Category Archives: Garden

Bees, Garden, permaculture, Weather +Climate

Snow. Deep.

Leave a comment

Samhain                                       Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

The orchard has at least two feet of snow.  The currant bushes have snow near the top of their branches.  The blueberry beds have almost disappeared.  The garlic lies now beneath a couple of feet of snow cover in the vegetable garden, as do the strawberries and the asparagus.  The bees have huddled up in their balls, all three colonies, rubbing against each other, creating warmth, keeping the colony at 93 degrees, maintaining body heat for the cold blooded individuals, the whole acting as a warm-blooded animal, using their mutual metabolisms to fend off the cold.  There are, too, all the bulbs, the ones planted this fall and those planted in years past, resting now, waiting for the signals, still months away, that will send them seeking sun and warmth.

Out the window shown in the pictures below I often see chickadees and sparrows scurrying from one warren of shrubs to another.  A rabbit or two come by at some point in the winter, as the chipmunks did earlier in the fall.  A squirrel dug a burrow in the snow near the end of November, coming and going several times.  I have not heard the great gray the last two nights, perhaps she’s out hunting in other places.

This is a Minnesota winter, the kind most of us here know well.  I’m glad to see it.

Aging, Friends, Garden, Great Work, Our Land and Home, Politics, Weather +Climate

Losing a Friend, More on Dams

Leave a comment

Samhain                                   Waxing Thanksgiving Moon

“In the view of conservationists, there is something special about dams, something…metaphysically sinister….the absolute epicenter of Hell on earth, where stands a dam.”

John McPhee Encounters with the Archdruid (1971)

We lost half a cedar tree in our backyard to heavy snow and wind.  We nurtured this tree from a small cedar bush into a two trunk tree that shaded our small patch of grass just beyond the deck.  These early heavy snows can be hard on evergreens since they retain needles throughout the winter, making them vulnerable to the wet and often large snow falls of late fall.  We’ll have a chance to do something new out there come spring.  Kate wants a lilac tree.

Here’s another thing about dams.  They generate, in addition to hydroelectric power, strong feelings.  People love’em or hate’m.  After they are built, they often become so much a part of the local ecology that people defend them from destruction with much the same fervor that folks oppose their construction in the first place.

There are a multitude of problems created by dams:  river flow is often altered and in turn alters the ecology both upstream and downstream, sediment pools at the base of dams robbing downstream deltas of needed material, archaeological sites can be destroyed or rendered extremely difficult to discover, populations are often displaced and, often, are denied access to the power produced by the dams which relocated them.

Equity questions abound as in the case of waters diverted to Los Angeles and Las Vegas from the arid Western states of Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Arizona and as in the case of a dam on the Zambezi river, built by Mozambique but because it needs military protection from rebel forces, forced to sell its electricity to South Africa at 1/7th of the world price.  Dams concentrate capital and political power in often unhealthy ways, especially in third world countries and especially when used as elements of a geopolitical strategy by such bureaucracies as the US Bureau of Reclamation.

More as the week goes on.

Art and Culture, Garden

Planting and Reaping

Leave a comment

Fall                                            Waning Harvest Moon

The last forty bulbs, a monet tulip collection, have gone in the ground.   I planted a couple of hundred daffodil and tulips at various spots in the orchard, which we see from the table while eating breakfast.  The others, more daffodils and tulips along with a bunch of new lilies, went into the tiered beds off our patio.  Spring color has such an invigorating effect after winter.

It was more hassle, but I went ahead and amended the sandy orchard soil where I planted the monet tulips.  Without the composted manure/top soil mixture, the sandy soil would not support these tulips for long, especially since most tulips are biennials at best in our garden.

With all the bulbs and corms put to bed, I went to work taking out all the remaining root crops:  onions, beets and carrots.  We had a large number of each, enough to add to our stores for the coming winter.  I also picked four big leeks since I plan to reprise my leek based chicken pot pies.  Over the next week I’ll have to pull the remainder of the leeks and make something with them.  The last butternut squash came in as well.

With the exception of putting the bees up for the winter the only remaining necessary garden chore will be mulching once the ground freezes.  I have oak leaves and still hold out hope that I can find actual bales of straw somewhere.

Garden, Humanities

Rusty Latin

Leave a comment

Fall                                                         Waning Harvest Moon

Back into the Latin this morning with my tutor, Greg.  Boy, I got rusty in just two months off.  This language stuff requires constant attention.  When I went through college and sem, I took courses that I could set aside for weeks at a time, do a reading and note review in one big gulp, then be fine for a mid-term or a final.  I can’t do that with Latin.  It’s probably why I never learned a language.  The repeated application just didn’t suit the style I brought to learning.  Now, older, I’m more methodical, more patient with myself and feel no pressure for a grade.  Makes the process better, though not simpler.

So.  This ends the intellectually demanding week I’ve had since Tuesday morning.  Whew.  A bit of let down now, a kick back and read.  Then, I’m going to pick up the Latin again this afternoon after the nap.  Strike while the mental iron is still hot.

The weekend will see me finishing the bulb planting-24 tulips, harvesting carrots and beets and leeks and squash, maybe even some more greens.  I’ll also get the bees ready for their cardboard wraps, though I won’t put them on until sometime in November.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Garden

On Defining Maturity

Leave a comment

Fall                                            Full Harvest Moon

Three lily beds planted, topped with a serving of tiny yellow daffodil bulbs.  I realized today that planting bulbs in the metaphoric equivalent of maturity.  Putting lily corms in the ground in autumn to produce flowers in June, July and August of 2011 defines delayed gratification.  So.  There.  In spite of my personal measure of maturity–did I get a napkin the first time I went through the line–I seem have passed a different test.  Gotta make it before I hit 65.

Kona helped.  She chased down marauding chipmunks and rodney danger squirrel.

Kate’s off at work, each evening a chip closer to retirement.  I’m about to head on the treadmill for a late work out.  Watching Ghost Writer now.  Pretty good.

Garden

Warfarin for Mickey?

Leave a comment

Fall                                                 Waxing Harvest Moon

A day made for bulb planting, fall clean up.  Kate worked out front pruning back the roses, spirea and decluttering.  I got started with 24 bulbs, a kaleidoscope mix of various tulip colors.  Tomorrow morning will find me back out there, kneeling in what passes for prayer these days, tucking small living things beneath the earth, feeding them and pulling the blanket back over their pointy little tops.

This is, too, the season when mice, content to feed outdoors during the growing season, return to the warmth and comfort of domestic life.  Kate gets exercised when she sees mouse droppings, so we put out the decon and the ropax.  Seems ornery on our part but spreading disease is on theirs. Wonder if Disney ever included warfarin in a Mickey Mouse cartoon?

Also bought some more half pint jars for honey, bulb food for a our winter sleepers, a snack when they wake up, a 50 pound and a 20 pound bag of dogfood, plus two bags of dog treats.

Saturday sort of stuff.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Writing

Weekend Delights

Leave a comment

Fall                            Waxing Harvest Moon

Ah, the weekend.  It came just in time for me this week.  Much to do and now some calm, free time in which to do it.

Ray, the Andover senior who mows our yard, raked leaves on Thursday, so I have bags o’ mulch sitting on the patio.  It’s way better than seed-filled hay.  Wish I could find some marsh hay, but the leaves will work well, too.

Bulbs today.  Kate and I plan to discuss bulb placement, then I’m going to go to work.  Also this weekend, writing the future of liberal thought, or Liberalism:  III.  Lots of ideas swirling around, gonna have to corral’em and find homes for them in a structure that makes some kind of sense.  Looking forward to that.

Writing always pulls me in, usually makes me happy.

Art and Culture, Garden, Humanities

Feeling Rushed

Leave a comment

Fall                                              Waxing Harvest Moon

With Latin on Friday and my tour day on Thursday things can get a bit rushed.  I’m feeling a bit behind right now since my sententiae antiquae are not done and my translation of the reading remains.  The Baroque tour is done, however and I look forward to giving it twice tomorrow.  Tomorrow, too, is the Thaw exhibition lecture.

Not sure when I’m going to get my sententiae done, especially the vexed English to Latin, maybe late tomorrow night, just like real school.  Over the weekend it’ll be bulbs, bulbs and the first draft of the Future of Liberal Thought.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden

In and Down

Leave a comment

Fall                                          Waxing Harvest Moon

60 pink daffodils have a new home in the soil surrounding two cherry trees and a pear tree.  These trees are the first ones visible out our kitchen window, so the blooms will cheer us up as spring begins to break winter’s hold next year.  Bulb planting relies on, requires darkness.  Beauty, like Snow White, goes to sleep beneath the autumn sun and lies as dead all winter long.  With the kiss of the sun prince flowers emerge.  Perhaps the years I’ve spent planting bulbs in great numbers, as many as 800 in some years,  triggered my affection for darkness.  In the first few years of daffodils, hyacinth, tulips, snowdrops and croci I often thought of those bulbs, covered in snow and cold, waiting out the winter in their castle of food and nascent stalks, leaves and flowers, a feeling similar to the one I get now when I’m at work in the garden and a bee, a bee from Artemis Hives, alights on a flower near me.  Both of us, insect and human, have valuable work to perform in the garden and we labor there as colleagues in every sense.  The patience and persistence of the bulbs beneath the snows and cold of December and January has always touched me, a sweet feeling, a well-wishing for them in their lonely underground redoubts.

That’s part of the darkness focus.  Another, earlier part, came when I began to feel uneasy with spiritual metaphors that took me up and out of my body.  Heaven.  Prayers that go up.  God being out there.  The minister lifted up above the congregation.  A sense that the better part of existence lies beyond the body and this moment, somewhere high and far away.   I began a search for spiritual metaphors that took me down and in.  Jungian psychology helped me in this search, but the clincher came after I had decided to study Celtic history in preparation for writing my first novels.  A trip to north Wales and two weeks in a residential library there tipped me to the existence of holy wells, springs that had sacred meaning to early Celtic religious life, long before the arrival of Christianity.  Here was a metaphor that went down and if used in meditation, could stimulate a spiritual journey in the same direction, no longer trying to get out of  the body or up and far away.

The spiritual pilgrimage that began from that point has led me on an inner journey, into the deep caverns and cathedrals of my own Self, traveling them and finding the links between my Self and the larger spiritual universe, the connection not coming on an upward path, but on the ancientrail of Self-exploration.  I do not seek to go into the light, but into the caves.

Bees, Commentary on Religion, Cooking, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, Sport

Grounded

Leave a comment

Lughnasa                               Waxing Back to School Moon

Finished digging the potatoes.  The crop seems smaller than last year’s, but I can’t tell for sure.  Still, we don’t eat potatoes often and we have enough to last us quite awhile.  Kate made an early autumn roast vegetable medley with onions, carrots, leaks, garlic, beets and one potato I pierced with the spading fork.  It was delicious.  So was the raspberry pie–of which we have two.  Our raspberry bushes have been exuberant.  We’ve still got leeks, greens, beets, carrots and squash in the ground.  Some of it will stay in the ground until the frost and freeze gets serious.  I made a mistake last year with the carrots and didn’t get them out before the ground froze.  They became organic matter for the soil.  We also left our entire potato crop out in our garage stair well.  When the temps dropped down, way down, the potatoes froze, then thawed.  Not good for potatoes.  We’re trying to not make those mistakes this year.  We’ll make new ones!

Working with Leslie today reminded me of the punch there is in ministry.  Yes, the institutional confines squeeze life out of faith, but the individuals, the people can put it back.  She asked me an interesting question.  We got to talking about Christianity and she wondered, “Do you miss it?”  I’m not sure anyone has asked just that question of me.  I don’t, not at a faith level.

I miss the thick web of relationships I once had there.  I miss the opportunity to do bible study.  That may sound strange, but higher criticism of the bible is a scholarly affair requiring history, language, knowledge of mythology and tradition, sensitivity to redactors (editors), an awareness of textual differences, as well as a knowledge of the bible as a whole.  I spent a lot of time learning biblical criticism and I enjoyed it.  Not much call for it in UU or humanist circles though.

By the time my nap finished it was too late to put the shims in the hives.  I hope there’s some clear, sunny time tomorrow.  Also need to put the feeder back on the package colony.

The Vikings.  Not sure.  Favre needs some better wide receivers, yes.  The defense played well.  Adrian Peterson did, too.  It felt as if we were outcoached the last two games.  Not sure about that, that’s a murky area to me, but something doesn’t feel quite right.