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.
Captain Beefheart’s Ten Commandments of Guitar Playing
4. Walk with the devil
Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the “devil box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you’re bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
(From WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. Via Brian Beatty.)
tweet of the day
Quote out of context
Arugula is a type of lettuce that is offensive to some conservatives.
Redington
“And this is where it starts.”
Living in the county long enough, you begin to feel that you know every road, every creek, and even every cow; but there are still places hiding out there, waiting, scattered amid the leaves, in the lonely hollows.
But where are we? Where have we gone?
Somewhere Beyond the Corn.
Read more
tweet of the day
headline of the day
Giant carrot proposes to woman in China
dear clusterflock
Post a photo of your fridge.
question out of context
You gave your talk at the TED conference last week wearing your mushroom death suit. How does the suit work?
Lemon Cuke
My friend had his lemon cucumbers out for sale at the Hanover (Illinois) market this morning, and I bought this one. And I bought his mixed greens, his kale, and his oregano, as well as zucchini and new potatoes from an Elizabeth (Illinois) man who also sells grass-pastured lamb and beef. (I still have some of his lamb in my freezer compartment, so I bought no meat today.) Also, four little zucchini muffins from a woman selling baked goods, jam, and pickles.
It is a low-key market, and that is what makes it fun, as many buyers and sellers seem to know one another.
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from the comments
I need to give pickled beets another try. I often roast beets in winter, and I like them, but they’re just too sweet for me to take more than a couple of bites. I’ve always associated pickled beets with sad meals with old people, but now that I’m old myself, I think it’s time to embrace them.
tweet of the day
Herschel, the Magnificent Jew
Old Jews Telling Jokes, via John Gruber
from the comments
I once had an Uncle Glenn. He was what you call “kin,” but we saw more of him than of some blood. He had a big round ruddy face, and I used to think it was because of all the beets he ate. As it turns out, he was just drunk all the time.
In Case You’re Wondering About Beets
Sheila and I were talking about beets. In case you were wondering, you don’t have to limit yourself to beets from a can. Pickled beets are good. Raw beets in a salad are delicious. They also can be served with a side of cottage cheese. Another way to enjoy beets is to roast, peel and toss with balsamic vinegar, olive oil and a bit of thyme.
I like to juice beets with carrots and celery. You also could juice a beet with one-half lemon and two-three apples. Don’t throw away the leaves, they can have a bitter taste but are very nutritious. Beets are potent and can be a problem for some people, especially at first. But you can avoid nausea by chasing your beets with a raw apple. Beginners are advised to juice half a medium-sized beetroot once a week, slowly increasing amounts.
Sometimes urine will turn red after eating beets in quantity. This is called beeturia, or the passage of pink or red urine. The effect is temporary. Beets provide anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, and detox support. In addition, the betaine in beetroot is an amino acid said to have anti-cancer properties.
headline of the day
Archaeologists discover saber-toothed vegetarian
Kasoundi
Select your mix of chillies and slice them up. Separate the seeds from the flesh if you want a milder outcome. Kasoundi is not a macho hot-sauce contest. Avoid the temptation to construct an edible inferno, because all those subtle flavours will be lost. Look, you should just throw out the seeds.
The Chilly Hand of Coincidence
This image from Lydia reminds me powerfully of the scary 1933 Betty Boop Snow White cartoon I saw on TV in the 1960s and which I shared with Deron just the other night. The wicked stepmother turns a roto-scoped Cab Calloway (Koko the Clown) into a spooky daikon radish, and the ghosts have icicle fingers.
Oh. Dem Watermelons.
Grew up on this mess. No wonder I bent so twisted.
from the moderated comments
Actually, I love the fuck out of the damned things too… Hell, I get off making shit out of them. One year at Halloween, I made a scarecrow man out of a bunch of em and scared the shit out of a bunch of people. I even used to talk to it when I got drunk. He even became my best friend. Eventually, he rotted though. Never did try to make another scarecrow out of gourds after that….
A (Soup) (Swap) Conundrum
I actually pondered hosting a Soup Swap. Pondered it briefly. I really like soup, both the making and the eating of it, and besides, I need to “put myself forward” out here in the Back of Beyond if I am not going to drift out beyond the Back of Beyond and into La-La Land.
But I got to thinking about how few friends I have here and about how a Soup Swap, like a Book Club, sort of demands that the participants know one another at least a little. Else you start drifting into the territory staked out by Amway, Avon, and Tupperware.
Plastics.
the classroom reinvented
Slate ran a contest to reinvent the American classroom. Greg Stack and Natalia Nesmeainova won with their “Fifth Grade Exploration Studio.” If features an outdoor story circle, a “teacher base” and crops:
from the comments
Also — I knew a kid when I was in my early teens (Bob Good, I shit you not) who once had an escaped Chimpanzee break into his house, beat the crap out of him, drink a bottle of Mr. Clean, and eat a bag of potatoes before the police got him. That boy was not right after that, and the story dogged him his whole life.
from the comments
Did I ever tell y’all about the time Daryl and I went to a reading by Mark Richard? It was in Dallas at the Border’s at Preston/Royal, and he was doing a tour for Fishboy. I remember being beside myself that we were going to hear him read. Only six or seven people were there — I couldn’t believe it. Anyway, the reading was great, and he took questions, and someone asked whether there was a story behind his writing of “Happiness of the Garden Variety.” And he said, well, he and his friend, Steve, were living in this place where they did work in change for rent, and there was this horse named Buster, and they really did pull it out into the bay after it died of bloat in the tomato patch. But when it washed up at the motel, it wasn’t really at the Armada Inn, like in the story. It was at the Ramada Inn. He’d changed that part.
One Way Ticket to Mars
“This is not a suicide mission. The astronauts would go to Mars with the intention of staying for the rest of their lives, as trailblazers of a permanent human Mars colony,” Schultz-Makuch, with Washington State University, and Davies, at Arizona State, write in this month’s Journal of Cosmology.
“Their role would be to establish a base camp to which more colonists would eventually be sent, and to carry out important scientific and technological projects,” the scientists wrote.
Because of the harsh radioactive environment in space, the authors propose people in in their mid-50s or 60s would be the right age to go, Schultz-Makuch told Discovery News. The lifestyle would be tough, but the authors figure the space pioneers would have about a decade to work on a settlement.
I would go in a second if Cindy would. We like the desert. Also: I like to look for rocks, Cindy likes to sleep a lot, and we don’t eat meat so growing vegetables would suit us fine. I wonder if UPS delivers, though? We could fix it up real nice.
