Art

 Ever since Laura moved out, this home has seemed empty.  I'm making a start to address this by looking for cool art to put around the house.  Anyone have any suggestions?  Yes, I'm going to get kitties to fill the void of the missing two, although none can replace them.  Laura, if you ever want to give me either one of them, they're welcome here.  In fact, I'm going to pray that Zooey starts pooping on your bed again, although to what or whom I'm going to pray, I have no idea.

P.S. Thanks to DGNY for reminding me via comment that I still have a blog!

Social Niceties

Tonight we went out to a "Drinking Skeptically" get-together.  I didn't learn much about the local skeptics, and I didn't make any friends, but I did come up with a list of things to consider if you're a considering going out to a group meetup of some kind.

• Hate isn't attractive.  If you are arriving with an agenda to rant about, perhaps you might like to reconsider.
• Ego is boring.  Nobody wants to hear about how proud you are of yourself.  Seriously, I'm glad that you've supported yourself from the age of 18, without an education, but you're not special.
• Anecdotes are cool, if they're on topic.  If not--especially if they take five minutes to relate--they're irritating.
• Being mean to people is NOT cool.  When you tell me all about how you shamed a person in front of others, I don't see it as some kind of victory for you.
• Being kind to people IS cool.  When you ridicule that, I think less of you.
• Just listen a bit, perhaps?
• And ask people about themselves, rather than ranting about your own life.  Is that hard?  When you engage them, they'll respond and ask about you.  It's a simple formula.

Garlic, How do I love Thee?

Sweet baby Jesus*, do I love me some garlic twelve ways from sunday.  I'll eat three raw crushed gloves in a plate of pasta and not bat an eye (a habit that basically turns me into the equivalent of a federal Superfund Cleanup site for the next four hours), and a half dozen cloves go into most things that I preserve.  (Peppers, pickles, etc.)  Also, sautéed garlic is a staple that deserves to be on the lowest rung of the now-defunct food pyramid, in my humble opinion: eight or more helpings a day!

Okay, I'm exaggerating, but I really do love the stuff.  It's good for you, it's delicious raw or cooked or pickled, and it's truly the easiest plant to grow.  You poke a clove into the ground in October, and then come back the next July and scoop out the matured bulb.  At least around here, I never bother to water or feed it--I just make sure that the bed that it's in is richly amended with compost, and let the rains do the rest.  My grandfather used to keep a jar of pickled garlic cloves by his bedside (from bulbs that he grew himself, of course), and whenever he would feel heart pains, he'd eat a couple; he claimed that the pains would go away quickly.  Raw garlic is also, in my experience, a hangover prevention: if you've enjoyed the new year's celebration too much, swallow three cloves of garlic and you'll wake up tired and stinky, but not hurting.

Half of the 2011 garlic crop, drying

The first year that I was serious about gardening (2008), I planted about twelve softneck garlics in unamended heavy clay soil.  My reward for that excessive inattention was a crop of bean-sized bulbs with no flavor.  So last year, I devoted a 4'x4' bed to garlic, ordered hardneck porcelain seed garlic from Filaree Farm, and made sure that the soil was fluffy and rich.  As a result, I have almost 100 fat bulbs, each 2" across and sporting six or seven large cloves each.  I also enjoyed the benefit of ~100 delicious garlic scapes in the spring!

Nice 2" bulbs

For 2012, I have lost my mind.  Having just harvested the bounty above, I realized that I have more than enough garlic to save for seed and store for cooking over the next year, but alas, I've already ordered more seed garlic from Filaree.  Approximately three times more than I planted this year, enough to fill a 4'x12' raised bed.  This means that next year, I am going to witness the Garlic Apocaplyse.  Is it possible to have too much garlic?  We shall see.  Whatever the answer, I am never going to have to order seed garlic again....

And now a gratuitous picture of Finn with a dab of yellow paint on his kitten snout:

Just because

UPDATE:  The garlic has been drying in the garage for a couple of hours now, and OH MY GOD does the garage smell amazing!


*Did you know that, strictly speaking, uttering the name "Jesus" is not "taking the lord's name in vain", according to christian texts and history?  His name in aramaic was "Yeshua", which translates in english to "Joshua".

Facebook Sucks

I don't use it very much anymore, mostly because of concerns about privacy issues.  And now it's gotten worse: the "chat" feature seems to automatically log you in, and there's no way to disable that.  You have to explicitly take yourself offline.

That being said, social networking is useful.  I don't want to dump the networking aspect, just the facebook aspect.  Does anyone have a google+ invite that they can send me?

Eight Wednesday Things

TREES!

• This new greenhouse ROCKS.  That's a coffee bean tree and a bay laurel tree (as in, "bay leaves" or "roman laurel wreath") above.  They are loving the 80ºF temps in there, as are the peppers.  Next year, tomatoes and eggplant!
• Getting people hooked on something you love is really awesome.  I've turned Laura into a gardener!
• I have too many Lego
• Funny quote from tonight: "No punishment is too draconian.  A good thrashing with the town eel, perhaps.  Then, a written letter of apology to the eel."
• Finn has slept for 23.5 hours today.  I envy that cat.
• Twitter is the most ridiculously silly thing ever
• I don't have enough Lego
• Honey badger don't give a shit!

On the relentless march of time

A treat from the garden

The strawberries are coming on strong now.  I only have a few plants, and the slugs get most of the fruit, but this was a handfull that was unharmed and perfectly ripe.  I trimmed off the stems and halved them, and we shared the tiny bounty.

It's wednesday night, and I spent the sunset carving up cardboard boxes and tying the pieces up, because thursday morning is when the recycling guys come around.

Garlic!

The garlics are mostly huge and full of fat bulbs, and July 4 reminds me that I need to reorder seed garlic.  So I did.

My peppers are doing well in the greenhouse: they love the 90F temps.  I took my cell phone out there, and the wireless signal was strong--so this autumn, I shall be working with my laptop in the greenhouse.

Life's rhythms go on.  Most of the things that I considered important when I was 18 just aren't anymore.  In fact, even five years ago, I was a totally different person.  I remember how my 80-year-old grandmother used to laugh at things that I would say, responding "darlin', none of that grows a garden".
 
I was confused at the time, but I understand now.

On the incredible thickness of privilege

Richard Dawkins, who is someone that I normally admire, recently stepped into it.  What do you think?

Relevant link

On Tomatoes

Freshly pruned and caged Russian Black tomatoes

It's hard to grow tomatoes here.  Really hard.  The average last freeze in April 15, which is long after the southern USA states have already planted out--so seedlings must be started indoors, on heat mats, when there is still snow on the ground outside.  By June, usually, the rains have stopped, but that's far too late to have the plants in the ground, so they must be planted out in late april underneath plastic, to keep the wet from giving them blight.  This year, it rained all June, so it's even harder than normal.  July and August are usually pretty dry, with September starting to threaten rain again---so late august and September is when we start to be able to harvest vine-ripened tomatoes, if we've done everything else right (see above).

This is why I built a greenhouse this year.

New Greenhouse! The automatic vents have opened in this picture, making a chimney effect and cooling the plants inside

It's too late this year, but next year I plan to have a crop of strong tomatoes in there.  The Russian Blacks that I'm growing now have proven to be the most vigorous, beautiful tomato plants that I've ever started--I hope that they set fruit, and that it's good.  If so, I'll be growing them in the warmth next year.  Without the greenhouse, I have to cover them if there is a chance of rain, which I just did now.  Don't take a vacation if you want tomatoes in the Northwest.

Feeding and watering is an issue, too.  You can't feed tomatoes too much, or else they don't flower.  But you can't underfeed them, or else the fruits are small.  Moreover, they need specific minerals to avoid blossom end-rot and leaf yellowing.

But all that work and worry is worth it, even if I only get one tomato.  Even just one.  Why?  Because those round red things in the supermarkets are hybrid atrocities---without flavor, and grown without care or purpose other than profit.

I'd rather live in a world where I can enjoy one real tomato that I've nourished from seed in my garden each summer, than a pile of hybrids grown anonymously and shipped 500 miles.  I'm a locavore, an atheist, a scientist, and a fool: give me good things nearby, the truth, and silliness, and I'll be just fine.

Thursday Squash

A Red Kuri Squash in the Garden

This is my first year growing winter squash, and rather than the traditional butternut, a Red Kuri is what I chose to try out.  Apparently they are like small red pumpkins, or sometimes they stay yellow, with a very tasty nutty flavor.  Trying oddball things like this is one of the aspects of home gardening that really appeals to me: I'm not limited to what the markets choose to sell.

Another excellent example of that is garlic.  There are two kinds of garlic in the brand-name stores here, and maybe another five more at the farmer's market, but this year I planted four totally oddball varieties in my  search for the perfect garlic--and I think I may have found it: Romanian Red.  My RR's are producing large bulbs right now, enough to make it possible for me to save the largest cloves and replant them without buying new seed stock.  An additional bonus is the garlic scapes that I just harvested and pickled--I had no idea what a scape was until I grew my own garlic, and now I wonder how I lived this long without them.  They're only in season for a brief period in the spring, and each hardneck garlic plant produces only one--so they're relatively rare.  But oh my god, how delicious with scrambled eggs, or pickled!

I laugh, with a smile, at how tame my life has become.   Tomorrow I am going to go to the local food bank to see about volunteering possibilities.  Since I stopped with the Mountain Rescue gig, I've been sort of aimlessly looking around for ways to give back to the community again.  My tendency to overplant and the obviously huge amount of Red Kuri squashes that I'm going to have made me consider ways to give the produce away--and the food bank accepts gardener's donations.  And that made me wonder if perhaps I could do more than just that.

And now I'm googling ways to become a certified master gardener...

Greenhouse

My new greenhouse (and a bit of the garden)

My garden makes me happy.  :)  The greenhouse is this one, if you are interested.  It was a bit pricey, but I really wanted a local, wood, long-term greenhouse with low maintenance, and it was the only one that fit the bill.

I've now stocked it with peppers, and Laura has put some tomatoes in there for her volunteer gig.

A small, unfocussed blur; a standing chill

A squash blossom in my garden

With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.

I worked in the garden tonight.  Vines tied upwards, new dark driplines run through beds, raspberries picked and thinned; twine around black currants to restrain their rowdy growth, eggshells at the foot of the tomato plants, garlic scapes snipped and quickly sautéed in oil with freshly cut broccoli.   

A riot of carrots

There is a robin nest just behind the garden fence.  From 6:00am until 9:00:pm, the little chicks cry for food.  "meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep....."

I exulted when the dripline timer turned on right on schedule, and reveled in the focussed water on my plants, which have suffered so much in this cold spring.  But tomorrow the pieces of the greenhouse arrive, and I'll put it together and know again that special greenhouse smell that I recall so well.  I would find my grandfather would asleep in his, surrounded by tomatoes.  At the age of 45, exactly how old I am as of last saturday, he uprooted his family and they fled for their lives to a country where neither he nor they spoke the language; he went from a job as a harbor master of a busy port to a field laborer, picking fruit.  It was a familiar job: he had grown up helping my great grandfather tend the gardens of an imperial estate.  He didn't complain, he was thankful for a second chance at life that many like him did not get.

I can't believe I'm fucking 45 years old!  I will take a page from my grandfather's book of life, and not complain.

Secret Meeting

As I get older, I yearn more for more alone-time. I've always kind of been this way, but lately it has been getting stronger. Before my father died, I remember going crabbing in Puget Sound with him and his best friend; as we sat on the boat after dropping the pots, the two of them got to talking about wives. "Yes, it can be difficult to be married", said his friend, "but just imagine how lonely it would be without them".  My dad nodded in agreement.

This is completely opposite to the way I am, and I'm not certain why. I am perfectly satisfied not seeing anyone at all and having no human contact for a month or more. Perhaps this makes me a bit of a hermit... if so, I don't really have a problem with that.

There is an older woman who lives on my street who, I believe, lives alone.  She walks up the sidewalk in the evening, seemingly with great purpose, but the sidewalk ends just a few hundred meters on where the street itself terminates in an explosion of weeds.  So she turns around, and comes back down with the same intensity.  I once greeted her, but she ignored me, effortlessly.  She doesn't look at me as she passes by.

My neighbors are an older couple.  They spend little time together, and when they do, it seems pro forma.  He mows, she gardens.  He calls out to me occasionally, when I'm pulling clover out of my raised beds.  "Hey neighbor!" he says, like Ned Flanders.  I think he's forgotten my name, since I only introduced myself to him once.  "How goes it?" he asks.  I say something mildly despairing about slugs, and then ask him what they're growing in their own two raised garden beds.  "Fuck, I don't know.  That's Carolyn's shit, I don't care what it is, I just water the shit, she does whatever she does with it", he answers.

I don't have any issues with being alone.  But I never, ever, want to be with someone that I treat like that.

Unschooling

An interim post while I get used to blogging again...

Here is a very interesting story about a teenager who has never been to school.  I heard it on NPR last night as I was driving home with a carload of compost for the garden.  At first I scoffed at the idea, but the more I think about it, the more I have concluded that it's a pretty inspired way to teach.  The only thing that I think might be hard would be the transition from no structure to university classes, but that's about it.  Just think about never going through the typical high school experience, and instead growing up and learning at your own rate, and in your own style.

So Much to Say

May this be enough for now:

Woah

I'm still alive! Film at 11:00.