headline of the day
Flowers regenerated from 30,000-year-old frozen fruits, buried by ancient squirrels
from the comments
Erica, kale will grow very nicely in a container. It likes the cold, as you know. I don’t have personal experience with deer (rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, birds and lately a raccoon!). But I have heard of some things that can help if you don’t have a tall fence.
Fragrant bars of soap hung from branches or a bamboo stick, etc., about 30 inches from the ground. Think Irish Spring. Or human hair (ask a barber for trimmings) in mesh bags three feet off the ground. Plant spray made of three raw eggs in a gallon of water. Supposedly deer hate that. Also, row covers can help for a while, anyway.
I’ve also had success with mirror mobiles. I had one that was just a long fishing-wire string with small round mirrors attached. I laced it from a piece of wire protruding from a fence and nothing bothered my garden for ages. It would swing around in the sun and wind and it must have freaked out the varmints. Then the Iowan managed to knock it off onto the brick walk and broke a lot of it.
So I bought some very thin fishing wire and a bunch of little mirrors from a craft store. One mirror, glue, attached to the back of an identical mirror. Either one string or attach multiple strings to, say, a wire hanger, which is not pretty but will do the job. Speaking of, you also might string fishing wire between posts in the garden because supposedly that confuses deer.
Good luck!
DIY, Growing Food in Winter
These are lettuce and pea seeds I put in last week. They are growing in my back yard, in a plastic container that held spinach. Yes, it is cold. And it freezes and sleets and ices up, still. But this is winter gardening and people do it even in colder climates than northern Virginia.
You just wash a plastic container that has a lid, punch some holes in the top and bottom, put in some soil (I use a seeding mix) and sprinkle in seeds. Water, close the container, label it with a permanent marker. Place it outside in a sunny area. Now you have a greenhouse environment for your seeds to grow. I may need to transplant these into a larger container before it gets warm enough to plant in the garden.
I also have some flowers and pampas grass sprouting.
Your seeds really want to grow, even in harsh conditions. Like us, they are animated by the life force.
Owlet Caterpillars of Eastern North America
My same friend Susan who brought us the critically acclaimed Omega Institute in Your Pants, 2010 edition today supplied the following list, from the book Owlet Caterpillars of Eastern North America by David L. Wagner, Dale F. Schweitzer, J. Bolling Sullivan, and Richard C. Reardon:
Sordid Snout
The Herald
Feeble Grass Moth
Dead-wood Borer
The Betrothed
The Little Wife
Serene Underwing
The Consort
Dejected Underwing
Inconsolable Underwing
Tearful Underwing
Sad Underwing
The Penitent
Sappho Underwing
Youthful Underwing
Darling Underwing
Read more
Sign of the Times (and the Place)
Half a dozen Russian speakers, all under thirty, packed up their car after a weekend rental of one of my neighbor’s cottages here in the Driftless Regional Resort Region. A few may have glanced at me as I scrabbled in the dirt, digging up buried money and muttering, “I am uncovering my wealth.”
Go Bury Money, Like Now
I’m sharing a New Year’s tradition aimed at drawing wealth to you. I have no idea about its origins.
Take a bill or some coins and put the money in a plastic bag. The amount does not matter. Bury it outside your front door while saying, “I am burying my poverty.” Mark it with a stone or something you can find the next day. Seriously, people have not been able to find their buried money the next day. Do this on New Year’s Eve, before midnight. Then, on January 1, dig up the money while saying, “I am uncovering my wealth.” Do this anytime during the 24-hour period on New Year’s Day.
If you don’t have ground outside your door, not to worry, take a pot and bury your money there and place it outside your door or on the balcony. If that doesn’t work, take a bowl and cover the money with a wash cloth and put it beside the door. This is about symbolism and intent. Do not spend the money, ever. Put it away. Some say that if you spend the buried money, you’ll lose money.
If you follow these instructions, unexpected money will show up for you in the next year. Maybe because I believe, this always happens for me. Always. At least in the years the Iowan has not found, and spent, my buried money. I have heard about people who eventually have taken stacks of buried money and donated it to a good cause. For instance, they have donated it to a church or favorite charity and report all is well.
Or you could leave it tucked away in its individual sandwich bags in a hope chest or drawer. And laugh to think about what your heirs will think to find it.
from the comments
I love it when a garden plant takes off like that, although sometimes it makes me worry that the soil has some kind of errant isotope in it (50s giant ant movies). I had a banana pepper plant like that a couple of years ago that must have crossed with an anaheim pepper plant because it had the cool sweetness of a banana pepper and a bite, too. That one plant produced like the one Derek mentions here.
Also, isn’t there a dish served in Mexico called Pulpo in su Tincto? Octopus cooked in its own ink. Why is there so much gastronomic technique that heads straight for morbid irony? Lark tongues in honey, porcupine-kabobs…. Maybe it’s because tired minds (mine) register form even in a daze.
Mistletoe Shortage
There’s a mistletoe shortage in Texas, due to drought. But some people don’t care.
“In 1901 you needed to be under the mistletoe to steal a kiss in public,” said Mr. George. “In 2011, you can do just about anything you want in public and it goes unnoticed.” When asked about the shortage, Mr. George was confident there would be no love lost.
Quote out of context
Arugula is a type of lettuce that is offensive to some conservatives.
No Mums and Pansies Here
“We begin, often enough, by hoping to knock the neighbors’ eyes out with the largest mass of color since the lions ate the Christians.” Garden writer Henry Mitchell.
I have my own variation of Henry’s ways. When it gets cold, I like to bust out South American tropicals to keep the pumpkins company. I. Will. Not. Submit.
Full Disclosure
I’m not cut out for the Back-to-Basics life.
The last few years seem to have been on repeat: By late winter my body is craving an unprocessed, detoxed existence in the sun filled with hard work, and less digitized shenanigans mediated by an ongoing and evermore invasive variety of screens. So nose in a seed pack, fingers in the soil I get to work preparing and planting while dreaming about making cheese from scratch and creating handmade paper. Horrifically, I actually begin to think that one of those back-to-the-land communes could be kind of cool–communes got a bad rap, but they could be something special. Ugh. What is wrong with me?
Further disclosure at maldita lengua.
30 for Thirty Days, The End.
The last day of my thirty-day project. I don’t claim it as art, just something completed.
We Won Backyard Garden of the Year
Kristopher designed this four years ago. Subcontractors did the structures and masonry, we did the garden. This year, the garden grew into the space it was meant to be.
Something I’m Working On…
I’ll say no more for the moment.
Earthquakes and Hurricanes
Irene roughed up my flowers and our psyches. Both are recovering nicely. As the storm moved toward us Friday night, we popped out to the John Prine concert. We sat on the expansive lawn of northern Virginia’s Wolf Trap concert pavilion. People were mellow, nibbling picnic food, drinking wine, chastened by a week of unexpected earthquakes and then, what next, a hurricane.
Night settled in and I pulled my wrap around me. I was carried away by the opening act, British singer/guitarist Richard Thompson. I closed my eyes and soared. He was dynamite, pumped up maybe by the hurricane mustering strength in the Atlantic. Then the Iowan bolted. He’d gotten a call — Home Depot, a shipment had arrived, the backup sump pump might be in. He was in natural disaster mode. So we left, rushed for the depot. I didn’t mind. The Iowan had talked me into going to the concert. I would have sat at home working and worrying. I got to see Thompson, I’d seen Prine several times. I got home and readied for the next day.
There was no sump pump backup (but of course). I went to bed, got up early on Saturday and shoveled copy all day as the winds blew and rains slammed. The Iowan went next door for happy hour, hurricane parties are big here. He was looking out the window when a big limb crashed down on the neighbors’ car. Later, the wind knocked down half of my “green screen” on the back porch, my outdoor living room, a mesh netting of climbing plants I put in to replace the running bamboo (!) the ambassador’s wife placed there as privacy for the (now gone) hot tub. The Iowan said “we’ll fix it in the morning.” But he got on the phone, and I got my little hammer and nails and slipped outside. I climbed up on the white wicker settee and tap tap tap in the wind and rain and set it to rights before the yelling started: “GET IN HERE WHAT ARE YOU DOING WE ARE HAVING A HURRICANE!”
Finally, to bed around midnight to sleep in fits and starts. The Iowan stayed up, prowling the blue house, stacks of old towels at the ready to fight off any water encroachment from the not-so-finished side of the basement to the other. I found the stub of a cigar on the porch the next day, dregs of red wine in a crystal stem on a side table next to the back door. I could see him in the mind’s eye, leaving the the covered back porch, stalking across the open deck, glaring into the black sky, pelted by rain but staring Irene down, daring her, don’t even think about it.
Sunday. Rainy but calmer. We were still standing, a few small tree limbs down (thank you, my talented tree trimmer). The sump pump held. We never lost power. I worked into the early evening.Sunday night. Drained.
We’ve had a week.
Why I Garden
We’re still dealing with aftershocks and looking forward to this weekend’s hurricane. So I’m thinking about cats. Not really. More like green things. I thought maybe even non-gardeners might appreciate this little meditation on the growing game.
Tabling and Cutting Broom-Corn
Fig. 3 from Broom-Corn and Brooms. A Treatise on Raising Broom-Corn and Making Brooms, on a Small or Large Scale. Circa 1879.
I expect I will be working on rather a small scale.
question out of context
You gave your talk at the TED conference last week wearing your mushroom death suit. How does the suit work?
OFFER: Garden Creeper
Posted to Dubuque Freecycle group Wed Jun 22, 2011 8:55 am (PDT)
You sit on this and move along pulling with your feet while you weed. It has a compartment for tools or weeds. Prefer quick pickup.
from the comments
I had someone bring in a grounder to take out a large network of bamboo roots next to the house. The hard, shallow mesh made growing anything there impossible. I cleaned and dug and amended. But the soil was dead. Everything died there. I finally planted two large packages of field peas. I remembered some farm tract I read long ago, I don’t even know why, about how field peas can rescue poor land. I had a vision of tiny bean roots breathing oxygen into the soil. It is working. Plants are growing there now.
The ground isn’t mad at me anymore.
What if the U.S.D.A subsidized gardens?
Roger Doiron of Kitchen Gardeners International, a Maine-based nonprofit, has put together this nifty graphic that shows the planting layout of the White House vegetable garden – which is more an ideal than a typical garden, but not uncommon in its choice of plants – and then re-imagines how it would look if it were to reflect the crops that the federal government supports. The change is pretty stark. The data is culled from the Environmental Working Group’s fantastic farm subsidy database.
This hits straight to the heart of the heartland.
Message in a Dream
A neighbor asked me over last week to look at his American elm seeds. He is trying to grow new trees from a large healthy one that somehow has managed to escape Dutch elm disease. This is part of an effort to grow new American elms in our county in Virginia. But the neighbor has sprouted only a few seeds from dozens of attempts. And they don’t look so good.
My yard was very conservative when I moved in last summer. Within weeks it was bright and beautiful with exotic flowers that bloomed until December, then burst into life again a couple of months later. This earned me a bit of a witchy reputation. But my experience is limited to flowers, fruits and vegetables. I am not a tree person. But I told the neighbor I would see what I could find out. I started researching online. I found some information, but it was confusing. I was frustrated. Later in the week, I had a dream. I was walking with my father in the woods. He was the kind of person who could go straight to a stand of trees that had been declared extinct, or nearly. No big deal. It was like he could smell them out.
In the dream, my father bent down and started digging with his hands in the forest soil, pulling away the organic matter on top. He pushed deep into the packed earth and pulled that up in his fists. He held out the rich soil to me. I woke up thinking about the elms.
Yesterday, I told the neighbor I wanted some of the seeds. I mentioned the soil in the woods where I often roam near the trail near here (the Iowan sits on the bench and waits for me to get my fill). I did not mention the dead father and dream. But, I said, “I’m in.”
Death Bloom
Last weekend, Daryl cut down our 25-year-old sweetgum tree. Dallas soil is wrong for sweetgums; it is too alkaline and causes iron deficiencies in the trees. But the prior owners had planted one, and it was beautiful, so we fretted over it for the 20 years we have lived here. Daryl would give it iron supplements, but it always looked anemic. It was beautiful, even as it failed to thrive. Last year, though, the tree was spectacular. The leaves were a rich green, its foilage full, and we thought perhaps a tap root had broken through the alkaline soil to a richer level. We realized this spring that last year’s performance had been the tree’s death bloom. It called on all of its resources for a final showing, in an attempt to make seeds that would carry on. It used itself up in a glorious display, then died.
This here is scarecrow country
Since a few years ago, when I started properly trying to get to know the part of rural Britain where I live, instead of just repeatedly driving from my house to B&Q, Starbucks, Borders and Sainsbury’s and missing all the interesting bits, I’ve taken photographs of around 300 scarecrows – or “mawkins”, as they’re known here in Norfolk. In order to do this, I’ve got off trains before my scheduled stop and made myself late for meetings, almost been run over at least three times, and put my life at risk trespassing on a variety of East Anglian allotments. I’ve snapped scarecrows who look like floating ghosts, scarecrows who look like futuristic horse people from outer space, scarecrows with their own pet scarecrow foxes, chav scarecrows, disco scarecrows, scarecrows with drawn-on gnashing teeth that could haunt your dreams more than any George A Romero film.
from the comments
At bean salad’ll stay like it is in the compost pile while all the rest goes dirt vagina.
