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On supermarket shelves, we are given a mind-numbing array of choices to select from. Shall we have some peppercorns on our macaroni, some cinnamon for baking, or a bit of rosemary with roast pork? Five hundred years ago, however, cooking with herbs and spices was a much simpler choice.

The post Around the world in spices and herbs appeared first on OUPblog.

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A hopeful tale of friendship and flower power, Alison Jay‘s wonderful wordless picture book Bee & Me opens with a young girl startled by a buzzing bee.

No-one likes to be stung and it looks like the bee might be all over before the story’s even begun. Fortunately, a crack in the door of curiosity and bravery opens up the way for an joint adventure bringing plants and flowers across the grey city, delivering beauty and benefits to all city inhabitants, whether honey bees or humans.

Variations on similar theme may be familiar from The Bee Movie, The Curious Garden by Peter Brown or perhaps Big City Bees written by Maggie de Vries and illustrated by Renné Benoit but what Jay brings afresh to this optimistic, reassuring and galvanising story are the glorious details in her beautiful and textured illustrations, often using multiple panels per page, thereby blurring the boundaries between picture book and graphic novel.

Many layers of storytelling run parallel to the main plot. Repeat readings will lead you into the lives of several city inhabitants, when you peer through apartment windows, watching what happens as time passes and the plans of the girl and her bee blossom. It made me think of a recent discussion I had with author Phil Earle, in relation to his fabulous Storey Street series, where he talked about his firm belief that there is story worth hearing behind every door (or in Jay’s case, through every window). A further strand in Jay’s fabric of storytelling follows the growth of friendship between the girl and another young resident in her block of flats, as if distilling how nature can save us from loneliness and make us feel re-connected once more.

Worldwide, bees are in decline. Because of their role as pollinators, we need bees, and bees – facing the threat they now do – need us. This upbeat, optimistic, can-do example of how children are able to make a real and beneficial difference to their world will hopefully inspire a new generation prepared to make a difference.

Enthused by Bee & Me the girls and I set about creating lots of Bee Seed Tape to give away to all our fellow allotmenteers. Seed Tape is a strip of biodegradable material with seeds already imprinted in it, evenly spaced and super easy to use for speedy planting.

First we dyed (organic) toilet paper, spraying it with natural food colouring.

When the paper was dry, we stuck on seeds using a thick flour/water paste (as thick as possible, so that the moisture in it didn’t encourage the seeds to germinate). We chose to use seeds for sunflower and borage because bees love these plants and the seeds are large enough to handle easily.

Once our seed tape was dry we turned it into bees. Our bee body (which was designed to double up as a plant label) was made from a lollipop stick on which the seed types written on it.

The seed tape was wrapped around the lollipop and held in place with some black ribbon to create bee stripes. Ping-pong balls and pipecleaners were used to create bee heads, and instructions for planting the seed tape were stuck onto black cardboard wings (you can download the template here if you’d like to use ours) threaded on to the black ribbon.

Now it was time to share and plant our bee-friendly seeds so off to the allotment we went:

Here’s the seed tape rolled out before we covered it up with soil.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such fun seed labels before!

A bit of water and now we just need to wait!

Whilst making our Bee Seed Tape we listened to:

Shakin’ up The Pollen by Scribble Monster

Busy Bee sung by Arthur Askey – a favourite of mine from when I was little!

Bees, Butterflies & Bugs by Sir Jerry

Bee Bom by Anthony Newley

Monty Python’s Eric the Half-a-Bee

Other activities which might work well alongside reading Bee & Me include:

Using out-of-date seeds to create mosaic artwork. Seeds and seed pods come in the most spectacular range of shapes and sizes and are great fun for using as an art material.

Going on an after-dark walk around the neighbourhood to look in windows. Can you spot, as in Bee & Me, someone reading a book? Someone painting a picture? Someone knitting, (extra points for these) tossing a pancake or writing a story on a typewriter? What tales could be behind these glimpses into the lives of others?

Adopting a small public space in your street (perhaps by a verge or under a tree) and planting some flowers or herbs to brighten up the lives, not just of bees, but also of your neighbours? Be inspired by Todmorden’s community herb gardens or London’s Guerilla Gardeners (with examples from around the world).

If you liked this post you might like these other posts by me:

How we made a bee hotel and read Whose Garden Is It? by Mary Ann Hoberman, illustrated by Jane Dyer

How we threw seed bombs around our neighbourhood and read Mabel’s Magical Garden By Paula Metcalf

The day we planted meatballs instead of seeds, in celebration of Findus Plants Meatballs by Sven Nordqvist

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Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book by the publisher, Old Barn Books.

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It was a week of moderate temperatures and changeable spring weather that gave us sun and rain and wind and snow and more rain. Today was supposed to be sunny and 50F/10C but it has turned out to be damp, cloudy and 40F/4C instead. It is also Easter which I keep forgetting since I don’t celebrate it. Happy Easter to you if you do celebrate! Bookman and I went out to pick up few final items for the chicken brooder and were surprised to find the store wasn’t open. We were not the only ones pulling into the parking lot and turning around.

What need: an oven thermometer to monitor the temperature in the brooder, two small cookie sheets to have under the bedding to make cleaning easier, one extension cord so we can plug in the heat lamp because all of the outlets seem to be on the other side of the room from where the brooder is.

Is there some sort of law of extension cords that says whenever you need one you will not have a spare?

Because, maybe I’m imagining it, but we buy them and use them and then where do they go after that? They get “put away” in a place we will easily find them next time we need one. The need arises and we run around looking in all the likely places only to be disappointed. We go buy a new one. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. It’s like socks in the dryer. Where do they go? Someday I am going to discover a seething nest of extension cords in some dark recess of the house and it will be the stuff of nightmares.

The plan today was to get the few items at the store, get the brooder set up, turn on the heat lamp and monitor the temperature and adjust the light accordingly so it will all be figured out by the time we bring the chicks home Thursday night. Thursday people! I am going to have four baby chickens Thursday night after work! But wrench. So we got as far as we could. The photo is of Barton Apartment. The Dashwoods will be in their apartment for about six weeks until it is consistently warm enough outdoors, they have real bird feathers, and Barton Cottage is move-in ready.

The coach is all ready for picking them up. Thank goodness we don’t need horses or footmen in livery. Bookman felt it necessary to put a chicken sticker on the box so we would not mistake it for a cat carrier. And he got fancy with cutting the holes in the top. Nothing but the best for our girls!

You know, when the Dashwoods arrive, for the first time ever in this house the girls will out number the boys. All of our animals except for Touche my red-eared slider turtle of 20 years (RIP), have been boys. Thursday night we will be five against three. Estrogen will finally triumph.

Even though the weather has been all over the place, the plants have all decided that spring is here. Melody Maple Tree is beginning to bloom. The witch hazel is blooming too. Poor thing, it is supposed to bloom in the fall but only managed it once. For some reason it has decided that it is a spring blooming witch hazel. And in autumn, it doesn’t like to let go of its leaves. It is a healthy shrub, just confused.

The leaf buds on all of the apple trees are swelling. Even the rose has swelling leaf buds. The spring

bulbs are pushing their way through the winter mulch that I have not had the chance to remove yet because it has been too cold or too wet. The Egyptian walking onion has shot up, there is sorrel I can pick already. All this is happening a few weeks earlier than usual and I feel unprepared.

As I walked around the garden this afternoon I thought, briefly, oh I can plant peas and radishes and kale! Not yet. In two weeks perhaps. While the frost is well out of the ground it is still not quite warm enough to sprout seeds outdoors. It definitely won’t be long though.

I spent quite a lot of time going through the plant sale catalog this weekend marking up possibilities and dreaming. My main focus this year is to plant the green roof on the chicken coop and to get started turning the very shady area under my front yard apple trees into something that recalls a woodland. At the moment it is home to moss, violets, a very tiny patch of ramps, a tiny patch of wild ginger, a small area of alpine strawberries, and one columbine. In the middle of summer it pretty much looks like weeds.

I imagine a ferny glade. But I have to stop kidding myself with the ferns. I have the shade but I do not have the moisture. My soil, even after years of adding compost, is still too sandy and every experimental fern I plant is dead by the end of summer. So it is time to imagine something else. I don’t yet know what that something else is, but I am working on it. Spring ephemerals, patches of low growing plants with interesting leaves, a few bigger plants in dappled nooks. A simple path through it all. Wish me luck.

Filed under: chickens, gardening

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Happy Spring to everyone in the northern hemisphere and Autumn to my friends in the south! I am usually so keyed to solstices and equinoxes but for some reason I totally forgot about this one and was only reminded about it during the weather forecast on the radio this morning. That kind of reveals how all over the place my brain has been of late. Work has been busy and then at home there have been lots of things to keep track of — a four-day Easter weekend, a four-day birthday weekend, chicks coming in a week and a half, a chick brooder to build, a chicken coop to finish, seeds and sprouts to keep track of, a garden to plan and a just released Friends School Plant Sale catalog to comb through to help me plan that garden. Also, books to read, a Library Journal review deadline coming up, cycling workouts, a weekly virtual cycling group ride to lead, weights to lift, core workouts and time with a foam roller for all my tired muscles. Oh, and blog posts to write. Though I didn’t do so well with that last week. This week should be better though. Maybe.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the last two weeks have seen two new essays go up on Vocalis. Check ’em out, they are great! I’m hoping the Easter weekend will afford me time to write one of my own I have been kicking around in my head for a couple of weeks now.

Phew. Breathe.

My seed starting is going pretty well. The tomatillos are being stubborn but everything else is sprouting and growing including the peppers that were so slow to start. Last week I intended to get marigolds started but for the life of me I could not find any of the seeds I saved from last year. Where could they have gone to? I really have to make an effort to get better at organizing my end of gardening season self. I am generally so tired at that point I put everything aside to deal with in a few weeks during late fall/early winter and then it ends up I don’t do anything until spring when I am running around wondering what I did with the marigold flower heads I clipped for seeds.

Since I could not find the dried flower heads, I resorted to buying a packet of marigold seeds when Bookman and I went out today to get chicken coop hardware. We got hinges and latches for the coop and run doors. Also nails. I am paranoid about critters of both the two and four-legged sort getting into the coop and run when we are not around. As a result, you would think we were building a mini Fort Knox. We got door latches for the run door, the egg door and the cleaning door that we can put locks on. Bookman and I also spent way too much time discussing hinges — what kind, how big, how many, where and how are they to be attached, how will they open, expensive galvanized or a little cheaper zinc coated? Yes, we are totally over-building this thing. It will be a chicken coop for the ages.

The weather this weekend is sunny but a cold, much more normal temperature for this time of year (40F/4C). The week brought us sun and rain and snow. Also, my tulips are up through the mulch by several inches. The week ahead will have warm sun, rain, and possibly a day of wet, heavy snow. This is much more like typical spring in Minnesota where winter isn’t quite ready to let go but spring is ready to take over. It’s a rollercoaster. Or Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates.

The chicks arrive in a week and half. To that end, Bookman built us a chick brooder today. I was planning on us doing it together but he did it while I was doing some household chores. When I asked whether he wanted me to help, he grunted at me and said I didn’t have enough testosterone. The brooder is a temporary home for the chicks until they get big enough to go outside. We built it, Bookman built it, out of cardboard boxes and duct tape. Building something with duct tape is a manly job apparently, men being distinctly qualified to fix and build things with industrial strength tape.

For some reason the cats do not help Bookman build things like they help me. Perhaps they were concerned about tape and fur? Whatever the reasons, they stayed clear.

The brooder is done. Next weekend we will put in the bedding and hang the heat lamp and make it move-in ready for the babies. Just a little over a year ago we decided to get chickens. Back then it seemed like a forever time to wait and now in about ten days, the Dashwoods will be arriving and I worry if we are ready. I’ll find out soon enough.

Filed under: chickens, gardening

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It’s been one of those really busy weekends with nothing much to show for all the busy. Brunch with a friend, a women’s bike race, bike rides, a movie and popcorn, a letter to a friend, housecleaning, laundry, a few errands, sprout tending, cat tending, lost sleep because of warm weather, cats and the time change, too much coffee. I haven’t managed to read anything but a few poems and part of an interesting article about crows in Audubon Magazine. The weekend is drawing to a close and I am definitely not feeling weekend restful, could I have another please?

The weather Friday and Saturday was absolutely gorgeous. I got to go home from work Friday an hour early — yay! — and wouldn’t you know it, the buses were running late. At least I got to wait in the sunshine while reading Jane Eyre so it wasn’t all that bad.

Saturday was nice enough that I had all my trays of sprouts out on the deck. The extra warmth I had been giving the peppers and the shot of warm sun Saturday has finally got the seeds sprouting. The onions and tomatoes are doing great. The basil is just beginning to unfurl some tiny leaves. Today I was going to get some marigolds started but I just didn’t manage to get those pots filled with dirt and the seeds into them. Perhaps I can still squeeze it in before my head hits the pillow tonight.

While the early spring weather is pleasant, the fact that the temperature was 25 degrees F warmer than normal is disturbing if I think about it too much. If you haven’t had a chance to read the good and interesting article at LitHub, There is No Market Driven Solution To Our Climate Change Catastrophe, I highly recommend it.

Paul Mason writes of the “complacent calm” in the “world of suits” and says,

The focus is on scenarios for ‘what will happen,’ the climate catastrophe that awaits if we allow global temperatures to rise by more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But in the edge-places of the world the catastrophe is happening already. If we listened to those whose lives are being destroyed by floods, deforestation and encroaching deserts, we would better understand what is coming: the total disruption of the world.

I think many people are still under the impression that impending climate disasters are going to happen to other people somewhere else far away and not to them personally. There are going to be a lot of surprised people in the world over the course of the next 15-20 years.

The weather today was still warmer than normal but gray and damp feeling. Bookman unfortunately had to work all weekend so there was no chicken coop building. Hopefully next weekend will be conducive to getting out and putting on a roof and starting to build some walls. If not, we’ll be indoors getting the chick brooder ready. Next weekend puts us two weeks away from the arrival of the Dashwoods!

Filed under: chickens, gardening Tagged: climate change

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What a gloriously gorgeous day it has been today. To be outdoors working on the chicken coop without a jacket on of any sort and to be perfectly comfortable, even a little warm. The sun shone and the sky was a brilliant blue. There was a bit of gusty breeze but it wasn’t a cold breeze. We’ve had the door to the deck open most of the day and the cats have been happy as can be. It’s funny how in fall 58F/14C feels a little chilly but in spring it feels so very warm.

Bookman and I got the rafters up on the coop today. It went along really easy because Bookman had the brilliant idea of using two C-clamps to hold the rafter on instead of me trying to hold the rafter still while he drilled. It went so fast and easy we didn’t know what to do after that because we had expected it to be a thing. So we measured a board to attach the run door frame to and then attached that to the coop. And then we put up another board on the other side of the run for attaching hardware cloth to and then there was nothing else to do because we need hinges for the door before we build the door frame so we know if we need to make any allowances for the size of the door to fit it into its allotted space.

And we are also ready to start cutting plywood. But the plywood is under a tarp that still has a bit of snow and ice on it and we didn’t feel quite prepared to remove the tarp and start figuring it all out. That will be for the next nice weekend. It feels good to be making progress on the coop again. We still have a lot to do but all the structural framing and stuff is all done. In some ways that feels like the hardest part. Now we just have to fill it all in.

The seed starting continues apace. The onions and leeks are doing great. The tomatoes have a few tiny sprouts. The peppers still have not decided to give me any satisfaction. I think they might not be warm enough or getting enough light so I now have a lamp shining on them when the sun is not which is about half the time. Hopefully that will be enough to encourage them to get going. If not, I guess I will be buying plants in May. There is still time yet, so fingers crossed!

Today I filled paper pots and planted parsley, basil, pineapple tomatillo and cumin. I have never grown tomatillos before, I have never even tried one. Have you? I’ve seen them at the store and I have heard they make great salsa and I always like to try something new every year and these are it. The catalog description says these actually taste like pineapple. Now, I don’t expect they will, not exactly. In a blind taste test no one will be fooled. However, I expect they will be pineapple-y, a little sweet-tart and kind of fruity. Since they are an experiment we’ll see how it goes!

The weather forecast for the coming week is up and and down temperatures but always above freezing even at night. That is just crazy for this time of year. March has traditionally been one of our snowiest months and the precipitation predicted for mid week is rain, not snow. Looks like it is time to get out and start cutting back last year’s perennials and prairie grasses. Too early to remove winter mulch yet. This week might be warm but next week could be a blizzard. Not likely considering weather trends, but one just never knows.

One last thing. That photo over there is what reading in bed at night is like for me. Dickens is on my lap and that’s Waldo curled up next to me. Bookman took the photo this week because he thought it was so funny. But this is not unusual, this happens every single night. If it doesn’t then there is something out of the ordinary going on. So now when I talk about reading in bed, you can fill in some of the details of what that looks like.

Filed under: Books, chickens, gardening Tagged: seed starting

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Yesterday I came down with spring fever. The temperature got up to an unseasonable 57F/14C. The spring fever outbreak was of epidemic proportions in the city causing people to go outside without coats on! There were people out running and cycling, walking dogs and children. I walked out onto my deck with bare feet and stood in the sun, face upturned, as though I were a sunflower. It felt delicious.

I had a window open for a while for the cats and when they weren’t fighting over who got to sit in the window where there was plenty of room for both of them but neither wanted to share, their noses were plastered to the screen. Then, for no reason that I could discern, one or the other of them would go running around the house, scrabbling across the furniture and skidding around corners on the wood floors.

But what a difference a day makes in more ways than one. So much restless energy let off yesterday and today, rain turning to sleet and then to snow. Waldo and Dickens were mad at me for not opening the window again. Since they didn’t pull out enough of each other’s fur yesterday they had a few more rounds today. Finally they have settled down and are curled up together sleeping as I type this.

Seed sprouting is coming along nicely. The leeks and onions are looking good. The peppers have not yet sprouted but they are getting close. They take a long time to get going which I found out too late last year. But I am getting a nice and early start this year. Today I made more newspaper pots and seeded tomatoes —pink brandywine, pink ponderosa, Cherokee purple, and Evan’s purple pear — and celery. I had no luck at all with the celery last year and since I have seeds leftover I thought I would give it another try.

While I am making newspaper pots I can’t help but notice article headlines. Of course the news is generally bad (terrorism, Syria, ISIS, climate change) or infuriating (presidential election campaigning). I was beginning to get a bit down about it all today and then I realized that all the bad stuff in the paper, I am turning it into good stuff. Pots for starting vegetables and soon herbs and flowers. And newspaper, being compostable and good for the soil, will get planted right into the ground with the vegetable plants in May. So then I couldn’t help but smile over turning bad news into sweet onions, spicy peppers and juicy tomatoes. If only my reach went beyond newspapers.

Some of you have mentioned you are interested in making your own paper pots. Here is the YouTube how-to video for the pots I use:

The pots are a really good size. You don’t need to be precise in your folding. After making a couple it gets really easy and you don’t have to think about it. A good activity while watching Netflix. Be aware though that the more you make, the inkier your hands will get so don’t plan on touching anything while you are working.

Cycling

I’m still cycling indoors on Zwift. For a time last week on one of my sessions I had the women’s QOM (queen of the mountain), sprint and fastest lap jersey all at once. I had to take a screen shot to mark the occasion.

I am part of a women’s only group and Wednesday I led my first virtual group ride. The women’s group has two rides that leave at the same time, a fast ride and a slow ride. We start off together at 1.5 w/kg until a certain point in the course and then the fast group increases to 2w/kg (and then 2.5 w/kg on the second and third laps with an all out sprint to finish) while the slow group continues and does 3 laps (about 19 miles/30km) at a constant 1.5 w/kg.

I’ve ridden with the fast group the last few weeks but Tuesday night I had a hard workout and needed a slow recovery ride. No one had volunteered to lead the slow group and I asked if there was going to be a slow ride and who was leading. It turned into one of those because-I-asked-I-got-volunteered situations. So I led the slow group.

We were a pack of five and stuck together tight even on the hills (we found out later the fast group fell apart at the end of the first lap and we felt quite pleased with how well our group did). We all had a great time and they asked if I would lead again and even consider being the regular ride leader. I was so flattered, how could I say no? Hopefully it goes just as well this coming Wednesday night and wasn’t just a fluke.

The women have also started some women-only racing which is great because even though I have been doing the open racing on Zwift every Thursday night since January, it’s all men and pretty much a stupid free-for-all. The women race on Saturday afternoon every other week and so far we’ve had two races and they’ve been great with everyone following the rules and encouraging each other. In yesterday’s race I finished 14th in a field of 22 and I had a great fun time.

My goal for the next race is to really concentrate on strategy and making sure I am at the front of the pack when we cross the start line so I don’t get dropped off the back and end up racing alone and having to work twice as hard as the people up front in the pack.

I just found out there is a real life women’s gravel road race at the end of May a half hour’s drive south of the Twin Cities. And it’s free, no entry fee. It’s only 33 miles/50 km which is a totally doable distance for me without any extra training. Astrid, however, is a road bike designed for smooth narrow tires and pavement. We rode on gravel trails every week last summer but the gravel we rode on was crushed and packed and almost like pavement. The internet informs me I can get some tires for Astrid that will work better on gravel, slightly wider with a little tread. I’ll have to talk with the folks at my local bike shop and find out if it is true. I hope so!

Filed under: biking, gardening Tagged: gravel, racing, seed starting, Zwift

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We nearly reached 50F/10C one day last week. Of course it was a work day so I did not get to fully enjoy it. Nonetheless when I left work it was sunny and drippy still. I did not have to zip my coat or wear gloves and my scarf was lightly draped around my neck. The air felt fresh and humid from all the melting snow. And then, in intimations of things to come, my allergies flared right up and I spent the rest of the evening enjoying itchy, burning eyes. While the week ahead will not see 50F, the forecast for each day is at or a little above freezing and then dropping below freezing each night.

Spring seems to be making an attempt at an early arrival. I had best find my bottle of allergy medicine. Sigh. In the good old days I used to be able to make it until early to mid April before taking antihistamine every day. Then I’d get a break around mid-June for a few weeks before having to take them again through frost. A couple years ago my June break disappeared and I had to start taking them at the end of March through frost. I hope this year is a fluke and I won’t have to start taking them in February especially since frost is coming later and later every year. I might have to eventually break down and see an allergist to — I’m not sure what — reassure me that taking over-the-counter loratadine for months on end is not going to cause me any kind of harm. If you don’t have seasonal allergies consider yourself lucky. That I do and that I also love gardening and cycling and being outdoors in general creates a special kind of misery that will only continue to get worse as the climate gets warmer.

But enough complaining and feeling sorry for myself, there are plenty of other people with problems worse than mine.

On a happier note, I seeded peppers in sprouting pots today. We are doing cayenne, paprika,

pepperoncini, jalepeno, orange bell and a mini red bell. Last year we had no luck at all with the peppers. Most of them didn’t sprout and the ones that did were weak and tiny and died shortly after being moved outdoors. Hopefully we will have much better luck this year. Long-term weather forecasting is suggesting our summer might be a hot one. Perfect pepper weather, though not so great for the humans of the house.

I had to make more paper pots for the seeds so while I did paper pot origami, Bookman worked on the baby blanket he is crocheting for a coworker and we watched the final episode of History of British Gardening. I learned that I have been mispronouncing Gertrude Jekyll’s name since forever. I’ve been saying “Jek-ill” and it is apparently “Gee-kill”. But then the Brits pronounce words in weird ways in general like how do you get “ho-kum” out of Holcombe and “lester” out of “Leicester”? There were so many words in this series of garden shows that I could not comprehend, mostly place names but not always, that at times the host might as well have been speaking something other than English. Do those of you in the UK ever feel that way when you hear Americans speak or do you think we have just gone and ruined a perfectly good language?

Dickens decided to help me make pots. Lucky for me he did not feel compelled to help for long.

The leek and onion seeds I planted last Sunday have already begun to sprout. Next weekend it is tomato time.

Friday I picked up Richard Mabey’s newest book The Cabaret of Plants from the library. My turn has finally come and oh, it is going to be such a treat. Here is a little something from the introduction:

[We have] mostly sublimated our interest in the existence of plants into pleasure at their outward appearance, and the garden has become the principal theatre of vegetal appreciation. Plants in the twenty-first century have been largely reduced to the status of utilitarian and decorative objects… We tend not to ask questions about how they behave, cope with life’s challenges, communicate both with each other and, metaphorically, with us. They have come to be seen as the furniture of the planet, necessary, useful, attractive, but ‘just there,’ passively vegetating. They are certainly not regarded as ‘beings’ in the sense that animals are.

It is Mabey’s goal in the book to challenge that view. Does it make me odd that I find that really exciting?

Filed under: Books, gardening Tagged: allergies, Gertrude Jekyll, Richard Mabey

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Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

Some very exciting news! The Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously on Friday to pass the new chicken rules. That means I no longer need to get the signatures of my neighbors to have chickens. It’s not that I thought any of them would object, it was the bother of it all. Most of my neighbors work and catching them at home and getting them to open their door when it is freezing cold outside is not something Bookman looked forward to doing. So the only thing we have to do now is finish building our coop and pay for a permit. Easy!

To celebrate, Bookman and I went to Egg Plant Urban Farm Store today to gather supplies and talk to the folks there. The authors of my chicken book are not from Minnesota and had no advice about when the chicks would be able to go outside. After talking with the people at the farm store we learned that six weeks is about the right time. Given we still need to finish the coop and spring weather is inherently unreliable, we decided to hold off ordering our chicks for a couple weeks. So instead of having babies the first weekend of March, we have postponed new parenthood until the first weekend of April which also happens to be my birthday weekend.

We did, however, buy the supplies we needed to set up the brooder, that is not something you want to be doing when you have four confused new babies that need warmth and food and water. We got a big bale of pine shavings, a feeder and waterer, and a heat lamp with a red bulb. The red bulb is so the light does not disturb the wake/sleep cycle of the chicks. We will get the feed when we get the chicks. I was worried it might go stale if we had it sitting around for a month.

We haven’t built the brooder box yet. I need to bring home one more cardboard box from work. Then Bookman and I will get creative with the box cutters and tape to make a nursery for our babies.

I admit to being a little disappointed to have to wait until April for the chicks. I wanted so badly to throw all caution to the wind and order them today. But it’s best to make sure we won’t be scrambling to finish the coop and/or have to keep them indoors longer than we should. And okay, I admit, baby chickens for my birthday is a pretty cool thing.

Seed starting also began today. I am trying something new this year. Instead of playing musical seed

trays on top of the refrigerator, I have placed our mini greenhouse in front of the south-facing kitchen window. The tray of seeds I planted is mostly cipollini onions with a few pots of leeks. I have not had any luck growing either of these to full size because I think I have always started them too late. Maybe this will be the year it all works out.

I continue making paper pots and hopefully next weekend I will have enough ready to get peppers started. We have a couple different kinds of bell peppers and quite a few varieties of hot peppers. Last summer was unusually mild and the peppers did not do well, they like it hot. I hope they do well this year, not because I want a hot summer, but because Bookman is very excited about purple jalepeños. I like spicy but hot peppers are not my thing.

In spite of several days of arctic temperatures last week, it doesn’t seem like there has been much winter at all this year. I feel like I have barely gotten a chance to breathe and rest before beginning the whirlwind of seed starting and early spring. I have all the supplies and plans prepared, now I just have to get my brain and energy focused there. It’s a shift I’ve known I have to make but it still feels like everything is rushing at me. Then again, it feels like this every spring. I’m like a hibernating bear that has smelled spring coming from its den for a few weeks and now that it is imminent it takes a bit of stretching and shambling about to shake off the winter. But it’s all good; just have to stretch a bit and maybe scratch my back on that tree over there…

Filed under: chickens, gardening

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Have I mentioned lately how much I love Minneapolis? It is by no means a perfect city and the winters are long and hard, but by golly how many other cities have a community advisory group that works with the city council on things like urban agriculture and food security issues? Homegrown Minneapolis is the name of the group and their latest newsletter included a map of all the vacant city lots that can be leased for community gardening and urban farms. Also in the newsletter is information regarding a proposal to turn a public golf course near my house into a food forest.

What’s a food forest? It is exactly what it sounds like. It is a designed landscape that mimics a natural ecosystem while incorporating food producing plants like nut and fruit trees, shrubs, perennial vegetables and herbs. Annual plants can also be grown in the mix. And of course it is a space that also utilizes native plants to attract pollinators and other beneficial insects, control weeds and build soil fertility.

The site of this proposed food forest is a public golf course near Lake Hiawatha. The golf course is very expensive to maintain not just because it was built on a wetlands and requires millions of gallons of water to be pumped out of it every year. It turns out the amount of water being pumped far exceeds the permit limits and is therefore illegal. A portion of the golf course has also been closed since 2014 when we had so much rain that the “back nine” was flooded and is still so soaked and damaged the park board can’t really afford to fix it. This golf course also drains into Lake Hiawatha which suffers greatly from water quality issues do to run-off into the lake. This golf course covers 140 acres and serves very few people, costing to my mind and many others, more than it is worth.

So a young, brilliant city resident has put up a proposal and taken up the challenge to advocate for repurposing the land. His vision allows for a much reduced golf course, fruit orchards, nut trees, and more. His vision even includes returning wild rice to Lake Hiawatha which, I just learned, used to be called “Rice Lake” because local Native Americans grew and harvested wild rice there before they were forced to move elsewhere.

The food forest would be grown on public land, would be tended by volunteers, and would welcome all from the community to go and harvest food from it. It would solve the water pumping problem and the lake’s water quality issues as well. And it would provide learning opportunities for both adults and school children. Plus it would be far cheaper to maintain than a full golf course not to mention more beautiful and useful.

This is such an incredibly exciting thing and if it goes through, if the Park Board decides to go along with it, it would mean Minneapolis would be home to the largest food forest in the United States. And yeah, you know I’ll find a way to be involved with the project even if it is only volunteering a few hours every month. There is a meeting being held on February 27th. It’s scheduled for four hours in the afternoon which is a big chunk of Saturday time for me, but I might just see if I can make it for at least a portion of the meeting. If not, I am sure there will be other opportunities as the proposal picks up steam.

In my own garden, I have a tray full of paper pots ready for onion seeds next weekend. I must continue working at making pots because at the end of the month I will need to get the peppers and tomatoes started. I love this time of year. While it feels so hectic getting everything started, it is also the most hopeful time of the gardening year because there is still so much possibility. The slugs haven’t eaten the greens yet, the squirrels haven’t dug up or stolen anything, there hasn’t been too much rain or not enough, too much heat or not enough. In my mind’s eye my garden is lush and green and perfect. Reality will kick in soon enough, but until then, everything is still perfect.

In chicken news, the same newsletter that brought word of the food forest proposal also informed me that the city council will be voting on the new chicken ordinance on February 12th! I wasn’t expecting anything from the city council until summer. But perhaps they want to get it all settled before spring when people who want to start keeping chickens will be looking to get underway. Bookman has not yet begun to collect neighbor signatures, it has been too cold and snowy. But now we will wait and see what happens come Friday. Bookman may just be saved the trouble of collecting signatures after all. Fingers crossed!

In cycling news, I am still riding in virtual races on Thursday nights. Each week is different and sometimes I finish first or second and sometimes I finish last. One thing for sure, my fitness has improved immensely. I am also in the final week of a 6-week workout program that has meant hour-long (or more) workouts four to five times of week doing intervals of varying intensities. This too has paid off. On a (virtual) ride after my workout yesterday I decided to see if I could beat my personal sprint records on the two sprint sections of the course and I blew each one away by several seconds! I even managed to ever so briefly hit 4 watts/kg, something I thought I would never manage. I also noticed I now frequently go over 3 w/kg which means that after this week I will start racing in group C instead of D. Technically I should start this week but I want to give myself one more “easy” week before I go to the next group and start coming in last all the time. I will be good incentive to work hard and improve, right?

Also this last week on Wednesday night I participated in my first virtual group ride. It was so much fun! I am part of a group on Zwift called ROL (Ride On Ladies — in Zwift you can give riders a “ride on” thumb’s up, it’s a way to offer support and tell other riders they are doing great or thanking them for a good ride, etc). There is an ROL group ride on Wednesday nights but I had not joined in because it is a fast ride and with the races I’ve been doing Thursday nights I didn’t want to overdo it the night before. Anyway, a slower group ride was introduced this week so I joined that one. We used an app called TeamSpeak which allows us to actually talk to each other while we ride. I rode with a couple people from Seattle and someone from Ohio and I think maybe Texas. Technology is awesome!

Also, there are enough ROL women who are interested in racing that we are going to have our own women’s race on Saturday upcoming. It will be a 30km race and I will have to race in group B which is both exciting and scary. There are not a lot of women on Zwift, I saw somewhere that women are only about 8% of the Zwift population, but among them are some really strong riders and racers. It is exciting to ride with them because it forces me to work harder and they are all supportive and encouraging so even though I feel intimidated, it comes from my own personal worries of not being very good rather than anything anyone else has said or done. Currently there are 24 women who have indicated they will be racing Saturday and 56 who have said maybe. We’ll see what kind of turnout there really is. I just hope I don’t finish last in my group. But hey, if I do, incentive to improve!

Filed under: biking, chickens, gardening Tagged: Food forest, Lake Hiawatha, Minneapolis, sustainable gardening

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I noticed on my way from my porch to the bus stop earlier this week that birds are starting to sing in the morning. At 6:30 it is still dark but a few voices are sleepily chirruping hello in the pre-dawn. This made me so happy that I would have danced my way down the sidewalk if it weren’t for treacherous slicks of ice hiding in the shadows. We might be having a thaw this weekend —it’s 40F/4C as I write this — but spring is still two months away.

Still, one must plan and prepare. Today I began folding newspaper pots for starting seeds. In just two weeks the onion seeds will need to get going. Last year I got started late with the onions and the late start combined with putting them out when they were too small meant I ended up with no onions at all. Not having grown onions before, it was all trial and error. Mostly error. This year I try again and see if I have any success.

Folding pots out of newspaper is messy and a bit tedious after the first pot or two. What does one do to entertain oneself? Watch the Secret History of the British Garden of course! I just watched the third episode about the 19th century and there is only one more episode left and that makes me very sad. A few years ago I watched and loved A Year at Kew. There are three seasons of this marvelous show and if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it, especially on a cold winter’s day. Why can’t Americans make good gardening shows? It’s not like we don’t have any spectacular gardens.

I almost titled this post “Pot Making” but decided it might give the wrong impression. Have I ever told the story about my pot garden? Way back before Bookman and I bought our current house we had a townhouse with a large south-facing deck. We began container gardening on it before container gardening became a thing. To me at the time it was growing plants in pots. We were at a social event once, I don’t recall the exact occasion, but I was talking with someone and said with great enthusiasm that I had a pot garden. The astonished look on the person’s face and her sudden loss of words made me realize what I had just said. I quickly explained I was growing tomatoes, peppers and herbs in pots on my deck. I wasn’t entirely certain she believed me. I beat a hasty retreat.

I have been lost my gardening journal. It had three year’s worth of notes and plant lists and plans in it. I have no idea where it has got to. I have looked in all the likely places more than once and even in unlikely places too. It never leaves the house and my house isn’t that large. The last I recall seeing it was during the summer on my reading table. Bookman kindly surprised me with a new notebook that even has a pocket in it, very handy. But I remain nonplussed about the missing notebook and terribly sad about not only the disappeared garden notes but also reading notes. My hope is that it will turn up eventually and I will wonder why I failed to look for it in that location. In the mean time, planning for this year’s garden moves ahead.

I have begun a list of things that need to be done once the ground thaws. Last year at the Friends School Plant Sale in May we bought a few shrubs in anticipation of our garage being knocked down and an expansion of garden space. It took far longer for that to happen than we expected so we had to plant the shrubs in a temporary location in the main garden. They will need to be transplanted into what we now call the chicken garden. The list keeps growing every week. Spring is such a busy time!

And speaking of the Friends Plant Sale, I got the save the date postcard in the mail during the week. It is magneted to the refrigerator door where Bookman and I can see the date and the photo of the beautiful flowers. Every year I think it will be the year when I get to finally plant up my front yard and pack it full with prairie flowers and grasses and every year it gets put off. This year it is being put off again because I need to plant a green roof instead. I have already begun a list of plants I know will be good but looking at the catalog when it becomes available at the end of March will be when the planning really happens.

Lots of things in the works and the closer spring gets, the busier I will be. But it is all fun and I love it or I wouldn’t do it.

In cycling news, 250 Kung Fu nuns biked 2,000km in India to spread a message of women’s empowerment and environmental conservation. They are amazing and inspiring women.

Filed under: biking, gardening

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The seeds I ordered last weekend arrived already this week! I was not expecting them for another week or two, but here they are. It is far too early to be able to do anything with them yet. As I type this it is -3F/-19C outside with a wind chill of -19F/-28C. Ah, winter in Minnesota!

Despite the cold, I was rather disturbed to learn that 13 of the last 16 winters in my area have been “Zone 5” winters. If you aren’t a gardener or in the U.S. you might not know what that means, so let me explain. The United States Department of Agriculture, USDA, long ago created a plant hardiness map. It is based on average annual extreme minimum temperatures over a 30-year period and goes from zone 1, the coldest, to zone 13, the warmest. My zone in Minneapolis is 4 which means minimum winter temperatures regularly dip below -20F/-28.9C. That’s air temperature without wind chill added in. The last time the USDA updated its zone map was 2012. I’m not entirely certain, but I think they update it every ten years.

For 13 of the last 16 winters to be zone 5 is a big deal. It won’t yet put me squarely in a warmer zone but it is definitely moving there. State climate watchers and meteorologists are speculating that within the next three to four years we will begin seeing zone six winters. This is both crazy and scary. A zone 6 winter would mean a minimum temperature of only -10F/-23.3C. Some people might wonder why I’m not cheering, why I am not excited about the bigger variety of plants I might be able to grow, why anyone would be upset over a winter that never got colder than -20F/-28.9C because, wow, -10F/-23.3C is still pretty cold.

But it is not cold enough.

Minnesota ecology has evolved around long, frigid winters. Already forests in the northern part of the state are showing signs of stress and disease. Our moose population is getting smaller every year. The emerald ash borer is spreading at a faster rate, killing the state’s ash trees. And every year incidents of West Nile virus occur earlier and earlier in the season. That we even have to worry about the virus at all is a fairly recent, within the last ten years or so, thing.

And it isn’t just ecology that is affected by warmer winters, people are too. Minnesota culture is heavily invested in cold winters. Heck, we have a frozen lake’s worth of jokes about it. And we tend to think we are better than everyone else because we can endure the frigid cold. There are winter carnivals and events that warmer winters will make difficult. This year it took so long before the cold hit, the lakes have not been able to build enough ice for the various pond hockey tournaments and many of them have been postponed or cancelled entirely.

Warmer winters are no small, inconsequential thing.

I am not quite sure how to plan for shorter, warmer winters in my garden. I continue to operate under zone 4 assumptions but clearly I am going to need to adapt. I don’t know what that means, exactly. Today I spent an hour or so figuring out where to plant all those seeds that arrived in the mail earlier this week. I am supposed to rotate my “crops” to keep garden soil healthy and avoid hungry insect problems. But, as big as my garden is—pretty much my entire backyard—it still is not large so rotating is a flexible term. I mean growing my tomatoes three feet from where they were last year and moving the zucchini from one end of the garden bed to the other counts as rotating, right?

I got it all figured out though, at least on paper. There are always revisions when it comes time to plant because I can never remember exactly how much room I have in all the various garden beds. And bundling up and walking around the garden right now won’t work because everything is under snow and I can’t even tell where the paths are and where the beds are. Spring and planting time will reveal all!

Biking

Just a quick bike note today. I did another race on Thursday and it was an entirely different mix of people than the week before. There were eight people in group D and I was still the only woman. It was a crazy fast race and I think the guy who won by just over five minutes should have been racing in the C group instead, but maybe he has low self-esteem issues and needed an ego boost or something. I came in fifth in my group riding pretty much at the same rate I had the week before. I had a great time though riding with a C group rider who had gotten dropped from the main group and playing tag with another D group rider.

I’ll try again this coming Thursday and see how it goes. One thing for sure, it is most excellent exercise and I work a lot harder in a race than I do during a regularly scheduled workout. I will be really interested to see how it all translates to riding outdoors again when spring comes.

Filed under: biking, gardening Tagged: climate change

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What does one do on a day when the high temperature is 0F/-18C and the windchill makes it feel like -10F/-23C? Why, order garden seeds of course! I wasn’t planning on placing my order until next week but the need to think warm, green happy thoughts won out.

I ordered with three different companies. My biggest order went to Pinetree Garden Seeds. They are a great company, reliable, excellent prices and good quality seed. I love them. I got the usual sorts of seeds, carrots, beans, peas, cilantro, cumin, mustard, nasturtium. In addition I got some new varieties and some new for me to grow things. I got the Irish Cobbler potatoes we grew last year and a purple potato called “Adirondack Blue.” I got a Japanese turnip called “Shogoin” that is white and about the size of an extra large radish. It can be sliced up and eaten raw, pickled or stir fried. I also decided to try growing chicory this year, “Catalogna Emerald,” and it turns out it is a fancy Italian dandelion, but hey, I like dandelion greens so no hard feelings. In consultation with Bookman we decided to try growing cauliflower for the first time. I am getting seeds for a short season small headed heirloom variety called “Early Snowball.” We also decided to try and grow ground cherries, also known as tomatillos. The variety is “Pineapple” and the description promises high yields of fruit that have a pineapple flavor. I’ll let you know!

I also bought a little thing called a “seedmaster.” Not seeds but a seed distribution system for those tiny seeds that Bookman’s sausage fingers drop in huge clumps and that stick to my damp ones. The seedmaster looks kind of like a fat syringe without a needle. Fill it with seeds, push down the plunger and it will supposedly drop one tiny seed out at a time. It was about the price of a packet of seeds so if it doesn’t work, I haven’t lost much. But if it does work, the clouds will part and the angels will sing.

Baker Creek sells nothing but heirloom seeds and quite a few of them are for hard to find rare varieties like the Sakurajima radish. A variety of daikon radish, Sakurajima is the world’s largest radish. It typically weighs 13 pounds/6 kgs and can grow as large as 100 lbs/45 kgs! There is an article on the history of this radish with some photos at the link attached to the radish name. No, I did not order seeds for this!

What I did order was seeds for golden amaranth and elephant head amaranth, pink radishes of normal garden size, “Holstein” cowpeas —funny on several different levels, but Americans probably know cowpeas better as “black-eyed peas”— and a white seeded sunflower called “Tarahumara.”

One more order placed with Jung Seeds. They’ve been around since 1907, very reliable with good prices. They are based in Wisconsin, a neighboring northern state so when their catalog says something is cold hardy I can believe them. I like to get actual plants from them from time to time as well as garden supplies. This time I ordered a seedless red grape called “Somerset” that is supposed to be good eating and for jam or jelly. Bookman and I have tried growing grapes before and failed both times. The varieties we tried were different than this one and we planted them both in the same location, a rather exposed one at the back of the garden. This one is going to go in a small space on the south side of the house where it will get lots of hot summer sun and be protected in the winter from the cold north winds. I am not sure how long it takes for a grape to begin producing. If it survives the summer and next winter I will consider it a success.

I also ordered ten feet/3 m of nylon trellis that is guaranteed for five years and promised not to tangle. If there is the remotest possibility that it can tangle, in my garden it will. But as long as it is easy enough to untangle, that is all that matters to me. Also, that it is reusable year after year. This will save me having to buy the giant skein of jute string every spring and creating my own pea and bean trellis out of jute and sticks from tree prunings. This stuff is so upscale fancy in comparison I might not recognize my own garden!

These seeds are all in addition to ones I have left over from last year: several varieties of tomato, sweet peppers, hot peppers, pole beans, pumpkin, zucchini, Swiss chard, beets, cantaloupe, okra, basil, onion, and a whole bunch of other seeds it will take far too long for me to list out for you. Big garden? Oh yes! Bookman and I will start making paper sprouting pots in the next week or two. We’ll seed the onion around mid-February and the seed starting just scrolls out from there to peppers then tomatoes and more. Busy fun times ahead!

While I am on the subject of seeds, I have to tell you about Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener. I mentioned last week that it is a really good book. I did not mention how hilarious it is. I was reading the section on flower anatomy yesterday because in order to properly cross plants you have to know all the sex parts of a flower. The author has some fun with this explaining that flower stamens are plant penises. The carpel is the female part of the flower. The ovaries live at the bottom of the carpel. The top of the carpel is where the stigma is. The stigma is the plant version of a vagina. He goes on to talk about plant sex and what happens when a flower gets pregnant.

But that’s not all. Because in order to make crosses, a gardener has to do a sort or artificial insemination thing. If the plant you want to cross has flowers with both male and female parts in one flower, one must first emasculate a flower so it does not self-pollinate by using tweezers to pull of its little plant penises. This procedure really is called emasculation and the author alludes to it as being like neutering!

Pollen of course is plant sperm and the gardener needs to transfer pollen from one flower to the other to make the desired cross. The author discusses various ways to do this and in the end recommends fingers and tweezers because they are easier to clean so you don’t risk spreading pollen where you don’t want it:

Between crosses, I clean pollen off my fingers and tweezers by rinsing them off with a little water or (if no one is looking) simply a quick swipe with my tongue—which really isn’t all that gross, people, you eat pollen every time you eat honey. Even if it is, erm, plant sperm.

I’m just going to leave that there for you to dwell on. No doubt I will also be seeing an uptick in pornographic spam.

Biking

So I am doing a six-week workout program in Zwift to improved my FTP (Functional Threshold Powers, a measure of fitness). The first week went pretty well and I began the second week yesterday. Week one was only four days of various types of interval workouts. I took Wednesday as an easy ride day and Thursday I entered my first virtual bike race!

I entered in category D, the lowest ranked category. I could have raced category D women’s group but I was the only woman racing and besides the categories are based on watts per kilogram (how much power you produce per kg of weight) so on that ranking alone everyone should be fairly matched regardless of biology.

I was really nervous but excited. The A and B groups start first so they don’t get tangled up with the slower racers. The C and D groups start together two minutes later. It is a neutral start where we all get a chance to form a group. The real start of the race comes in a section of the course that is about five minutes from the start/finish line. There were about five other Ds that I fell in with and we pedaled along together in a group until we hit the first big hill. Then the group fell apart, I found myself in front of them, and by the time the hilly segment was over I had lost them completely.

But then I spied a D group person about 8 seconds ahead of me. Back at the start he must have been up at the front with a big group of Cs and I had not seen him. So I made it my goal to try and catch him.

The race is three laps and each lap is just a little over 10 miles/16kms. I caught the guy on the first hill on the second lap. We spent the rest of the race riding together. There are three hills on this course and they all come at the end of the lap; a long hill of about 6% grade with a few short spots of 8-10% grade followed by a downhill that turns a corner into a short, steep 10-12% grade hill that then has a nice longish descent that lets you catch your breath before the really long hill to the finish that ranges from a 3-8% grade. We hung together until that second hill on the final lap. He started to pull ahead and gained a 7-second lead on the descent that I could not make up.

It was a great race and I had loads of fun and figured I came in second since the guy had crossed the finish line first. But it turns out that is not how the race finish is calculated. It is calculated by your actual start and finish times so, when the results were posted, it turns out I won my group by 2 seconds!

The guy I was racing against found me on Strava afterwards and thanked me for a great race, told me I had caused him some pain. I thanked him too and told him the feeling was mutual (I was a bit sore on Friday!). It turns out it was only his second race.

There is a race every Thursday night and I will be trying it again this week. My new racing friend will be out of town but he promises to be in the race the following Thursday for a rematch.

Filed under: biking, gardening

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Ah friends, my two-week vacation is slowly coming to an end. It has been really nice. I am so completely unwound that I feel like I am ready for a vacation. Isn’t that the way of things? I managed to get through all but one gardening book I had piled up for my time off. The one I am still reading is called Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener. It is really good and I am eager to try my hand at it in my own garden. Perhaps I will manage to create a tomato that ripens early and is less prone to blossom end-rot. Wouldn’t that be something? Also radishes. I grow a mild pink variety and last year I also grew a spicier purple variety, wouldn’t it be fun to have a radish that is purple but a little less spicy to slice and eat raw on sandwiches? There aren’t any flowers in particular I’d like to try this with, but you never know.

The New American Landscape: Leading Voices on the Future of Sustainable Gardening is also quite good. This book is composed of essays by various names in the sustainable gardening field on a number of different topics from managing the home landscape to waterwise gardening to soil health. In case you are wondering what sustainable gardening is, the definition used in the book is,

using methods, technologies, and materials that don’t deplete natural resources or cause lasting harm to native systems.

Simple enough, right? Yet in the general world of gardening as conducted and encouraged by big box stores, sustainable is not encouraged.

One of the essays, “Flipping the Paradigm: Landscapes That Welcome Wildlife” by Douglas W. Tallamy, made me laugh because he talks extensively about the importance of insects in the garden, and not just pollinators. I thought you all might be interested given my post about insects not that long ago. Tallamy notes, and he has the citations to back it up, that ninety-six percent of the terrestrial birds in North America rear their young on insects, not seeds or berries. Insects are high-quality protein that growing birds need. No insects, no baby birds.

One other book that is excellent, Planting in a Post-Wild World by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West. At first I thought I would not like this book because they began by disparaging people who advocate planting native plants. But, but, but I spluttered. And then a lightbulb moment. Native plants are definitely good and Rainer and West advocate for them too. The problem is the people who say native plants and only native plants and if you plant something from Asia in your midwest garden you are some kind of heretic.

These garden designers encourage creating gardens based on landscape archetypes like grasslands, woodlands, shrublands, etc. Pick your archetype and go from there. It is about matching plants to the site and creating plant communities whether that plant is native to a midwest prairie of the Russian steppes.

They do a fantastic job in explaining their design process and how to do it at home. I took extensive notes and find myself full of ideas. My soil is extremely sandy and I have always thought I need to work at improving it. When it comes to vegetables, that is the case, but when it comes to the grassland plants I enjoy, Rainer and West tell me to forget about it. I shouldn’t be wasting my time doing this, instead I should be busy searching out plants that like the kind of soil I have, and there are plenty.

I can’t say enough what a good book this is. I have been trying for years to create a grasslands-type garden in my front yard and have succeeded in creating a wild, weedy mess. Now I feel like I know what I can do to correct it. It will still be pretty wild but if it goes well it will be a more contained and more varied wild with a lot fewer weeds and a lot less maintenance. I have quite a bit of planning work to do to make it happen and not being a person of great wealth, it will take years to plant it all up because I can’t afford to buy all the plants in one go. But ideas and a plan make a good beginning and will go a long way to correcting the helter-skelter way I’ve been going about things.

Hooray!

On a side note. I have some catching up to do on replying to comments and visiting blogs. Bear with me as I get back up to speed after vacation. All too soon it will be like these last two weeks never happened.

Filed under: Books, gardening, Nonfiction, Reviews Tagged: garden design, plant breeding, sustainable gardening

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I hope the New Year is off to a good start for everyone!

I did not stay up until midnight, I haven’t made it up that late in so long I can’t remember when last I did. This morning person has to have a darn good reason to be up that late and since parties and other sorts of gatherings aren’t my thing, there was no reason to not read in bed and go to sleep as usual.

However, BookerTalk is a curious person and wanted to know what reading was winding down 2015, so to satisfy her nosiness, I read The Small Heart of Things: being at home in a beckoning world by Julian Hoffman. It is a lovely, quiet book full of observations of the natural world and humans in it.

Today though, today, let’s talk about 2016.

For the last couple of years I haven’t had any reading goals. This year though, I think it is time. Oh it is nothing so lofty as reading more classics or finally getting around to reading particular authors. No, it has to do with my reading table and all the books that are piled on it. Some of those books have been there for two or three years. This table is meant for books in progress or books to read next and it has become clear that in progress and next are ideas that have gotten extremely wobbly and imprecise in my vocabulary.

Therefore, it is time to clear the decks, or rather, the table. I am growing weary of Bookman’s jokes that he is worried about it collapsing. But if you think I am going to go through and list every single book that is on that table in the post for your edification, you have another thing coming! As the year progresses I will definitely make updates so you don’t have to worry, you’ll find out what is on the table as I do because, big reveal, I don’t even know all the books that are piled up on it! Surprises for everyone!

And of course there will be non-bookish Sunday posts to look forward to as well. Chickens ahoy! Biking adventures! Chills and thrills! You just never know what might happen. Oh, and then there is Vocalis too. I had better get working on my next essay. I already have the title: The Joy of Socks. Do you like it? I wonder what it’s about?

It’s going to be a good year.

Filed under: biking, Books, chickens, gardening Tagged: #readinginto16, Read the Table

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Wow, what a year 2015 turned out to be! Between gardening and planning/building for chickens in 2016 and my new passion for biking I am surprised I had much time to read at all. But I did! And I managed to read 75 books, the same number as I did last year. I think it helped that I read quite a few short books and graphic novels, but in the end it isn’t the number but the quality that matters and did I ever read some excellent books this year!

Here is how it breaks down:

Books read: 75

Fiction: 43
Nonfiction: 30
Plays: 1
Poetry: 1 (while I only read one complete book of poetry, I read lots of poems)

Breaking it down even further it was a good year for hybrid genres which is why the numbers don’t add up:

Biography/Memoir: 13
Children’s/YA: 4
Comics/Graphic stories: 15
Culture/Social science: 2
Diary: 1
Environment/Climate Change/Nature: 2
Essays: 4
Fantasy: 5
Gardening: 2
History: 2
Humor: 1
Books about books/Literature/Writing: 6
Science: 1
Science Fiction: 5
Short stories: 3
Steampunk: 1

Books Written by…
Women: 41
Men: 33
Multiple: 1

Rereads: 3

Number of authors whose books I read more than one of: 7 (Matt Fraction, Ann Leckie, Noelle Stevenson, Jo Walton, Kurtis Wiebe, G.Willow Wilson, Virginia Woolf)

In translation: 6 (French, Japanese, Spanish, Greek, Dutch) this number is way down from last year, I really need to work on upping my in translation reading

Book Source:
ARCS: 15 (many of these were books for review for Library Journal and Shiny New Books)
Own: 11
Library: 49 (I am such a good library user!)

Publication Dates:
2015: 35
2014: 17
2000-2013: 13
1950-1999: 4
1900-1949: 2
1800s: 3
BCE: 1

Favorite Fiction:

Imperial Radch Trilogy by Ann Leckie Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, Ancillary Mercy
The Waves by Virginia Woolf (for Shiny New Books)
Orlando by Virginia Woolf (also for Shiny New Books)
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear

Favorite Nonfiction:

On Immunity by Eula Biss
This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein
Notes from Walnut Tree Farm by Roger Deakin
The Art of Daring by Carl Phillips
The Rider by Tim Krabbé

Honorable Mentions:

When Mystical Creatures Attack! by Kathleen Founds
The Martian by Andy Weir
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Just City by Jo Walton (for Shiny New Books, hmm I am seeing a trend here…)
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

Biking

This is the first year I have ever kept track of how much biking I did, and frankly the first year I have ever done enough biking that I would want to keep track. Would you believe I pedaled 5,311 miles/8,511 kms? Holy mackerel! I did it over the course of 209 rides and 301 hours. Not all of those rides and miles were outdoors. Astrid and I covered 1,500 miles/2,414 kms together outdoors with our longest ride topping 70.6 miles/114 kms. The rest of the miles were on a stationery bike in the late winter/early spring, and with Astrid hooked up to a smart trainer since the end of October.

Using Zwift and a smart trainer, I have pedaled since October 23rd, 1,593 miles/2,564 kms in 88 hours 29 minutes climbing 86,873 feet/26,479 meters of virtual elevation and burning off 117 pieces of pizza (285 calories each). My longest virtual ride was 100.2 miles/161 kms.

Gardening

In the garden we had our 1 1/2 car garage torn down, built a shed, installed a chainlink fence and framed a chicken coop. In addition we had the pleasure of a family of hawks nesting in my nextdoor neighbor’s backyard. All but one ear of popcorn was stolen by squirrels. We grew potatoes for the first time. Also Brussels sprouts and amaranth. None of our lettuce seed sprouted but it was a great year for peas, chard, sorrel, basil and zucchini.

Thanks for sharing 2015 with me!

I hope you all have safe New Year’s celebrations. And may 2016 be filled with lots of good books and joy and all the things you love most.

Filed under: biking, Books, gardening, Year in Review

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One week of vacation down, one more to go. What have I been doing? Waldo and Dickens over there give some indication. My legs are beneath the quilt and they are laying on them. We are all three on my reading chaise. This is the good life.

One of the things I have been doing on my reading chaise is going through the pile of gardening books I borrowed from the library. At this point in my gardening life garden books have reached the point of being repetitive. Knew that. Knew that too. Oh yup, also knew that. It gets hard to find and learn anything new. But I keep trying. Sometimes I do learn something interesting. Like, did you know that beets, spinach and swiss chard are all in the beet family? Or that when garden space is limited, potatoes give you more calories and nutrition per square foot than any other vegetable? I also learned that building a wind turbine in my backyard will never happen. It has to be 100 feet away from any other structure and at least 30 feet taller. Like the city or the neighbors would ever let me put that up!

I have also been sorting through the chicken books I requested from the library. I figured out which one I decided I wanted to buy last February, A Chicken in Every Yard. I also found The Chicken Whisperer’s Guide to Keeping Chickens has some good advice in it. However Chicken in Every Yard is the best comprehensive book and includes everything from raising chicks to caring for sick birds.

Since I was thinking about chickens, I checked in at Egg Plant Urban Farm Supply to see if they had anything up about ordering chickens yet. They do!. I can order my chicks as soon as the end of February. Crikey that isn’t that far away! Way back I had thought we’d get two buff orpingtons and two australorps but, as much as I love the way the orpingtons look, so big and fluffy and pleasingly round, they seem a bit too docile. I want chickens with more curiosity and who like to forage and I didn’t want to worry about the orpingtons getting picked on by others. So, at the moment we are planning on two australorps and two Rhode Island reds. Of course, until I actually place the order, I might change my mind again.

Back at the end of September I cut off all the amaranth flowerheads, bagged them up and brought them indoors to dry. They’ve been hanging out in the basement since then. Today Bookman and I finally decided it was time to start doing something about harvesting the grain. It’s a process and the seeds are tiny but as a first try with amaranth we are pretty pleased. We haven’t finished yet, but we expect we’ll be able to fill the jar. Next year we aren’t going to plant corn so there will be more room to grow more amaranth, both red and gold varieties.

Which leads me to something else I did: seed inventory. I went through all my seed packets to see what I have, what varieties did well, what didn’t what I want to order again, that sort of things. Then I went through the seed catalogs and marked what to reorder and of course had to mark a few other things new to try. I also decided that next year I have to be better at saving seeds so I don’t have to reorder so many. I make it a point to buy heirloom and open-pollinated varieties so I can save the seeds but then I rarely do mostly because I want to eat them and begrudge letting peas and beans go to seed and setting aside the biggest heads of garlic to replant in the fall. I’ll be placing my seed order mid-January so I still have time to revise what I want. Once the order is placed, I’ll let you know what yummy things will be going into the garden come spring!

On the cycling front, I rode 100 miles/161 km yesterday. It took me five hours and eighteen minutes to do it and my legs complained the last ten miles, but by golly, I did it! When the odometer clicked over to 100 I cried a little from happiness over my accomplishment, because my legs were hurting so bad, and from relief over being able to stop. I thought when I stopped pedaling I my legs would stop hurting but as soon as I climbed off Astrid they started hurting even more! After stretching and walking around for ten minutes the pain went away and I was just plain tired. Today there are no lingering effects and the pain is a vague memory, so vague I am actually looking forward to doing it again sometime!

But not yet. Because now I am going to try my legs on virtual racing as well as a six-week structured workout program for building fitness. Astrid and I don’t necessarily like being stuck indoors, but Zwift is working out well for both of us.

One more thing before I go this evening. That essay site I’ve mentioned a few times? It is now live! Stop by Vocalis if you feel so inclined. Let me know what you think. And if you have an essay of your own you would like to publish, send it over! All the information including the email address is there.

Filed under: biking, Books, chickens, Essays, gardening Tagged: amaranth, Vocalis, Zwift

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Annie Dillard is talking about insects in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She says she never asks why of a vulture or shark but she asks why of almost every insect she sees. They reproduce, or have the possibility to reproduce, in huge numbers. They, she says, are “an assault on all human value, all hope of a reasonable god.”

I understand exactly what she means. Insects are small, unpredictable, hard to see, unavoidable, and they are everywhere. Some of them are also dangerous or at least threaten to cause pain from bites or stings. I’ve been stung by bees before and bitten by a fire ant more than once. I get bit by mosquitoes too now and then but I am lucky enough to not have a reaction to their bite. I used to think it was because I am somehow magically special, but I suspect it has to do with the fact that I am already amped up on antihistamines because of all my allergies so mosquito bites end up having little or no effect.

The more time I spend in the garden, the more I appreciate insects. Not only are they necessary for my garden to grow, but they also help breakdown organic matter that feeds the soil and then feeds the plants that feed me. There are insects that hunt other insects too and some of them spin gorgeous webs. And insects are also food for bats and birds. I used to think there were good bugs and bad bugs and would freak out when I cam across bad bugs in the garden, they’re going to hurt my plants! Kill the bad bugs! Kill the bad bugs!

As an organic gardener this usually meant drowning beetles in a dish of soapy water, spraying the aphids with soapy water, squishing, or tossing that huge white grub onto the sidewalk or street. And as a vegan, I’d always feel vaguely guilty about killing them.

But the more I read about garden ecosystems and creating a balance, I am less inclined to label insects good or bad. They all have their place and when the system is in balance, so are the insects. This last summer when I discovered aphids on some yellow coneflowers I left them alone and watched to see what would happen. They did not spread to any adjacent coneflowers nor did they harm the plant. Soon after I discovered them, other insects discovered them too and kept them in check.

The insects I actually had trouble with last summer were slugs. The only thing they ate enough of to cause damage was my potatoes, but it also turned out that it was mostly my fault. I used straw for hilling up the potatoes and because the summer was so wet, it created a slug paradise in the potato patch. Lesson learned.

I totally understand the creepy-crawly factor of insects. I can appreciate them but—Ack! get off my hand! It takes great strength on my part to not freak out when I find a spider on my arm when I stand up from weeding. However, I was left completely baffled when an acquaintance asked me for some advice on killing her weedy lawn. I asked if she was going to do some garden beds. No way she said, I don’t garden and I try to spend as little time as possible outdoors because I can’t stand all the bugs. You mean mosquitoes? I asked. No, all bugs. Even worms and butterflies? All bugs, she said. They all freak me out and I hate them.

There is no way to respond to that.

Another person I know regularly tells me how much she hates mosquitoes, how she wishes a plague would wipe them all from the earth. I understand mosquitoes are a vector for diseases. We have west nile virus here in Minnesota. And I know thousands get sick and die in other parts of the world every year because of malaria. Still, mosquitoes are a vital part of the ecosystem and to wipe them all from the face of the earth would be a huge mistake.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that I have either a spider or old spiderwebs in pretty much every corner or every room of the house. If one should fall into the bathtub or sink, it gets rescued. We get house centipedes of sometimes gigantic size in summer. We don’t kill those either, we just let them be. Waldo, however, likes to snack on them sometimes especially when he can catch one in the bathtub. If a bee or wasp gets in the house, we trap it and release it outdoors. If a fly gets in the house, it gets shooed out the door too or Waldo catches it and eats it.

We sometimes get ants in the kitchen in spring. We sweep them up and take them outside. Now and then they are too many and relocation won’t work. We feel really bad spraying them with vinegar and water. However, I think we may have found a formula that keeps them from coming indoors. Last year in early spring before the ground thawed, we liberally poured cheap grocery store cinnamon around the edges of the kitchen (indoors) where the ants generally come in. It made the kitchen smell lovely, it is nontoxic and not a single ant came into the house. We’ll be trying it again this coming spring and crossing our fingers it wasn’t a strange coincidence.

I understand being afraid of insects. I struggle with it all the time. It has taken me a couple years and lots of careful breathing and self-talk to be able to work in the garden near the anise hyssop when it is blooming because it is humming with bees. To be on the ground, weeding beneath it or next to it with bees buzzing in my ears and around my head is unnerving. As long as I move slowly and carefully, the bees don’t look at me twice. I am not what they want. And yet it is not easy for me to be there but it is getting easier.

Something that helps is taking the time to look closely at the bees while I am standing up and they are busy working. There are an amazing variety of bees and they are fascinating to watch. The buzzing can actually be soothing.

I am beginning to extend this curtesy of observation to other insects like ants and grasshoppers and beetles of various kinds. At first glance they are ugly but the more I look, the more I realize how beautiful they are in their own way. Perhaps more than any other species on earth insects are the most wild, the most uncontrollable. Their wildness is terrifying. But I aim to keep observing them, to keep breathing carefully, to discover if they might not have something to teach me.

Filed under: gardening

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Because the pile of gardening books I already have from the library for my impending vacation isn’t enough, I had to add more. Really though it isn’t my fault and I am sure you will agree.

Today I realized that I’d be having chicks in a little over three months. I personally won’t be laying eggs and hatching chicks, that would be weird even for me. No, I’ll be picking up the three-day old babies from the urban farm store. To that end, I must begin to think about and prepare their indoor home. Plus, I need to read up again about how to care for them. Last February I went through a pile of care and feeding of backyard chickens books and found one I really liked that I will probably buy to have on hand for quick reference. Can I remember what the title is? Of course not!

I felt certain that my February self knew I would not remember the title and that I put it on my library wishlist. So I had to browse my library list. I didn’t find it but I did find a number of gardening books that I had put on my list and forgotten all about so I requested them. Tis the season to learn about new plant varieties and things to try in the garden so I can include everything in one seed order in January or make digging/planting/building plans. I think I requested something like five gardening books.

But then I had to find the chicken book. And since I couldn’t remember and so many of the book covers looked familiar I had to request several, possibly four or five, I’m not sure; it is all rather a blur at this point.

I do, however, want to give myself a big pat on the back for restraint. I see you going all big-eyed whaaa? at me. Yes, restraint. I have over three hundred items on my library wishlist and I looked at them all in search of the chicken book. Don’t you think that I wanted to request some of them? That I only requested the gardening books shows just how fantastic my willpower is. Don’t you agree?

Posting will probably be spotty through Solstice. I am making a selection of dishes from Vegan Richa’s Indian Kitchen. I am going to start the cooking on Sunday for a few things I can make ahead like the dessert and the naan bread and the chutney so I don’t have to spend the entire day Monday in the kitchen chopping things up. Because of course I chose recipes that require lots of different vegetables and they all have to be chopped up. Since I don’t cook except for Solstice, my chopping skills are lacking and in order to make sure none of my fingers are lacking by the end of the meal preparation, I am very slow and careful. But even before that is the grocery list making and then the actual grocery shopping and it always ends up taking more time and energy than I plan for so this year I am trying to remember that.

So, if things are quiet in my little corner, that’s what I’m up to. Or I am at the library picking up all those books I requested.

Filed under: Books, chickens, gardening, In Progress, Library

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I was AWOL from blogging last night because Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie arrived for me at the library and, well, had to dive in! You understand. I’ve been waiting my turn for this since the beginning of October when it was published. But I have been anticipating reading this third and final book in the series since I read the second book back in February.

When the first two books in a trilogy are really good there is always the fear that the third book conclusion might go awry. But I am feeling confident that it will all end spectacularly. Within half a page I was into the book and didn’t want to put it down. Hooray! If only I could have called off from work today and stayed home to read. But what do you say? Sorry, can’t come work today because I am reading a really good book? I so rarely get sick that if I tried to lie and say I was ill, no one would be believe it especially when I turned up the next day looking hale and hearty (though perhaps a little tired from staying up late to finish the book). Besides, I am bad at telling lies anyway and the guilt ruins it all.

Before I go off to read more of this amazing book, I have to tell you about the little pile of other books that came along with this one.

Last week on a gardening blog with holiday gift suggestions, one of the items was a book called Gardening for Geeks. As a geek and a gardener I had to borrow it from the library! But that’s not all.

Now, I’ve had a library card in the Hennepin County library system for as long as I have lived here. I have been requesting library books online for as long as there has been the ability to do so. Why, why, have I never noticed the “related books” stream of book covers? Probably because it is lower down on the page, below the fold so to speak, and I never had occasion to scroll down. For some reason when I was requesting Gardening for Geeks I scrolled down and found this glorious thing!

And then I went crazy.

Oh, that looks like a good book. I’ll request that. That looks good too! Oh yes and that one. I wonder what that one is about? Request. Request. Request.

I now have a tidy pile of gardening books on sustainability, maximizing your food harvest, and DIY green projects that will very likely make me want to install my own solar panels and create wind turbines that also serve as trellises for pole beans. I already really want to build a solar food dehydrator, I don’t need further encouragement.

Since I will have two weeks off very soon I tell myself that I am just stocking up for vacation. And I am. But I also have to remind myself that we need to finish building the chicken coop with its green roof before undertaking any additional projects. Looks like I will be studying up and making a future project list! Bookman has been warned.

Filed under: Books, gardening, In Progress, Library, SciFi/Fantasy Tagged: Hennepin County Library

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I probably should have known better. But so many weeks of mild weather lulled me into complacency. Each weekend I thought, I should empty the rain barrels. But the forecast for the week would be warm and I’d think, eh, I’ll do it next weekend. The last two days we did not get above freezing and Bookman went out this morning to drain the barrels. Too late. Both of them are frozen solid. How could that be? How could 55 gallons of water freeze solid in two days? Well it did. We were hoping for some melt today but the high only made it to 33F/.5C. However, the forecast for the next few days says nights below freezing but days above. So. We opened the hose valves on the barrels for the water to drain should it melt. I hope it melts. Then we can tip the barrels upside down to keep snow out of them and set them up again in spring. Hopefully this one freeze won’t spilt the barrels. Plastic, even when it is thick, is surprisingly fragile when it freezes.

During the week I noticed the butterfly weed pods split open. I have one in the front yard and have never seen it do this, probably because by late summer it gets hidden by the taller purple coneflowers. At first I thought it was milkweed and for the life of me could not remember milkweed growing there at all. I was beginning to doubt my memory when I looked up butterfly weed on the internet and discovered, yes, it does have pods that burst open and looks remarkably like milkweed. I also discovered that the plants really like sandy soil which explains why it is doing so well where I planted it in the back garden, the soil in its bed is pretty sandy. This is a happy stroke of luck. I have a chicken garden that is full of sand buried beneath woodchips and leaves. Some of those seeds are going to get scattered along the sandy margins this week. Come spring I just have to remember where they got planted so if they actually sprout, I won’t accidentally pull them up thinking they are a random unwanted weed.

Speaking of the chickens, Bookman and I went out to work on the coop this afternoon. While our bodies were warmly layered, our hands were not. Work gloves are not insulated and one cannot build in mittens. So we got two rafter support beams up before our hands were so numb we could no longer feel them. Barring any surprise “warm” days or December/January thaws, our coop building is done until spring. We didn’t get as much done as I had hoped, but we made pretty good progress considering we have never done anything like this before. If we don’t get the rafters attached before spring, that will be first on the agenda. Then the fun with plywood and foam insulation begins. We bought a jigsaw in preparation for cutting holes in the plywood sheets for windows, doors and vents. Fun times ahead for spring!

Will you be surprised to know I am already thinking about what to plant in the garden next year? That early seed catalog I got? I’ve paged through it all and marked it all up. I’m planning on trying a new to me green bean in the garden, a variety called “masai” that I have heard is tasty and has a very high yield. I also just read a Mother Earth News article about turnips and learned there are small turnips about the size of a golfball that are mostly Japanese varieties that can be eaten fresh, even sliced up like water chestnuts and used in stir fries for a bit of crunch. This has made me far more excited than I should be. After two years of not having much success with parsnips, I have decided to toss those out and plant more turnips which I do have success with. So next year I’ll plant the big late season turnips and the small early season ones too.

And then of course I am planning what to grow on the green roof of the chicken coop. I decided to have a purple/blue and orange color scheme. All the plants have to be drought tolerant and low growing. So far I have decided on blue fescue grass, pussytoes, pasque flower and catmint (not a cat-attracting variety!). Next autumn I will plant spring blooming bulbs of Siberian squill, grape hyacinth, and orange species tulips. The roof is 10 feet/3 m long and about 2.5 feet/.8 m from peak to edge. I am planting both sides of it so have lots of area to play with and all winter to imagine and plan. If you could see me as I type this, I have the biggest, dopiest grin on my face.

I am still reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I am reading it little bits at a time and I hope, as the gardening posts become few and far between for a while, you won’t mind me updating you on my progress through this beautiful book and the occasional quote. This one is from the chapter called “Seeing:”

It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret to seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.

Isn’t that a beautiful image?

Biking

Biking on the trainer is going great. Zwift added a bunch of workouts a couple weeks ago and I thought I would give one of them a try. I chose an intervals workout that was 60 minutes long. The workout Zwift gives me is based on my FTP (functional threshold power). I expected it would be hard, but holy Lance Armstrong Batman! After the first two intervals I was sucking wind so bad I could not get my watts up to where they were supposed to be. The screen kept flashing “More Power” in big read letters. I yelled at my legs like Captain Kirk to Scottie, “Give me more power!” And my legs yelled back, “I’m givin’ ye all she’s got Cap’n!” And then the five minute interval would be over and “Fail!” would flash up on the screen in big red letters. To my credit I didn’t give up. I failed interval after interval right up to the end. I am apparently not the only one who is having problems because this week a new workout was added: 6-week ftp for beginners. Ha! As the name implies, it is a six-week workout training to improve ftp. I have decided to embark on that in January.

At the moment my riding plan is to add 5 miles/8 km to my Saturday ride each week through the end of the year. Have I mentioned this yet? Sorry if I am repeating myself. Anyway, by doing that I will be putting in a 100 mile/161 km ride on January 3rd. Yesterday I did 70 miles/112.7 km. I’ve done that far on Astrid outdoors but that included rest stops. Yesterday my only rest was a quick bathroom break. My legs were tired but my rear end was a bit sore. A hot shower never felt so good. Everything is feeling just fine today, but then I haven’t gotten on the trainer yet. That will be the real test.

That I think all of this is a whole lot of fun is utterly amazing to me. If this time last year you would have told me about this I would have called you crazy. Now it seems I am the crazy one.

Filed under: biking, chickens, gardening Tagged: Annie Dillard, green roof, Zwift

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The weather is making it really difficult to believe it is November, but I’ve decided to just go with it and try to not be too freaked out by the weirdness of it. Climate change in action? Probably a little bit. But there is also a “Godzilla” el niño in the Pacific that is a major contributor as well. The combination makes part of me very happy because, wow, November and I spent time outdoors today plenty warm in a sweatshirt. The other part me of is worried and a little angry because this is just not right, not normal at all and nobody seems concerned, too busy running around and believing we are somehow lucky. Humph.

On a happy note, I jumped with joy the other day when President Obama said no to the entire Keystone Pipeline project. I want to thank the farmers in Nebraska for all their lawsuits that slowed the entire review process down and gave a lot more people time to comment and protest and government officials, including the president, time to seriously consider what an oil pipeline running across the U.S. from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico would mean in terms of climate change and immediate environmental impacts. So thank you Mr. President. You made me squeal with joy, clap my hands and do a happy dance. My eyes might have gotten a little teary too.

Then there is the news that Vermont Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Senator Jeff Merkley from Oregon have proposed legislation to stop the government from issuing new leases on public lands for fossil fuel extraction. The “Keep it in the Ground Act” would also end all current non-productive leases for fossils fuels on federal land and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific. It would also prohibit offshore drilling in the Arctic and the Atlantic. It is a bold move and Republicans, many of whom don’t “believe in” climate change, are already saying the bill has no chance of passing. It is unfortunate but not surprising. Nonetheless, the fact that anyone is even proposing such legislation is a huge step in the right direction.

Closer to home, I pulled the turnips today. One huge one and three radish sized ones and an actual radish that’s a bit deformed. Bookman is going to boil them and mash them up with a potato to have with dinner tonight. Yum.

We do not rake our leaves up from the yard. We rake them off the sidewalk only. This year we are putting the sidewalk leaves in the chicken garden. Remember it is all sand? We covered it in wood chips in August but those take so long to decompose. Now we are adding leaves. And since it has been windy these last couple of days and the neighbor across the alley from us has a huge tree in their backyard that dropped its leaves, a good many of them blew over and caught themselves along our new chain link fence. I raked them all off the fence and deposited them in the chicken garden while thanking the neighbor’s tree for the donation to our soil-building project.

Bookman and I spent quite a lot of time today looking at pictures of rafters on the internet and discussing physics and geometry. We are ready to frame the roof on the chicken coop and run and sine we are building it as a green roof we have to account for extra weight. What’s the best and easiest way to build five rafters? Lots of rafters are notched on the end of the board that sits on the structure’s frame. Do we need to do that? Also, how steep do we want the pitch of the roof?

We decided from roof peak to frame would be a foot which means the roof pitch is not super steep but steep enough to provide decent drainage for the green roof. So then we had to do some geometry. Kids, if you are sitting in geometry class thinking, this is so stupid, I will never need this in real life, let me tell you that you are wrong! So we worked out the math and started to cut and drill and we changed our minds about how we wanted to build the rafters from mitered triangles screwed to the frame to notched rafters sitting on the frame edge. And we got ourselves so turned around upside down and backwards that we decided to stop and have some chocolate chip cookies.

The cookies made everything better. We decided to go back to our original rafter plan of making triangles that attach to the coop frame. Much easier than figuring out how to make notches. By this time though we had worn ourselves out so we called it quits for the day on coop building. Our building progress today was conceptual rather than actual but we have to have the concept down before we can make it reality. Now we know what we need to do and how to do it so next chance we get should go more smoothly.

That’s the idea anyway.

Something bookish. I am very much looking forward to Richard Mabey’s new book The Cabaret of Plants becoming available in the U.S. The Guardian had an essay by Mabey recently in which he talks about plants and the environment and much of what he talks about is in his book. Things like how beans use echolocation to find their poles and mimosa shrubs have a greater memory-span than bees. I am all agog. I must know more! Please book, hurry up and get published!

Biking

Just a quick note about how indoor biking is going: great!

Achievement unlocked! I did a metric century on Zwift yesterday (100km/ 62.2 miles). For that I get a special jersey my avatar can wear to let everyone know about it. It was actually harder to do on my trainer than on the road. When I am riding outdoors I get to coast on the downhills and get to rest at traffic signals. On the trainer I am pedaling all the time, no stopping. I did stop halfway for about two minutes to run to the kitchen and get a couple energy bites. But golly, did I work! And sweat! Even with a fan blowing right in my face the entire ride I went through both my water bottles, something I only have ever done on the hottest days of summer. But it was good and it was fun and I got lots of kudos from other people riding at the time. The next big goal is an imperial century (100 miles/ 161km). I wonder if I can do it by New Year’s?

Filed under: biking, chickens, gardening Tagged: In which I learn that geometry and algebra are both handy real life skills to have

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It was a cool, rainy week and we even had snow mixed in with the rain one day. And sleet. We had sleet too. But in spite of the snow and sleet, temperatures remain above freezing. There are still trees with leaves. This week temperatures are going to hover around 60F/15C with a few days forecast to be warmer. It’s really crazy how mild it has been. In the just over twenty years I have lived in the Twin Cities, I don’t recall it ever being this warm at this time of the year even when there was an el niño.

With this long mild autumn, the sorrel has regrown and is looking even nicer than it did in the spring. Bookman has plans to make some pesto to enjoy with dinner one night this week. The chard is still going too. And that’s really it, nothing else in the garden any longer except the turnips which will also be made into dinner sometime during the week. If I had known it was going to be so mild this late I would have planted some late season peas and radishes. Too late now. I will have to work on my psychic abilities for next year though so I don’t miss another wonderful opportunity.

Bookman had the entire week off from work and had planned on working on the chicken coop. That did not happen because of the rain. Today, however, was quite comfortable so we spent several hours outside working on it.

We gave up trying to prime all the boards before building with them because it kept raining or was going to rain and they never had time enough for the paint to dry. It isn’t a big deal really, the wood is all treated. The primer is so we can paint the coop later and is easier to get on when you just have a flat board to paint and no corners and angles. But if we continued painting we were never going to be able to start building and building was more important. So.

We got all the upright supports done, the top cross supports for the walls and roof, and the supports for the coop floor. Next step is to figure out how to frame the roof. It’s coming along and we are having fun making it and feeling rather proud of ourselves especially since we have never done anything like this before. Now that we are really making progress, it is beginning to feel like we really are going to have chickens.

Eventually the weather will get too cold for us to work outside and then we will have to start thinking about where the chickens will live indoors. We will be getting them in March as chicks just a few days old and they will have to live in the house under a heat lamp for a while and even when they don’t need the lamp anymore they will still need to live indoors until they get all their feathers and it is warm enough for them to safely move outside, probably around the end of May. So they need a place to live that is big enough and safe from the sure to be curious Waldo and Dickens. We have a few months to get that worked out.

Since there isn’t much to do in the garden any longer, I have picked Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek back up. I wanted to share a thought that caught my attention:

beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do it try to be there.

Biking

I am very much enjoying riding Astrid indoors hooked up to the smart trainer. This week for Halloween, the folks at Zwift had a little fun and and turned all the avatars into skeletons. We all had little scarves on our heads that matched the color and pattern of our jerseys when we had flesh on our bones. They also added jack-o-lanterns on the roadside throughout the course. It was pretty fun. I wonder if we might all get Santa hats for Christmas? Or maybe our bikes will turn into reindeer?

Anyway, they recently added structured workouts as a beta feature. The one workout everyone is trying is the FTP, functional threshold power. It’s a “test” to find out how much power per weight you can maintain for twenty minutes of going all out. They structure it so you get ten minutes of warmup at a cadence of 90 rpm and then you do about twenty minutes of riding at various watts (power is measured in watts), and then you do twenty minutes all out with nice messages telling things like, you are halfway there if you aren’t struggling you should try to go up ten watts. At first I thought, no way but I’ll try. And I did it and it was hard but not as hard as I thought it would be.

After the twenty minutes is over there is ten minutes of cool down riding. Then you get your FTP. I was hoping for 160 but got 157. It will serve as a baseline for training. I will check back with the FTP workout in three months and see if I have improved at all. It’s my understanding that FTP works better than maximum heart rate for training purposes. I will have to do some research to figure out how to use that number and improve it.

I did read a really good book published by Bicycling magazine called The Bicycling Big Book of Cycling for Women. It has all kinds of general stuff about cycling like the different types of riding and the kinds of bikes and lots of good stuff specific to women like core/strength training exercises, nutrition, and how our hormones affect performance because they do and it isn’t our imagination. Very informative I thought. It’s a good book for novice to intermediate level cyclists, is written by a woman, and is encouraging and motivating as well as fun.

You know you have fallen in love with a sport when you read books about it. I’m pretty sure I’m a goner.

Filed under: biking, gardening Tagged: Annie Dillard

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The leaves on Melody Maple have all turned golden and after a beautiful week of sun, we had a cold, windy, rainy Friday that blew all the leaves off the tree. Autumn leaves on trees are definitely gorgeous, but if you ask me, the show isn’t quite over even after they have fallen off. When I walked up to my house after work Friday, I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of my leaf strewn sidewalk. It’s like a piece of the Yellow Brick Road came from Oz to take up temporary residence in front of my house.

There are still plenty of leaves on trees though. The city-planted boulevard tree, a different kind of maple than the one in my yard, still has its leaves. It is currently half green and half red-orange. My apple trees still have their leaves too, though not as many as before Friday. Apples are not striking autumn trees. Their leaves mostly turn a pale yellow and drop off but the entire tree is never yellow at once. The leaves do their thing on an individual basis and almost as soon as they change color they fall so the tree is mostly always green with the leaf density getting fewer and fewer until they have all fallen.

Of the asters that were blooming last week only the aromatic one is still going. The mum

is still going too. And in the herb spiral, there are a few calendula that the frost did not kill and they are valiantly blooming yellow and orange.

Today Bookman and I spent some time in the vegetable garden pulling out dead tomato plants, squash, beans and various other things. In spite of the frost we had, the weather here remains unusually warm for this time of year and one of the tomatoes I pulled out was resprouting as were a good many of the beans. It is really kind of crazy. I don’t recall an October since I’ve lived in Minnesota that has been this warm.

We harvested most of our Brussels sprouts and had them for dinner tonight. Neither of us has ever had Brussels sprouts before. At their mention I have only ever heard people say, yuck! There are so few people I have encountered who say yum that they seem to be the freaks. But over the past few years I have had enough people tell me that I had to try them and the plants themselves are really odd looking, I decided fine, this year I’ll give them a try. And you know what? They are delicious! Bookman liked them too. That means I’ll be planting them again next year. And next year I will know they need a lot more room to grow than I gave them this year. Success!

We have not tried the okra we grew yet. We didn’t get enough at any one time to do something with so we would chop them up and put them in the freezer. This winter Bookman is planning on using them in a stew or two. When he does, I’ll try to remember to let you know what we thought.

We did not work on the chicken coop today, instead we chose to work in the garden. We did spend some time figuring out a piece of building engineering that had us baffled. We both have the day off from work tomorrow to celebrate our wedding anniversary and plan to make a trip to the hardware store to get the brackets we decided we need. Then we have plans to work on the coop in the afternoon since the day is supposed to be sunny and mild.

As we were out in the garden today I noticed the bees have all gone. There was one lonely bee on the hyssop that is normally abuzz with activity. No butterflies about either. Or mosquitoes! The chickadees and juncos are here in abundance now. We get the dark-eyed juncos here and I do love them ever so much. They are such pleasingly round birds.

The squirrels are quite enjoying the extended warm weather, using it to fatten up even more. This week they took the opportunity to fatten up on the pumpkins that were still in my garden! We had about ten of them and the squirrels ate five. Bookman saw them at it one morning before he left for work and ran out and rescued the ones they had not gotten to yet. Not only am I disappointed about the squirrel raid of the pumpkin patch, but next year I am going to have pumpkin coming up all over the garden from them dropping the seeds everywhere. We got enough for a few pies and other pumpkin goodies, just not as much as we were looking forward to! @%*$#& squirrels!

Biking

My smart trainer arrived in the mail during the week. Just in time too because while I could have bundled up for an outdoor ride yesterday, it was gray and blustery and damp from the rain the day before and would not have been any fun. So I set up my trainer and had a great time!

My trainer is a Cyclops Powerbeam Pro with ANT+. What that means is that I plug the ANT+ usb dongle into my computer and it talks to the trainer. There are a number of cycling sites that can be integrated with a smart trainer. They show you video and tell your trainer to increase resistance when you are going uphills and make it easier when going downhill. They measure your energy output and miles and all that. It is pretty nifty.

In addition to the trainer I got a special trainer tire so I don’t wear out my road tire. I took my road tire off Astrid’s back wheel and put on the new one. Since my double flat over the summer I am getting pretty good at the whole tire thing! It didn’t take long to do at all. I did have to borrow Bookman’s thumbs though to get the last bit of tire pushed into the wheel rim, but other than the brief assist, the tire was all my doing as was changing the wheel quick release mechanism for the trainer compatible one. It took both of us to get the bike hooked into the trainer, Bookman lifted while I kneeled on the floor and directed the parts to where they needed to connect.

The cycling program I am using with the trainer is a new one called Zwift. It basically turns indoor cycling into a kind of video game. Riders get experience points, and special prizes for accomplishments and when you level up you get access to more customization goodies like a new jersey for your avatar or a new bike.

As you ride around there are three competitive segments on the course for which you can get points and a special jersey to wear until someone else beats your time. There is a big hill for which you can get king/queen or the mountain, a sprint segment, and an overall best lap time. The course is about 6 miles/9 kms.

It is so much fun! I did 9 laps yesterday and even though the virtual miles were less than I have been riding on the road, I worked harder and my legs were really tired. I was really good for about five laps and then I began feeling tired. I started telling myself I could take it easy, I didn’t have to sprint. But then the sprint segment would roll up in front of me and the timer would flash up on the screen with the best time, my best time and where I was at that moment in comparison and gosh darn it, I had to try!

The sport of cycling is predominantly men. There are more and more women joining to be sure, but the crowd is mostly male. It is that way on the roads when I am biking around and it is that way on Zwift. The plus side of that is, while the men on the Zwift discussion boards complain about never being able to get close to wearing the KOM jersey because there are too many better riders out there, I, a newbie to the sport, got to wear the QOM jersey twice yesterday. I did not get a green sprint winner jersey. I suck at sprinting. Nor did I get to wear the orange best lap jersey. But because there are so few women, I think of the 250 people riding in Zwift while I was on about eight were women, I have a chance at those jerseys and I find that highly motivating.

So it appears my outdoor biking is done for the season. But Zwift and my new smart trainer look like they will be an excellent indoor alternative. Yay!

Filed under: biking, gardening Tagged: Zwift

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