BUSY, Busy, busy

I've been doing stuff. Volunteering, job hunting, photographing stuff, cooking, meeting folks living. It's all been good and interesting and nice but hasn't left much energy or time at the end of the day to blog and post pix. Soon, real thoughts will appear.

In The Woods

I'm sleeping in my own bed again!!! It feels so good. And I already know the schedule of the local NPR station. It's funny how things like that can really throw you off. I'm taking a break from unpacking and arranging my room.

So far everything is fine. I've spent quality time with my neighbor, C, who loves to cook and has already given me a great recipe that I'm going to try tomorrow on my own. Volvo is running perfectly and the driver's seat is now completely comfortable thanks to my last tune up before I left Tallahassee. The last mechanic I went to was really great. I wish I'd called him the first time I needed work. He said the car looks to be in good mechanical condition. He reminded me that Volvos last a long time so end up looking really a mess but running great. This coming week I want to do a big car clean and wax.

C and I did a little drive around yesterday. First we went to the house/land that she and B, her husband, are about to close on then we trekked to see my trees. It is exactly 26 miles from our current houses to my land. She and Bob's place is much closer to where we all now live. Anyway, the new owner of the other 2 acre lot next to me has begun putting up her house. Land has been cleared and part of the modular house are already on site though not yet assembled. Gosh, It looks sooo different with the trees gone that I couldn't find my well at first. But once I got sort of oriented again to my to lots I was happy again. And it seems that the spot I temporarily had marked out before I moved to London, for my first tiny house might be pretty close to the right place.

One housemate is still moving in so hasn't been around much, another is on vaca with family in Maine, so I won't meet her until next week, and another is moving out at the end of the month so isn't around but I did get to meet him yesterday. The one away left me a nice welcome note though. I've got my big basket of fruit, chocolate, cheese and crackers from the Florida family I just left. All yummy stuff.

The County is such an interesting community, a mix of old time residents, die-hard Republicans, land developers, retirees in the Village, 70s/80s back-to-land types & newer back-to-landers progressives all (mostly) determined and being successful at creating a local economy and local jobs, maintaining control of the local politics, not wiling to let things just run the way they always have. Of course, this leads to serious tussles regularly, but I think that's what happens in a good democracy. I just bought into the local food-coop grocery store which has everything Whole Foods does but just less of it. What they don't have they can either get or I can get from the Trader Joe's (about 30 miles away).

I think I've got a good lead on a local general contractor who's willing to have folks work with him when he builds for them. He's building a small office building/shed where I had lunch yesterday, it was exactly what I want as my first little place on my land so I'll have to give him a call next week to see how feasible it really might be.

Now, for gardening...You knew this was coming right?

I'm in good time to put in an autumn garden of collards, broccoli, salad lettuces and at the end of the month garlic (which has to be planted in the autumn to grow & be harvested next spring/summer). I have some great garlic I bought in London on Columbia Road (legendary flower market), which is probably too old to grow, but I'll plant it along with some newer stuff I get here. In any case, there's very sunny patch of my land along our gravel road that I let my former neighbors uses to pasture their chickens and do some small garden. This means the soil should be in great condition. Chicken poo is great fertilizer, especially since they were being raised organically and moved around the area. My plan is to borrow a tiller, turn it all over and start sticking stuff in the ground. I'm keeping the big pots I used at my cousin's to plant something into outside the house I'm living in. The house has a garden space outside the front door that has been sorely neglected under the guise of being 'natural', but I talked to L who was gardening it and he's fine with my clearing it out and starting some new things.

It's fenced. . .we have deer. All the babies are running around with their moms so I'm terrified of killing Bambi anyday now. Deer season is starting later this month, then I'll begin worrying about hitting someone's favorite hunting dog or getting accidentally shot. Such is life in the woods. My favorite color might become 'Traffic Pylon Orange'!

Goodness! That was a lot for just 3 days. Gotta get back to unpacking and organizing stuff. Maybe I'll get finished in time to take photos before sunset.

Stuff keeps growing

My cucumbers all curve as they grow, but I tasted one for the first time today and it tastes great.

One of the window box tomato plants is making a couple more. Surprising. All of the okra is doing really, really well. I've harvested enough for two big batches of fried okra. I love it!

Meanwhile, at the other end of things the cantaloupe have flowers. I don't even like cantaloupe, but the seeds were free so I'm excited they are doing well too.

We've been having lots of hard rains. Photos to follow.

Collecting rain water

A Few Words of Advice: If you ever have to go to a 'free' medical clinic on a walk-in basis, writing 'large oozing lump on back' on the in-take form will get you called into triage and treated first. (I had to get an infected spider bite taken care of this week.)

Back in the garden. . .
The garden center tomato plants that were planted in mushroom compost in a very large pot have done very well. They are called 'Window Box Romas' and I think I'm going to try to save some of the seeds. They only grew to about 2 ft tall and produced over 2 dozen tomatoes. I think the mushroom compost had something to do with how well they grew because the Zappala-Santore roma tomato plants I also put in mushroom compost are growing very well and have blossoms now, too. All those I put in the ground are going very slowly and don't seem to have very robust stems either.
Here are the last of my Window Box Romas:


The okra is also doing very well and I fried up the first batch and ate it like popcorn a few nights ago. Here's the next round, just picked. And a cucumber.


I forgot to check on my potted okra plant for a few days and this is what happened:


They got chopped up and put in to the compost.

How to de-salinate the seaweed I'd recently collected has been a bit of a dilemma. Nature solve all my problems this week.

We had an enormous rain storm last weekend -- booming thunder, lightning, the works, and flash flood making downpour. Normally these storms don't last very long but when I realized that this one was going to go for a while I raced to the back, got several of my garden buckets and placed them where the gutters are broken and waterfall like streams of rain were coming down. Within a few minutes, I had all filled with water and the storm continued! So, in addition to the gallons and gallons of rain water, the seaweed which I've left spread out on the grass was rinsed clean.

The challenge the next day was to get the water from the front of the house where it collected to the back where it could be left to soak the seaweed. Cousin gave me an empty plastic trashcan with lid and I set to hauling rain water around the house to fill it. But firsts, I picked up all the seaweed, putting most into the trash can to be soaked and about 1/4 of it into my compost. Stir and wait.

I've been a fan of the UK charity, WaterAid since going to Glastonbury in 2007. They provided the best toilets and are doing good work. I learned a lot about the lack of clean water around the world at Glastonbury and how important it is to basic human health. As sensitive and aware as I like to think of myself, readily available clean water is something I was very much taking for granted. And yet, the first thing I had done after I bought my 'little green acres' was to have a well drilled. Anyway, I like WaterAid. I've recently become aware of an US charity (here we call them 'non-profits', 'charity' having somewhere along the line, become a pejorative for doing unto others as you would like them to do to you) -- charity: water. The name along made me partial to liking them, then there's their cause and they are very new but seem to be doing good work. I think getting the message across is 75% of any cause, the other 25% is getting people to give and then getting them to act. charity: water is getting the message out in very interesting ways, like using Twitter. So, there's WaterAid and there's charity: water. And there's me hauling collected rain water across the American lawn, around the crepe myrtle bush and into the side yard I'm using as a garden. As I went back and forth I thought of other women, little girl-women, old grandmother-women, women with babies strapped to their backs, all over the planet who have to do the same thing just to survive and I wished them well. When I was done I had filled the 32 gallon trash can, used the leftover to fill my watering cans, and wet my 2 compost piles. Then I went into the air-conditioned house ever mindful of the strange turns in history that have made me such a lucky person.

I Grew Stuff!

I have tomatoes!!!


The tomatoes plants I bought and put into a large pot with mushroom compost have produced red, edible tomatoes! I'm so thrilled. I also have okra and a few borlotto beans!



The tomatoes that were put into mushroom compost are growing like gangbusters. The ones in the ground aren't doing as well. My Zappala-Santore tomatoes potted in mushroom compost shot up quickly and are quite hardy and now are getting blossoms. Those in the ground are still very small. But, the okra in the ground is producing steadily now, while the one that I potted is huge and sturdy but has only produced one okra so far. Tonight I'm making something with my tomatoes and okra. Maybe toss in some leftover eggplant and make it a sort of rattatouille. With pasta. I've been food bargain shopping lately. Times are tough:)

We also went to the beach a few weekends ago and while there I caught sight of one of the rare and elusive white (not albino) North Florida squirrels. Elusive, not shy. He spied me too and too a good long look. Long enough for me to get this picture.

They in other places but I think they were first spotted down here.

That whole walking to and from work experiment I had been doing the past few weeks was put on hold due to temperatures over 100F. That was both the atmospheric temp and the 'feels like' temp for over a week. We got a thuderstorm last night, so I think I'll start back tomorrow. At least walking to, take the bus home though. Hot can be really dangerous.

Milestones

Yesterday was a big day. It was the 65th anniversary of D-Day. I was important to me because it was 4 years since my mom's death. All day long I didn't think about her death. I thought of her, but not her death. The same happened in March on the date of my dad's death. In fact, I thought of them on days before, but on that day, life was normal.

This a good thing. Until this year my Springs have been marked by a secret calendar that begins on my dad's birthday in February and end on my mother's birthday in July. The calendar was highlighted by the days leading to their deaths and after. I don't like that calendar of Spring. I'm hoping that this year marks the end of it.

Fork in the Road

"Approaching midnight here in Alabama and wondering with all of the great traditions of the South, what has become of the family Bible." tweet by drewrobinsonIII

I don't know Drew and have nothing to say about the above quotation, I just saw it and liked it. Perhaps because in my family we still have those enormous family bibles that include births, deaths, christenings as well as the Old & New Testaments. My brother has the one from my mom's side and my cousin has the one from my dad's.

Well, maybe there is a connection to my recent thoughts. I'm applying for jobs that would take me away from my family here in Florida and back to North Carolina and that is really making me think. It's a bit agonizing. Thinking, I mean, deciding on a new job/career path. I feel like I've been living in limbo for several years, decades because I'm not fully settled one place or another. One of the reasons I bought 'my little green acres' was because I wanted to be rooted in North Carolina. But really, for me, being rooted is completely dependent on economics.

So, all that to note that I've been doing a lot of deliberative thinking this week. I assume it's a by-product of walking to and from work. No ipod--need to hear people or cars approaching, so just me, walking with my thoughts. Walking to work has been really good, except that I can't do it on days when it's pouring rain in the morning. This week that was 2 days.



But with all the uncertainties my micro garden is growing, not dying. I have teeny tiny baby cucumbers forming and some teeny tiny baby yellow crook neck squash forming too. The bought tomato plants in the big pot have over two dozen (!) tomatoes on them. I picked off several tomato hornworms this week. They were munching up the leaves and taking bites out of some of the green tomatoes. And the borlotto bean pods are looking like borlotto bean pods. The broad beans are history but I'm leaving them in hoping the bad bugs will knaw on them instead of some of my growing plants.



To my cousin's great confusion, I've been saving small yogurt containers, lots of them. Cut holes in the bottom and they are great seed starter pots. It has occurred to me that the best gardening is recycling, re-using & cooperative. Even though I bought it, the mushroom compost I'm using in the big pots is re-purposed soil originally used to grow mushrooms. My neighbor brought me some old metal trellis things that she no longer needs. I'm using them for some of the bean plants and the cucumbers. On another day, her husband helped me to cut up some wood I'd gotten from a dumpster. I'm going to use that wood to brace the legs of the growing table.
And of course, there's the compost.
Recycle. Re-use. Regenerate.

An Experiment: Walking instead of driving

My daily walk to work is exactly 4.0 miles. One way.

I started walking to and from work two days ago. My family thinks I'm nuts, but I think it's crazier to pay $2.30 for a gallon of gas. Today I drove because I have to get somewhere immediately after I leave work. Tomorrow, I'll be walking again.

I don't live in a city that has a good public transportation city despite being the state capital. It does have a bus system but it doesn't seem reliable enough to use to get to work on time every morning. It doesn't have bike lanes or pedestrian walks or even sidewalks in most of the city. But it is a city where people live and work. It has a pleasant downtown, by no means a forbidden zone to be avoided. There are museums and an Imax theater and restaurants, shops and state government. There are two major universities here and a significant community college too. There is an organized group of bicyclist, but they are the rare exception. There are a new bike lane being put in, but it will take years for those few to be completed and it won't result in a real network of routes to safely travel.

I live in the land of SUVs and pick-up trucks, it's a place where people talk on mobile phones while driving, the land of people not paying attention to how they are driving while talking. I live in the land of fried pies, bacon is an essential food group and menus list hush puppies with the vegetables. Obesity is a greater public health risk than the H1N1 virus. So, you'd think they'd care more about having a more walkable city, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It's also the land of air conditioning, daily summertime rain storms and 90% humidity by 7AM. There are good reasons to not want to walk, who wants to arrive to work soggy? And yet, in two days of walking only saw one car with more than one person in it. Carpooling would save these folks a lot of gas money. More fried pies!

I've been very fortunate these first days, we've had unseasonably cool weather and low humidity. This will end soon. Walking from where I live is not easy but it's not impossible either. I start out on a two-lane road without defined shoulders but with a canopy of live oaks draped in Spanish moss, it's very shady.

There are desire paths worn through along the sides. I'm not the only person walking along this road. The first section of my walk lasts about half a mile and I cross two major intersections. Fortunately, each of these has pedestrian crossing lights. Unfortunately, they also allow right turn on red for vehicles.

After that stretch, I have sidewalk past some small businesses for a bit

and then I enter a beautiful city park (more shady, big trees) with well-maintained pedestrian paths, tennis courts and a swimming pool. Someimes I see friends in the morning H2O aerobics class. The paths are parallel to the street and go through a nice residential neighborhood.


Where the park neighborhood ends the state government buildings begin, I'm almost to work and I've walked just over 3 miles. The last half mile is along city sidewalks and includes one steep but short uphill climb. I give myself 90 minutes to get to work and don't rush my pace. Because I'm a naturally fast walker my normal pace would get me to work in unpresentable condition. At my current pace, my walk lasts about 1 hr 15. I leave home at 7:30 which gives me 15 minutes to stretch, cool down and change clothes. That's the other challenge to walking -- I have to carry my work clothes. Even at the moderate pace I'm walking it's necessary for me to change clothes for work. Fortunately, it's warm weather now, my clothes aren't bulky.

Overall, it's a nice walk. Only that first half mile is worrisome. The first thing that I noticed on Monday morning was walking I noticed all the things I would never see when driving. Wild flowers along the way, the way the terrain has some gentle undulations until I reach the government buildings, even how many cars only have one person in them yet every one seems to be heading in the same direction.


Eventually, I want to get my bike out of storage from another state and bike to and fro instead of walk. I like walking but it's adding 3 hours to my daily schedule which is too much for me.

The Night Garden

The temperature here tonight is 73F (22C) with an occasional gentle breeze. It feels good. But lately I've been worrying about my okra (they seems too small). Then the other night I decided to just stick my cayenne pepper seedlings into the ground even though they only have about 3 leaves and are so tiny I still might mistake them for weeds and yank them out one day. It's been in the 80s and sunny here all week, it just seemed warm enough for some things to go into the ground. But then I worried it was too soon and that they were so small that little buggies would nibble them.

I'm a worry-er.

Then tonight I realized I could protec them for a while more even it all it does is to make me feel better. I've cut up some plastic bottles and put them over some of the smaller seedlings as DYI garden cloches. I also used one big plastic food container. Here are a few pictures.

cayenne peppers under plastic


okra @ night


OH, one of the broadbeans has got blossoms!
broad bean blossoms by flashlight


I'll remove the DYI cloche in the morning and if they look worse for wear I won't do it again tomorrow night.

Mondays

I've never understood why Mondays are so difficult for some people. Just getting up in the morning is a challenge for me any day of the week. But today I got it. I had a strange constellation of unfortunate incidents beginning with not hearing my alarm and culminating (I hope) with my finding some of my borlotto and broad beans covered in tiny little bugs that I'm sure mean them harm. It's been a long day but the weekend was very fulfilling. It was a really nice weekend.

The county & city had a big compost bin sale which required standing in a line winding through a Mall parking lot. I'd been warned that people start lining up around 6AM even though the sale doesn't start until 9AM. Sure enough when I got there around 8:30AM the parking lot was pretty crowded and there was already a long line. A woman behind me said she'd come buy at 7 and there were some people in line but she went for breakfast and then came back. Last year not everyone who lined up got a bin. No limit is set on the number of bins one person can buy so it's hard to tell how long they will last. I think I was in line for about 1 hour maybe 45 minutes. I was going to get 1 but after waiting I decided to get two. I'm using one to hold yard clippings and the other to become the compost.

After getting the bins I headed to A the nearer's where she let me take away some really sweet smelling rotting leaves from her roof. There may or may not be some worms in it, only time will tell. It will make great brown matter that I can add gradually to the compost. Then I set up my compost bins. They are near all the veg plantings. Whne I'm finished digging up the side yard grass they will be in the midst of the 'garden'. It's a long narrow space.


Then I started filling it.


Sunday was Lighthouse Day all over the state. All the lighthouses around the state were opened to the public. We drove out to St. Marks less than an hour away. It was a really beautiful, beautiful day. On the way back we drove around the coast a bit then stopped at a good local place for dinner. We were stuffed! But it was a wonderful day.

On Sunday I made it to church. At 9AM! I like this church, it's what church is supposed to be, what I remember church being when I grew up. It's about love and tolerance and kindness and tolerance and being a better person and caring for yourself, your fellow humans and your community. On Sunday, the sermon was about stewardship. It was also the Sunday after Earth Day. In many churches the sermon might have focussed on christian stewardship but our rector talked about how being good stewards of the Earth is tied to being good to our fellow man. He also said that it was not a political issue, not Republican or Democratic, liberal or conservative. It was really nice and well done. So that was nice.

By 10:30, I was home relaxin' on the sofa watching This Week on ABC. A while later my aunt called and talked with my cousin for a few minutes. It sounded like she needed some help so I volunteered since E was taking it easy for the day. Aunt was determined to cut back one of her roses because it had pulled over the trellis that it was growing on. So I headed down. Wow, it was like the bramble that enclosed Sleeping Beauty! I ended up going to Ace Hardware to buy some pruning clippers (which I don't own but wanted anyway). By the time, I was done I had loads of scratches, I didn't realized how scratched up I was until I took my shower. That hurt!

Now, I know and you know and my aunt knows you don't prune roses while they are in bloom. But when my aunt decides it's time to do something, it's time to do something. Her trellis had fallen over from the weight of the roses and the fact that it was rotted. So, I clipped and snipped and killed a bunch of blossoms and buds which pained me but my aunt appreciated the help. I'm sure if my cousin or I hadn't helped, she'd have been out there with her tiny 5' self trying to wrangle that crazy rose plant and ended up buried in it. Mercy. Well, I took most of the clippings and added some to my compost and set the rest aside to add later.

Then Monday happened.

Boy, I'm glad tomorrow is Tuesday.

The Kindness of Strangers

This week was all about unexpected gifts.

On Monday PB forwarded an email from a local gallery needing gardening volunteers tomorrow to help with their landscaping. I called immediately to let them know I'd come over.

Tomorrow (Saturday) at the Mall the city and county are having a truck sale of compost bins. They regularly cost $100+ but they'll be selling them for $30. I'll be up early apparently there's a line every time they have one of these sales. It really is a bargain. Though it's ridiculous how expensive compost bins cost, this is a deal. YAY!

Later that morning at work, A came to my desk and handed me a book because she likes it and though it was the kind of book I'd enjoy too. Two days later I ordered my own copy online. The book: 100 Vegetables and Where They Came From by William Woys Weaver a very nice man whom I once met.

On the day, same A and I were talking about my gardening when the subject of bamboo came up. I'd just reluctantly bought a small package of the stuff for my bean plants but I needed more. Well, shoot! was her reaction, it's all over the place. It's worse than kudzu. I was shocked to learn this but then I had seen bamboo in our parking lot. So after my after-work walk that day I stalked around the building and snapped off a few tall bamboo poles. Great! I was thrilled!! Then when I came in, R told me that if I wanted more bamboo I was welcome to come to her and husband's home to take as much of the huge clump growing in their back yard. As much as I'd like. In fact her hubby owned a machete and loved to go out there and hack away at the stuff. He'd chop as much of it as I'd like. So I was in gardener's heaven. They are expecting me around 4:30,5 on Sunday. Wow!

Then, THEN, this morning A the nearer (her office is nearer to my desk than the other A's) told me about her roof. It's really steep so she won't to up there and won't let her up there to clear the roof or gutters. As a result they haven't been cleaned in a while, like years. So when RoofGuy cleared everything off he called her and said "You have compost. With worms." Excuse me? On the roof? All the leaves and roof/gutter stuff turned to compost and he left it in her yard for her to use. She has flowers and gardens loyally, but she said she thinks she might have some of her special Roof Compost Mix w/Worms that I can have. So I'll be calling tomorrow morning to learn if I can visit her meet her doggies and get some special RoofCompost(TM)

Next, our colleague C is having a garage sale to end all garage sales that includes designer furniture (a vintage Herman Miller chair! Crazy Man!). Anyway, he hears us talking compost and says if I come by his sale, I can have his kitchen peelings in his refrig that he uses in his compost. He's got waaaay enough he says.

Why am I so touches and thrilled by people giving me broken bricks, and the dregs of their gutters and extra rotting food? Because I'm garden crazy! I think it must happen to millions of people this time of year, really earlier. OMG and there might be worms too!!

And it finally rained one night but didn't crush anything already in the ground. The rain makes it easier to pull out the grass in the area I want to plant. The park across from work is having some brick work done. The bricklayers have said I can have all the broken & discarded bricks I want. I'm going to use them for a small walkway where I pull up grass but don't plant anything.

AND I went to a 75 cent movie (Slumdog Millionaire) w/Aunt C! I made her stay through the end credits to see the Jai Ho dance. So cute!
What a week!!

I've changed continents

I'm allergic to dirt. More on that later. . .

I can't believe how long it's been since I wrote a blog post. October 2008, 6 months. I won't venture to explain all I've been up to during those months. Here's the important stuff:

I changed continents. I left London in January to come home for The Inauguration (as it is so commonly referred) and the next phase of, well, me! Now live with a cousin, hanging out with her mom who lives down the street (my 86yo aunt in better shape than me).

Got a part time job at the local arts org. and work with very nice and normal people.

My computer's hard drive died and with it all my software, so photos are gonna have to wait a while.

Of course, I'm in The South and it's blissfully warm, even hot some days and it's Spring, so I've started gardening again. Cousin seems perfectly delighted for me to tear up the grass on her sunny southern side and put in vegetables. Our own little effort to channel Michelle Obama. (we're working on our triceps too!) She's put in some collard greens in a slightly cool and sunny spot with plans to harvest while very young and tender.

I've launched my, now annual, flurry of seed starting. I have so far put into the ground seedlings of: okra, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, borlotto beans, broad beans, and runner beans. Two roma plant-lets from a garden center & a scattering of oregano seeds are in a giant pot (BIG LOTS! is great $7 for 22 gal plant container! God Bless America). Another big pot has fennel sproutlets (destined to die I'm afraid because I couldn't wait and properly transplant them). To keep them company I sprinkled some parsley seeds around the pot too.

Soon to be transplanted into larger containers and properly cultivated before planting in the ground: John Baer heirloom tomatoes, more okra (LOVE okra), celeriac, cumin (why not), cayenne peppers, thyme, oregano, basil, cebolla onions (sorta small ones), rosemary. Rosemary from seed just to see what might happen even though it's next to impossible. I think it take about 18 months for anything substantial to develop. A zen of gardening sort of thing. So is my quest for year round salad greens. I wanted to start a salad growing table (screen bottom). I can build it now but can't plant until Autumn because it's already too hot here. So be it. Zen of Gardening 2009.

Now, about my allergy. It's not actually to all of dirt, just one particular latin names something that is a 'component of dirt'. Those were the words of the allergies nurse who tested me several years ago. Of all the things I was tested for this was the only thing that came close to me being allergic to. There's a scale, this was my borderline item. So I laughed. Loudly. Very loudly. At the time I was working for an environmental conservation organization. Often helping farmers and community gardeners and family with land they wanted to keep. I Like Dirt. Dirt Is Good.

So, I garden then I come inside and sneeze some. Really. It's becoming my routine. Today, after work and my daily walk, I'm going to the nursery to look for lemon thyme plants and rosemary.

Oh! I'm on Twitter: twitter.com/cultureworker. So are lots of amazing gardeners and foodies. More about Twittering later. For today the question is:

What 6 plants can't you live without?

I came up with about 10, working on narrowing it down. I'll report back on that another day.