It’s been too long since I reported on one of these. We’re outside most of the time these days, but it’s mostly doing yard and garden work. We do notice the wildflowers: how could we not!
To Play in a Wild Garden
Connected At The Roots writes about children in nature, and usually reports on going out into the wild, several kids at once, with magical results. Recently there was an interesting post on kinesthetic adventure at home (but still outside).
This inspired me to make our rather wild property more kinesthetically challenging. Amie is always hanging and climbing anyway. The opportunity presented itself when we had some large trees removed by our neighbor. Oh, he regaled Amie and her buddies with a true show of how-does-he-do-that-climbing and hands-over-the-ears-chainsaw noises and heart stopping toppling of trunks and then the gasp-inducing thump…
One of the trees was a big pine, which we were advised not to keep as firewood. So I asked my neighbor to chop it up into stumps of several heights: for around-the-campfire seats, and for stepping and jumping.
Now we just need to wait until they stop oozing sticky tar, then we’ll sand them down and place them. Amie already walked on them (of course, I mean: they’re there!), and later on complained that her shoes were stuck to the pedals of her bike.
I also asked the tree guys not to shred the smaller poles that are useless as firewood but that we can use for teepees, either for beans or for housing.
We have several areas on our property that are quite civilized, like our vegetable garden and the herb garden, the small strip of lawn-to-be in front (it’s all buckwheat at the moment), and the “practical area,” where the clothes are line-dried and firewood and building materials are collected.
Then there is the fenced-off backyard, which is a bit like an old forest: old trees rising up, their branches and leaves out of reach up high, but below, in the pine-needle duff, roots and twigs threaten to trip you up… unless you’re used to running along a mature forest floor. The adventure actually begins at our patio, which is made of bricks sticking this way and that, and some oddly place planks sticking up…
Then there are two areas to the front which are mixed old and young forest. The saplings crowd the massive tree trunks of the old trees, sending their branches this way or that – oops, don’t let them poke out an eye! The ground is even more treacherous there, with fallen logs and cut off stumps hidden underneath decades of accumulated leaves. We plan to have a narrow path in each of these patches: hidden and shady, leading to some structure made from tree and moss…
Planted Potatoes
Three days ago I chitted the Dark Red Norland (early) and the Keuka Gold (mid-season) and they were all callused over and ready to be planted yesterday. I planted (sowed?) about 1 lb of each.
I dug 3 trenches each 8 feet long (the length of our raised beds), added some well-rotted cow manure to the bottom, then put in the potatoes eyes up. Then I covered them with 3″ of soil, tamped the soil with my spade and watered them. We should see the plants coming up in a couple of weeks, then I’ll start adding soil as the stems grow until the trenches are filled.
That means my rows were not 2.5 feet apart (as is recommended), but only about 1 foot apart (our raised beds are 4 feet wide). Also, I put in each seed about 6 inches apart, not the recommended 8-12″. Gotta make do with the space we got. Call it “intense”.
That’s BED 5 filled to capacity (and beyond). This is the relevant part of my garden layout (so far) in Plangarden:
Or click on My Garden Design to see the entire garden (it changes every day; and I’m still debating whether I will get the subscription – $20/year, so I don’t know how long it will be available for you to see). Finished, unplanted beds are in light purple, whereas finished and planted ones (only BED 5 so far) are in brown. The beds I still need to dig and/or fill are in light green.
Today the tree work was completed, so I can go ahead and plant without fear of things being trampled or crushed (there was a lot of crushing: we’ll be resowing our lawn). So tomorrow, if the weather allows, I will plant BED 8 with onions (from sets), the broccoli, kale and leek seedlings, and radish seed. Perhaps I might even finish double-digging BED 6 while filling up BED 7 (which is all dug out)…
Amie Talks about Death Again
In the evening Amie watched March of the Penguins. We had shown it to her about half a year ago but she wasn’t interested then. This time she was, going “oh so cute!” and so forth, but really paying attention when the little chick dies of exposure and the mother mourns over it.
– what happened to it?
– it died because it was too cold.
– but no, it didn’t get dead. Look, it’s moving, like this. [makes sad little movements with her head]
– no, sweetie, it’s dead.
– what is the mother trying to do now?
– the mother is so sad she is trying to steal a chick from another mother.
– stealing isn’t nice.
– see, the pack doesn’t allow it and the chick is back with its mother.
When we went to bed she wanted to sit in the pile of blankets to keep her egg warm. Then she wanted to talk about the penguins.
– I especially want to talk about when the chick got dead. I liked that.
– you liked it? Do you mean it made you happy?
– no.
– so you mean you are interested in it.
– yes. It’s interesting.
I had to explain again why the chick had died.
– but I didn’t see any blood.
– it wasn’t wounded, it was just too cold.
– can I have a baby penguin? It’s not too cold here.
– it’s too warm here. Penguins like it cold, but not too cold.
Seconds later:
– promise me we will die next to one another? [this while holding my head, her nose nearly touching mine, her eyes locked to mine]
– I can’t promise that, sweetie. We don’t know when we’ll die. It’s mostly not in our control.
– we could die in an accident.
– yes, or when we grow old and it’s time.
– but we don’t die on the cross. Only Jesus died on the cross. What is Jesus’ Mama’s name?
– Mary – not the Mary we know. A different Mary.
– What’s her last name?
– I don’t know.
– Jesus died and then Mary died too. They went far away. As far as… Auntie R. That was a long drive.
A little later:
– Mama, can we have another baby? But I want it to be a girl. We can call it Amie.
– but you are Amie. So we couldn’t call her Amie!
– but what if I die? And I still want to pinch your arm? [arm pinching is a leftover from nursing: she does it when tired or sad and when falling asleep]
I was dumbfounded. A weird thing, that statement: “Amie” (II) would still be pinching my arm, and that seemed to make her feel better about dying. Such a strange concept of identity, such fearless exploration of what death is and what it means to her! She soon fell asleep.
I’ve written about how I want to communicate to my daughter about death here.
Independence Days – Week I
Baby spinach microgreens
This is my first installment of the Independence Days Challenge.
Plant something. We double-dug three raised beds and constructed the bases of four 4×4 potato bins. I chitted the early potatoes, and those and many seeds and seedlings are ready to go in this week (will update when that happens; it’s raining currently). We also waiting for our neighbor to bring down some trees and prune others, so our garden will get more sunlight.
Harvest something. We’ve been eating our Black-seeded Simpson lettuce from cold frame-now turned raised bed for weeks now. I’m experimenting: in one row I cut the outer leaves, in the other I cut out the inner hearts. We’ll see which regenerates the best (I think it’s the hearts). Also been munching on microgreens from seedling thinnings and “onion shavings”, and I tasted a Stevia seedling yesterday: yum! O yes, and the baby spinach that bolted when I “hardened it off” in 90F weather, or rather, when I brought it back to the 68F basement! LAL: Live And Learn. LOL.
Preserve something. I’m debating on whether to fire up the small chest freezer we got on Freecycle. DH complains that I don’t buy enough groceries for a whole week, which necessitates extra trips to the store – and the library, as it’s on the way ;). It’s true, I lack foresight when purchasing food. It just hurts to shop for produce that I know will be growing in our own garden very soon. In any case, this challenge will help me make a start! For instance, I could cook double the amount of shepherd’s pie while the minced beef is on sale, and freeze half; I could start practicing canning with store bought tomatoes when they come on sale…
Reduce waste. Our guest-suite project has generated a lot of reusable construction wood, which we’re storing in the shed. We’re sure to get a nice three-bin composting system out of it, and some planters, and perhaps a rustic fence. We’ve made nitrogen recycling a habit, as well as toilet cloth: good riddance to yet another disposable! And as for the usual waste, we’ve “pruned” our house and are improving our record through the Riot for Austerity: April was our sixth month.
Preparation and storage. I am working hard on my skill – wheelthrown pottery: that counts for preparedness, right? As for storage, I still need to put our emergency stores together and should start making a wish list of what we still need. Then we should test our camping equipment in our backyard. Another kick in the butt!
Build community food systems. Our town has some vegetable gardens here and there, but ours is the first in our neighborhood. As our gardening is so in your face – on a (small) hill, facing the street – most neighbors drive by slowly to check out our progress, wave at me digging, or shout “looks promising!” Last week a neighbor popped by and asked if I would advise her on her own veg garden! I said I have no experience but a lot of gardening books. Another neighbor drove up our long and narrow driveway to consult about the mulch and compost we’re using. The “top secret” green community project has stalled as we wait for replies: hopefully I can let you in on that soon.
Eat the food. We’re finishing off the last of the blueberries that I froze last season. Still working on the blueberry freezer jam I made last year – I cooked it too long, so it’s too thick to spread, but Amie loves it as “popsicle scoop”.
Good Fences and all that…
Eek! The joke in my banner has come true.
First Rabbit of the Season
Two of them brazenly hopped right by the bed with the lettuces – our only crop, so far! They passed by it either because they didn’t notice the food, which I doubt, or because they were spooked when they spotted me in the window. I assumed the latter and instantly, in the rain, erected a makeshift fence around the cold frame.
It just brings home to us that we are going to have to erect a fence around the main veggie garden soon. We’ll do that as soon as the tree work around and above that area is done. It’ll mainly keep out dogs, rabbits, and skunks. I’ve never seen woodchucks (groundhogs) around here, or raccoons, but we might try to fence them out as well. We have seen deer, though never that far onto our property. As for the squirrels and chipmunks, well, they’re such good climbers, and what with all the overhanging trees it seems like I will surely lose the fight, so I’m not going to bother.
I’m thinking to reuse the chainlink fence that the previous owner used to keep her dogs in. It sticks out about three foot up above ground and one foot down into the soil. We’ll line it with chicken wire, and we’ll also lay chicken wire underground, horizontally, for no less than one foot, to stop the burrowers. If any woodchucks and raccoons show up, I’ll add a chickenwire overhang around the perimeter to deter their climbing. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll slowly be hidden as we grow our vines on it.
Learning a New Skill: Pottery
It’s raining which is good: the soil needs it. So I’m stuck inside, with some time to catch up on research, and to show off my creations from my first session of wheel-thrown pottery!
Here they are, thrown, dried, kilned and glazed:
Their beautiful colors (glazes made by my teacher, Lisa Dolliver) are hard to capture in photographs. I love each imperfection, and the fact that they never turned out to be what I had intended them to be. I sit down at the wheel and play, letting the clay dictate. I signed up for another session and this time will try to be more goal-oriented: try to recreate something, for instance, try to get its shape and volume right.
Yesterday I made two plates/platters, which is great fun to do, all that compressing. I also still need to get the hang of collaring, which looks like so much fun. And my wedging leaves a lot to be desired… I think I shall move “pottery wheel” up on my Tools/Toys list.
Riot for Austerity: Month 6 – and Ode to Freecycle
Gasoline
Whenever there’s a birthday party or a school outing, I volunteer to drive ourselves plus several more kids there and back and even around to their houses. This month has been laden with those, and DH has had to drive in to work a couple of times. Result: 9.65 gallons/person, or
23% of the US National Average
Electricity: those lights!
The further jump in our electricity bill (from 484 KWH to 534 KWH) wholly coincides with the addition of one heat lamp (and incandescent) and two more fixtures (2 fluorescents each) for our germination and seedling area. We buy 100% wind energy electricity, though, so:
15% of the US National Average
Still, I’m looking forward to turning the lights off soon for many, many reasons!
Heating Oil for Heating and Warm Water: finally down!
Finally the weather has turned and it shows. For oil for heating and for hot water we reached:
48% of the US National Average!
Phew, what a relief! I doubt we’ll be turning the heat back on until Fall comes ’round again, but we musn’t become complacent: preparations for next winter are the following. (1) A good wood stove and putting more effort into drying the wood we already have (by then it will have been cured for two years) and getting more local wood – perhaps even from our own yard again. (2) Also, a wrap-around greenhouse that will double as a solar collector. For (1) we need to save money. For (2) we need to start designing and collect a lot more windows from Freecycle!
Trash: the usual, so far
Still on track, as we haven’t finished our guest room project yet – waiting for the inspector! – so haven’t reckoned the construction debris yet.
10% of the US National Average
We are still salvaging a lot of construction wood: We’re keeping it out of the landfill and it will all come in handy some time later, no doubt. Whatever we don’t plan to use we put on Freecycle.
Water: waiting for the rain (barrels)
We’ve been consuming more water as the new, small lawn and the larger patches of buckwheat become established and need frequent watering – the promised rains have not come.So we used up 595 gallons of water over the month, that’s
20% of the US National Average
All of us – the Rabbit (co-houser) included – have been very good with showers and flushing toilets, so we’ll just have to suck up the extra consumption, but not for too long!
The problem is we’re wavering with the rain barrels. They cost a lot to buy new ($100 a pop). I’ve pursued all the avenues I can think of for free/cheap barrels that we can convert to rain barrels ourselves and no luck: that market seems to be “saturated” already around here. A tank, maybe? That would have to be bought online and shipped, and also costs a pretty penny…
Consumer Goods: good, depending how you count…
We bought some big things in April. Some were garden related, those I’m not counting (a hoe, for instance, which came to a pretty penny!). Other expenses were for our guest room – for our family, all of whom live far away and visit for long stretches, and co-houser(s). They include a toilet, a shower enclosure, an interior door, and the usual construction stuff like studs, dry wall and subfloor… Just like the garbage, I’m going to count all these next month, when the project (hopefully) finishes. Then we’ll tally it all up. It all goes into a yearly average anyway, at the end. (*)
So those expenses excluded we did reasonably well, with two take-out dinners, coffee (I’m counting these here as I’m not counting food), and a couple of dollars for books from the library book fair: $160, that’s
19% of the US National Average
(*) I want to add we did quite well by getting a lot of good stuff on Freecycle: a slider for the main entrance to the room, off the mudroom, a casement window that will let light from the mudroom into the room, and a really nice window for the new bathroom. As for other things we kept out of the landfill: Amie spotted a clean, almost new and more importantly *real* Pooh Bear at the good-goods-exchange at the dump, and what could we do? Poor “not-real” Pooh Bear!
My Child Will Not Eat Vegetables
Gasp! See that gap?
A lettuce was taken from under the shade cloth! Ah, there it is:
And here:
This last picture, my dear readers, shows a true miracle. For Amie will not eat vegetables. No peas, or corn, no cucumber, no cherry tomatoes, no broccoli. Mashed potato, yes, and rice, but that is it. Something to do with color and texture. Luckily she’ll eat any fruit you give her – but try convincing her that tomatoes are fruit!
Maybe she understood how important this very first harvest was – or maybe her Baba quietly told her… As soon as I came in with the handful of leaves she asked me: can I taste it? And after I washed it, she took a bite, and another, and another. Three, yes. And though she didn’t seem wholly convinced, and had no more after that, she congratulated me:
– Mmm, Mama, that’s pretty good lettuce!
It sure is!
Here she is again, hanging out with most of the seedlings “hardening off” in the afternoon heat – maybe the hardening off only begins once theyre returned to the much cooler basement!
Reading and Writing Checks Already, Arithmatic, and the Metaphyics of Time
What with all the gardening around here it’s been a while since I wrote about Amie’s non-gardening doings and goings. Here are some newer developments.
We’re working on her letters. She recognizes all the upper and lower case and can sound out and read three-letter words:
But writing them is something else altogether, especially those pesky rounded lower cases. Numbers too are a challenge. So this spring break we’re working on all those.
These days Amie sees us writing a lot of checks (unfortunately) and she was curious what that was about. I explained it to her and even found an old checkbook from a defunct account for her to play with. She wanted to write out her first check to me!
– How much do I owe you, Mama? she asked
– Oh, I said, by the time we’re done, mm… about a million
No problem. She asked our co-houser to help her fill it in, and when he – we call him Rabbit, so I’m going to start referring to him as Rabbit as of now – started writing in the amount, she changed her mind. When he had formed “10” she said:
– I want to pay Mama ten million dollars!
When he had added another 0, she said:
– Yes, a hundred million dollars!
She is so very generous!
She has been doing some multiplication with single digit numbers and division by 2. She needs her fingers and concrete things to do it: “If we have 6 ice cream sandwiches and there’s 2 of us, how many do we each get?” works, but “What is 6 divided by 2 make?” doesn’t.
Her Baba also taught her to add up a big and a small number. For instance, 76 + 4. This is how she explains it: You put the big number in your head: 76 (pinches thumb and index fingers together and touches her forehead, turning them and making a creaking sound, as if turning a key in a lock). Then you put the smaller number on your fingers (arranges her hand so 4 fingers are out). Then you count: 76, (takes away one finger) 77, (takes away another finger) 78, (takes away another finger) 79, (takes away last finger) 80!
She is not only a mathematician, like her Baba, but also a metaphysician, like her Mama (used to be). The other day she was acting all grumpy and DH observed that she was becoming a two-year-old again.
– No-o, she said, I can’t go back; I can only go forward.