Summer Waxing Green Corn Moon
Monthly Archives: July 2009
It’s Melting
Summer Waxing Green Corn Moon
This is yet another color, black. Is this readable?
Fade to Black
Summer Waxing Green Corn Moon
The demon of blackness has chosen many screens as his domain, at least many domains that read this blog. I’ve changed colors here to see if it helps. Please let me know if it does.
A Good Day
Summer Waxing Green Corn Moon
A good day to work outside. Still gotta fix the netaphim since other matters interfered the last couple of days. Lots of weeding to do. Even in a drought our watering supports the weeds just as it does the vegetables and flowers.
The Minneapolis Art Institute balanced its books. That’s a good thing. Those who work and volunteer there know the last year saw colleagues cut from the work force and strain was present.
Sierra Club legislative work is in a quiet spot right now. The legislative agenda setting process kicks into high gear next month, then moves like a freight train rolling down hill right through May of 2010. The work requires attention and building of new relationships. That all takes time.
The kids have a new puppy, Solomon, continuing the theme of traditional Jewish names for the German short-hair in the house.
It’s funny the way camera angles often emphasize the head. This shot looks like Solomon has the head for making wise judgments put on the body of a Chihuahua.
Herschel, Solomon’s elder, has cancer and is not expected to live much longer.
The Star-Trib weatherblog has gotten less attention than it deserves this last month and a half. Three blogs Sierra Club, weather and Ancientrails proved too demanding. Even two can be a lot. Giving up the Sierra Club blog made sense when the Legislative Committee Chair position came along.
Vega. Still.
Summer Waxing Green Corn Moon
Vega the wonder dog continues to add mischief and joy to our lives. She climbed up on the kitchen table after treats we foolishly left there. Yesterday she took the door-stop we use to lock our sliding door at night and happily chewed on it. Yesterday, after the mulberry tree went down, Vega picked up the downed branches, chewed them and distributed them widely.
All this and still no ring.
Obama has fallen from grace a bit, his poll numbers have gone down. This makes sense and shows a president of color, or the eventual first woman president, will have to perform. That is as it should be. No one gets a pass when the health of the nation is on the line, no matter what. Does this mean Obama has failed to live up to expectations? Yes, but the expectations represented the type of governance no person can achieve. Now we have to learn how to adjust our understanding of who he is and what he can accomplish. Just like we’ve had to do with every president of every era.
Tomorrow more work outside.
Gadget
Summer Waxing Corn Moon
A.T. got a Blackberry. He’s not proud of it, but the life he’s chosen for the next couple of years, especially the Sierra Club part, will require maintaining a calendar while away from home, checking e-mail and using the internet. A phone with those features made the most sense. He thinks. Only use will tell.
A.T. also got a new watchband. But, sadly, no ring has turned up or come out. That means soon we’ll have to face the question of how to reband (rebrand?) him. A ring carries important social and personal meaning. A.T. feels weird without his wedding band.
Can You Read Me?
Summer New Moon
Are any of you out there having trouble reading Ancient Trails? One user on a Mac finds the website totally black, not as that’s existential, dude, but as I can’t see what you’re sayin’ man.
A.T. wants to know if you find the site hard to read for any reason. Let him know.
They Nourish Us Five Times
Summer New Moon
A.T. cleaned turnips and beets, cut their greens off and prepared them for boiling. He also prepared kale and collard greens, first washing them, then cutting their rib out and storing them for Kate who will boil and freeze them.
An old folk saying suggests fire wood warms you five times: when you cut it, when you move it, when you split it, when you stack it and when you burn it. There is a parallel in the seeding, tending, harvesting, preparing and eating of vegetables and fruits. Each of these plants grew from a tiny seed placed either in soil or in soil block. They were thinned and mulched. The soil over and around them has been built up over the years. When they grew to maturity, the same hands that planted them, took them from the plant and washed them.
When Kate and I eat them, they will have nourished us five times. As we care for the seedling, we participate again in the miracle of vegetative reproduction. While we tend them, we pay attention with love to the soil in which they grow, checking them for disease and creating a nurturing place for them. When we harvest them, we enter into the oldest covenant of humankind, one that even preceded the neolithic revolution, the covenant between humans and domesticated or at least cultivated plants. When we prepare them for food, we touch not strangers, but friends, allies in the ongoing wonder of nature’s intertwined parts. As we eat them, we become the plant and the plant becomes us.
In the Garden
Summer New Moon
A.T. used the chainsaw this morning. He cut out a mulberry tree growing in an unwanted (eastern) location. A.T. feels manly after he uses the chainsaw.
Kate and A.T. harvested peas, greens, beets and turnips, too. A.T. planted beans as a cover crop among the onions, where the garlic came out. A.T. plans a much larger garlic crop for next year. He has 9 or so large bulbs set aside for planting and set in an order for several new varieties. At the SSE (Seed Saver’s Exchange) conference over the weekend a speaker suggested planting the garlic earlier, even in August. A.T. asked SSE if he could get his garlic earlier than the September 7-9 ship date. Nope. Not to worry, he’ll plant his own in mid-August and check the crops against each other next June.
This whole gardening process now begins to blur the line between horticulture and agriculture. With crops meant for immediate consumption, but others for storage: potatoes, turnips, carrots, squash, beans, garlic, onions, greens and peas, plus the eventual fruit yields, our garden has become a substantial part of our lives. Substantial in the transubstantiation notion loved by Catholics. We eat of the body of our garden and our orchard and in our bodies it becomes use, transfigured from plant to human. A sacred event. Substantial in the way it requires the use of our bodies to realize its harvest. Substantial in the political sense since it cuts down trips by car, makes our place better than we found it and keeps us close to our mother.
The bees have added another dimension. An interdependent, co-creative collaborative effort.
Life. Fast. Good.
Summer New Summer Moon
Bees. Netaphim. Trencher. Chain saw. Plant cover crops. Harvest. Life runs full speed in the next three month, perhaps even a bit more. A lot better than slow.
Gotta get outside and get to work. Bye.