Yearly Archives: 2014

Cooking, Garden

I Sprayed In The Garden Alone

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Summer                                                              Most Heat Moon

As the Most Heat Moon gives way to the Lughnasa Moon, gardening takes more time. Today I picked gooseberries, a thorny fruit, willing to rip and tear any who venture near. Got enough for a full basket and didn’t end up wounded.

This was also a spray morning. One goes on the plants throwing out seeds in various fleshy carriers like tomatoes, egg plants, cucumbers, beans, peppers, as well as those concentrating on root growth like onions, garlic, carrots and beets. The other is for those plants spreading their leaves like chard and collard greens, various herbs.

Today was also a drench day, a concentrated solution that goes on the soil, not on the plant, and raises the level of molecular interactions in the soil that create plant growth. Drenching is a bit messy since I’m using an old Miraclegro feeder that has seen far better days. It leaks and sprays, soaking my shoes and pants. Time for a new one.

Kate has the pressure cooker out, shades of the 1950’s, having discovered that low acid vegetables like beets and carrots require the higher 240 degrees a pressure cooker can reach.

Forgot to mention that my energy level has returned to normal, perhaps normal plus a bit, after the long two weeks with guests, then Kate gone, then more guests. I’m glad because it restored my sense that I can care for a garden, a vegetable garden, about the size of ours, especially if that’s the primary outdoor work I have to do. That and the bees.

Politics, US History, Weather +Climate

Positive Signs

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Summer                                                             Most Heat Moon

Some positive signs. News about climate change has gone from whether to when, how much and what do we do. Though this is a fight that will require joint effort beyond anything I’ve seen short of a war, the U.S. can lead if it finds the will. A change in the public opinion atmosphere, in this case, may lead to a change in the less gaseous atmosphere.

Another. News reports have begun to notice inner city America. Again. Urban poverty became prevalent long before climate change arose. Roman and Chinese cities in ancient times already grappled with its problems. Over the course of my life urban issues have had their cycles, reaching a zenith during the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson and his Great Cities programs.

Today’s Star-Tribune has an article that grazes the issue written by Chicago Tribune conservative Steve Chapman who quotes Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic.  This link to the Atlantic collects several of Coates’ fine essays on urban America, particularly urban black America with a focus on Chicago. He’s making a case for reparations, that is, some form of restitution for all those effected by chattel slavery. Well worth reading.

Cities and their issues were the focus of my professional and political life. It’s heartening to me to see these matters beginning to take up space in various media. The amount of human heartache and the egregious loss of raw talent occasioned through urban poverty is stupefying.

May both climate change and urban poverty see more of our combined attention over the next few decades. They both need it. (Another bit on the intractability of urban poverty later.)

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work

Nocturne

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Summer                                                          Most Heat Moon

The increasing pace of the harvest is plant life telling us that the seasons that matter are cropped0017changing. What seems like the height of summer to us presages not more summer, but fall and the big harvests of September and October. That’s what the plants know and in their distinct and ancient language they’re reminding us the time to gather in foodstuffs is now. Right now.

Pressure cookers and canning kettles across the Midwest have begun to heat up, too. That’s another sign. 5 pints of carrots went into the jars today and beets go in tomorrow, green beans as well. In a less complex economy this work would decide whether some of us would live or die through the long winter. Even with our garden I’m grateful for grocery stores. We would have to devote so much more of our time and energy to growing food if it were not for them.

Still, it’s not bad to have a reminder that the complex market system that brings vegetablescroppedIMAG0327 and fruits and meats and processed foods of all kind into our grocery stores is just that, a human system. That means it can be disrupted by war, by natural disaster, by disease, by insects, by normal seasonal fluctuations in temperature and by climate change.

It feels good to have those chicken-leek pies in the freezer. Those red glass jars of pickled beets and the golden ones of carrots. The jarscroppedIMAG0347 of honey and pints of green beans, tomatoes and sauces. Frozen greens and peppers. Dried onions and garlic. Grape jam, currant and gooseberry pies. All the various herbs dried. And last year all the apples and cherries, plums and pears. Next year, probably, too, with the help of bees. (but we won’t be here, most likely, to make that happen.)

Garden, Our Land and Home

Gratitude

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Summer                                                                        Most Heat Moon

The mid-summer harvest has well begun with the first crop of beets now almost all picked,cropped1500IMAG0368 about a half of the first carrot crop and early green beans. The garlic, though late, is getting close and several of my onion stems were lying down yesterday, a sign they want to come out of the ground for drying.

I have a second crop of beets and carrots already on their way to maturity and a third planting in some places sporting two or three leaves. The tomatoes have begun to flesh out and I expect, with some heat, that we’ll begin to see ripe tomatoes in the next week. Kate picked a large batch of blueberries yesterday and I had some for breakfast this morning.

The fruit trees are disappointing. Almost no apples, cherries and no plums and very few pears. Kate may have the right croppedIMAG0360diagnosis (her real gift in the art of medicine). No bees. There are, as always, many many currants and our crop of gooseberries is as big as it’s ever been. I’m going to pick them tomorrow. We also have a sizable hazelnut crop this year.

As usual the garden’s bounty varies, but as far as the vegetables go, this is as good a year as I’ve seen in our 20 years here.

(gooseberries)

Anoka County, GeekWorld, Our Land and Home

Itchy Palm? Too much odonatology?

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Summer                                                                  Most Heat Moon

The dragonfly came up in conversation yesterday because I saw one outside the window at Running Aces and remarked I’d read they hadn’t changed in 300,000,000 years. A remarkable fact to me and one I confirmed in some quick internet research this morning.

Tom then added that they were unique in their ability to vector their prey, that is, calculate the prey’s path and their own so they would intersect. All other apex predators chase their prey. Very interesting. (see video below)

A little more poking around found a few more interesting facts about the dragonfly, but I put the most remarkable one (to me) last.

 

 

1. The study of dragonflies, and sometimes damselflies, is called Odonatology. Dragonflies are referred to as Odonates.

2. About 5000 species of dragonflies and damselflies are known

3. Top speed for a dragonfly is between 30 and 60 km/h (19 to 38 m.p.h.)

4. A dragonfly needs warmth to fly and you will notice they will often land when
the sun goes behind a cloud.

5. Because of their compound eyes, dragonflies can see in many directions at once

6. Fact: They Calculate Velocity For A Perfect Kill

The dynamics of capturing an object in mid-air are staggeringly complex, so much so that it’s usually something that’s only done by animals with complex nervous systems, like seagulls, or humans. To intercept something moving with its own velocity, you have to be able to predict where it will be in the future. When researchers began studying dragonflies in 1999, they found that rather than “track” their prey—follow it through the air until they caught up with it—they would actually intercept it. In other words, dragonflies ensure a kill by flying to where their prey is going to be.

That indicates that dragonflies calculate three things during a hunt: the distance of their prey, the direction it’s moving, and the speed it’s flying. In the space of milliseconds, the dragonfly calculates its angle of approach and, like a horror movie monster, it’s already waiting while the hapless fly stumbles right into its clutches.

7. Most of a dragonfly’s life is spent in the naiad form beneath the water’s surface…They breathe through gills in their rectum, and can rapidly propel themselves by suddenly expelling water through the anus.[6

Anoka County, Sport, Woolly Mammoths

Railbirds

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Summer                                                                       Most Heat Moon

croppedIMAG0348

A warm summer evening, a true northern summer evening with just a hint of coolness after the sun went down. The Woollies gathered at Running Aces: Mark, Scott, Warren, Frank, Bill and Tom. Most of us were novices at betting the horses, but we made up in enthusiasm what we lacked in knowledge. Normally, you would expect such a situation to favor the house, but I’m sure as a group we took home more money than we bet. Warren hit a boxed exacta and so did I. Between us we won over $215.

The food is good bar food and we had a window table with a clear view of the finish line. We discussed betting techniques: what a cute name, color, odds by Ricky, odds by trackman published at the bottom of the program, looking at the racing history of the horses. Names seemed a dominant choice.

I bet on Hooray Katie. Lost. Frank bet on Hanna. Won a quarter. Tom and Mark bet on Kissmelikeyoumeanit and won. Mark won an exacta. Bill won a couple of times. I think Scott won, too.

These horses, pacers and trotters, are Standardbreds. This means that they trace their ancestory to Hambeltonian 10(pic). If thoroughbred racing is the sport of kings, harness racing, the same source of information says, is the sport of the people. The people were out there tonight, cheering and drinking, enjoying the summer evening. And the Woollies were part of it.

Asia

Huh

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Summer                                                             Most Heat Moon

Over to Beisswinger’s hardware store to pick up the mower after repairs. While there I noticed a group gathered amongst the riding mowers on display, two men with Beisswinger tee-shirts and two Chinese or Japanese men taking notes, while a third took photographs. Here’s what surprised me. My reaction.

My first thought. Hmmm, Chinese investors getting ready to make a bid for the Do It Best hardware corporation. In taking care of the mower and payment I forgot to ask anyone who the visitors were, but my reaction itself is noteworthy. How the economic landscape has changed.

Politics, US History

On the Run

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Summer                                                                   Most Heat Moon

Started a new book last night, On the Run, by Alice Goffman, a recently graduated sociologist Ph.D.  Her father was Erving Goffman, also a sociologist. You may be familiar with his work on social interactions. For example, in a work on human interaction he observed that the amount of space people need when conversing while standing differs by culture.

On the Run recounts Alice’s 7 years of living in a poor black neighborhood of Philadelphia, but recounts it from a sociological perspective. I’ll write more about this as I get into it, but I wanted to note two things I’ve learned already. Things that disturb me quite a bit.

First, in the introduction she cites devastating statistics about the incarceration of black males. This one really got me. 60% of black males who don’t finish high school end up in jail. 60%!

Second, she remarks on a coincidence that’s been staring us in the face for a long, long time, but is even more devastating. The rise of tough-against-crime legislation and the war on drugs-both of which are primary drivers in what one sociologist calls “mass incarceration”-began in the 1970’s. This is the period just after the passage in 1964 of the Civil Rights Act and the victories of the civil rights movement. Think about those two things together. They should give you pause.

More later.