Monthly Archives: May 2009

Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work, permaculture

Bee-ing

Leave a comment

Beltane                      Waning Flower Moon

Tomorrow morning Mark Nordeen and I will zip up our white bee suits, put on Wellies and gloves, secure the veiled bonnet that makes us look like prim Victorian ladies headed for a stroll in Hyde Park circa 1880 and do the third check on the bee hive.

When I checked it a week ago, I saw capped cells and a lot of activity.  As I’ve watched scouts come and go over the last week, I’ve noticed that between 1/4 and 1/3 of them return with pollen on their hind legs.  This is a key transition, meaning they will be able to make their own food, wax and propolis.

As each new piece has become a part of our overall property, the gestalt increases.  It grows in size, has grown in size, from the first decisions about boulder walls and perennial flowers, through bulb planting, hosta and ferns, the multiplication and division of iris, day lilies, true lilies, hosta, bug bane, ligularia, dicentra.  When Kate began to grow vegetables, the gestalt pushed out some more.

Hiring Ecological Gardens and putting in the orchard last fall has pushed the boundaries of the whole further out, while integrating it more.  The bees have added an animal component, a lively and complex bee-ing.

Growing vegetable plants from seed under lights, then planting them outside adds another layer.  The work that Ecological Gardens plans for May 26 and May 27 will enrich it yet again.

The feeling is hard to express, but wonderful.  Mabye the bee hive is a good analogy.  It feels to me like the whole property has become an interdependent whole, with the land working for us and us working for the land.  I’m not talking about just food production.  The beauty of the flowers, the grace of the ferns, the broad green presence of the hosta are part of it, too.  Each part feeds into and amplifies the other.  The bees enhance the fruit trees, the vegetables and the flowers; in turn they provide pollen to the hive.  We care for the whole and harvest food, aesthetic pleasure and a sense of connectedness.

Garden, Great Work, Hydroponics, permaculture

Plants I’ve Known From Seeds.

Leave a comment

Beltane                       Waning Flower Moon

The peas and turnips and beets and new onions are up and wriggling toward the sky.  I planted all of the hydroponic plants today with the exception of the cucumbers.  They go in tomorrow.

This was satisfying, putting in plants I grew myself from heirloom seeds.  The next satisfaction will come as they grow, another when we harvest, but the best will be when I replant them next year grown from seed I harvest this year.

I already have garlic growing from bulbs I planted two years ago.  Once the new beds are in we will plant the beans, all of which are from last year’s beans.

Good to get all this done before I leave for Hilton Head.

Now it’s in to MIA to pick up  the Sin and Salvation catalogue for the Pre-Raphaelite show I will tour through the remainder of the summer.

Our Land and Home, Politics

Life Beyond the MUSA Line (and a bit of left wing political thought)

Leave a comment

Beltane                       Waning Flower Moon

We live beyond the MUSA line.  Not very far beyond, it cuts Andover almost in half.  The Metropolitan Urban Services Area line establishes the land which must have city water and sewer. It snakes around the outline of the seven county metropolitan area, attempting to adjust the size and density of suburban development.  Planning officials created the MUSA line in the long ago as a tool to prevent urban sprawl.  It hasn’t worked.

The house we purchased 15 years ago sits on a 2.5 acre lot and has its own sewer (septic) and water, a well.  This has happened all around the seven county metro area.  Larger size residential lots leapfrogged the MUSA line and went in with their own utilities.

From the standpoint of personal independence I prefer our situation.

At any rate this all means we have to manage our own septic system and our own well and water deliver system.  Today we had the septic system pumped out–every 2 years.  The guy who did it took off the manhole cover and checked the baffles. Who knew we had baffles?

Anyhow this 15 year old system was made of concrete and the baffles had cracked and one had fallen off, so we had to replace them.  In order to do this the guys from Kothrade Sewer, Water and Excavation had to get down inside the tank.  Turns out this can kill you.  The fumes.  As I thought about it, I thought, gee, that makes sense.

How would you like to make your living crawling around somebody’s septic system?  Me neither.  It cost $175 for protective gear to work in  a confined space, an OSHA requirement.  This is real danger, two guys in Minnesota in the last year after crawling down a thirty-foot deep manhole into a new system.  Curing concrete sucks up 02.  The first guy in passed out and died.  His buddy went down to see what was wrong.  He died, too.

There aren’t many things worth dying for and our septic system is sure not one of them.

Travel

Post Garage Sale

Leave a comment

Beltane            Waning Flower Moon

I’m going to help Kate take down the garage sale.  Then, if it has not started raining, I’ll move yet more daylilies.  Daylilies are the plant that goes on giving.  They will be here long after we are, in fact, they may be our most permanent legacy.

As the date of the Hilton Head trip comes closer, my thoughts turn to sitting on the train, Kindle 2 in hand, reading as the Midwest, then the east coast and finally the deep south pass by.   I love every part of traveling as long as I’m not flying.

Garden, Great Work, permaculture

A Cool Night.

Leave a comment

Beltane                    Full Flower Moon

This is the kind of weather that can scare a Minnesota gardener.  Right now the temperature is 42.  It could, will, go lower, though the prediction says no lower than 40.  If I thought it were going to get down to freezing, I’d have to cover my new peas and turnips.  They have just poked above the soil and would suffer and most would die.

My baby plants from inside are now adolescents; they stayed outside six hours today.  Tomorrow, I’ll put them outside by the beds where they’ll be planted and give them one more day in the peat pots before digging them in to their permanent homes.

I cut up the potatoes today, readying them for planting, too.  They may be a little late, so we’ll see what we get.  A lot of new plants in this year’s garden: leeks, parsnips, turnips, greens, brocolli, cauliflower, plants I may not understand too well.  Again, we’ll have to see what we get.

That kind of experimentation is one of the joys of gardening, eating something fresh that you’ve only ever had from a produce section of a supermarket.  This year marks a large expansion in our vegetable and fruit crop.  That means a lot of uncertainty, a steep learning curve with some plants.  All part of the deal.

Garden

Beware Success With Perennials

Leave a comment

Beltane               Full Flower Moon

Beware success with perennial flowers.   I have, long ago, mastered the art of growing asiatic lilies, iris and day lillies.  To my occasional regret.  The asiatic lilies are not too much of a problem though even they live long and prosper, therefore sometimes making a nuisance of themselves.

Iris and day lillies though are another matter.  They grow, multiply, spread.  When in a happy location, their presence can become not much distinguishable from weeds, especially since the definition of a weed is a plant out of place.

I just finished two hours of digging and moving daylillies.  Again.  The good news is that they grow anywhere you put them.  The bad news is the same.  I have a sturdy Smith and Hawkings spading fork which I broke today.  Again.  Shouldn’t have stepped on it to free the gnarly net of roots the daylilly clumps develop.  Sigh.  A satsifying, yet frustrating morning.

They need to move again because I want the sunny spot they have occupied for sprawling melons and cucumbers.  This spot has great sun and lots of room for squash sprawl, a good thing if you have the room and we do.  Right where one large batch of daylillies currently live.

Cinema and Television

Slumdog

Leave a comment

Beltane                   Full Flower Moon

It takes longer for films to make it up here north of 694, the transition point where pick-up trucks begin to out number SUV’s and mini-vans.  It should be no surprise then that Kate and I just saw Slumdog Millionaire.  This is a wonderful movie.  At least at first the most engrossing aspect of the film was its sheer cinematic beauty, somehow Danny Boyle made the famed Mumbai slums glow while not romanticizing them.

Dev Patel and Freida Pinto  (what kind of name is that?)  made the film with their tenderness in the midst of horrific circumstances.  Dev Patel’s slumdog had a nobility and purity that put the police, the corrupt game show host and his own brother in such a bind that they all ended up supporting him, even if reluctantly.

Freida managed a tough girl staying on her feet in spite of the curse of beauty.  Dev never gave up on her; he pursued in a Quixotic manner, eventually making it on the game show because he knew she would be watching.

Worth its Oscars.  In fact, it was good in spite of them.

Travel

Gettin’ Ready

Leave a comment

Beltane                         Full Flower Moon

As I move into the week before a trip, I begin going over my check lists, things to take, things to stop, buy fewer groceries, get all necessary work around the house done.   On my to take list are wheeled luggage (for those long trips from the first class lounge to the train), netbook, deet, camera, Kindle and my passport.  Yes, clothes, too.

On the to do list is gathering necessary passwords and usernames in one place, stop the mail, stop the newspaper, get all the baby plants in their new beds, check the bees one more time, finish moving the day lillies.

There is, at least for me, the inevitably of forgetting some task, some essential item.  Over the years I have become familiar with my habits, the kind of things I tend to forget or misplace, so I tend not to lose or forget my wallet, glasses, tickets, camera and Dopp kit.  Maybe this will be the trip where everything gets done and nothing forgotten.  No thing left behind.  Hey, could be an educational program, too.

Today in specific I’ll move all the indoor plants outside, work some more on the day lillies and set my baby plants outside for 5 hours.  Gotta groceries, too, and cook dinner.  Then, there’s workout.  Ready. Set.

Family, Travel

Leaving on A Slow Train

Leave a comment

Beltane                         Full Flower Moon

A week from tonight I will be asleep or almost so on an outbound train from Chicago to Washington, D.C.  After several hours during the day on Saturday in D.C., the train for Savannah leaves Union Station, arriving around 6:30 a.m. the next day.  Slow travel seems to fit with the life I’ve come to lead, one that waits on the natural rhythms for flowers and vegetables, fruit and honey.

Travel became a family insignia, we should have trains, planes and ships, buses and taxis on our family crest, the Ellis family crest that is.  We are a peripatetic group.  Mark travels regularly around Southeast Asia, frequenting Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam while basing himself in Thailand.

Mary will travel sometime this year to Athens from Singapore where she will present the results of her Ph.D. work.  She gets to England now and again in addition to returning to the US.  She will not, however, be able to come this year because the Singapore Government has banned official travel to the US due to the H1N1 flu.  Her travel is official because the university for which she works pays for her ticket and the university is an arm of the government.

Art and Culture, Asia

The Tea Ceremony on Tour

Leave a comment

Beltane                 Full Flower Moon

Two tours this morning.  The first, a Visual Thinking Strategies, for third graders from Maxfield school in St. Paul went well.  The kids attention petered out after about 45 minutes and we went on search of things they found interesting like guns (flintlock rifles) and a painting of a small dead boy wearing a dress.

The second, a public tour, had the Museum given title, Steeped in Tradition:  a tour of Chinese and Japanese art.  I thought, well, why not talk about the origins of the Japanese tea ceremony.  We began in India with Vishnu and the Ghandara Buddha, stopped by the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara in China and smaller statue of the Buddha, then went into the Taoist gallery.  After the Taoist gallery we visited the Song dynasty ceramics for a Chan Buddhist inspired tea cup, then onto Japan for our fine statue of Amitabha Buddha, the Buddha of the Pure Land.

We first hit the tea ceremony proper with the shoin audience hall, used by Shoguns as well Buddhist abbotts for ceremonial occasions including the first, elaborate, large and showy tea ceremonies.  After that we went to the tea wares gallery to look at tea cups and discuss the notion of wabi-sabi.  The tour ended at the tea-house and brief walk through of the purpose of the tea ceremony.  There was only one woman on the tour but she had an interest in Asian art and knew something of China and Thailand.

Back home.  Nap.  Now, workout.