Category Archives: Garden

What Will They Do Next?

Lughnasa                               Waning Harvest Moon

It appears life as a Vikings fan will continue as a pilgrimage through a wasteland of frustration and dashed hopes.  In the first game of the season, at Cleveland, 4-12 or something like that last year, this supposedly Super-Bowl ready team is behind 13-10.  Behind.  Aaarrrrgggghhh.  Each pilgrimage must perforce visit the slough of despond before rising to the heights of the heavenly city (Miami this year) so we’re there early.

On a different note.  After getting groceries this morning, I picked grapes.  Kate makes a wonderful grape jelly from our wild grapes.  They grow all over the woods, but have chosen the six foot fence for a nice run.  As I had my small shears out, cutting the purple bunches from the vine, the Rosetti painting, the Girlhood of Mary Virgin came to mind.  In the background Mary’s father, Joachim, tends to a grapevine.

The harvest is a good time of year and I enjoy the wild harvest as well the domestic one.  This is hunter gatherer behavior, imprinted on us for millennia.  It satisfies a deep need.

Surgery and Rigel Back Home Pics

Lughnasa                                     Waning Harvest Moon

Kate’s decided to have surgery.  A scheduler will call tomorrow or Monday to set up a date, probably mid-to-late October.  She’ll have 2 days in the hospital and 4-6 weeks of basic rest for recovery.  The surgeon believes this will alleviate up to 80% of her current lower back symptoms.  The neck will remain for now.

Kate used our dehydrator last night, drying roma tomatoes.  We’re experimenting right now, seeing what we like dried.  All part of the grow it, store it, eat it plan.

Rigel minutes after her return home.

rigelathome

Vega and Rigel, happy to be together again

rigelaround-vega

Vega has a swimming pool, but she likes the watering bowl, too.

vegainwater

Night, Cool Night

Lughnasa                        Full Harvest Moon

Cool nights and perfect days, high 60’s to 70.  Blue sky with puffy clouds.  The occasional cirrus formation, mare’s tails prancing in from the north.    Clear air.   Bright stars and a moon full enough to navigate a country road without headlights.

This is the time of year, in the midst of the harvest, when the growing season pretty much comes to a stop here in the northern central U.S.  Garden clean up lies not far ahead, digging potatoes and pulling carrots, too.  Parsnip and garlic will sleep over the winter in their beds.  A few beets left to pull, a lot of squash still maturing and the beans have a bit more time before the pods dry up.

Life changes with the seasons.  Just how is not always predictable, but cooler weather inspires different activities than the heat of  mid-summer.  Snow and bitter cold different activities again.  You either enjoy these changes or you move somewhere else.

Woodpeckers and The World of Ideas

Lughnasa                             Waxing Harvest Moon

All afternoon as I have wandered the precincts of Enlightenment thought a pileated woodpecker has drilled one of the dead trees in our woods.  The sound compels attention, a drummer of a truly ancient tribe with a steady and resonant sound.  Each time it comes I’m drawn away from the abstract world of ideas and the delicate process of translating thought into words.

The woodpecker sounds push me away from the desk, here where I now have three desktop computers, two monitors, two large external hard drives, a router, a cable modem and a weather station in front of me, two printers and a phone off to my right.

When I turn toward the sound, my gaze lights on the purple blossoms of clematis, a fragrance worthy of tiny glass stoppered bottles selling high and it’s mine to enjoy for free.  This plants is special, because it’s plant of origin was in the garden of a woman who died from breast cancer.  We got our plant several years ago and I have divided it many times.

Then I notice the late afternoon sun, so low now.  By September 20th the earth will have moved enough along on its orbit that the angle between us and the sun will diminish to 46 degrees, a decrease of 23 degrees from its high at the Summer Solstice.   By December 20th it will decline another 24 degrees to its low of 22.  The angle casts interesting shadows, illuminates the clematis and a late hemerocallis bloom, a golden orange set on fire by our one and only true star.

Both of these places, the abstract world of thought, nestled in that small yet infinitely large space between my ears, and the cabaret set with a woodpecker drumming and Sol doing the lights exist, yet the relationship between them has felled many trees and spilled gallons of ink.  In what way can my conception of reason, a chunky idea studded with links and nested in a web that includes Europe, the mind of God and the Lake Minnetonka Unitarian-Universalist Society, be like the woodpecker, its lattice combed skull vibrating with each pile driver punch driven in a quest for food?

Its equivalence to the liquid, dying sunlight is more accessible, more plausible.  But why?  How does that sweet clematis fragrance fit?  It is all a mystery, yet here I sit writing about it.  Another mystery.

Down in the Trenches

Lughnasa                             Waxing Harvest Moon

Kate’s pain continues.  “I don’t even  feel guilty about not going into work today,” she said.  Whoa.  That says it all.

Her condition creates  a moving target, how to balance therapies and activity with the pain and newly emerging symptoms.  We’ll find a place for her to be, at least until we have to find another one.

The gradual slide toward fall, now most noticeable in the changed angle of the sun and the decreasing average highs, has energized me.   The trench for the electrical wiring linking the honey house (in process) to the grandkids playhouse has soil over the wiring now.  The trench had to be redug where Vega and Rigel had prematurely pushed soil back into the trench.  That was work for an adze, work done while kneeling spread wide over the trench.  A wide stance, I guess you could say.

I checked the bees this morning, too, sending them love as Queen Latifah suggested in the Secret Life of Bees.  Though I love them and they seem happy, that is plentiful and busy, there is not much honey, maybe a frame and a half at most.  Why this is, I don’t know.  It seems the learning curve here will be long, but that’s ok.  I’ve got time to learn the way of the beekeeper.

A Yucky Day

Lughnasa                                Waning Green Corn Moon

A funky day.  This morning found me on my hands and knees, on a garden pad plucking weeds from between the bricks on our patio.  The whole back perennial garden has taken last place in the maintenance department as Kate and I have learned how to keep up with the vegetable garden and the orchard.  That means it got a bit overgrown and weedy so I’ve spent a lot of time this week putting it back in shape.  The Woolly meeting is a good spur, but I felt bad about neglecting it anyhow.

While doing this, I  misplaced or lost a Japanese hand held weeder I bought Kate at the Seed Savers Exchange conference.  When I say lost or misplaced, I mean I went upstairs for my cell phone and when I came back down, I could not find the damned thing.  It was as if it grew legs and ran off into the garden or developed roots, turned green and hid itself among the lilies and the clematis.  Very weird.  Felt like I’d lost my mind.   I have no idea what happened to it.

It was hot, too.  I finished that work, fed the dogs and tried to get a nap in but the dogs began whining.  They got me up at 6:30 a.m., about an hour to an hour and a half before I normally get up.  I’ve felt sleep deprived all day, too.

I’ve not gotten as much work done so far as I wanted.  A yucky no good no account day.  On that note, I’ll get some sleep.

Sunday Afternoon

Lughnasa                           Waning Green Corn Moon

The peas have come down and this week the garlic will go in the ground, an experiment suggested by the former editor of Organic Gardening at the Seed Savers Exchange conference.  This is about a month plus earlier than suggested by other garlic growers, including Seed Savers Exchange.  He claims it gives greater yield.   Since my new varieties of garlic will not come until September 10th or so, I’ll have a ready comparison the same beds.

A more summer like Sunday with the temperature here 79.  I have no tours for a while (August 28) and the Sierra Club work will not pick up real steam until late September, so I have a long stretch I can devote to the garden.  Instead of trenching today Kate took the truck.  I need the truck to pick up the Ditch Witch.  The trench will get dug tomorrow morning instead.

Many people have begun to evaluate Obama’s performance so far.  The best article I’ve seen is in this month’s Rolling Stone.  It has David Gergen, Paul Krugman and Michael Moore.  All agree he’s done better than could have been expected, but the problems facing him, especially health care reform and the economy, may require better than that.  Neither one takes well to part way solutions.  Either health care reform achieves universal coverage and cost containment, at a minimum, or whatever happens may not be seen as successful.  Likewise with the economy a tepid recovery or a prolongation of the deep recession past the next few months will be seen as failures.  The economic fixes need to start gaining traction soon and they need to result in real improvement.

Other Drivers

Lughnasa                           Waxing Green Corn Moon

Up early.  Woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I fed the dogs, got the paper and made breakfast.

I spent an hour deciding where to put some extra cash among several spots at Vanguard (I chose a T.I.P.S. mutual fund.), then put  together a China tour:  the Sacred Arts of China.  I’m subbing and wanted to do something I’d already researched.

Kate and I had our business meeting.  More money and calendar stuff.  We decided I should get long term care insurance, so I sent off for the application.  I also bought an orchard rack to store dried fruits and vegetables in the dry storage area Jon built over his vacation here.

A while back I mentioned passing the deaf driver signing wildly and turning, hands off the wheel, to read the communication from his passenger.  A couple of days ago I was on my way into St. Paul; a car in front of me swerved over and back across the center line.  I had an opportunity to pass and took it.  It was a woman wearing a burka, a narrow angle of vision in the fading twilight.

Today I had a small, bitter cherry from a bush in our new orchard.  On another bush across the way, must be different, I picked two (100% of the crop) that were fleshy and sweet.  Someday I have to learn the names of all of these plants.

Got my notice of accepted application from the friendly folks at your social security administration.  This month on the third Wednesday I’ll get my first social security direct deposited.  Hmmm…

Weeds. Less.

Summer                             Waxing Green Corn Moon

The majority of the weeds that were in the clover now lie baking in the afternoon sun.  This hand pulling of weeds is a chore, but it has its satisfactions.   Not having to do it again for a while is the chief one.  When it comes to the garden, I try to think of ways that I will only have to do certain tasks once or not at all.  Weeding is among those and the close planting in the vegetable and perennial gardens, plus mulch have been my best tools in that regard so far.

Becoming Native To This Place

Summer                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

westorchard709

The next meeting of the Woolly Mammoths will be here in Andover.  That means it’s theme and subject matter time.  The theme will be, Becoming Native to this Place, the title of a book by Wes Jackson of the Land Institute.  The subject matter will focus on the gardens, permaculture and the local food (slow food) movement.

At the Seed Savers Exchange conference held two weekends ago in Decorah, Iowa a commercial grower told of his change to the local foods idea.  A grower of greenhouse foods for various distributors who took his foods far from northern Iowa, he recounted attending a meeting sponsored by folks whose agenda was local foods.  They showed that, due to commodity based agriculture, northern Iowa was a net importer of food.  That astounded him.  He switched his focus then to growing vegetables for local consumers, working on niche markets like institutions, restaurants and grocery stores in the northern Iowa area.

He didn’t mention Michael Pollan by name but the subject matter was similar to Pollan’s recent work, In Defense of Food.  The Woollys have read the Omnivore’s Dilemma and the Botany of Desire.  We’ve also looked at the notion of Homecoming and the Great Work by Thomas Berry.  This August meeting, only 17 days after Lughnasa, the first fruits festival of the Celtic calendar, will celebrate the Woolly’s interests in home, food and continuity.    southgarden709400

Continuity?  Yes.  The Woollys have a 20+ year record of perseverance with each other and, by implication, an interest in this place we have  chosen to call home for those same number of years.

To the Woollys who read this:

Please choose one of the books or websites indicated and take a look.  While looking pick out two things:  what surprised you?  what would you like to know more about?   If you want, also look for something that seems off or misguided to you.