Category Archives: Garden

Garden, Great Work, Writing

Making My Soul Hum

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Superior Wolf is underway again.  The other day I hit on the point that had me stuck, a character I’d carried over from another novel.  He didn’t belong in this one, but it took me 25,000 words or so to figure that out.  Now a new plotline, more salient and tight, has emerged with a strong character, a protagonist who will drive the book.

It feels good to be back at fiction, a long caesura, and I hope the next one is brief.  Fiction speaks from my soul, the rest tends to be, as we said in the sixties, a head trip.  Over the years since then, I’ve learned to respect head trips.  I earned a living with them for many years and they’ve kept me engaged with the world.  They do not make my soul hum, though my  Self speaks through them as well.

Kate made a trip to the Green Barn, a nursery she really likes on Highway 65 near Isanti.  She picked up composted manure, sphagnum moss and several plants.  We have some new ferns, cucumbers, morning glories (the ones I grew in the hydroponics died outside, though the tomatoes have done fine.) squash and several grasses. 

Tomorrow morning I’m going in for a breakfast meeting at the Sierra Club, a meeting with the political director of the national Sierra Club. Politics makes my soul hum, too.  Though I can’t say exactly why, water issues matter a lot to me, so I’m angling (ha, ha) to get on the committees that deal with Lake Superior, rivers, lakes and streams.  Watersheds seem very important to me, so I hope to work on projects related to watersheds, too.  One thing I know about politics is that showing up matters, so I’m gonna show up.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden

Another Outside Day

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55 bar steady  29.78 4mph NNW  dew-point 31  Beltane, Sunny

                            Full Hare Moon

My Taoist studies have proceeded more slowly than I had hoped, but the regular appearance of material thanks to the online classes has kept me involved.  I’m on my last course now.

Another sunny day.  Work outside today, and perhaps tomorrow, too, then I have to devote some time to managing inside matters, get back to full-time writing. 

Later.

Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Seeking Mastery Within

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54  bar steady 29.78  1mph NW  dew-point 44  Beltane, sunny and cool

                                       Full Hare Moon

The weather remains cool.  This is not a long spring; it’s a long late March or early April.  The gardening upside has been longer lasting blooms on the tulips and the daffodils and the scylla.  This weather has also proved excellent for transplanting, reducing transplant shock to a minimum and resulting in little wilting after a move.  The downside has been slow germination (no germination?) for some vegetable seeds planted and slow growth for the ones that have sprouted.  From the humans who live here in Andover perspective it’s been a great season.  Cool weather to work outside and to further many landscaping projects.

Last night’s conversation about mastery at Tom’s lingers today.  At one point we asked each person to claim what mastery they found in themselves, then we offered evidence of mastery we found in them, too, from an outsider’s perspective.  Various Woolly’s were masters of soulfullness, love, living, listening, communicating, design, the big picture, and drawing others out to see the best in themselves. 

Tom and I were wrong in our assumption that individual Woollys would find it difficult to claim a sense of mastery.  And delighted to be wrong, too.  We affirmed what each Woolly saw as their area of mastery and added ones they hadn’t seen or chose to ignore, e.g. mastery of forensic engineering, computer skills and sheepshead, making the complex accessible, letting go, the body in motion.

In my case, for example, I admitted I couldn’t find anything to claim since I’ve lead such a curiousity driven life, often running full speed down divergent paths at the same time.  Then, I said, “Well, I guess I could claim being a master student.”  That got modified in the eyes of the group to seeker after essential, radical truth.  OK, I can see that.  “You’re a master teacher, too.”  Hadn’t occurred to me, but that’s become a theme in various areas of my life of late, so it must be there in spite of my opacity to it.     

Tom initiated a get together for designing the evening and having me as a co-facilitator, rather than a servant lackey.  He made the food simple, sandwiches and soup followed by a big, really big, cookie.  Others seemed to appreciate the act of co-operation in design of the evening.  Tom and I wanted to introduce better time managment, and we did; but, that was not appreciate by everyone.  “Felt forced.”  Well, yes.  But every time together has its limits and therefore its limits on contribution.

As we closed, Tom observed that the Woolly’s as a group are a master that each of us can turn to for guidance in life.  I nuanced that a bit by suggesting that as a group, over 20+ years together, we have mastered groupness.  We are a living community, best evidenced, as someone said, by the fact that we show up.

I have signed out for the summer at the Art Institute.  I need the break.  I’ll use the time for writing, family and our land.

Art and Culture, Garden, Writing

More Homes for the Small and Furry

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51  bar steady  29.75 3mph N dew-point 31  Beltane, Sunny and cool

                                    Full Hare Moon 

“I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing everything.” – Vladimir Nabokov

Amen to that.

Another cool day.  Great gardening weather, not so great growing weather.  The cool temps have  kept germination slow, my carrots have not emerged at all and only a few stray beet and lettuce seeds have begun to push through, at least at close of growing day yesterday. 

We will see today.  Sometimes seeds all sprout at once, sometimes not at all.  Germination percentages vary with weather, timing of planting, quality of seed and amount of moisture.  We’ll get something.  We do not watch the soil with the same eagerness as pioneers, for example, whose lives may have depended on germination.  I can only imagine that then the progress of the seed received an attention bordering on pleading and prayer.

We have the grandkids playhouse in the truck, three very large boxes of a put-it-together by the numbers building we bought at Costco.  Today’s task is to unload it and cover it with a tarp until we can level the area now cleared by the Steve and Aimee’s assistance yesterday.  After that we move brush onto yet more homes for the small and furry.  Not sure what after that.

I’m signing out for the summer from the MIA.   In September 2006 I began the second year of the docent education process.  In summer 2007 I signed up for the Made in Scandinavia painting exhibition.  After labor day the school year touring got going.  I had a month off in February for Hawai’i, but other than nothing longer than a week since 2006.  It’s time for a break.  Besides, I need to get back to work on that novel.  And a children’s book or two, too.

Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work

Rites of Spring

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52  bar rises 29.94  2mph NW  dewpoint 20 Beltane, sunny

                Waxing Gibbous Hare Moon

Nope, this isn’t about naked pagans dancing under a full moon.  Sorry.

Rather, it’s about those things we do.  In spring. 

The Mickman’s guy just left.  “Charlie,” he said, “We came through the winter pretty good.  Just one dead sprinkler.”  He handed me a sandy, wet plastic sprinkler head, smiled and went on his way.

Kate bought her annual supply of, well, annuals.  Alyssum, impatiens and coleus.  She’ll go back for a few more.

We prepared and planted new beds, cleaned old ones.

The furnace last ran in April, but, unlike most years we have not turned on the air conditioning yet.

The dogs spend more and more time outside, just like we do.

The guy who cleans the gutters and does the outside windows will show up after the cottonwoods disperse their seeds.

We moved the snowblower to the back of the garage bay and the riding lawnmower to the front.  These are his and hers machines.  Snowblower–his.  Lawnmower–hers.

We have all of these mechanical/electronic servants.  Instead of a gardener, we have a sprinkler system and a riding mower.   Instead of servants working mechanical fans we have an air conditioner.  Instead of a summer kitchen we have Vent-a-Hoods.  Instead of the post office we have e-mail.  Instead of shopping in real world stores we have Internet retailers.

These are sophisticated technological devices and they replace human labor of the domestic variety with skilled human labor.  The skilled folks make more money because they work in several locations rather than just one.

I find though, that when I work in the garden, I prefer hand tools:  a spade, a spading fork, pruning saw, trowel, rake.  In general  I allow only one mechanical tool into my work on our grounds.  The chainsaw.  It replaces labor I’m not sure I could perform even if I had the time.  On occasion I’ll rent an industrial strength chipper, but only after many hours cutting down trees and brush, then delimbing.  I plan to rent a stump grinder sometime this spring, but that’s a very special purpose piece of equipment.  Otherwise it’s shovel and pick, adz and drawknife.  Small sledge hammer, wire cutters and bolt cutters, Japanese weeding knife, serrated sickle and unserrated sickle.  A tool in the hand is worth two in the bush.  Or something like that.

Garden, Writing

Novels In Vitro

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48  bar rises 29.83  1mph NW dewpoint 38  Beltane

            First Quarter of the Hare Moon

Once again the papers and books pile up while I focus on the task du jour, getting the garden planted, cleaned up, preened, weeded and planned.

Significant news on the hydroponic front.  The heirloom tomato plant I’ve kept inside has flowers.  That means tomatoes sometime in the near future.  Most of the early work with the hydroponics has come to fruition, literally.  I eat a salad from it at least every other day and the tomato plant flourishes.  Three tomato plants, four cucumbers, six basil and four morning glories have gone outdoors. 

Phase II starts soon.  Phase II will see cherry tomatoes, peppers and eggplant first as seedlings, but then as plants to continue growing indoors.  If this works well, we might expand the hydroponics to include flowers and more plant starting for outdoors.  We’ll see.

I have two or three novels in various stages of development.   Two of them, one about werewolves and the other about witches and magicians, both set in Minnesota have promise, but I’d have to get back to work on them full time.  Again, I don’t seem to do it.  Thinking about this because there are so many bad werewolf movies and books out there.  I did, though, mention Sharp Teeth here, I believe.  This one’s a keeper.  Done in blank verse.

Garden, Politics

Country Gentleman with Corn Rows

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61 bar steady 29.69 0mph WSW dewpoint 47 Beltane cloudy, cool

              First Quarter of the Hare Moon

“When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.” – George Bernard Shaw

Love it, or leave it the bumper stickers used to say.  I bleed red, white and blue.  These colors don’t run.  WWJD?  George Bush and Dick Cheney keeping the world safe for democracy.  Shaw is a genuine prophet, witty and ascerbic.  We don’t have his equal today, at least none that I know.

The Country Gentleman corn fit neatly into three rows, three feet apart, running east and west.  All the little onions are now in a bed by themselves, tucked in for the growing season.  The garlic looks great.  It’s a strange crop.  Sow it in the fall, reap in mid-summer.  We have peppers, tomatoes, onions, corn and beans planted.  A perfect garden for mexican cuisine.  We also have some beets and  carrots. 

I like these day where we work in the garden in the morning, then it rains in the afternoon.  Perfect.

Garden

The Gardening Curve

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64  bar steep fall  29.75  2mph W dewpoint 37 Beltane Sunny

               First Quarter of the Hare Moon

Painted brush-b-gone on the stump of a honeysuckle.  I foolishly planted it where it blocked two beds from the sun.  It will not return now, as it has in the past, a Lazarus plant that would not stay dead.  Planted Guatemalan Blue and Table Queen squash along the fenceline. 

Tomorrow onions go in and I’ll get started on moving daylilies yet again, though I believe this time their movement is final.  I’m taking them out of the garden environment and putting them along fences and at places where I need a friendly plant barrier to invasive wild species. I’ve discovered, at last, the proper place in our landscape for these hardy specimens.

I’m a Celt and a Teuton.  I inherited the Teutonic love of scholarship and the Celtic imagination.  I also inherited a Celtic skin.  Being outside for very long leaves me a little woozy.  I also take a couple of medications that create photosensitivity.  Another reason to work in the garden in the early morning, a couple of hours at a whack. 

We are ahead of the gardening curve for the most part.  A little late on some vegetables, a little early on others.  May is a busy month with clean up and  planting, bed preparation.  I’m lucky Kate’s got a week off now and can help.  She’s a sturdy, stay at it gal.

The dogs love gardening.  They come out where we’re working, flop down on the grass and watch.  When that gets too tough, they go to sleep.

Family, Garden

Hidden Gardens

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60  bar falls 29.93 3mph S dewpoint 33  Beltane sunny and windy

                  First Quarter of the Hare Moon

The new bed for corn has a bag of composted manure mixed into the soil.  Debarked elm trunks went around three sides to bolster rotting logs from the creation of this bed 10 or so years ago.  The only plants remaining are a few stray Siberian Iris.  I like them and I don’t think the corn will mind having them there. 

Kate and I went into the woods and settled on a place to put the playhouse for the grandkids.  It will face the firepit, midden heap park that I’m currently constructing.  I’ll have to clear buckthorn.  A few smaller oaks need to come out anyhow for thinning.  After that we’ll level the site and begin putting the structure together.  We plan to add a small deck and a fence.   I’ll plant a shade garden and native understory shrubs around it to blend it into the woods.  Kate also wants to string lights in the trees, a magical spot.

Black landscape cloth now covers a large arc of ground underneath the three oaks that stand beside the near garden shed.  The idea is to kill off the nettles underneath, which will prepare the way for a hosta, fern, and other shade lovers garden there.  It’s not too visible, but I like the idea of hidden, pocket gardens around the landscape.

All this outdoor work wears me out.  Off to a nap, then perhaps some more work outside.

Art and Culture, Garden

I Am Still Learning

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52  bar rises 29.91 6mph dewpoint 33 Beltane

           Waxing Crescent of the Hare Moon

Short note.  Checked on the hydroponic grown tomato plants after their first night outside in mother earth.  They look ok, though the first one I transplanted might be a little droopy.  When I moved it out of the pot filled with lava pellets, I sheared off the long root system below the pot.  On the other two I used a different method and maintained the root structure intact.  The better way, I learned.

Hate missing the cool morning for work outside, though I have two tours today that should be fun.  A group from Winnipeg for a highlights tour and another Weber public tour.  Gotta be off for those.