Category Archives: Garden

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden

The True Generational Transition

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Summer                   Waxing Summer Moon

Jon and Jen moved around the house this morning, packing and stowing, wiping Ruth’s tears–the wrong cap on her bubble bottle–and feeding a smiling Gabe.  It was the deliberate preparation of seasoned parents, checking this and that, getting ready.  As I watched, I realized this was the true generational transition.  The birth of grandchildren seems to represent the moment when the grandparent’s generation gets legs in time.  It’s not.  It comes when those children integrate into their family.  It comes when their parents take responsibility for them in a functioning, dynamic family.  It comes when tears are soothed, food comes to the table, when boundaries are set, when imagination is nurtured.  It comes when love creates a new family.   I saw all this over the last two days.

Jon put together Ruth’s playhouse.  We bought it a year and a half ago on sale at Costco.  It’s actually a utility shed, but a very cute one with windows and peaked roof.  We’re going to put white lights over the whole area and dress up the inside so other grandchildren can use it too.   Permaculture focuses not only on the plant life in an area, but on the human use of the land as well.  The playhouse adds generational nurturance to the built environment here.

Meanwhile the attacks on our new drip irrigation continue.  Vega seems to have taken a particular interest in where the netaphim should be.   She is not content with things as they are; rather, she sees things as she would like them to be and acts.  She apparently sees the netaphim with multiple holes, disconnected from its sources of water and distributed not where the plants are, but where she sees a better design.

Life has vibrancy here.  A good thing.

Garden, GeekWorld

Gremlins or Demons or Bugs, oh my

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Summer                    Waxing Summer Moon

This morning the temperature has fallen back to 65.  Good garden weather for moving mulch and repairing netaphim.

Electronic gremlins have given me fits for weeks now.  Not strong fits, but sure annoying.  A while ago my computer refused to recognize my disk drives.  On a day to day basis this is not a problem, but on those days when I want to play a CD or reload software or look at photographs saved to disc, on those days it’s a total frustration.

Then, sometime after returning from the trip to South Carolina, Georgia and Florida my photoshop elements photo organizer seized up.  It opens with a large rectangle in the upper left of the screen and a smaller slice vertically to the far right.  Nothing happens after that.   Again, on a day to day basis, not a big problem, but when I want to manipulate photographs, something I do often, particularly to make them smaller so they’ll fit on this website, I’m shut out completely.

In all these cases and the one below I try to sort stuff out myself.  I have a pretty good, but not perfect track record at this.  I never could figure out how to set up our wireless router, for example.  Geek Squad.  I may have to take my computer over to best buy.

The last couple of days, too, I’ve been bothered by a diminished stream.  No, nothing that Flomax could cure.  I’m talking about irrigation system.  I’m very familiar with the amount of water that comes out of a given spray head.  When it comes out in a weak flow, something is wrong.  It happened last week and I called the well guy to check the well reservoir.  Works fine and he did not charge me.  Whoa.  Again, this morning a weak flow.  Hmmm.

Kate said, “I know why it’s weak.  The front sprinkler is on.” Now that’s just strange.  This should never happen, two zones on at the same time, unless two different programs are scheduled for the same time.  Nope.  I checked that, not the problem.  Zones run in sequence.  1 runs, shuts off, then 2 runs, shuts off, then 3 runs and so on.  Why this should happen, I don’t know, but I hope the folks at Rainbird can explain it to me.

Art and Culture, Family, Garden, Politics, Writing

What Do You Do Well?

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Summer                      Waxing Summer Moon

“We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.” – William Hazlitt

What do you do well?  No false modesty, please, just a clear honest look at yourself with an assessment of your skills and abilities.  Each of us has something that we have forgotten the how of in the midst of performing the act.

Typing is one such skill for me.  I long ago broke with the eyes to the keyboard, careful typing of the uncertain.  I’ve used a keyboard since turning 17 and it is now a tool about which I think little.  Perennial flower gardening is the same.  Vegetables not so much, since I still have to think about growing season, water and food preferences, sun and varities.

Politics comes naturally to me now, but only because my dad and I started watching political conventions when I was 5.  Weighing the political possibilities in a given situation is like typing.  I no longer look at the keys.

Writing, too, has begun to come into that category, too, though the longer pieces, like novels, still require a good deal of careful planning and thought.

Parenting and child-rearing, also, seem to have become second nature to me.  I can think about it, but I don’t much.  I just do.  In the same vein caring for dogs now has experience and attentiveness to guide me, not conscious thought so much.

Cooking, too.  I’m not confident in my cooking skills when it comes to cooking for others, but for Kate and me, I work in the kitchen with interest and experience.

Touring at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts has gone through peaks and valleys, with my comfort level and confidence now beginning to rise again.  This one will take a while to pass into something I do well consistently.

OK, that’s my list.  What about yours?

Garden, permaculture

Sharpening. Mulching.

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Summer            Waxing Summer Moon

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”- Bertrand Russell

Hmmm.  I wonder if that’s true?

Laid down some more straw, weeded a bit in the perennial garden.  After that I went out to the hardware store and bought a diamond file to sharpen my Felcro pruners,  often used garden tools.  A clerk had take me back into the tool aisles.  When asked why they roped them off, she gave me the expected answer, “People have been stealing tools.”  Tough economic times.

Then over to Anoka Feed and Seed where I ordered 6 cubic yards of shredded wood mulch.  Gotta cover up the netaphim and refresh the mulch all around the orchard.

Garden, GeekWorld, permaculture

Take That Hose And Grab It

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Summer                              New Moon

A bit of a disconnected afternoon.  A long nap followed by working for a while in the heat trying to figure which zone on our irrigation clock corresponded to which actual sprinklers.  This was necessary because we got a new clock and the guy joined the wires in roughly the same order as the old one.  Roughly.

The stimulus for this work came from Kate’s discovery that our new puppies get excited when the water comes through the netaphim line we just had put in our orchard.   By excited I mean grab the netaphim and run with it, chewing all the while.  Netaphim is a plastic tube about half the size of a garden hose through water drips onto plants rather than sprays.  It works great, but better without teeth marks.

Tomorrow I’ll put all the netaphim lines on a schedule separate from the rest of the sprinklers and start them early enough in the morning that their work will be done before the puppies get up.  That should solve it.

Bees, Garden, Great Work, permaculture

Smoke Gets In Your Bees

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Waning Days of Beltane                   Waning Dyan Moon

We near midsummer; it’s only 15 hours away.  The Summer Solstice, the hot sister of my favorite holiday, the Winter Solstice, comes to Minnesota at 12:47 am tomorrow, the early hours of father’s day.

To celebrate I plan to work outside in the garden and do some pre-Raphaelite reading, maybe look for a PRB take on midsommer.

To start, this morning I checked on the bees.  There are many, many more bees than came in the small wire and wood box in April.  They come and go, searching the area for nectar and finding plenty at this time of year with the bumper crops still ahead.  Nectar flow precedes honey flow and we are hind leg deep in pollen and nectar.

The bees did not meet the threshold of 8 sides substantially covered with brood that indicates the need for another hive box.  Maybe next week.

There must be a trick to getting the smoker lit and working.  It has challenged my bee-keeping more than the bees so far.  In order to use it  you have to a fuel burning, then smother it, but not put out the coals so the fuel will continue to smolder, producing smoke for the duration of your hive check.

Like many learning curves this one imposes a double penalty.  While taking time to keep the smoker lit and producing, I can not work the hives.  Once in the hives, which I work slowly anyway because I’m still learning, the smoker punking out (pun!) puts me at risk from angry bees.  Meanwhile back to the smoker which means I’m not checking the hive.  Normal learning process.  Frustrating and exhilirating.

Now for some deadheading, trellis building and potato and beet mounding.  Check you on the flipside.

Family, Garden, permaculture

Growing

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Beltane                       Waning Dyan Moon

“Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.” – Remy de Gourmont

Don’t you suspect Remy de Gourmont considered him(her)self a complex mind?  It’s the simplest explanation for this quote.

Our two puppies are six months old, so they’re past that OMG they’re cute! phase.  They still play like puppies though. Rigel ran circles around the cedar just off the deck while Vega lay in wait, pouncing on her sister as she made each circuit of the tree.  They slept outside in the garage, just as we had always intended the wolfhounds would.  Never happened.

We have a five stall doggy home in the garage custom built by Jon.  Each stall has a layer of insulation below its floor and an opening in the front where feeding bowls can be set.  We did feed the wolfhounds out there.  The doors lock.  Perfect for containing these big (68 pounds) puppies.

We’ve decided on Rigel and Vega as their call names, though which is which we have not decided.

Still gimping along with a less than stellar inner world, pressed down, slow to motivate.  The saving grace of these periods of melancholy, as my analyst pointed out, is that they are a prelude to a creative time.  I’ve been turning over ideas for a new novel and possible new, online, ways of marketing.

The garden continues to develop.  All the squash have emerged, ditto all the bush beans.  Carrots and beets have begun to show their presence, too.  The garlic is close to harvest.  The potatoes have really taken to this sandy loamy soil we have in the raised beds.  Strawberries, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, chard, mustard and collard greens, kale, cucumbers, asparagus and onions are all growing, especially now that we’ve had a little heat.

Time to hit the grocery store.  After that, I need to work on the computer set up which has some problems that need addressing.

Bees, Garden, permaculture

A Northern Summer Garden

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Beltane                        Waning Dyan Moon

The garden.  The squash and melons are up.  The beans have begun to put on second leaves, the peas have begun to climb the trellis and the cucumbers have their tendrils out for their trellis, too.  The garlic is not far from harvest and greens are in abundance.  Flowers are blooming and the bees are buzzing.  A garden that works.

Bees, Friends, Garden

Hive 2 In Place

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Beltane                     Waning Flower Moon

Mark came over and we suited up.  The bees have been busy.  I saw the small larvae curled up in the very bottom of a comb’s cell, several of them.  We investigated each frame, finding one frame with many capped cells, maybe 60%.  The bees did not seem interested in us.  We only used the smoke once and that was as we removed a frame with a large number of bees working on it.

Mark said it was a little early, but we decided to put hive 2 in place, moving up into it one of the frames with brood and spreading the others out a bit on the bottom since it left only 9 frames below out of 10.  Much of this management of the hive involves swarming.  If the bees feel their space has become  too cramped, some of the hive, maybe all, will fly away into a tree, then send out scouts for a more roomy place.  This means less to no honey at the end of the season.

After this next phase, we will switch the top one onto the bottom and put the bottom on it.  The third and last hive goes on top of both of them.  After this last swap, the supers go on.

Lydia came over from next door.  She’s going to do some weeding and some heavier work like taking out yew that died over the winter.  Much of her initial weeding will happen over the week we’re gone.  It will be good to have some help.  Weeding becomes a chore around this time of year.

Garden, Travel

Finishing Up

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Beltane                Waning Flower Moon

Last day at home.  Got up and put the snowblower in the truck.  Then I roughed up the area around the fruit trees and sowed clover seed where I had killed the quack ten days ago.  Planted the remaining hydroponic plants, five cucumbers.  They went in along a drip line.  They will get a trellis this year.

When the cucumbers were tucked in with a bit of composted manure per each, I hopped in the truck and took the snowblower over to Beisswinger’s Hardware. “I thought we were done with snowblowers,” the guy behind the service counter said.  “I like to get mine done in the spring, then it’s ready for the winter and I don’t have to compete with other folks who’ve just decided to do it.

Mark Nordeen plans to stop by around noon.  I imagine we’ll add a second hive.  Then, one more later.  After that, the supers go on and honey production can start in earnest.

Well, off to the library to return some books.  Then, packing.