegetable garden or among the perennials.

Meanwhile I’ve kept glaucoma in check, showed objects related to communication and swept through 14 verses of Metamorphoses, Book III.  Work in its way, of course, but I can’t say I prosecute it with the same vigor as Kate.  She’s a force of nature, out in nature.

Mickman’s comes on Monday to start up our irrigation system.  We need the water to support the veggies that we plant.  Especially in this drought.  On Wednesday when I went to the eye doc I stopped by Mother Earth Gardens, across from the Riverview Theatre.

We now have four six packs of leeks, one of shallots, one of green onions and pots of rosemary, cilantro and basil.  The last couple of years I’ve started these myself, but not this year.  They won’t go in the ground until Sunday or Monday, so they can get watered right from the start.

Lots of tasks now:  clean the air conditioner, clean out the bee hives, install our new fire pit, cut down a few trees that impinge on other activities.  Some of them involve the chainsaw, so I’m happy.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work

Growing

Leave a comment

Spring                                                              Bee Hiving Moon

Put in my seed order to seed savers yesterday.  This is the first year in a few that I’ve not started any plants.  We moved the hydroponics cart into the garage to gain room for consolidation of all our dog crates in the kitchen.  Not sure whether we’ll use it this winter or not.  Maybe.  But this year, we’re planting seeds or buying transplants.

I ordered 8 tomato plants and 6 pepper plants from seed savers.  I still need to pick up onion sets, leek transplants and kale, probably tomorrow at Mother Earth Gardens at Lyndale and 42nd.  Our potatoes will come from seed savers, too.

We’ve got raspberries, strawberries, apples, pears, plums, cherries, blueberries, currants, wild grapes and asparagus that are perennials, plus the overwintered garlic and some onions.  Even so, I’m glad we don’t have to survive off of our produce.  Gardening would be real work then, a chore.

Instead, our garden sustains us spiritually, maintaining that constant and close connection to the seasons, to the vegetative world, to the soil.  It also provides food throughout the winter and we’ve chosen to emphasize that aspect of our garden by planting vegetables that we can put up.

Plus the bees.

Garden

Spring Cleaning

Leave a comment

Spring                                                   Bee Hiving Moon

The so-warm March got folks cranked up about the garden, but this is Minnesota.  Our last frost date is still May 15th, six weeks away.  It’s no time for annuals.

(where we’re headed  2010 harvest)

Kate and I have started peeling away leaves, dead branches and stems, prepping our various beds for the warmer weather ahead.  None of what we uncover is frost sensitive.

I spent time moving limbs I had pruned in the colder weather, raking mulch off our onions and garlic and getting the planting plan for 2012 down.  We’ve decided to focus this year on crops that we put up or store for the winter:  beets, onions, garlic, leeks, potatoes, tomatoes, kale, chard, collard greens.  We’ll also put in some herbs and some peppers and some sugar snap peas, but those we’ll use during the season.

Working in the garden, a tactile spirituality, balances out the indoor heavy lifting that has occupied–and tends to dominate–the winter season.  It feels good to be engaged again.

 

Garden

The Garden in Early June. No, Wait…

Leave a comment

Spring                                                          Bee Hiving Moon

Seasonal craziness note:  both of the photographs here were taken in our garden on the same day, April 20th, 2011.

Chainsawing today.  Cutting back aged amur maple branches, considering eliminating all of these fragile little trees and starting over with something new.  Kate raked out fallen leaves and I moved them to a place where they can rest.  Both Kate and I cut down perennial stalks and grasses left in place over the winter.

Tulips and iris and crocus have all begun to push out of the ground.  None of these will be injured if a frost comes; they’re spring ephemerals or early risers.  Their strategy is to get up, bloom, go to seed and store food for next spring’s big push before the leaves come out and other plants get in their way.  It’s a smart plan and one that gives us beautiful blooms often as winter seems to have barely left the building.

We’ll work away at it, an hour or two at a time and by the end of the week we’ll have those we can reach without compacting soil spruced up and ready for the growing season.

Our magnolia is in full bloom right now, a white torch in an otherwise brown world.  Kate wanted a magnolia and she got one.  If we don’t get the severe cold, say -30, it gives us an early spring pick me up.

It always feels to good to get outside, shake off the gardening rust and slowly get up to speed with the yard again.  When we bought this house 18 years, we spent a fair amount of cash upfront on landscaping, figuring that we wanted to enjoy while we lived here and that’s its maturation would swing into place just when we needed it.  We were right.

This year and the next couple we’ll focus on preparing our flower beds, vegetable beds and orchard for minimal maintenance, keeping active as far as planting and intensive tending only those areas we can manage.

Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Politics, Sierra Club, Weather +Climate

A Year of No Winter, Now With No Spring?

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                         Woodpecker Moon

OK.  So, there was this place that used to have winter but had it replaced by a season of cloudy skies and what passes for cold in the southern states.  Then, that season ended and summer began.  Minnesota 2011-2012

Not kidding.  It’s 60 degrees here today, March 11th.  And this doesn’t seem to be an aberration, the temps go like this for highs:  59, 65, 70, 67, 68.  And that gets us through Friday.  It may throw the bee season into a conundrum since my package bees don’t arrive until mid-April and the bloom cycle could be accelerated by as much as a month.

This is also a year when I didn’t start any vegetables.  Not a one.  We moved the hydroponics into the garage for storage so we could consolidate the dog crates in one place. I imagine the places I buy plants will have used the same calendar as usual and we could waste a month or so of available warmer weather.  In other words we could have a growing season up to 6 weeks longer than normal.  But we’re not ready for it and won’t be.

The Great Wheel continues to turn, but the holidays may usher in different weather than usual.  Climate change is well under way.  I hope the climate change deniers have a ringside seat in hell to the catastrophe they’ve created.  I know, that sounds extreme, but I mean it.

The deniers will not and never could change the basic science behind global warming, all they could ever do was slow down humanity’s response to it, a slowing down that amounts to a criminal act, a felony against generations yet to be born.  They need to be held responsible for their greedy, stupid, infantile actions.

But they probably won’t be.  They’ll die off before the worst of it hits.  That’s why I hope hell has a special viewing room for these shrunken souls.

Would you like me to tell you what I really believe?

Garden

Uh-oh

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                       Woodpecker Moon

A chain saw morning.  Certain trees, elm and oak in particular, have windows of time when pruning does not expose them to disease:  dutch elm disease and oak wilt.  One of those windows is late winter, a window the weather gods seem determined to close early this year.

We had some pruning on what I think of as the three sisters, three oaks growing close together on the northern edge of our garden, and on the lone young elm that resides just inside the garden fence, also on the northerly side.

Chain saws do not like old gas, gas over 30 days in the tank, so each time I use the chain saw we have to get fresh gas, toss some two-cycle oil in it, then cranker’up.  Kate got me a gallon yesterday afternoon while she was out.  I adulterated it this morning, poured the old gas out of the chainsaw, filled it with fresh gas/oil.  It needed bar and chain oil, too, a gunky, thick oil that lubricates the chain and the bar around which it spins.  Added that.

In the oak’s case I had to use a ladder, not a real wise idea with a chain saw, but in true stupid home owner fashion, I went ahead anyhow.  On my behalf I am very careful with the chain saw and felt this was a risk I could handle.  Worked out ok.

The elm did not require the ladder.

The limbs and branches are down.  At some future point I’ll limb them and cut them up for brush or firewood, probably firewood since we purchased a steel fire pit at the end of last summer and have yet to install it.

Art and Culture, Bees, Garden, Health

Time Marches On

Leave a comment

Winter                                  Garden Planning Moon

Kate sent the check off for the bees.  Two two pound packages of Minnesota Hygienics.  They should come around tax filing deadline.  A happier thing to hive bees.

We also decided on the plantings for our garden this season.  I’ll wait a bit on sending out the order.

In other news:  yes, I left the honey I intended to take Roy Wolf on the counter top.  Here. Yes.  I left the rug I intended to take to American Rug Laundry in the garage.  Here.  Yes, I apparently sent a test back to my doctor without my name on it.  And that’s just this week.

Who’s turning 65 soon?

On a different note.  Two fun groups of kids today.  Asian art tours.  One kid said, “I have a wonder.  I wonder whether the Chinese see our living rooms as weird?  Like we see theirs?”  Don’t know about you but I imagine either one would see our living room as weird.

The museum has artificial turf and tropical plants, brightly colored metal outdoor chairs and outdoor umbrellas up in the lobby.  Called a popup park.  One kid asked, “Is this art?”  Geez, how would I know?

 

Aging, Bees, Family, Garden, Our Land and Home, permaculture

Under the Garden Planning Moon

Leave a comment

Winter                                   New (Garden Planning) Moon

In the next couple of weeks I’ll order two packages of bees, 2#, to install in mid-April. Two hives produce plenty of honey for us and some to sell.  I have no desire to create a bigger operation, but working with bees has its soothing aspects and its downright fascinating aspects.

Also, over the next couple of weeks Kate and I will sit down and plan our 2012 garden.  We now have all the beds installed, the orchard has begun to produce, albeit still at modest levels and our perennial beds have taken more or less to running themselves with the occasional weeding foray and bulb planting episodes.

My short burst workouts, which include four sets of resistance work in between the all out sessions of 30 seconds and one minute, have begun to show results, so this summer I plan to have more muscle which makes gardening both easier and more fun.

We have a fire pit, dug out fully by Mark last summer with a large metal fire ring and cooking grates ready to be installed come spring.  Once it’s in place we’ll have a nice area near the grandkids playhouse for twilight and nighttime fires, roasting marshmallows and wienies.

With Kate at home much more now, we’ll be able to take even better care of the yard.  Wisely, Kate let the grass cutting go a couple of summers ago, enabling her to concentrate on weeding and pruning, tasks, for some inexplicable and yet joyous reason (from my perspective), she enjoys.

Aging, Art and Culture, Bees, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Humanities, Myth and Story, Retirement, Writing

On Moving Toward Doing the Work Only I Can Do

Leave a comment

Winter                              First Moon of the New Year

Spent yesterday shifting to my new work schedule.  A couple of hours on Ovid, plus analyzing some of Caesar’s Gallic Wars.  Edited three portions of the Tailte Mythos:  Book I and began clipping postings from Ancientrails to consult for my first essay in the Reimagining project.

Also learned that I can’t go to sustaining status at the MIA until I’ve had 8 years as a docent.  Sustaining would cut my tour requirements in half.

This means I’m going to have duck out of the Sierra Club sooner than I had planned.

No plant starts this year.  I’m going to buy already started plants and of those only those we decide to grow for particular, planned uses.  We’re going to shift our gardening now toward minimalism, toward those things we’ll preserve.  Two colonies of bees.  Emphasizing less maintenance everywhere, planting towards a time when the gardens will need even less, eventually very little care.

Life’s focus changes as our lives change and now I’ve become focused on those kind of things only I can do.  Only I can write the Tailte books.  Only I can set down my scattered thoughts about a sort 0f ur-faith, a common reverence all of us on the planet might share.  Others might/will translate Ovid, but only I will work toward a beginner’s level commentary, one similar to Pharr’s commentary on Vergil.

Not sure why now for this shift except to say that I know my time is finite.  Yes, it always has been, that’s true, but now it seems existential.  No, I’m not covering something up here, I’m not ill, in fact, I just got a set of labs that Kate says are typical of a 40 year old.

Long ago, in my 20’s, I read an article about when certain professions reach their maturity.  You know the material about mathematicians and scientists, early ripe, but certain other professions matured much later, writers and artists, for example, with the oldest age of maturation according to this reckoning being 50, for philosophers.

Factoring in my drinking and an early career emphasis on politics and the practical side of religion, I don’t find 65 to far out of range for me.  I feel mature in my thinking and writing skills now and I need to deploy them or my unique contribution will be lost.

Aging, Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Humanities, Myth and Story, Politics, Sierra Club, Writing

How the New Year Might Look

Leave a comment

Winter                                           First Moon of the New Year

At an inflection point with the Latin.  Either I keep the pace I currently follow, maybe 6 hours a week; or, I ramp up, say to 10 or 12, maybe a couple of hours each day.  Some analysis of other texts–maybe Caesar or Suetonius or Julian, I have all of these in Loeb Library volumes–plus more translating of the Metamorphoses.  My inclination is to ramp up, do more, focus on Latin and the novel.  That’s what my heart tells me.

That other project, too.  The one I’ve got slotted for 5,000 word essays each month next year.  Where I’m going to give voice to my whirling ideas about the earth, about ge-ology, about what would help us help our home planet.  That one, too.

When you add these things together, they constitute real work and I feel good about that, not trapped or bummed.  Now all I need is a way of allocating my time so I can work them all in and still manage the art, the garden, the bees and family.

That may be my new year’s work.  Pruning activities and creating a new schedule.