Daily Archives: February 22, 2014

Health

Owee

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Imbolc                                                                 Valentine Moon

Back on the treadmill.  No, I haven’t started going off to work again.  I mean, I’m back on the treadmill.  In what I consider an ironic situation my right pectoral is so painful I can’t do the P90X workouts.  Why ironic?  Because in the fall that injured it, I landed on my back. Must have really torqued that left arm, which I’m pretty sure hit first and absorbed most of the fall.  Why didn’t that hurt my left pectoral?  I have no idea.

Sent a note to my doc telling her that this is two weeks past the event and the pain interferes with my workouts and general getting around.  Maybe I’ll head back to Dave, the bicycling Lancastershire man who helped me get past my shoulder pain last fall.  I’m going to let Corrie decide.

I don’t mind the treadmill since I watch movies and TV while I’m doing it, but about a year ago I decided I wanted a more robust workout, one that included resistance work, too.  I developed my own, which seemed to plateau.

Then Kate saw an article for P90X and I did the fitness test for it.  And passed.  Barely. It’s fun and I was just beginning to learn the moves of the various workouts, showing some progress, when I fell off the door jamb.

Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Winter Time Archaeology

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Imbolc                                                                   Valentine Moon

Finished first draft of my query letter.  It includes a synopsis of Missing, about 1,500 IMAG0365words, and the first five pages.  Missing itself, after revision 5.5, is at 103,000 or so.  I want to get some feedback on the query letter, then start sending it out to agents.  My plan is to get it out to 10 agents before I leave for Tucson and other points south west.

(June 5th, 2013)

That took the morning.  Tomorrow I’m putting together our seed and plant orders, calculating the kinds of nitrogen they will need based on the bed sizes for specific vegetables and getting an order for the nitrogen off to Luke Lemmer in Plato, Minnesota.  This is in plenty of time since our vegetable beds, raised about 18 inches off the ground, are invisible now.  It would require winter time archaeology to find them.

The Vegetable Garden
The Vegetable Garden

This is part of why I like four distinct seasons.   Planning a garden while 3 feet of snow lie in our yard and the temperature is in the teens headed toward the teens below makes the full cycle of life an experience rather than abstraction.

(February 21, 2014)

 

Family, Garden, Great Work, Health, Our Land and Home

A Letter To Saudi Arabia

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Imbolc                                                               Valentine Moon

Brother Mark, within a hundred miles of the Rub al Kahli, the empty quarter, asked me about the winter and the garden.  Here’s my reply:

It has been our most severe winter since 1978-79, which was only 8 years after I moved up here.  We just got 10 inches of snow and the temperatures are headed back down.  It’s 2 right now and we have -15 for a low forecast this Thursday.  Snow in our front yard is as high as my hip.  The raised beds in the vegetable garden have disappeared.

All the dogs are good right now.  Gertie gets around much better since she had the surgical crimp removed from her left rear knee.

Kate’s away at quilting retreat with her sister Anne.  Just me, the dogs and lots of snow.

Last year I began using products from International Ag Labs and they increased our production even though I used them for only part of the season.  The broadcast fertilizer went down fall and this spring I add nitrogen.  There’s also a transplant formula to use when planting.  These products improved the microbial life in the soil and add minerals found missing through soil tests.  I tested the vegetable garden and the orchard last fall.

International Ag labs moves gardens and farms toward sustainable agriculture by creating healthy soil.  This has always made sense to me and I’m pleased to have found them.  Bill Schmidt found them.

Over this weekend I plan to place my seed and plant orders.  Once I’ve done that I can 10002010 09 25_0301order nitrogen in forms specific for specific plants.  This means I will no longer have to rotate my crops because I’m building soils designed optimally for each plant type.

Tomatoes, beets, cucumbers, melons, bush beans, sugar snap peas, leeks, greens, herbs and peppers.  The garlic’s already in the ground.  This fall I’ll plant scallions at the same time I plant garlic.

The orchard is part of the program this year.  That means I’ll be spraying the trees as well as the vegetables.  These are foliar feedings, not insecticides.  That’s a weekly, sometimes twice-weekly job. There, are, too soil drenches every other week.

Aren’t you glad you asked?