Not only a blizzard of busy-ness but an actual snow blizzard too. No post last week because When I came to Sunday afternoon I was pretty much done. We had a blizzard Tuesday night into Wednesday morning that made roads and visibility so bad even the buses stopped running, which meant neither James nor I could get to work. Both our workplaces remained opened, which meant we had to take vacation time for our unexpected snow day. It was nice until the afternoon when we had to go out and shovel the heavy wet snow, some of which was drifted up to my knees because of the wind. A week later the snow was melted. By this last Friday it was 75F/24C! And yesterday it snowed. Thankfully it was a rainy kind of snow and nothing stuck. Ah spring!
Last weekend though was gorgeous; not 75F gorgeous, but warm enough to be out in only a windbreaker. We took advantage and finished pruning the apple trees. I also pruned the grapevine and crawled into the raspberry patch and pruned out the old canes. Somehow I managed to get some nice scratches through my clothes. Those raspberry thorns don’t mess around.
James generally works Sunday through Thursday so he got to be home for the beautiful Friday. The chickens got to be out in the warm sun all day long. They were so happy. I had to laugh when James texted me a photo of Mrs. Dashwood enjoying a dust bath with the message of Dashwood down! Dashwood down!
As chaotic as the spring weather has been, the birds are becoming more active and migrants are beginning to return. Robins are everywhere! The cardinals are calling to one another. The juncos fly in and mob the witch hazel in front of the kitchen window. The sparrows are getting loud and competing with the juncos for witch hazel occupancy. This Thursday, March 20th is World Sparrow Day in addition to being the Vernal Equinox. A double celebration!
The time change last weekend also knocked me for a loop. I didn’t begin to feel normal until around Thursday this week. The stupidity of changing the clock twice a year really has to stop, and pretty much everyone agrees it should. What no one can agree on is whether to set the time permanently on Daylight Savings time or non-Daylight Savings time. Clock time in general is ridiculous. In my grumpy time-lagged haze last weekend I listened to a To the Best of Our Knowledge podcast called The Tyranny of Time. One of the guests was historian David Rooney who has written a book about clocks and time. He pretty much said the invention of timekeeping beginning with sun dials had a political and economic agenda from the start and has always been about control. This did not make me feel better about the time change, but it did make me want to strive to free myself as best I could from the “tyranny of time.” I can’t do it completely since I need to work for wages, but I can find ways to break away from the clock when I am not at my paid job. The conditioning is strong and it is not easy!
Seed starting is going apace. All of the peppers from two weeks ago have sprouted except for the jalapeños. Since they are saved seeds I am worried something is wrong. So I re-seeded the pots today. They could just be extra slow to germinate and I might end up with a lot more plants than I expected, or something is wrong with the seeds and I will need to purchase some plants in May. Of course I am hoping I am being impatient and I end up with more jalapeños than I planned for.
Last weekend I sowed tomatoes and every one had sprouted by Friday. This was extra exciting because three of the varieties I am growing from saved seed. I have never saved tomato seeds before because they take a bit of extra work, a sort of fermentation to remove the protective coating on the seed. Apparently I did it right! So growing on from last year is Hungarian Heart (sauce), A Grappoli D’Inverno (all-purpose plum type), and the mystery Alley Tomato, a small red cherry James found growing in a crack in the alley pavement behind our house and which we transplanted into the garden. In addition to these I am also growing Council Bluffs (slicing) and Orange Peach. Orange Peach is an orange tomato that is slightly fuzzy like a peach! It supposedly makes excellent tomato jam. How could I not give it a try?
I also sowed some perennial herbs: Lamb’s Ears, Lady’s Mantle, and Horehound. None of these have sprouted yet, the packets all say they take awhile. I’m trying to be patient and not worry, but I whisper encouraging words to them everyday.
Today I sowed seeds for Angelica, Lemon Balm, and Treasure Flowers (aka Gazania). The Treasure Flower seeds are a gift from my friend Care of Care’s Books and Pie. And if they do well I will think of Care every time I see them in the garden. A real treasure!
With all the seed starting and pruning on weekends, my attic project has stalled, I haven’t picked up my knitting in months, and it’s been even more months since I’ve picked up my spindle. I’m never going to get good at spinning at this rate. And my poor loom is gathering dust next to my sewing machine, which has been used a couple times in the last months to make bulk food bags and to patch a pair of pants. Talk about the tyranny of time! Actually, more like the tyranny of capitalism that makes me have to work for wages instead of for myself on a small homestead.
Before I go, I want to point y’all to a couple excellent resources for those who are politically inclined to protest the current U.S. government shitshow. 5 Calls is a civic action website that will provide you with the phone numbers of your senators and congressperson and scripts for up to 41 current issues. Then there is Democracy.io where you can email all three of your representatives at once, no copy and pasting, no filling out the tedious website contact form, one and done.
Finally, there is Jessica Craven’s Chop Wood, Carry Water newsletter. It’s a political newsletter with current news, scripts for phone calls on urgent topics, and also things to celebrate which makes it upbeat rather than depressing. She writes several times a week and I’ve yet to not feel energized after reading her.
Reading
- Book: Perennial Ceremony: Lessons and Gifts from a Dakota Garden by Teresa Peterson. Peterson is Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and a citizen of the Upper Sioux Community. She lives in Minnesota so it was an extra pleasure reading her book. She writes about her garden and her childhood and she includes recipes for many of the foods she grows. They aren’t vegan recipes so I will not make most of them, but I might see if I can get James to veganize her Honey Thyme Apples and Eggs breakfast recipe. And I might give her Two-Day Dill Pickles a try since I am growing cucumbers this year.
- Book: The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan. I’ve been pecking away at this book for months (pun intended). Tan’s drawings are beautiful, the text of her journal is not so very interesting, though sometimes there are moments. It’s mostly just a journal of the birds that come to her yard everyday and what they do. The amount she spends on seed, suet, and live mealworms is astounding. But at least she is spending her money on food for birds and not jetting around the world or buying sports cars and other useless things, so that’s something.
- Article: How To Be a Fighter When You Feel Like a Punching Bag by Kelly Hayes. Good advice from a veteran activist for anyone who wants to do something but is feeling overwhelmed and stuck.
- Essay: Taking the “Shoulds” Out of Reading by Molly Templeton. Who of us hasn’t said “I should read more classics,” or “I shouldn’t read such junk,” or “I should read that book/that author?” Templeton gives you permission to knock it off already.
- Poem: Solip Cystic by Raquel Gutiérrez. “I am required to resist the distractions and the easy wine/ that facilitates the annihilation of the other/ and their daily bread”
Quote
“I know too little to know what’s ordinary. But I have heard experienced birders call the Lesser Goldfinch a ’trash bird’ because it is so common and numerous. I heard others call a House Sparrow a ‘junk’ bird, an invasive, like the European Starling. I understand the antipathy. Invasive birds usurp habitat and resources. But I can’t help but feel discomfort. The rhetoric is often the same as the racist ones I hear about Chinese people.”
~Amy Tan, October 20, 2019 in The Backyard Bird Chronicles
Listening
- Podcast: Green Dreamer: Sandor Katz: Fermentation as a catalyst for social transformation. Sandor Katz is a fermentation guru and I might be a little biased because I own a couple of his books and have read a few more. But if you are at all interested in fermentation both as a process of food preservation and as a metaphor, then give this one a listen.
- Podcast: Team Human: Helena Norberg-Hodge. Norberg-Hodge is an amazing woman whose work I have followed for a couple of years now. She’s all about localization and doesn’t talk about it from an abstract intellectual level, but from real world experience.
James’s Kitchen Wizardry
There were baked beans made with beans from the garden, split pea soup, cherry hand pies made with frozen cherries from last summer’s garden for Pi(e) Day, and all the usual deliciousness.
Thanks for the links to Democracy.io and the Jessica Craven newsletter. I love that quotation from Amy Tan about sparrows. I’d never thought about it like that. Mrs. Dashwood in the hole is hilarious! It’s wild to me that both of your workplaces were open during a blizzard where the buses weren’t running! You all are hardy folk up there.
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Yes, I hope you find the links helpful Laila! That was one instance in the journal that Tan wrote something interesting. I have come across a similar sentiment in regards to invasive plants so it was extra interesting and also saddening to hear it happens in birding spaces too. Mrs. Dashwood is a delight 🙂 The whole blizzard thing was aggravating but there was nothing we could do about it but enjoy the unexpected day off 🙂
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Hey, that seems harsh that you had to take vacation days when it would have been dangerous to even try to get to work.
Interesting observation about the tyranny of time. I was reading a book by a watchmaker recently (Hands of Time: A Watchmaker’s History of Time), and although the author didn’t talk so much about the aspect of social control, she did point out how contingent many of our time categories are. Apparently we have 24 hours in the day split into two sets of 12 because that’s how many knuckles we have to count on each hand (thumbs excluded!). And the hours are further split into 60 minutes because 60 was the base of the numbering system used by the ancient Sumerians.
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Yeah, well when my workplace doesn’t close down then that’s what we are required to do. Luckily I have lots of accrued vacation time so it wasn’t a bad thing 🙂
Oh, fascinating about the time categories! I had not heard that about any of them before.
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Thanks for sharing that article by Kelly Hayes. That really “hit home” in a good way. I hope you get that gorgeous garden day soon!
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I’m so glad you found the Kelly Hayes article helpful Mara! So far all the gorgeous garden days seem to be happening during the week while I am at work, bit soon, I just know it will be soon! 🙂
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Yes, like Mara I thank you for the Kelly Hayes article. I always love a chicken picture, and admire how many seeds you save and sow!
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Glad you liked the Kelly Hayes article Jeanne! I’ll have to try an get some actual chicken wallowing video sometime because they are hilarious to watch 🙂 I didn’t used to save so many seeds, but the more things I grow, the more seeds I’ve decided it’s good to save because seeds are getting more expensive, and the plants I save seeds from are ones that are adapted to my garden conditions. All around win! 🙂
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TY for the poems, LLL
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You are welcome dear Care!
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I hope your cherry pies were delightful! I’m STILL chipping away at all the blackberries I picked last year. I can’t seem to use them up! I went home for a week (I should write about this in my blog) and tried baking a bunch with blackberries, but I’m starting to feel like the abyss gazes back. 😂
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So good Melanie! If we didn’t live so far away from each other I’d bike over and take all those blackberries off your hands 🙂 I was thinking about adding some thornless blackberries to my garden, but apparently they aren’t reliably hardy here and I’d have to lay the canes down on the ground in fall and cover them in protective mulch. That’s too much malarky to deal with when my gardening approach tends to be if you can’t make it through winter with minimal care then you don’t belong. 😀
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I’m now visualizing your garden as a feral animal: scrappy, survivor, good when you get to know it.
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Heh, James and I always laugh because at some point in early to mid August one of us says, “the garden has gone feral.” 😀
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Sorry to be late to the party, Stefanie, I somehow missed this post. I don’t envy you the blizzard but hurray for sunny days and happy chickens! 😊It’s great to be cracking on with your sowing, too, hopefully the slower things will catch up . . . I am the most impatient gardener on earth, if there’s no sign of germination almost instantly I go into panic mode! By the way, a super easy way to save tomato seed is to simply squeeze seeds from a ripe fruit onto kitchen paper and leave it to dry completely, then store in an airtight container. When you want to grow them, put the paper in a tray of compost, water and stand back. No need for messing about with fermentation and it works brilliantly.
I’m with you on the whole daylight saving thing, we came close to fixing it in Europe a few years ago but Covid seems to have scuppered it. It would make sense for us in the UK to stay on winter hours i.e. not put the clocks forward next week but I can guarantee most folks would vote for British Summer Time because the notion of an ‘extra’ hour of evening is so compelling. Who needs light until gone midnight, I’d like to know, and why does no-one consider how dark the winter mornings would be, especially for those of us in the west? One of the greatest things about making early retirement happen was being able to ditch the clock and live my life to more natural rhythms (although of course we still have appointments and the like to be aware of); I haven’t worn a watch for 13 years and we don’t own a single clock, only what the laptop shows.
Happy gardening . . . and you will get back to the woolly crafts one day, I know! 😉
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I will forever be envious of your polytunnel Lis, but it’s probably just as well I don’t have the space for one since I wouldn’t have the room for all the plants I’d be getting started in there either! Thank you for the tomato seed tip! That will make saving seeds a less precarious undertaking since I won’t have to worry about spilling moldy water across my desk 🙂
Oh for a clock-free life! You lucky woman. One day I hope to join you in not knowing or caring what time it is 🙂
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Dashwood down! LOL!! That did make me laugh. I hate daylight savings too. I often wonder about the viability of leaving my house clocks the same and just adjusting my schedule – could I live in my own time bubble? I haven’t managed it so far but you never know. I’m hugely impressed by all your seed planting. We haven’t begun here because for UK gardeners it feels a bit soon. I have no idea why that should be if you in Minnesota can do it, but normally I don’t plant until April. Getting enthused by your plans, though!
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The best thing about chicken dust baths is that as silly as they look to us, they manage to flop and roll with such luxury and dignity. There’s a lesson there I’m sure.
I’ve planted nothing outdoors yet, all the seed planting is happening indoors on a shelf in my kitchen with heat mats and grow lights. I won’t be able to plant anything outdoors until the end of April at the soonest, and then only cool weather things like peas. Because my growing season is short, I need to start a lot of things indoors that won’t be planted out until mid to late May. You UK gardeners can probably plant your tomatoes and other warm season plants outdoors in April. 🙂
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I love DST in the autumn when it magically creates an “extra” hour. LOL (Yes, I know, that’s not offering much to the conversation.) We had that storm on Friday (I will omit the details of my excitement). Those are fabulous sounding resources for calling representatives and other key figures. Which is only stating the obvioius, as many here have thanked you and expressed their intention of putting them to use. Funny texts and good listening make all the difference. I’ve missed that Templeton article but I’ll have a look; this year is deliberately un-shouldy for me, in regards to reading, and I am having a blast with it. We had a huge dish of baked beans last week too…but not from our garden?! What kind of beans do you grow that work so well for that? (We just use navy, heavy on the molasses and a really long bake.)
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Heh Marcie, you crack me up 🙂
I grow a variety of beans for drying. In this case James used some lima beans and Hidasta red. Scarlet runner beans also make good baked/soup beans. The best dry bean variety I’ve grown so far though are skunk beans. They are a big bean with great texture and hold together really well when cooked.
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