Even as we were literally beating the bushes around the garden trying to evict the second of the two baby rabbits, I read a blog post from an intentional community farm (whose name I cannot at the moment recall) about slow clothing and creating their own on-farm process from fiber to clothes. They have a few sheep but they had recently added angora rabbits. Since we are in the waning of chicken-keeping and James and I both love having animals around and we are not likely to share our space with cats again for various reasons, I thought, rabbits are vegetarian and they can be trained to use a litter box. What if we get a couple of angora rabbits? And off I went, searching across the internet.

Turns out Angora rabbits are huge animals, weighing as much as 12 pounds! They must be brushed practically everyday, which is good for the fiber collecting but time-intensive, and shaved at least once a year. They do not tolerate heat because of all that fur. But they have gentle and cuddly personalities, and are one of the most adorable critters ever! They live on average 7-12 years.

When I floated the idea to James he was horrified. We’re chasing rabbits out of the garden and you want to bring one in the house? Well yeah, but…

You can imagine how it went after that. I have since snapped back to reality, because as awesome as it would be to have my own angora to spin into fiber, one of the things about having cats in the house was always coping with all that fur. Cats are not nearly as furry as angora rabbits. And I am certain that it would not be long before the near daily grooming devolved from fun to 12 years of tedium and regret. Plus I still have unspun wool I bought two years ago making it not hard to imagine all the rabbit fur piling up waiting to be spun. I’d have to get a spinning wheel instead of a drop spindle but even then with all the time spent rabbit grooming, when would I have time to do all the other things like garden and bike, and read, and all the other crafts I enjoy AND spin all that rabbit fur and then use the yarn to make things?

It was a lovely poofy cuddly dream while it lasted.

In the meantime, we did actually get the second rabbit out of the garden. The rabbit was even kind enough to reveal the hole in our defenses, a tiny gap only a couple inches wide between our fence post and the neighbor’s chain link fence. If James hadn’t watched the scared rabbit leap and squeeze themself through that 2-inch gap, we would not believe it possible. Gap blocked, we are now rabbit-free and the ravaged peas are making a valiant comeback effort. Only it’s July and they are doomed to not make it in the summer heat. But I don’t have the heart to tell them that so I let them know how pretty their new leaves are.

I do think there is a rabbit population boom this year. The other morning on my way to work I saw no fewer than 8 rabbits on my block alone. Four of them were playing chase in a neighbor’s front yard and they were so cute! I can say that because they were not in my garden. The squirrel population crashed this year. It had been growing ever larger for several years and last summer I could look out almost any time of day and see three or four squirrels in the garden. But this year, there is only one who is consistently about. Of course it is the one who likes to play spider-squirrel on my screen door.

I was siting at my kitchen table having lunch not long ago. The sliding glass door to the deck was open and I watched the squirrel hop up the couple deck steps from the garden, bound across the deck and throw themself against the screen door where they stuck like velcro. Then they proceeded to gleefully climb all over the screen, up and down, backwards and forwards, around in circles. I’m sitting at the table yelling at Squirrel to get the fuck off the screen. Of course they ignored me. He—it was obviously a he—stopped climbing around and was just hanging out on the screen. His creamy fluffy belly was rather alluring, and I briefly wondered if it was as soft as it looked and whether I could touch it. But then he began moving around again, putting tiny holes in the screen. Enough! I stood up and he saw me coming, leapt off the screen and scampered away. I have seen him come up onto the deck for a drink of water since then but no more screen climbing, at least not while I have been watching.

The black raspberries this year are gifting us with bowls and bowls of fruit. We gave some to our nextdoor neighbor, and I even gave some to Mrs. Dashwood who has never had raspberries before. She gave it a long look before she pecked and then she gobbled it down and looked at me for more. I gave her a couple more and was rewarded with her happiest of happy coos.

I’ve been experimenting with making raspberry leaf sun tea on the deck. The first batch was raspberry leaf and rose petals. I didn’t use enough raspberry leaves so it ended up tasting less like tea and more like flavored water. But the combination was lovely. This weekend I tried raspberry leaf and chocolate mint. I used plenty of raspberry leaves but added too much mint which overwhelmed the taste of the raspberry. And no, it didn’t even have a chocolatey hint. However, it’s been summer hot and since I iced the tea, the mint ended up being refreshing. I think next time I will go with raspberry leaves only in hopes for something slightly fruity. I also have a bunch of raspberry leaves drying so I can use them in tea over winter.

I also have elderberry flowers hanging up to dry for tea. And I’ve got enough nettle leaves dried to last me well into next spring’s allergies. I’ve got some mint drying, but will make sure to do more before summer is over. There will be tulsi basil to dry at the end of summer and lots of borage. I’m excited about the borage. I’ve tried to grow it before as a plant I bought and have never had any luck. The plant has always been stunted and anemic. This year I decided to try growing from seed, and bingo! I have quite a few plants that have large leaves and are looking quite sturdy. Yay! And after years of failing with calendula I have a nice little patch of that going too.

As the summer heat has settled in, the beans are now growing fast and would do Jack and giants proud. This morning I saw there are flowers on the peach tomato. I’m hoping the other tomatoes aren’t far behind. The cucumbers are ridiculously healthy and flowering. Fingers crossed they begin fruiting soon. The pumpkins and butternut squash vines are about to get unruly. The Swiss chard is days away from being large enough to start picking.

Yup, the summer garden is about to be amazing!

Reading

• Book: On Lying and Politics by Hannah Arendt. Wow, Arendt knew what she was talking about and it’s terrifying. Basically, she concludes lying is inherent to politics, always has been, always will be. But the best defense is a population of people with critical thinking skills. I can’t help but feel like we’re doomed.
• Book: Is This My Final Form? by Amy Gerstler. A shapeshifting poetry collection. “As a fuzzy/headed chick, my alarm call but an anguised/hiccup, I once observed a scurry of squirrels, concealed in a hollow tree, wearing seventeenth/century clothes. Alas, no one believes me.” From “When I was a bird.”
• Poem: Resistance by Margaret Elphinstone. “is weeds which survive underfoot,/sprayed and uprooted;/is slow lichen on scoured rock:/is seeds that wait in the dark”
• Article: What many environmentalists get wrong about the money system, and why it’s important by Matthew Slater. All about how money works and doesn’t work. “That system is breaking down and increasingly contested and has no capacity to include new ideas and values. Perhaps the best you and I can do towards a better system is to stop believing in the current one, to withdraw from it (to a greater or lesser extent), and create new, gangster-free informal economic contexts.”

Quote

“The chances of factual truth surviving the onslaught of power are very slim indeed; it is always in danger of being maneuvered out of the world not only for a time but, potentially, forever. Facts and events are infinitely more fragile things than axioms, discoveries, theories—even the most wildly speculative ones—produced by the human mind; they occur in the field of the ever-changing affairs of men, in whose flux there is nothing more permanent than the admittedly relative permanence of the human mind’s structure. Once they are lost, no rational effort will ever bring them back.”

~Hannah Arendt, On Lying and Politics, page 9

Listening

• Podcast: Between the Covers: Madeline Thien: The Book of Records. I have this book on my desk and I can hardly wait to get to it. This was a really good interview.
• Podcast: Planet Critical: Why we can’t understand each other: Damien Williams. This was fascinating. All about language and communication and how we don’t actually communicate anymore. As for language, well, we may be using the same words but not the same meanings and so we are all living in different realities.

James’s Kitchen Wizardry

While we didn’t feel like there was much to celebrate for Independence Day, James still made from-scratch vegan hot dogs, buns, baked beans, and French fries. So delicious! He also made a small batch of raspberry jam today. Also delicious. So blessed and grateful for the garden’s abundance and James’s cooking skills!