• Tag Archives Vega

  • Mammoths Trek North

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                          Waning Green Corn Moon

    Today the Woolly Mammoths put themselves on the ancient trail to the north, a gathering of the herd happens here in Andover starting at 6:00 p.m. or so.  Kate has helped me with the meal the last two meetings, or, better, I have helped her help me.  The menu includes two brined and roasted free-range chickens.  It also includes potatoes from our garden with our parsley, roasted beets, turnips, and carrots, and possibly, tomato and onion salad from our garden.  I say possibly because three of our Cherokee Purples began to turn last Friday, all the rest of our tomato explosion are still green.  Kate will also make her signature dish, a rhubarb pudding.

    I have to go out this morning and retrieve my new wedding ring from the jewelers so Vega, Kate, and I can have a small ceremony during the meeting blessing the new ring.  Then there’s a chain to get to keep Rigel out of the damned orchard.  Ice.  Bones to keep the big dogs happy during the meal.  The little things that have to get done before a large meal.

    So, I’d better get to it.  Talk to you later.


    📂This entry was posted in Cooking Family Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • My Dog Ate My Remote

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                 Waning Green Corn Moon

    OK.  In previous episodes of the Vega/Rigel saga our heroines have:  escaped multiple times, eaten the recently installed netaphim, chewed up various hoses and their inside beds and, most famously, eaten my wedding ring.  All that, but now they’ve done something serious:  revealed the insides of the dvd player remote.  Yike.  Can you imagine manually inputting every command to your dvd player?  I thought not.  Sigh.

    Kate’s back and she’s glad to be back.  It allowed a day to rest and today we’ve begun work on the meal for the Woollies.  I dug potatoes and pulled beets and carrots (three colors–white, purple and orange)  while Kate brined the two free-range chickens I bought yesterday at the grocery store.

    While filling the dogs pool (yes, they have one in addition to the water container.), I squatted down to hold the hose, the shortened bit Vega has left me.  Crack, snapple and pop.  Not rice krispies.  Nope.  It was my lower back.  Owee.

    Kate is a great resource on how to handle back pain so I have been her apprentice since then.  She also gave me some pain meds that helped, too.  I wanted to go out to the Marsh in Minnetonka to see the opening of Moon’s art show, but I can’t make it.  Moon is Scott Simpson’s 92 year old Cantonese mother-in-law.

    I do have to go to the grocery store for the stuff we decided we need for the meal.


    📂This entry was posted in Dogs Health Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • Eureka!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                 Waning Green Corn Moon

    Got some sleep.  Feel better this morning.  A busy day ahead.  Groceries, recycling, straw, more weeding.

    Kate comes back from Denver today.  I  had a bit of a snit yesterday when she wanted to stay an extra day.  My Woolly meeting is on Monday and she’s a big part of the get ready for it plan.  Also, her birthday is Tuesday–65!–and I have an evening ready for us.  I wanted her back her with me, but felt conflicted because she wanted to stay with Jon.  He had a bad ride home from the hospital.  A moot point as it turns out, since it would have cost around $500 to change the ticket with $150 airline fee, $30 Orbitz and $320 in additional ticket costs.  Not proud of myself over this, but I’m glad she’ll be home today.

    Vega or Rigel, remember them?, ate my pocket moleskine diary and a current novel I’m reading, Consider Philebas.  By eat I mean shred and coat with drool.  The diary’s pages are recoverable and Consider Philebas, though badly mauled and wet, contains the pages I’ve not yet read, which is good enough for me.  Just one more of the V&R stories.

    Over the last few days I have dutifully filled the large rubber water container we have outside.  And refilled it.  Those big dogs, I thought, drink a lot of water.  Then, shortly after I filled it yesterday morning, I put the hose away, turned around to see Vega curled up in the water container.  She was happy.  Archimedes could have had his eureka moment watching her.  90 pounds of puppy displaces a lot of water.

    The Denver Olsons have had a rough summer.  Hirschel their 6 year old German Shorthair developed cancer and died.  hirschJon’s surgery has created the kind of upset recovery from any surgery always does.  Next up is Gabe’s surgery to install a port for his prophylactic factor.  That comes on the 27th.  Not to mention that they started back teaching two weeks ago.   A lot for a young family to absorb.  Why I was conflicted.  (pic:  Hirschel)


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Dogs Family Health 📎and tagged

  • Watch the Video

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                 Waxing Green Corn Moon’

    Former Door County dairy farmer and Woolly Mammoth Bill Schmidt passes the Dairyland baton to northern Indiana’s Fair Oaks Farm.  Why?  They produce enough milk to provide for the dairy needs of an 8 million person city.  They have 25,000 acres and 32,000 cows, milked 3 times a day on a moving carousel.  Hard to believe?  Watch the video.

    Kate and I spent the morning at the Minnesota Spine Center.  We met a confident and capable surgeon who gave Kate some possibilities she had not had before.  Whether any of them will relieve what has now been a 20 year 0rdeal that has caused a lot of pain and cost here 3 1/2 inches in height we do not know, but we will.

    Vega the wonder dog continues.  Now she has found the netaphim running through the raised beds.  She has gnawed on some of it though she cut through none of them.  She’s an intelligent, active, inquisitive dog.

    The Blackberry Storm I got at the Verizon store got terrible reviews when it first came out.  I have used it for a few days now and can say that the problems I’ve encountered so far fall the into the severely annoying class, frustrating but not crippling.  Example.  Like the I-Phone, the device it attempts to copy, it has an acclerometer that switches the orientation of the screen from portrait to landscape when you turn the phone.  Unlike the I-Phone the Storm does not always respond to the turn, at least not right away.  Likewise the internet link acts up sometimes, offering less than the full website for viewing.

    On the other hand it has a full qwerty keyboard in landscape mode and two thumbed typing can  be accurate and fast.  It also has a smaller footprint than the I-Phone, something I appreciate.  It will work for my needs just fine.

    I’m back to working out with the full routine:  flexibility, resistance, balance and aerobics.   Body and mind work better when exercised.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Dogs GeekWorld Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • We’re Baaaack!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                Waxing Green Corn Moon

    Some new html code somehow turned all the type on some computers black.  Why this happened is not clear, since it never showed up on this computer or friend Bill Schmidt’s.  A long time back it became clear that the last thing done before a problem occurs probably screwed things up.  Yup.

    A.T. will go to sleep for now, but the blog will be, as much as possible, in the third person, with no I.  This is an exercise in discipline for a writer.

    The netaphim, shredded by Vega, now connects from one end to the other.  The reason for the fence, to allow it to stay that way, now comes into play.

    The irrigation clock received new instructions based on something heard at Seed Saver’s over last weekend.  Water once a week, a lot.  Stop.  This encourages plants to grow deeper roots, following the water down.  This is an experiment, we’ll see how it works.  This new setup will eliminate, too, a frustrating situation in which two zones ran at the same time, reducing the flow to both.  At least clearing the computer of all its programming and starting over should fix that.

    It’s surprising how many everyday items now rely on computer code.  The irrigation clock.  The weather station.  The blackberry.  Microwave.  TV.  Automobile.  Some experience with computers and with code, even if limited, can make navigating this electronic minefield easier.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden GeekWorld 📎and tagged

  • Vega. Still.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    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.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Politics 📎and tagged

  • No Ring. Yet.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                            Sliver of the Waning Summer Moon

    Inquiring minds want to know.  No, Antra, no joy yet.  There are still a few possibilities but the weekend trip and a busy day has not left me time to go check.  We have approximately an acre and a half fenced and 2/3rds of that is woods, so we may never find it.

    Woolly’s tonight.  We discussed Good and Evil in our own lives.  Tom Crane showed a wonderful documentary about a French region focused on Champion sur Lignon.  The people in this whole region hid Jews during WWII.  In interviews with them after the fact they implied that they just did it.   It was a very moving story.  It hit me especially since they were Huguenots, the group to which John Know belonged.  Their position relative to helping the Jews I recognized from work within the Reformed tradition.  Then, too, clergy played a direct role in the attitudes that led to their extraordinary, yet very ordinary actions.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Politics Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • Speed Bumps Ahead?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                   Waning Summer Moon

    Life has begun to take on some speed again.  The garden work.  The conference this weekend.  Sierra Club work later this afternoon.  Tours to design for the first of August.  That sort of thing. Along with the cool weather, 64 here this morning, it feels good.  (check me out on this 3 to 4 months from now and see if I’ve stressed myself out.)

    We now have a gated orchard, free from the marauding Vega.  The split rail defines the orchard, gives it a secluded look.  I’ll post a photograph at some point.

    Gotta go right now.  Up to Elk River for dog meds, then I have to read material so I can look modestly informed while I represent the Sierra Club at the Minnesota Environmental Partnership’s agenda setting process.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Garden permaculture 📎and tagged

  • My life, now

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                  Waning Summer Moon

    Vega the wonder dog has:  shredded the netaphim irrigation,  chewed up a length of high quality hose, swallowed my wedding ring, peed on the bench cushion Kate made and, most recently, peed on our oriental carpet.  As a result we have:  put up a split rail fence, done loads of laundry and taken the oriental in to the rug laundry.

    On the upside, she’s irrepressible, enthusiastic and downright funny.  Her sister Rigel, a sweet girl and a lover, seems bland in comparison, but they have the same parents.

    This weekend I’m off to Decorah, Iowa for a conference at the Seed Saver’s Exchange farm.  There will be lots of information on organic farming/gardening, wagon rides, two speeches on heirloom vegetables, a presentation on Heritage Poultry and a barn dance.  There will be workshops on saving seeds, garlic, potatoes, hand-pollination and bud grafting.

    This turn toward permaculture, horticulture, gardening was a gradual process.  It sort of snuck up on me as I dabbled in perennials on Edgcumbe in St. Paul, grew some vegetables, then did a bit more after we moved to Andover.  Later, I took a horticultural degree by mail from London University in Guelph, Ontario.  At some further point I began to read about permaculture, picked up Bill Mollison’s book and began to make contacts locally.

    The real spur to push further on all this was a conference Kate and I attended in Iowa City three years ago now.  Run by Physician’s for Social Responsibility it convinced me that I needed to turn my activist attention toward environmental matters.

    It took a while to get going but I got myself on the Sierra Club’s political committee last year in the summer, then followed up with work on the Club’s legislative committee this last session writing a blog.  Last September we hired ecological gardens to do a permaculture design for the whole property and made a push to get the orchard planted that fall so it would have the benefit of a full growing season this year.

    This gives me work outside, in the political arena and, as a Docent, in aesthetic and intellectual realms.  A really good deal for me.  As always, thanks, Kate.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Garden permaculture Politics 📎and tagged