Category Archives: Garden

Garden

Losing the Battle with Gravity

Leave a comment

82  bar rises 29.65  omph ESE dew-point 69  sunrise 6:23  sunset 8:07  Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Corn Moon   moonrise 2246  moonset  1316

irisrhizomes.jpg

These are iris rhizomes. I spent the morning and a hour this afternoon digging these up out of our raised bed.  You have to shear off the individual rhizomes from the mother rhizome, now spent from having thrown up its flower.  Cutting the leaves helps reduce transpiration when transplanting and helps avoid transplant shock.

Normally I would soak them in a bleach solution, then coat them in captan as a way of reducing fungus and other diseases, but these iris were very healthy.  Only one had any soft rot and I saw no evidence of iris borer either, so instead of treating them for disease, I spread them out on the same screen door I used to dry the onions.  They’ll dry a couple of days.  Tomorrow I’ll dig out the lower bed of iris, where all these will go and do the same to them.

As I sat on the edge of the raised bed, cutting the large fans of leaves and shaving off a clean cut with an old carving knife, a change in front stirred up a fair wind, blowing the leaves on the poplars, rustling them.  Doing this kind of work takes me away from everything else, I’m only in the moment.  A good feeling.

Our Country Gentleman corn, now over 8 feet high, didn’t develop adequate stalks.  I planted them too close together.  As a result, as this wind has whipped them around some of the stalks, burdened now by fat ears, lose the battle with gravity and flop earthward.  The corns not quite ripe, but close enough.  We had one ear for lunch, a couple more now for supper.

Garden

Garden Chess

Leave a comment

81  bar falls 29.88 1mph NNE dew-point 65  sunrise 6:22  sunset 8:09  Lughnasa

Waning Gibbous Corn Moon

Moving daylilies today.  At last.  Moved several large clumps of daylilies to new beds where they will provide a barrier between wild vegetation on the hill below seven oaks and the more domesticated garden to the southwest.  This frees up space for the true lily and iris move that will make another raised bed available for vegetables next year.

Each fall the chess game of where to move plants, how to make the best use of the beds comes into play.  This year, unlike last year, will have several moves.  In addition to the ones I mentioned here we will create at least one, perhaps more, new raised beds and put in some fruit trees for a modest orchard.

After reading the article in the startribune this week about permaculture, I decided to call on their garden consultant before we do much more in the way of changes.  It will be good to have another set of eyes.

Garden

Garden Work

Leave a comment

Pruning, dead-heading, weeding.  Cleaning the detritus out of the garden, gathering new beans and tomatoes.  Changing flags.  Even though mid-August the sun beat down, fierce still.

As I moved along, the plants reminded me, planted by my hand or Kate’s, remembering those days banging the new young plants out of pots, trowel in the soil.  The soil itself amended many times, now loamy and sandy, a good  home for flowers, friable.

A little financial work.  A nap with Hilo. 

Kate’s come home.  Bye.

Family, Garden, Great Work

A Pleasant and Substantial Path

Leave a comment

70  bar steady 30.13  0mpn SSE dew-point 62  sunrise 6:16 sunset 8:17  Lughnasa

Full Corn Moon  moonrise 2014    moonset  0554

“Mistakes are at the very base of human thought … feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack of being wrong, we could never get anything useful done.” – Lewis Thomas

Had to call the generator guys yesterday.  Our Kohler should exercise itself every two weeks, Tuesdays at 11:00 AM.  It has not done that since installation.  It works, we know that because it turned on during a power outage in June.  The exercise cycle, however, is how we know it works in between storms.   A fail safe.  They had a reason this time, like they had the last time.  This time use during an outage kicks it off the exercise cycle, “A problem Kohler refuses to recognize.”  The first time it was air in the gas line.  Maybe so both times, but I want it to do what we paid a hefty sum to do and that includes letting us know it works, all the time.  Otherwise, come an outage we may have no power and an expensive lump of metal and wires to help us enjoy the darkness and the heat.

Today and tomorrow and Monday are prep days for the herds migration out to our place.  Groceries.  Garden spruce up.  Hydroponics restart.  Decluttering the living room and kitchen.  That sort of thing.

Kate’s last two years of medicine are not the gentle glide down to a soft landing and out I wish they could be.  Her style of practice and the newer, corporate style do not mesh; the gears grind and jump.  It means she’s under pressure to see more patients, see more adults and smile doing it.  She needs a union, at best she will get out with her dignity intact.

We have, however, set ourselves on a pleasant and substantial path here at home.  We have expanded food production here this year and will expand again next year and possibly the year after that.  There are energy capture projects I have in mind and much more to learn from the disciplines of permaculture and horticulture.  She has her sewing and quilting; I have writing and politics.  Together, too, we have the kids, the grandkids and the dogs.  She will be here longer than she will be at work.

Friends, Garden

Men Always Need Help

Leave a comment

61  bar steady 30.14  0mph N dew-point 57  sunrise 6:16  sunset 8:19

Full Corn Moon  moonrise 2014    moonset  0554

Whoa.  Did you see the 7th gold medal race for Phelps?  His long, long arms came out of an arcing stroke, reached for the touch pad and, by .01 of a second, arrived ahead of the silver medalist.  To the naked eye it looked like Phelps did not make it.  A later interview with Mark Spitz, also winner of 7 gold medals, showed Phelps a humble and more realistic viewer of his own accomplishments than others.  Others wanted to make him the greatest Olympian; he said he was happy to be among the ones considered great, like Jesse Owens.  All this and modesty, too?  A great American to represent us in a country which understands the value of modesty.

With the Woollies here on Monday Kate and I have begun to get into preparation mode.  We don’t entertain often, hardly at all, but fortunately she’s an experienced suburbanite.  She can throw a party.  Best of all, she’s doing it on her birthday.  I’m lucky and the Woolly palate will be lucky.

The garden will get a spruce up.  I’ll dead-head all the day lilies and pull the obvious weeds if there are any.  The weeds growing up between the patio bricks will come out, too.  They could have come out a while ago, but we’ve had other matters.  The fire-pit can hold a fire, though its not pretty, nor finished, but the pit itself exists.  A bit of shuffling papers upstairs,  some art to the living room, turning furniture in a group friendly circle and we’ll be ready.  I’m looking forward to having the guys over and discussing what it means to be an America.

Kobe Bryant tonight on TV said he was proud to have USA on his team jersey. We’re the best, he said.  Not sure what that means, but that’s the question for Monday.

Apropos of none of the above is a story from the last Sierra Club political committee meeting.  We decided the three Minnesota house races we would target and a male committee member looked at the list after we’d congratulated ourselves on sorting out a complicated task, “Yeah, except we picked all the guys.”  There had been six races, three with men and three with women.

As his comment settled on the group, Katarina, the Sierra Club intern from Lentz, Germany looked up, smiled, and said, “That’s all right.  Men always need help anyway.”  Ooofff.

Garden, Politics

Making a Contribution

Leave a comment

74  bar steady  29.92 6mph NE  dew-point 63  sunrise 6:14 sunset 8:20

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon   moonrise 1926  moonset 0334

When I was young, I used to read about the decline of Western civilization and I decided it was something I would like to make a contribution to.    George Carlin, RIP

Gathered up dried onions and put them in Clementine and old Amazon boxes.  Our crop now rests on two shelves of book-case in the utility room.  A cool morning and clouds made the harvest very present to me.  We gather inside the fruits the earth has given us.

The Arcosanti bell rings with its rich, deep tone in the winds occasioned by the shifts in barometric pressure.

Kate’s back to exercising.  Good to see.

Politics will, once again, absorb more and more of my time.  The web has many tools for the nascent citizen lobbyist.  I’ve located a few that are helpful.  This blog now has them added to the links.

Garden, GeekWorld, Great Work

Hydroponics, Pt. II

Leave a comment

77  bar falls 29.72  2mph ENE dew-point 65  sunrise 6:11 sunset 8:24  Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon

With Kate I decided on the next hydroponic plantings.  One bed of different lettuce varieties and the other, lower bed with a sausage like green tomato, Rainbow Chard, Red Buran peppers, sweet long peppers and an egg plant.  This is more ambitious than the first batch, but I believe I understand the process better.  We will also start oregano and rosemary plants later on, perhaps September.

Kate’s going to go to Interior Gardens with me sometime this week and look at the gro-room.  This setup would have to go in the furnace room.  It would have lights on rails so they can move and hydpronic bathes on the floor or on platforms.  This would allow us to grow larger plants that our current setup does not allow, primarily due to height restrictions.

If we do this, I’d like to see it set up for winter.  I would then turn the upstairs set-up toward flowers and start-ups for next year’s out door garden.

Tomorrow morning I plan to head in to the Sierra Club for candidate screenings and to help with a mailing.  Then back home for a nap, and in again in the evening for the meeting of the political committee.

It’s sunny out after a rain.  The garden glows.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work

Why Does Gardening Inspire Us?

Leave a comment

65  bar steady  29.78  0mph E  dew-point 64  sunrise 6:11  sunset 8:24  Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon  moonrise 1816  moonset  0130

Rain all night.  After a night of moisture the air is cool and the garden looks replenished.  The lily bubils I set out in their soil plugs yesterday got a good drenching.  Forgot to mention yesterday that I also planted a stem with the bubils on it, apparently this was the old method of regeneration.  It makes sense because it’s what the plant intends.  After die back the stem and its bubils would fall to the ground and sprout from there.

While looking at the tomatoes yesterday, I had a realization, one you’ve probably made already.  When the tomato fruits are not ripe, they blend in with the bushy plant and its leaves.  Once they are ripe, that is, ready for distribution by hungry critters, they turn red.  Then, they stand out against the green.  Mother nature reverses the human traffic light, for her green means stop and red means go.

When I set aside a book review to purchase the book The Brother Gardeners, it made me think about gardening from a different perspective.  That is, why does gardening inspire us, over and over again?  We do not write books of a philosophical bent about agriculture, at least not many.  I can’t recall any, but there must be some.  So why does gardening get so much ink; it is an act usually irrelevant to economic fortunes.

Here’s one answer.  Gardening is a unique experience for each one who engages it.  The topography of your land, its winter and summer extremes, annual rainfall, the microclimates, the amount of work you put in to the soil, your ability to match plants with all these variables, the time you can devote, all these factors plus many more make certain that even the person gardening next door has a different experience than you do.

Within that unique experience though, there is a universal moment, an archetypal moment.  Each time we provide support and care to a plant, any plant, we relive a defining event in all human history, the neo-lithic revolution.  Somewhere, around 10,000 years ago or so, somebody, probably a woman, noticed that plants grew from seeds.  Little by little this led to tending the first gardens, a bulwark against the vagaries of hunting and gathering.

This changed the world.

Gardening, too, remains the most common activity, perhaps after parenting, that gives us the sense of co-creation with the forces of life.  In each unique experience, from tending African Violets in a windowsill to tomato plants and corn outside, we have to live on plant time.  We wait for the seeds to sprout.  We wait for the leaves to grow.  We wait for the blooms.  We wait for the fruits to set.  We wait for the fruit to mature.  Though we can, and do, fiddle with these factors most of us allow the plant to lead us.

In this cycle, as old as plant life itself, older than the animals, is the paradigm for our own lives.  Thus, when we weed or harvest, prune or feed we know ourselves part of the vitality of mother earth.  That’s key, we know ourselves as part, not the whole, not the most important part, only a part.

Family, Garden

Bubil Plucking

Leave a comment

74  bar falls 29.85  0mph NNW dew-point 56  sunrise 6:11  sunset 8:25  Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon

The punk hairdos of our Country Gentlemen corn now resemble pubic hair, albiet a dark purple.  Sex and the country gentlemen.  Though I’ve seen corn grown all my life, I’ve never done it myself.  The simple, elegant sexuality of these green giants intrigues me.  The tassel pops out of the top, spreads its stamens.  The developing ears–seed pods–push out this delicate female part, the silk, to receive the pollen which falls down as wind rustles the tassel.  Each seed on the ear has a silk that runs straight to it.  A gravity based system.  One of the tiny miracles in a garden of major miracles.

There is nothing on the planet so miraculous as the photosynthetic driven production of carbohydrates.  Without this marvel the food chain has no beginning link.  No beginning link, no chain at all.  It would not be out of place to stop by a plant tonight or tomorrow, put your hands together, bow a bit and say Namaste.  A gracias, too, perhaps.

Kate’s home.  She had fun with the grandkids.  She’s really become a grandma and a good one.  A pleasure to see.  She cooked tonight.  Spaghetti squash, tomato cucumber and onion salad, fish.  All but the fish from our place.

This evening I plucked bubils from the leaf junctions of three of my lilium.  After dipping them in some root  hormone, I took a pair of pick-ups and slotted them into soil pellets.  The pellets went into small plastic six packs.  The whole went out to the garden to receive water and sun.  After they’ve grown a bit, I’ll transplant them to the second tier bed down by the patio.  I’ve never tried propagating lilies this way before, but it was common in the 19th century according to my lily culture book.

Asia, Garden, Great Wheel, Weather +Climate

An Existential Chill

Leave a comment

66  bar steady 30.06  1mph NE dew-point 48  sunrise 6:09 sunset 8:27  Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon    moonrise 1533  moonset 2334

We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket.  George Carlin, RIP

The drum tower in Beijing.  Anyone who’s gone on the one week quickie tour of Beijing and environs has at least had a chance to climb it.  As early as the Han dynasty (206bce to 220ace), these towers used drums and bells to mark dawn and dusk. Kate and I climbed the drum tower when we visited Beijing in 1999. (I think it was 1999.)  I recall it as a dusty place with open areas used for storage, like an old barn.  Three stories high it had a commanding view of a market and one of the old style Beijing neighborhoods.  We were there at the end of December and the drum tower was cold in the way only bare, featureless spaces can be cold.  A sort of existential chill.  Maybe Kate didn’t go up, I do not remember now.

The death of Todd Bachmann, CEO of the premier garden center corporation in the Twin Cities, shocked me.  Many of our plants started their life at Bachmann’s.  Long ago in another life I was in a year long class with a Bachmann who had chosen the Lutheran ministry.  Then, too, there is the somehow stronger link with the site itself.

So often when events happen abroad, they happen in a place that is at best abstract:  Darfur, say, or Baghdad, Ossetia, even Jerusalem.  Once you have been there, walked those streets, seen the heaped up spices and vegetables in the market near the drum tower, then what happened is no longer abstract or far-away because the context is available to your own sensorium.  My feet recall the climb in the cold December weather.  My eyes recall the sights of the market and the small shops.

A strange sense of lassitude has come over me today.  On Sunday I do not work out, so there is a feeling of expansiveness, but also relaxation, a similarity to the sabbath.  The weather is perfect, moderate, sunny, low dew-point.  A great day to work outside, but digging out the firepit seems to have used up that motor for right now.  Even so, I’ll probably pick up the spade and spading fork and begin removing day lilies to new locations.

This is a task that has a window, a window created by the ideal time to transplant iris, August.  In this way my time must conform to the garden.  It is a happy bondage, though, and one to which I willingly submit.