Category Archives: Garden

A Yucky Day

August 14, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

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.

Garden, Politics

Sunday Afternoon

August 9, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

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.

Garden

Weeds. Less.

July 29, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

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.

Aging, Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, permaculture, Woolly Mammoths

Becoming Native To This Place

July 27, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

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.

Family, Garden, Great Work, Health, permaculture

Dinner Straight From the Plant

July 25, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Waxing Green Corn Moon

Dinner with vegetables straight from the garden is a treat and can be a surprise. It was tonight. We had potatoes, new potatoes-709042 potatoes, dug just before cooking. They had a distinct flavor, a nutty earthy tone unfamiliar from the long since harvested potatoes typical of both home and restaurant cooking. This meal included our garlic, our kale and chard, the potatoes garnished with our flat parsley and a bowl of sugar snap peas as an appetizer.

Digging potatoes involved a spading fork to loosen the soil, then searching around under the earth for these lumpy treasures. They grow well in the sandy soil here in Andover.

(pic: potatoes before harvest)

Kate takes off for the Grand Teton’s tomorrow, a CME conference. BJ is also out there, playing in the Grand Teton music festival as she has for the last several years. The Tetons have an incredible beauty, the American Alps, a very young mountain range. She’s back on Wednesday, then we go to see a micro-surgeon who has perfected the technique for cervical vertebrae. He’ll evaluate Kate’s candidacy for that surgery.

Lots of weeding today and more tomorrow. A normal task in late July, early August.

Bees, Family, Garden, permaculture

Pictures

July 25, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

westorchard709 Summer Waxing Summer Moon

From top to bottom:

Western half of orchard + three oaks

Cathedral at Seed Savers Exchange

Southern half of our vegetable garden

Lilies, Bees and Beans

Carrots

Vega the Wonder Dog

Vega (right) and Rigel (left)

ssecathedral400

southgarden709400

beansandbees709

carrots709

vega709400

vegarigel400

Garden, GeekWorld

We’re Baaaack!

July 24, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Waxing Green Corn Moon

Some new html code somehow turned all the type on some computers black. Why this happened is not clear, since it never showed up on this computer or friend Bill Schmidt’s. A long time back it became clear that the last thing done before a problem occurs probably screwed things up. Yup.

A.T. will go to sleep for now, but the blog will be, as much as possible, in the third person, with no I. This is an exercise in discipline for a writer.

The netaphim, shredded by Vega, now connects from one end to the other. The reason for the fence, to allow it to stay that way, now comes into play.

The irrigation clock received new instructions based on something heard at Seed Saver’s over last weekend. Water once a week, a lot. Stop. This encourages plants to grow deeper roots, following the water down. This is an experiment, we’ll see how it works. This new setup will eliminate, too, a frustrating situation in which two zones ran at the same time, reducing the flow to both. At least clearing the computer of all its programming and starting over should fix that.

It’s surprising how many everyday items now rely on computer code. The irrigation clock. The weather station. The blackberry. Microwave. TV. Automobile. Some experience with computers and with code, even if limited, can make navigating this electronic minefield easier.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden

They Nourish Us Five Times

July 22, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Summer New Moon

A.T. cleaned turnips and beets, cut their greens off and prepared them for boiling. He also prepared kale and collard greens, first washing them, then cutting their rib out and storing them for Kate who will boil and freeze them.

An old folk saying suggests fire wood warms you five times: when you cut it, when you move it, when you split it, when you stack it and when you burn it. There is a parallel in the seeding, tending, harvesting, preparing and eating of vegetables and fruits. Each of these plants grew from a tiny seed placed either in soil or in soil block. They were thinned and mulched. The soil over and around them has been built up over the years. When they grew to maturity, the same hands that planted them, took them from the plant and washed them.

When Kate and I eat them, they will have nourished us five times. As we care for the seedling, we participate again in the miracle of vegetative reproduction. While we tend them, we pay attention with love to the soil in which they grow, checking them for disease and creating a nurturing place for them. When we harvest them, we enter into the oldest covenant of humankind, one that even preceded the neolithic revolution, the covenant between humans and domesticated or at least cultivated plants. When we prepare them for food, we touch not strangers, but friends, allies in the ongoing wonder of nature’s intertwined parts. As we eat them, we become the plant and the plant becomes us.

Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, permaculture, Politics

In the Garden

July 22, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Summer New Moon

A.T. used the chainsaw this morning. He cut out a mulberry tree growing in an unwanted (eastern) location. A.T. feels manly after he uses the chainsaw.

Kate and A.T. harvested peas, greens, beets and turnips, too. A.T. planted beans as a cover crop among the onions, where the garlic came out. A.T. plans a much larger garlic crop for next year. He has 9 or so large bulbs set aside for planting and set in an order for several new varieties. At the SSE (Seed Saver’s Exchange) conference over the weekend a speaker suggested planting the garlic earlier, even in August. A.T. asked SSE if he could get his garlic earlier than the September 7-9 ship date. Nope. Not to worry, he’ll plant his own in mid-August and check the crops against each other next June.

This whole gardening process now begins to blur the line between horticulture and agriculture. With crops meant for immediate consumption, but others for storage: potatoes, turnips, carrots, squash, beans, garlic, onions, greens and peas, plus the eventual fruit yields, our garden has become a substantial part of our lives. Substantial in the transubstantiation notion loved by Catholics. We eat of the body of our garden and our orchard and in our bodies it becomes use, transfigured from plant to human. A sacred event. Substantial in the way it requires the use of our bodies to realize its harvest. Substantial in the political sense since it cuts down trips by car, makes our place better than we found it and keeps us close to our mother.

The bees have added another dimension. An interdependent, co-creative collaborative effort.