Category Archives: Garden

Let The Right One In

April 4, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Waxing Seed Moon

Took mulch off this afternoon, off all the beds except the shade bed where some tender mosses lie. Mulch taken off at this time of year has to remain close to the beds in case it has to go back on due to cold nights. There are green shoots all round tulips, daylilies, daffodils. Not much, just above the soil surface, but they are on their way.

A movie Saturday, too. Last night and this afternoon I watched Let the Right One In, the Swedish vampire movie. It differs from most vampire movies in its neo-realist style, careful cinematography yet natural compositions. There is little vampire lore here and what there is seems to run against the grain of the traditional. Eli, the vampire who is no longer a girl (her pubis has closed, whether sewed or fused is not clear) has remained 12, as she says, “a long time.” Yet the movie presents her as a twelve year old girl emotionally, not the precocious maturity of young vampires as in Anne Rice’s work. She has also gathered little in the way of riches or success from her state.

She and Oskar, the lead and also a 12 year old, become friends in an awkward courting ritual that has familiar missteps. In the end Eli protects Oskar, then Oskar protects her. A touching story in a gory, blood-dripping way.

Friends, Garden, Great Work, permaculture

Let The Grass Green And The Plants Grow

March 25, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Spring New Moon

Lunch with Paul today at Origami. When I lunch with friends, I find we often go back to the same place we first went, even after years and years. I had lunch with an old friend last month and we returned to Gallery 8 at the Walker even though it had been seven or eight years since our last meal together.

Today and tomorrow I have tours to prepare, and I’d best get to them. Nuclear hearing tonight at 6:30. Lots of stuff happening right now. I’m feeling a bit distracted, maybe over stimulated, but it won’t last.

I missed the thunder storm in this blog and the couple of days of rain, but when I woke up to snow this morning I had to get on and say, enough. I mean, really. OK, I know it’s not unusual, that March is a snowy month, that winter lingers, yes, but even so, enough. Let the grass green and the plants grow. Let some color appear.

A friend has decided to head to the Smoky Mountains next week to hike and see some green. I get it.

This is not cabin fever, I don’t have a longing to be somewhere else, somewhere warm; but, I do have a hankering for growth.

There, that’s off my chest. On another, similar note, my seedlings have gone from the sprouting stage to the small leafy stage. This is onion, kale, chard, eggplant, huckleberry, leeks, broccoli and cauliflower. On Monday I put them all in separate peat and coca pots, getting my hands in the potting soil. That took care of some of my green desire.

Garden, Great Work, Health, Hydroponics, permaculture

Under the Lights

March 23, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Waning Moon of Winds

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. – Walt Whitman

Business meeting and plants this morning. The business meeting went just fine, our financial management continues to work for us and not against us. Wish I could say the same for the financial markets. Sigh. Decided to check. Wish granted: Dow Leaps 497 Points on Treasury Plan. Yeah.

My seedlings, grown over the last couple of weeks, sprouted roots which is the time to move them to their next medium, in this case soil in peat and coconut fiber pots with the exception of four chard and one mustard green that I put in lava rock and in the hydroponics. The broccoli, egg plants, onions, leeks, mustard and collard greens, cauliflower and huckelberry now have soil around their sprouting medium. They are all under the lights still. Moving to larger size containers strained my space, though with some jiggering I got them all in new places and still under the lights.

Some of them have to move out soon to make way for the seedlings that need to get started on April 1st and April 15th. Just when they were getting comfortable. Hmmm. I may have problems here. Seems onions started by seed should not go outside until May. This will definitely cramp the April batch of plants.

Garden, GeekWorld

Dead Batteries, Live Seeds

March 11, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Full Moon of Winds

The beepers, now deprived of their energy source, sit soundless on the kitchen table where they will remain until I purchase 3 super heavy duty 9 volts to replace their deceased ancestors. Another distraction brought to you courtesy of the technological revolution.

Kate and I have gone through all the seeds that need to get started now and decided on number of seedlings to start. They will range from Musselburgh Leeks to chichiquelite Hucklberry. This afternoon I plant, turn the lights back on and start our 2009 garden.

Family, Garden, Great Work, Politics, Weather +Climate

Winter Happy

January 7, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

7 rises 29.48 WNW2 wchill 5 Winter light snow

Waxing Gibbous Wolf Moon

The seeds for the 2009 vegetable garden sit on my desk beside me in piles according to growth habit: viny, climbing, bushy, root or leafy. When I get the chance, they’ll go in my homemade database with pertinent data and places to record germination, first bloom, first fruit and eventual production. I’ve gardened for years, but never taken this much care. Why now? Not sure.

Kate’s off to see the physiatrist in Elk River. I hope he suggests some things that help her. She’s going to stop by Cottage Quilts on the way home.

I’m off to the cities this morning to count ballots for the ex-com and see Michelle. Michelle liked my first draft of the legislative updates, so it will go out Sunday evening. Many more to follow.

A light snow this morning, enough to make the outdoors beautiful and wintry. This kind of winter makes me happy.

Garden, Great Work, permaculture

Two One Hundred Yard Pots of Soup

December 14, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

15 bar steep rise 29.50 5mph W windchill 9 Samhain

Full Moon of Long Nights Day 8hr 45mn

It’s 4:48 and the sun has been down for 20 minutes, twilight almost run its course. We are a week away from the Winter Solstice, the high holiday in my personal calendar.

There is a simple pleasure, at once profound and straightforward. Grow a vegetable. Save it in the fall. Use it in soups in the winter. Today I made bean based soups with white and black beans from our garden. Onions and garlic went in each of them, too. So did some Swiss Chard grown in our hydroponics.

Clive Thompson, a writer for Wired Magazine, had a column this issue titled Urban Food. He said to heck with the 100 mile meal, I’m talking about the 100 yard meal. These two pots of soup are 100 yard pots of soup.

Feels great.

Family, Garden, permaculture

Working on the Forest Edge

November 16, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

32 bar steep rise 30.08 0mph NW Windchill 31 Samhain

Waning Gibbous Dark Moon

Got groceries at Festival. Grocery prices have gone up, maybe 15-20%. Many people bought their Thanksgiving turkeys from a young woman with a table set up beside the butcher’s counter. Christmas music played in the background, in sympathy, I guess, with the lonely retailers who expect no Christmas present purchases this year.

Once again I purchased produce unrecognizable to the check-out person, a friendly girl of about 18. Is this a rutabaga? No, jicama. Is this a sweet potato? No, a yam. Oh, do they taste different? Yes and have different colors, too. What about these, are they good? Rambuta. Yes, just slice around the middle and take the top off. Are they sweet? Yes, if you like sweet, you’ll like these. They’re not too sweet, are they? No. Medium.

Then I was on my way with my plastic bags, once again shopping without the cloth bags I’ve purchased for the purpose. I wish they’d hop in the car without my having to remember.

The rest of the morning I cleared ground along the forest edge so I can put down black plastic, then mulch, to kill all the flora we do not want in the way when we plant the crops that will distract the birds from our orchard. They will provide a height sensitive edge, stair stepping back toward the poplars, ash, cedar, oak, acacia and pin cherry behind them.

Built up a good appetite. Still eating the 11-bean soup I made a week and a half or so ago. Nap.

Now, after the nap, I’m doing inside things I’ve held off until I had a bit of time in the afternoon. I put ink cartridges in my Canon Pixma printer. This is a real rip-off. Even when printing only black, like copies, it uses up colored ink. This means that you have to replace the color cartridges as often as the black ones. Guess what? The colored cartridges are expensive. Anyone with this printer as their primary printer pays a lot for the privilege. My laserjet printer handles black and white in an economical manner.

Also cleaned the carpet in the study. Dogs leave the occasional trail. Also cleaned the stairs. Dogs, again.

Kate’s upstairs threshing beans from our garden. I look forward to using them in recipes over the course of the winter.

The cones are finally on the zone 5 grasses in the perennial garden. I hope they survive. They were a nice, delicate touch behind the lilies, iris and, later, the iris and sedum.

Oh. BTW. No fruits on the pepper or eggplant yet. It was a false pregnancy. This may take a while to get down.

Family, Garden

A Fruiting Body?

November 10, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

21 bar steady 0mph NE windchill 21 Samhain

Waxing Gibbous Dark Moon (I’ve been wrong on this for several posts)

Kate’s home and likely will be for a while until we get her neck dealt with in one way or another. She’s read. She’s sewed. She’s cooked. She’s helped out in the orchard work. Not enough for her sturdy Norwegian work ethic. Her neck is bad enough that work just makes it worse, but when she rests it subsides enough that she itches to get stuff done, a tough place to be in for such an active and alive person.

A bit more garden work to do. Stake the trees in the orchard. Put protective sleeves on my 2-year old, toddler trees. Put down black plastic on the forest edge and the shade garden area. Still, the end is in sight for this growing season.

This is said sotte voce: I may be a daddy! My dalliance with the peppers and egg plants seems to have begun to bear fruit. I can’t tell for sure quite yet, but it sure looks like both plants are with fruit. If so, I’m gonna be pleased. I’ll post pictures when I know more.

Paula and Lindsay come tomorrow morning to do some rejiggering of our site plan. Our work with them feels collaborative and I like that.

Tuesday evening is an event put on by our financial planner, talking about the current market situation.

Wednesday AM, most likely, Kate will have some more diagnostic tests for her neck.
Wednesday night is the Sierra Club political committee evaluation and celebration meeting. I hope enough folks show up to help us get a good sense of what happened. How many of our endorsee’s overall got elected. Why did the four campaigns we targeted win and why did two fail? What should be a time-line for next year’s political committee?

Thursday morning we see our financial adviser. Thursday afternoon Anastasia, Allison and I will judge the Northeast Minneapolis Art Show. Friday night we’ll go to the opening. Friday AM I have two tours and Kate has an appointment with the neuro-surgeon.

A very busy week.

Garden, Our Land and Home

Crash Under the Blood Moon

October 23, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

46 bar falls 30.22 6mph ENE windchill 43 Autumn

Last Quarter of the Blood Moon

It looks like the most violent moments of the credit crisis, stock market crash will have come under the aegis of the Blood Moon. Coincidence? I think so, but it’s still metaphorically powerful.

All the trimmed hemerocallis in the back have been tucked away in piles to decompose for the good of the land. The umbrella for the patio table has been deconstructed; it broke during a powerful windstorm in August. We will use the skeleton of the umbrella as a tutor for some climbing vegetable next spring, probably beans.

There are no more major fall clean-up tasks. The orchard has fall tasks, but I’ve only begun to learn about them, so I won’t do any of them until we come back from Colorado.

I also need to clear a fifteen foot edge on the woods, then cover it with black plastic and hay. That one I’m going to let nature start by killing back the existing plants. Once we have some snow on the ground I plan to burn two large brush piles in the way. A couple of other areas need black plastic or newspaper and hay, that I may start tomorrow.

Kate and I have our business meeting now. Tomorrow we have to get packed, finish up the usual pre-trip stuff. Later.

Garden

Over the Back Fence

October 18, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

Truck unloaded, then filled up with 6 bales of straw. All the outside plants inside. The morning. Along with a few miscellaneous things: watering the orchard, deconstructing a run of fence, talking with the neighbors over the back fence.

Now. A nap.