Spring garden

I have been out working hard today.  Mostly my focus was on cleaning up the joint and I got a ways on that.   I filled my weed basket up five times in addition to digging out some bush honeysuckles that had volunteered in the stroll garden.

I found some hostas that had decided they needed to be growing upside down, so I dug them up and replanted them the right way too.  I am not exactly sure how that happened, but I decided the situation needed rectifying.

The labyrinth is looking quite festive, as is the rest of The Havens.

I love having so many daffodils around the place.   It makes it easy to pick a big bouquet for the house.  The mid season blooms are coming on strong; there are still lots of late season varieties that are in bud out there.  This is today’s selection.

And the peas are really up!

Hope your spring is going as well as ours is!

Read Full Post »

September: as busy as ever

Hard to believe that it will be the equinox and Jim’s birthday in just a few hours.   We have a pile of stuff to burn, so I suppose we’ll have a bonfire tonight. I had one last week because the pile had gotten unmanageable.   I had pulled out the black bean vines and harvested the pods.   So the vines needed to be burned, as there were plenty of sundry insect eggs deposited on the leaves.  The patch did REALLY well this year.   Bear in mind that it occupied the part of the bean bed not being used by the pole beans.   In an area that was 4’x16′ I harvested almost ten pounds of black beans, once I had them shelled and dried.   I think that is outstanding production. The cats thought the black beans in the shell were fascinating.   Miss Mallory, being blind, checks everything out by sound and smell.  The crate of bean pods sounded very very interesting, as I had to shove them down in it to get all the pods in there.   As it rested in the kitchen, it made intriguing crackling and rustling noises. After I finished shelling the beans, I went out and dug the sweet potatoes.   Those vines had gotten delusions of grandeur, were determined to take over the whole northwest section of the garden.   They were well on their way to doing just that. They did not seem to mind me walking on them when I was headed out to pick the tomatoes, which are at the back of the picture.   What you do not see in this shot is the fact that some of the vines had found their way under the fence and were on their way towards the neighbor’s yard.   Thank goodness this is a non-hardy tropical plant, or we could be in danger of being covered with sweet potato vines the way Alabama is covered with kudzu. They look so pretty on the garden cart. That is 48.2 pounds of sweet potatoes.   I have a similar quantity of butternut squash curing in the back bedroom.  The freezers are packed with vegetables and fruit.   I just made a liter of herb vinegar for salad dressing.  I put up the last batch of sweet gherkins the other day. Anyway, the bonfire took care of the old cucumber and squash vines as well as the bean vines. While my back was turned, my dill self seeded. There is cilantro in this bed too, and the parsley plant just to the east of the dill has seeded the path next to it.   I can’t tell you how many times I have tried to plant parsley and have it not take.   Then you have a plant to go seed and throw seeds into a bark mulch and not get watered all summer, and voila!   Happy little parsley plants.  Go figure. Jim has been gone for a couple of weeks, off to visit people on the East Coast and to attend a class in making Windsor chairs for little people.   He got home yesterday, and it is REALLY great to have him back.   He isn’t a very noisy guy, but the place is preternaturally quiet when he is gone. While he was gone I spent some quality time with the slide collection from my father’s house.   Found some real gems that I will be sharing soon.   These two shots are from around the same era in my life.   The first is of me in my high school graduation gown and cap, sharing my diploma with Horace, my boa constrictor.   The second one was taken in the Sierra foothills as we released Herman, the bull snake, into the wild. Yes, I kept snakes when I was a teenager.   I guess that is what happens when you are born in the Year of the Serpent, as I was. The chairs Jim made arrived here just a couple of hours after he did.   Here is a shot of the new little chair next to the Papa chair.  The little chair still needs to be sanded and painted, but I think it looks beautiful. This is a chair that will be suitable for a child that is three or so, and will be useful to the young person until they start to shoot up around ten or eleven.   After that, it can be used for seating for a teddy bear, and then a place to stash your coat and purse when you reach working age. I convinced him to invest in the bending form for this chair, because I would like to see a small cottage industry happen.  When I suggested this to him over the phone, he pointed out that he had only been retired for two months, and I was already thinking of a job for him.  Well, if one can make a little money doing something one loves, why not?  This would be a great thing for a proud grand parent to give to a beloved little one.  At $450, it is not inexpensive but destined to last for centuries. Fall is definitely here.   The sumac is turning, as is the poison ivy.   The Petite Prairie is looking fantastic in the evening light right now, as the tall grasses are making their seed heads. Stay warm.   Hug someone you love, you never know how long you have with them.

Read Full Post »

Wildlife habitat city style

In the past I have mentioned that The Havens is a Certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat.  If you search the blog for “Habitat” you will find several posts on the subject.

I made a pretty comprehensive post about the vegetable garden a while back. Things have not changed a lot back there since that post, although we are in the process of removing the perimeter of grass that surrounds the beds. Right now this involves covering the area with carpet in an attempt to smother the grass. This is varyingly successful depending on the quality of the carpet used. But at least it is being discouraged. Eventually we will remove some dirt and put in weed barrier and something to walk on. Bark seems to work pretty well, as does pea gravel.  This is still to be decided.

I am excited to report that we have a screech owl hunting here. I have not figured out where it sleeps yet, but there are lots of trees with holes on the place so I’m sure it has a nice bedroom. However, it likes to sit on top of the frame that holds the swing out by the pond. I found one of its pellets the other day, all full of mouse fur and beautiful green beetle wing covers. The latter surprised me a bit, as I was not aware the screech owls eat beetles. But I did a little research and found out that not only do they eat baby rabbits (Yay!), they also eat other mammals, crayfish, insects, earth worms, small birds, and a whole lot of other stuff that you wouldn’t necessarily think that an owl eats.

In other news, we have been blessed (and I use that term advisedly) with another new addition to the habitat.   Apparently The Havens has been certified habitable by the local groundhogs (Marmota monax).  This species has  colonized the yard more than once.   The last time there was a ground hog living here the garden fence got another layer of security added, so I’m not too upset that we have a new colonist in residence.   So far she has stayed out of the vegetable garden.   Honestly, there is PLENTY for her and her family to eat around here without decimating the garden.  I noticed that she seems to like sweet cicely pretty well.

Anyway, I mentioned the extra level of security for the vegetable garden fence.  The previous ground hog had discovered that it could tunnel under the fence and access all that succulent produce within.   We acquired a live trap, and placed it strategically in front of the hole.

“Fools!” the groundhog muttered, as it dug a new hole a few feet down the fence.

We got another live trap and stationed it by the second hole.    It was just as easy to dig a third access hole…

We cogitated about the situation for a while, did a little on-line research, and then Jim went off to the farm supply emporium and acquired some chicken wire.  Attaching it securely to the outside of the fence about 18 inches up, at ground level he bent it outward and allowed it to extend out along the ground so that there was a strip of chicken wire about 18″ out onto the grass.   He got some landscape “staples” and secured the wire to the ground.

The groundhog thought about the situation for about 30 seconds and found a spot where the wire wasn’t really tight to the ground and wiggled its way under the chicken wire to its favorite hole under the fence.   This is where it made its strategic error.

Apparently beguiled and distracted by the crunching of  my fine lettuce, it did not notice us approaching the garden until the gate opened.

“Yaaaaaah!” is a pretty good approximation of its reaction to our sudden advent, especially since we happened to have Ruby with us.   Ruby chased the groundhog to its hole and then sped around through the gate to behind the fence to continue the pursuit.   The panicked rodent did not leave the same way it entered and found that the chicken wire was a lot more secure than it had seemed at first blush.  Tangled up in the chicken wire, it was having a huge groundhog heart attack since Ruby was bouncing around as it flailed its way out from under the wire.    Off it went to its tunnel, with Ruby in hot pursuit.

Jim addressed the loose wire situation, tightening it up and adding several more anchors.   The groundhog crouched in its burrow, apparently a victim of PTSD.  During the night, it moved away, never to return.  I guess the neighborhood was just too stressful for it.

Anyway, the new groundhog doesn’t care about the garden (so far).   It has lovely accommodations on the root cellar mound, and one of its progeny or its mate is busy digging an extensive burrow inside the barn.   We are not really too happy about the barn situation, as it is tunneling under the slab of concrete that makes Jim’s shop floor, and making a hell of a mess inside the rest of the barn with its dirt pile.   I have visions of the barn falling into the hole it is digging down there.

Anyway, neither of our tenants is going to be all that happy about their living situations, because we have plans for both areas.  We are planning to improve the barn substantially.   When that happens I sincerely hope that no groundhogs get entombed beneath the new concrete slab floor that is going to be poured.   But if they are, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

Also, we have acquired solar panels, and we are going to install them this summer.   This is a long involved project that begins with the moving of the dirt pile that we have established back near the root cellar.   That root cellar never had enough dirt on it, and because of that it has never been stable in temperature, being too cold in the winter and too warm in the summer.   So we intend to have a dirt worker come along with equipment and move our dirt pile onto the root cellar.   Unfortunately, this is going to seriously discommode the groundhogs living there but they are not an endangered species and I can live with that.

Pretty enterprising mammal, though.   I was investigating the burrow the other day, and I discovered that the ground had found a piece of reflectix insulation that was in the barn and had hauled it all the way out to the root cellar and was attempting to drag the whole sheet down into its burrow.   I guess even groundhogs know the value of insulating their home!

So, there you are.   The Havens wildlife habitat is still a destination.

 

Read Full Post »

Labyrinth news

I hardly know where to start with this post.

I am now certified as having satisfactorily completed my continuing education project.   That involved the commitment of a couple of grand to pay for the class in Neuromuscular Reprogramming that I just finished at the beginning of May.  It also required me to travel to California for a weekend each month for four months.   It was grueling, and gave me a new respect for the business Road Warriors who travel all the time.   Very few of my flights occurred without delays of some sort.

The class was well worth my time.   Neuromuscular Reprogramming is a technique of body work that achieves absolutely amazing results.   I am exultant and my clients are very pleased.   One of the side effects has been a huge increase in my business.   There isn’t a day of the week that I don’t have at least four massages scheduled.   Pretty good for the bottom line.

The side effect of that is that Jim has decided to retire from the work force as of June 28.   He won’t be able to start collecting Social Security until September, but that simply does not matter due to the increase in my income.   He will thoroughly enjoy being home for the summer and able to do his own projects.

One of those projects will be installing our new solar panels, which arrived this week.   I can hardly wait for them to be on line and watch the electric bill shrink to nothing while our carbon footprint diminishes as well.

The flower gardens are quite beautiful right now.   This is a view of the path in the Hosta Dell.   Don’t look too closely or you might notice all the weeds that took the opportunity to ensconce themselves while I was running back and forth to California.

Of course, the vegetable garden has been a big project. We’ve been eating wonderful salads out of it for over a month, and it recently presented us with over 6 pounds of snow peas, which we blanched this morning and have in the freezer. I also picked a pile of spinach, which is already in the freezer.

There is a sink full of broccoli raab that needs to be dealt with.  I will get around to that this afternoon, after I plant the veronica and the pink iris that one of my friends brought be yesterday.

So by now I’m sure you are wondering why I would title this “Labyrinth News.”

Simply this.   Back in November a most delightful woman named Twylla Alexander paid me and my labyrinth a visit.  She blogged about it here.  Her vision was to visit a personal labyrinth constructed by a woman in each of the fifty states.   I think she only has two states left to visit!   That is quite the journey, and during the course of it she has connected the owners of all the labyrinths she visited via email.

Now we are all agog over the near completion of her project, and hoping that we will be able to have a little cyber party to celebrate her accomplishment.   Well, and ours, of course!   And so, I make this post and I am hoping that it is possible for folks to upload pictures into the comments section.   I invite someone to attempt to do this.  If it works, then I will make a dedicated “Labyrinth Party Post” for us all to use.

Watch this space….

 

Read Full Post »

Pantry tour

This morning my dear husband regaled me with a reading of a short article in The Week, a magazine we subscribe to.   It involved the travails of the Clintons, who apparently find it necessary to rent a place for the summer in the Hamptons each year.   They got into a dispute with their landlord of last year over their security deposit, which was $20,000, and apparently they weren’t getting it back because it was eaten up by landscaping and utility bills.   So, according to the article, the dispute was settled amicably, but this year the Clintons did not rent that place again.  Instead they rented a six bedroom place in the area for a measly $200,00 per month.

TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS?   For a security deposit?   TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS?   A MONTH????    Let’s see.   Around here, a family of four can live on $20,000 a year.   Not high on the hog, but it is doable.   I’m not even going to talk about how out of touch with an ordinary American life people who can afford to blow $200,000 per month on a summer rental must be.   Are we ready for Hillary?   Maybe.   But does she have a clue as to what challenges most Americans face?   I really don’t know.   Does ANY politician?

Okey dokey.  I’ll get off my political angst-wagon for now.

I have been visiting slide shows on the SF Chronicle’s website this morning:   a Victorian for less than a million dollars, worst kitchen ever, celebrities who dated.  That last one was a real eye-opener for me.   Probably 80% of the people pictured and named in that little exposé were pretty much unknown to me.  I did not recognize names or faces.   I’m so out of touch.  Kinda like the politicians, I suppose, but in a different way.

Probably the reason I’m so out of touch is that I actually have a life that involves producing a large portion of what we eat.

This was my kitchen counter a few days ago.   I was proudly displaying the apples after they had been peeled, cored and sliced; ready for the freezer.

See the tomatoes in the basket next to the apples?   They have been roasted and are now in the freezer alongside the apples.   That reminds me.  I really need to defrost that freezer and rearrange it.   There are seven gallons of strawberries, six gallons of blueberries, one lug of peaches, plum pieces and plum puree, and God knows how many freezer bags of greens, green beans, asparagus, roasted winter squash, potatoes, carrots, onions, leeks, roasted tomatoes, and other stuff I have probably forgotten in there.   Inventory needs to be done.   The other freezer, which is even bigger, has the remains of a whole beef, sundry pork, lamb, poultry and fish, as well as the lard supply and again, God Knows What.

A job for another day.

I’m pretty sure the Clintons don’t have a pantry like this.

That’s the view from the door.   Actually, this room is around the corner from the kitchen.   Originally, this house was built with the idea that sometime in the future a second story could be added.  This area was designed to become the stairwell up to the second floor.   The hatch that gives access to the attic is directly above your head when you stand just inside the accordion door that hides this collection from the view from the living room.

Well, that picture simply does not do the room justice, so I stepped inside and did a few close ups.  Below you find the left side of the room.

The olives are purchased in bulk, and Jim processes them.   There are several flavors there, my favorite is the lemon/tarragon brined sevillanos.   Below the olives is the tomato puree collection, and below that is the apple sauce.   There is some pear sauce in there too.   The red box of milkbones is Ruby’s favorite thing in the whole house.

All those silver bags you see on the right contain the bulk spices.   We purchase them from Frontier Natural Foods cooperative.   Everything on that shelf is organic, and’ if appropriate, Fair Trade certified too.   There is allspice, cinnamon, cloves, caraway, mustard seed, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, coriander, cumin on that shelf.   No, we aren’t going to run out of spices any time soon.    It may seem like a lot, but whole seeds don’t get stale like ground spices; and I can buy a pound of organic cinnamon sticks for less than you will spend for a 2/3 oz bottle of ground cinnamon at your local grocery.  The rest of the prices have a similar ratio.

What you are not seeing because I didn’t photograph it is the giant container of 100 pounds of wheat, which I grind about 5 pounds at a time into whole wheat flour.  Also, down on the floor is an anonymous box that contains the un-roasted organic fair trade coffee in 5 pound bags that we acquire from Sweet Maria’s.

Now let’s turn our attention to the right side of the room.

The second picture shows the jelly and pickle collection.   I honestly don’t think I need to make any jam or jelly for three or four years.   That is why I have been freezing most of the figs coming off the tree out by the barn.   I still have plenty of fig preserves up there on that shelf.   That reminds me, I need to pick figs today.

It is actually a little scary how many different kinds of vinegar we seem to require in this house.   Sort of in the middle of the lower picture is a half gallon jar full of some sort of red amorphous substance.   That is the raspberry vinegar I am making from the raspberries I managed to get to ahead of the birds.   It is about time to filter the raspberries out of the vinegar they are steeping in.

Below that is a bunch of containers that are used to ship olives from Greece to the United States.   We found them at a recycler up in Santa Rosa over two decades ago.  They are equipped with giant o-rings under the lids, and when screwed down those lids keep the bugs out of the contents.   We have unbleached white flour, corn meal, polenta, black beans, garbanzo beans, polenta, pinto beans, rolled oats, sugar, rice, barley, vital wheat gluten in 20-30 pound quantities.   Our favorite container:  the bright yellow one in the foreground.  That has the chocolate chips in it.   Right now there are barely ten pounds of them in there.   Need to get more.   Wouldn’t want to run out of those!

You will notice that not all of our supplies are organic, or totally environmentally conscious.  For some reason, we find it necessary to have pineapple on hand.   I imagine I could find it from some other source than Dole, but sometimes I just get tired of being so darned perfect.

A long time ago I found a link to a website that would calculate how long you could survive in your home without buying food based on the number of people who live there and the quantity of food you had stored.   It told me Jim and I could get along for 3 and a half years on what we have accumulated here.   That was before we bought the beef….

I guess we are good for a short apocalypse.   This assumes, of course, that we are not immediately struck down by a bolt of lightning for our liberal, tolerant of gay lifestyle, heretical pagan ways.

I’d really better get my pagan ass out there, I need to pick basil for pesto, harvest the chard and get it blanched, and pick the aforementioned figs.

Read Full Post »