Category Archives: Garden

The Late Summer Garden

August 19, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Waning Honey Extraction Moon

Working in the late summer garden. Those creepy pre-beetle organisms continue to gnaw on my potato plants and I gnaw right back. So far the invasion has not gained a significant beach head thanks to soapy water and the occasional visit to prune out bugs. Parts of the garden where harvest has happened need to be weeded and green manure sowed. That’s a weekend task. The onions didn’t do too well this year. I think the bed they’re in just doesn’t get enough sun anymore.

Our tomatoes have matured or are close, but we’ve only had a few ripe ones so far. Too cool.

Kate planted decorative squash. I took some time to look at them today. Their tendrils reach out and grasp other branches, stalks, leaves, curl around them and seal themselves off. These tendrils though look like springs and function like springs. They give the squash plant some give as winds and rain put tension on the various connections. It was easy to see how a clever blacksmith could have looked at this plant and been inspired.

With the vegetable garden in a slow period we returned to the three tiered garden in our patio area. I worked there for an hour and a half or so this morning and it felt like being with an old friend. I’ve spent many hours on my hands and knees among these plants, each one of which I put in the ground myself. Well, not the trees and the dogwood, but everything else excepting Kate’s squash and zucchini.

Aging, Garden, Politics, Retirement

The Continuing Storm

August 11, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

The stock market whips around like a Post Office flag in a dereccho. Our politics flounder like a, well, like a flounder on dry land. The Europe Union has big troubles with its southern extremities testing their dive reflexes. Meanwhile I’m picking developing Colorado beetles off my potatoes. These are gross looking things part way between larvae and bug, no hard carapace just beetle shaped red wiggly surface. Uuucck.

Our money managers called us asking if we wanted to talk about the market. No, I don’t. We pay them to worry about this stuff for us and this is when they earn their money. Either this is an anticipated correction or the beginning of the fiscal end. If it’s the latter, I have my hobo shoes and a bindlestiff ready to go.

No matter the macro wheezing and moaning we go on about our life, cooking supper, pulling weeds, visiting the track. I imagine it’s quite exciting to play on the fields of high finance or national politics, but these days I’ll settle for a ripe tomato, a few frames of honey to extract and a dog next to me on the couch.

Aging, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Travel

Senescence

August 9, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

Walked in the garden alone. Yep, it’s an old time spiritual, much loved in the churches of my youth. It also describes my morning turn among our vegetables and in our orchard.

The garlic has come out already. The potatoes have a while yet to go. The beans have gone from green bean material to soup beans, waiting now for the pods to dry on the vine. A few onions remain, as for the tomatoes, there are a lot of possibilities, but as the weather cools, will they ripen? In the orchard we’ve had more productivity than any year so far, a few cherries, lots of currants, many dropped plums, but a few now maturing on the tree. The apples, in their plastic sandwich bags, have begun to swell on the honeycrisp tree, but on the other, a green apple, they’re not a lot bigger than when the bags went on in July. Our blueberries came and disappeared into the mouths of birds.

The wild grape harvest looks like it will be a big one this year. These vines are everywhere on our property, but the ones that produce the most fruit hang in dense layers over the northern fence that fronts our orchard. Picking the wild grapes usually marks the end of the gardening year here at Artemis Hives and Gardens, at least the food gardening.

The fall flowers of course begin to bloom then, the asters, the mums, the monkshod, the clematis. It’s also the time to plant bulbs, tulips and daffodils, lilies and croci. It is, too, the time that the garlic bulbs harvested in July, yield up cloves from the largest bulbs for planting. I like planting the garlic in late August, early September. Garlic is a counter culture crop, sown in the fall and harvested mid-summer.

Senescence has fascinated me for a long time. Earlier in my life the process of degradation that rotted wood, turned leaves into humus and prepared more soil got my attention. An early interest, I suppose, in the great chain of being (note the lower case here, less Scholastic, more Great Wheel). Now I’ve noticed another key aspect of senescence; it is the time of harvest. Yes, in the plant world, the dying of the plant’s above earth body follows or is in step with the giving of its fruit. That is, aging produces

This is also the time when gardening begins to wane in interest for me. My energies now turn to novels, research for tours at the MIA, preparing for the fall issue selection process at the Sierra Club and the upcoming legislative session.

Now, too, the cruise, which begins in October, looms closer and the loose ends for it need to be tidied. The Brazilian visa. New luggage. Check the clothes. Rent a tux. (yes. I’m gonna do it. 3 formal nights a week on the cruise. i’ll pretend it’s halloween every one of those nights. i’ll be some seriously weird expatriate Muscovite on the run from Putin’s secret police. something like that.)

Garden

Co-Habitation

August 6, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa Waxing Honey Extraction Moon

While harvesting Swiss Chard this morning, I looked down and saw a streak of blue head for the edge of the raised bed. I stopped all motion and, sure enough, the blue streak slowed, blue-tailed-skink stopped and looked. A skink with a bright blue tail had a curious, what’s going on in my world, peek, then scurried down a small hole underneath the horizontal board topping the side of the raised bed.

One of the pleasures of non-toxic gardening lies in the number of garden critters that develop happy homes in and around the beds. We have salamanders, skinks, various snakes, toads and frogs as well as the more common gopher, chipmunk, opposum, raccoon, groundhog, rabbit and squirrel.

The number of insects and arachnids also increase in variety, too. I see spiders, lady bugs, wasps, native pollinators and diverse number of mosquitoes, too. Of course the butterflies, moths and dragonflies also show up as do lightning bugs. Not so many of these last as my childhood nights in Indiana, but they are here. Many, maybe most, of the insects and arachnids I do not recognize.

Birds, too. Rose-breasted nuthatches, robins, blue jays, chickadees, red-tailed hawks, great gray owls, pileated woodpeckers and red-tailed woodpeckers, crows, sparrows and even the odd sea gull and pelican at certain times of year.

These sightings remind me of the truth I wrote about last year at some point: Kate and I share this property with so many other living beings, most of whom will be here long after we leave. Well, their direct descendants anyhow. The bank and Anoka county say we own this land, but we don’t. We’re merely occupying it for a period of time, co-habiting with an astounding number of others.

Bees, Garden

Bee Diary: July 18 2011

July 18, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Mid-Summer Waning Honey Flow Moon

The six new honey supers did not prove necessary since I’m still two supers ahead of each colony, but it does look like colonies 2 & 3 have already stored a lot of honey, especially in the two supers that went on in place of the third hive box. In colony 1, the colony I will overwinter, they seem to still be at work filling up that third hive box which will constitute their honey supply for the winter. In 2 & 3 we will harvest the honey from the two super equivalents to that third full hive box.

Looked at the garlic, which I’ve been harvesting as its leaves brown. When two leaves are brown, I pull them and I have about half the crop out now. It looks like the best garlic crop I’ve ever had. Nice fat heads. I’ll save a couple to plant next year, continuing this garlic’s acclimatization to our soil and weather.

We’re harvesting more frequently overall this year, getting beans, peas and lettuce before they over grow. This part of the July is the hump part of the growing season. From this point forward it’s either harvesting or making sure plants stay healthy until they are ready to harvest. The bees are in mid-honey flow, storing and working like, well, like bees.

Artemis gardens and hives is having a good year.

Art and Culture, Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Woolly Mammoths

To Bee, To Do

July 18, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Mid-Summer Waning Honey Flow Moon

Out to the bees in just a few minutes to slap on two more honey supers each, the six I finished varnishing yesterday while Mark put foundations in the frames. This will find six honey supers on colonies 2 & 3, while colony 1, the parent colony for next year’s only divide, will have four. Not sure if I’ll need more than these. I’m having to do this in the early morning, not the best time, but the only time I’ve got today.

At 9:15 Kate and I take off in separate cars for the Northern Clay Center. Our clay intensive starts this week, 10:00 to 4:30. I hope to learn how to make Japanese style tea cups and salad sized plates. Like tai chi working clay puts a premium on hand-eye co-ordination and sense of touch as well overall design skills.

A good while ago my spiritual journey had gone stale in the reading, meditation, contemplative modes I knew best. The next stage of my spiritual practice became gardening, working with the rhythm of flowers, soil, spades and trowels.

That practice went on for many years when Kate and I decided to add vegetables and the orchard with permaculture principles in mind. That added a good deal of oomph to the tactile spirituality, deciding to keep bees put animal husbandry into the mix. At this point my spirituality has become more and more attuned to the rhythms of growing seasons, plants and bees, all within the context of the Celtic Great Wheel.

With tai chi and clay my spiritual practice comes closer in again, my hands, my feet, my hips, my arms. Both clay and tai chi are paths on this nature focused ancientrail, though for me they are quite a bit harder. But that’s the push I need to grow.

After our first day at Northern Clay, I have my Woolly meeting tonight at Highpoint Print co-operative where we will make prints. One more step down the ancientrail of the mind/body link.

Art and Culture, Bees, Family, Garden, Great Work

Love Is Not Only For the Animal World

July 13, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Mid-Summer Waxing Honey Flow Moon

Kate’s put up ten jars of red currant jam and put together six honey supers. She’s a great ally in estate management with her skills. She keeps saying, “I’m surprised how much major surgery slows me down.” Oh?

When I ate dinner at the Java yesterday, the waitress said, “That was quite a storm last night.” “Yes,” I said, not remembering much. “It blew a big tree down, right at my house. It stopped less than a foot from my roof.” “Wow.” “Did you hire someone to cut it down?” “Yes. I’m going to miss that tree. It turned red in the fall. I knew I should take it down.”

Love is not only for the animal world.

The MCAD class has moved into Graphic Design history with an emphasis on posters, especially in the 19th and early 20th century. Some very striking pieces.

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Garden

Queen of Relaxation

July 13, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Mid-Summer Waxing Honey Flow Moon

Our new pack Kona, Vega, Rigel + Gertie has begun to calm down. There are fewer tense circling moments, fewer snaps and growls. Life with dogs has its rhythms, just like life with vegainwater humans. Vega, our biggest girl, lays on the window seat, tail thumping, watchful, inviting me to come down and sit beside her, enjoy a moment of relaxation with her. She is a great role model for relaxation. The 4th of July fireworks season has moved into the past, or the future, and Rigel no longer barks at the night sky.

Our tiered perennial garden and its brick patio have gotten neglected in our push toward the orchard, vegetables and bees. It was my focus for so long and now it grows on its own, almost, with little help from either of us. It looks that way, too. I began this morning a three or four day project to clean it up, weed it, mulch it, arrange and clean up the furniture and potting bench. This involved, today, pulling the lovely green chive like grass that volunteers everywhere, then putting down a heavy blanket of birch leaves, sweeping the bricks and clearing litter off tables and benches, killing weeds growing in the brick crevices and emptying old pots into the compost.

There’s still plenty to do and I’ll get on with that tomorrow.

Garden

Pick and Plan Eating

July 12, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Mid-Summer Waxing Honey Flow Moon

Kate and I have decided on a pick and plan eating method. That is, we’ll pick fresh vegetables, then build a meal around what we have. I picked this morning, for example, green beans, beets, golden and bull’s blood, lettuce, dill, and 7 garlic bulbs. We still have onions from an earlier harvest, so there’s the basics for our lunch or dinner tonight. In addition Mark has picked hundreds, maybe thousands of currants and Kate spent yesterday starting the preservation work. She’s test drying some, making jams and jellies. We’re well into the first significant harvest period though we have had strawberries, lettuce, kale, spinach and onions already.

The tomatoes I started inside, which looked puny early in the season have grown tall and begun to bloom. That means we’ll get heirloom tomatoes in addition to the two store bought plants. Through integrated pest management I’ve beaten back the yucky scourge Colorado beetles on the potatoes . Boy are they gross. Little fat jabba the hut creatures until they get their wings. The leeks have begun to thicken, not much, but some. The potatoes have blooms and that signals the beginning of tuber growth underground. Lots of onions getting bigger, carrots, too.

Big-Stone Mini-Golf deserves its own entry and I’ll get to that either later today or tomorrow.

Aging, Family, Garden, Retirement

Changes Comin’

July 10, 2011 Charles Leave a comment

Mid-Summer Waxing Honey Flow Moon

Mark and I transplanted hemerocallis (daylily) from the tiered gardens in the back to a front bed defined by a bur oak now in its 17th year and a Norway pine equally old. What we’re 06-28-10_earlylilies doing is gradually filling in spots on our grounds that seem to always require weeding, maintenance with plants that are hardy, go it alone types. The hemerocallis, like the hosta, receive scorn from landscape designers and permaculture folks, but like all God’s creatures, they too have a place. And their place is to grow in those places you don’t want to have to worry or fuss about. As we get older, we plan to retire more and more beds to this kind of planting, reducing the ongoing work until we have only some vegetables in a raised bed or two and the orchard. The rest will be in asiatic lilies, hemerocallis, hosta, bugbane, grasses, ferns, bulbs like tulips and daffodils, monkshod and various shrubs.

We don’t want to nor do we need to get there all of a sudden. We still love the bees, the vegetable garden, the orchard and the perennials, but realistically there will come a time when weeding, planting and transplanting will no longer be fun, but will turn into chores. At that point we want to have grounds that correspond to our willingness and ability to care for them.

Kate’s retirement has brought up a lot of these questions. We love her retirement and the success she’s shown in recovering from her recent, second, hip replacement. That means a lot of things that were too painful in the past, like long car rides and train trips, may become more possible. So, we’re not shuttling back into the shell until the end, just trying to be realistic about life’s changes that are ahead and inevitable.