As the garden turned from tomatoes to apples, I captured plenty of images. Here are some of them.
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This Week in Photos
Tag: homelife
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Taking Stock of Summer
I’m getting to a place where I wrote the best of what I will about Labor Day. In 2022 I wrote this post, which covers the bases. No need to re-write it this Labor Day weekend. There is more to life than annual traditions.
It is no secret unions are in decline. In his new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, Robert Reich points to the problem. The post-World War II economy was so affluent that unions did not seem necessary to most people in the wake of reforms that happened during the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. As a result, there was less impetus to form unions, and in right to work states like Iowa, a union could represent a workplace but workers were not required to join. The latest from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024) is, “The union membership rate of public-sector workers (32.2 percent) continued to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers (5.9 percent).” As we know from the administration’s move to invalidate union contracts among Veterans Affairs workers, the pressure will be on to diminish union strength among public-sector workers.
While summer is not over, the garden is winding down with leafy green vegetables, tomatoes, hot peppers, and apples remaining to be harvested. Instead of time off this weekend, I need to focus on work in my kitchen and garden, then digest what just happened. Short version: I withdrew from in-person society and reduced my contacts with people I know to focus on the immediate place where I live. I strove to make that life better.
Vegetables and fruit grew as well as they have ever done in my garden. The abundance produced from a small number of seeds and minimal cultivation is astounding. In particular, the green beans, cucumbers, and leafy green vegetables have been of good quality and mostly pest free. All five apple trees produced fruit. So did the pear tree. This year has been a bin buster.
As my concept of a kitchen garden matures, I have become a better meal planner and cook. One of the benefits of writing a meal plan has been a reduction in our grocery bill. If we write the meal plan to the garden, and then shop to the meal plan, the tendency is to spend less money, waste less food, and cook better meals. When I go to the grocer, my cart looks a lot different from other shoppers (yes, I look). More fresh fruit and vegetables and a small percentage of branded products. Life around the garden and kitchen makes more sense. I’m thriving in it.
Right now I have three pots going on the stove: two tomatoes and one hot peppers. Learning to process these items took time, but I know where I’m going. I mostly can tomato puree from plum tomatoes. I pickle a couple of quart jars of sliced hot peppers and then make a hot pepper paste to use on tacos. I learned to can only what we need.
This summer I exercised daily, even when the weather kept me indoors part of the day. That, combined with counting calories, led me to lose about a pound of weight per week. I have a way to go to get my BMI below 30. However, I feel healthy and that is important.
It has been a summer of plain folk living our best life. There are challenges, yet it was a decent summer in a turbulent time. For that, I am thankful.
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Summertime Heat
The last week has been a combination of ambient temperatures in the high 80s to low 90s, heat index of 105 or more, and thunderstorms. As a septuagenarian I stay inside with air conditioning once I finish early morning, outdoors chores to avoid passing out in the heat and humidity.
I took a box of cherry tomatoes to the community food pantry. My other Monday errands included filling the auto gas tank and lottery gambling. It was a quick trip, with exposure to people. I like the people part of it, and finishing while it’s relatively cool. Monday errands has become a thing in retirement.
It has been a struggle to mow the lawn, so the grass is growing long. I’ll need the cut grass for garden mulch and if nature dials down the humidity for a day or so, I’ll harvest it. I did manage to mow the ditch as it dried out, and before it got too hot. It was a workout.
When I was younger I would work strait through the heat and humidity. A few years ago I got woozy and had to lay down on the ground to recover. After that I decided to take better care of myself. As an Iowan I’m used to the heat and humidity. As a senior I learned to live another day.
Then there are the big salad dinners of summer.
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Working Today
With four weeks left until Labor Day, summer is about finished. A lot of work remains. The only compensation I receive for any of it is the satisfaction of a job well done.
Is my work the same as working for an employer? I think so, yet there is an attitude shift when we work for ourselves. I find more personal risk and am particularly careful I don’t get injured or make a bad financial decision. There is no malarkey in my work life. It is based on empirical tasks, cash flows, and bank loans, all of which are necessary to piece together a life. Most things break down into short projects upon which I can work until completion. There is no overtime pay, or any of the benefits allowed many workers. My spouse and I pool our pensions and hope they cover the bills.
I came up in a work environment where I earned more money than needed for minimal survival. It enabled buying a house, saving for our child’s education, and then later, when our savings proved to be not enough, it allowed us to pay the student loan to take that out of the child’s bucket. I also earned enough money to be able to quit my job multiple times without immediate prospects. The biggest adjustment to living on pensions is there is no longer any “extra” money.
From the time I left the job where my spouse and I met, until we moved back to Iowa and our child left to attend college, she worked at home. The work she did was valued and important to raising our child. There was the avoidance of child care expenses, and a clear division of labor, yet it was more than that. It was a way of life that had little to do with money except treating it as the fungible commodity it was. Ours wasn’t a perfect life, yet we got by.
I resist framing what I do every day as a job. The old farm word for it is “chores.” It’s more than that. With our more sedentary lifestyle, we need exercise, a healthy diet, and some amount of socialization. I suppose that makes us more than a cog in the machine of life. I hope we are more than that.
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Sunday Cookery
Sunday morning I picked green beans because they were ready. About 20 minutes into the task I was drenched in sweat. With a forecast high of 89 degrees it became clear it would be another indoors day. Once again, I escaped into my two favorite spots in the house: my writing table and the kitchen.
After finishing chores I sat at the desktop and finished my post for yesterday. I also exchanged emails with a friend with whom I am doing this event.
We met in person on Friday and have the idea of talking about why we write books at the end of the time. We are curious about how attendees get information about complex topics. Do they read books to do so? Should be a good conversation.
I am into the second volume of my autobiography and she is into her third, so that’s the origin of that. She sent along a quote about why we write from Nairobi Williese Barnes that said, “(we write) to shift the conversation, challenge harmful narratives, and encourage accountability in the ways we support and uplift one another.” I don’t disagree with that sentiment.
She quoted me back from my own writing from posts on this blog:
So we write, partly to clarify our thinking, and partly to satisfy our need to reach out to others and express the value of our lives, one life among the billions of people walking on the planet. Whether anyone reads or understands our writing is not the point, although we hope they do.
Why am I writing here, in public? Part of it is self-expression, a basic human need. Part is using language to understand complex social behavior. …. Defining a broader moral lesson is the challenge as the memoir progresses.
There are few finer things on this jumping green sphere than writing about writing, especially with a friend.
I made it to the kitchen at about noon and endeavored to get busy. I started with doing the dishes. More accurately, I started with the laundry. On the last Sunday of each month I launder my bed sheets and catch up on other laundry that accumulated. This took a bit of time out of kitchen work as I did five loads. I managed to make what I call “minced salad.” That is summer vegetables suitable for eating raw diced into one eighth inch cubes and mixed together with extra virgin olive oil and apple cider vinegar. I season with salt yet the seasoning possibilities are endless. It came out well.
The garden is about finished with zucchini. I modified my zucchini bread recipe, substituting applesauce for the oil, and by wringing the water out of the zucchini with a towel. It is to set for 2-3 hours before cutting so I haven’t tasted it. It appears to have had the desired effect which was to decrease the moisture in the loaf and reduce cooking time. It should be good.
The benefit of these activities is I can shut out the rest of the world and focus on our family. We need more time doing that. It is a way to go on living in turbulent times.
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Summer Rainstorms
The gutter clogged during a Saturday afternoon rainstorm. I looked at the forecast and rain was expected, on and off, for the next six hours. I decided to get the extension ladder and climb on the roof to clear the blockage so water wouldn’t overflow into the lower level of the house. I waited until the driveway showed signs of drying and went outside. Even though a misty-feeling drizzle hit my face, I persisted. From the time I got the ladder down until I returned it to its rack was less than 15 minutes. At 73 years, I should limit my time on the roof, yet the problem was immediate, the consequences of doing nothing were unacceptable. The situation wants a permanent solution.
I had a fitful night’s sleep the evening of July 4. Community fireworks were scheduled for July 5, so that didn’t keep me awake. News of the administration’s budget reconciliation was likely at the heart of my restlessness. That, with the courts enabling parts of their agenda. It’s as if every good public work I have done since graduating high school is being undone. It’s intentional, so my restlessness is not without reason.
Today there will be a decent harvest for the food pantry. Yellow squash, cucumbers, and leafy green vegetables, for sure. When the sun rises, I’ll take my daily walk on the state park trail and get into the garden. With the rain, the garden is really producing, to the benefit of our household and some who are food insecure.
Rain has consequences, both challenging and positive. A summer rainstorm provides opportunities to improve our lives, if we are open to seeing them.
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Drinks of Summer
As summer arrives on June 20th, I think about beverages I seek at least once each year. I hope to change all that and pick something as my standard beverage. That’s what I say at the beginning of each summer.
Diet Coke When I’m at the convenience store playing Powerball, once a summer I pick up a Coke or Diet Coke and drink it. This year it was Diet Coke because I am watching my caloric intake. It will be a cold day in hell when I try another of those. It has no flavor. Coke is not it. If Diet Coke was invented “just for the taste of it,” I don’t know what taste they are marketing. I won’t be yearning for another one of these.
Yoo-hoo A couple times a year I pick up a Yoo-Hoo chocolate flavored beverage at the convenience store. I probably should not. The beverage is made mostly from water, high-fructose corn syrup, and whey. I associate drinking Yoo-hoo with living in the south, yet that makes no sense. It was invented in Garfield, New Jersey in 1928 and has been owned by multiple international conglomerates. In a moment of weakness, I’ll likely have another. It fills a certain niche.
Iced Tea I buy the cheapest black pekoe tea bags and brew a pot of tea in an old Brown Betty. The first glass is poured hot, directly from the pot over ice. By far, this is the most refreshing beverage of summer. I make it a couple of times per summer for the refreshment and the remembrance of summers past.
Lemonade When I volunteered with the home owners association I bought a large container of lemonade mix for our annual meeting and potluck. I never used much of the container and from time to time I make some for myself. It is basically a sugar fix, something I need to watch. I may try making lemonade with Italian Volcano lemon juice. The flavor is great and I can control the amount of sugar.
Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Tennessee Whiskey I had a finger of this whiskey in a bottle I bought maybe ten years ago. I finished it off and decided it’s time to eschew distilled spirits unless I am celebrating with friends. It’s intoxicating effect is too much for this aging frame. The other thing is distilled spirits can be very expensive, even at the wholesale club.
Mass Produced Beer I used to buy a case of beer from the wholesale club each summer. I iced the bottles down in a cooler we got for a wedding present, and enjoyed one or two after a hot sweaty day of working outside. They are wanting $30 or more for the brands I like, so that one is getting sanded off in the woodshed. If I have a beer this summer, it will likely be with friends at the site in town where it was brewed.
Iced Water There is still nothing like a glass of water poured over ice. After all the trips down memory lane with the other beverages, I expect this will be the standby. It should be. Filtered water straight from the refrigerator is simply the best.
Editor’s Note: This post is one in a series of quick, short, fill-in posts while I spend most of my time and energy planting the garden. Things are looking good, yet I’m not there yet.
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On Self Reliance and Grease Monkeys
I was sidetracked by being a grease monkey for 90 minutes at the beginning of my outdoors shift. When I removed the wheel to replace the tractor tire, I did not realize the role the key plays. It uses friction to to keep the wheel turning as gears engage and turn the axle. No key, no movement.
I started the tractor and put it in reverse: nothing. A couple of YouTube videos later I understood what was wrong, retrieved the key I discarded from the trash and reassembled everything. The grease on my hands won’t come out using special soap, so I will have to wear it off. I drove the tractor to mow a patch in the garden… good as new.
My father eschewed being a grease monkey and encouraged me to find a different way to make a living. Toward the end of his life he was assigned duties as a forklift operator in the meat packing plant. He made a point of wearing decent clothing as he hauled pallets of meat around the warehouse. Decent meant a minimum of homemade repairs. His message was we could rise above the quotidian circumstances in which we came up and found ourselves. He graduated from college at age 40 as an example.
I was glad to resolve the issue created by mounting the wheel improperly. I resisted an urge to call the repair shop and ask them. I just solved the problem using tools available. Self reliance is essential if we will survive the authoritarian regime in Washington, D.C. We need to save our money for more important things like taxes, food, shelter, clothing, and healthcare. Today’s political trends have me living closer to the means of production. That’s a good thing.
Editor’s Note: I finished planting most of plot #3 on Wednesday. I’m waiting for the hot peppers to mature before transplanting them into the final row. Next step is preparing a tomato patch. In the meanwhile, my posts here will be shorter than normal. I do plan to return to “normal” at some point after the garden is in.
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Burn Pile #1 – 2025
After several days of rain, Friday was a clear day for gardening. The cruciferous vegetable plot is fully planted, the next large plot is cleared, and I cut weeds so I can access the compost bins more easily. I lit the first burn pile of the season. The plot with the burn pile needs mowing so I can store the tomato cages there until ready to use them. I put my Practical Farmers of Iowa placard on the compost bin to officially open the garden. It felt like a productive day.
The right rear tire of the yard tractor wouldn’t hold air. I called the John Deere shop and they sent me to a local tire service that has been in business since 1932. I checked in the wheel, and now await their phone call. I’m good with waiting until Tuesday to pick up the wheel. Everyone, especially a mechanic, needs a holiday weekend.
I complain about the internet from time to time, yet it was easy to locate a YouTube video that showed how to remove the wheel from the tractor. It saved time and frustration. It assured me I was performing the work correctly. We didn’t have that in the pre-internet days. As a bonus, I had the correct tool to remove the clip holding the wheel on the axle.
It’s the time in the garlic cycle where heads from the 2024 crop need to be used. Thursday after supper I took half of what remained and made garlic purèe with olive oil. I froze eight jars, which is plenty for the rest of the year. There is an abundance to use fresh until scapes come in.
Friday was a good day in the garden. Here’s hoping for more like that.
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Rainy Day Offering
It was raining Monday morning so I drove to Monticello to pick up two 50-pound bags of garden fertilizer. It’s the same locally composted chicken manure I’ve been using since working on the farms, called Healthy Grow 2-4-3. I tried other types of fertilizer and the granulated format makes application easy. I don’t do the science of testing soil pH and selecting an appropriate fertilizer. Basically, I am doing monkey work by mimicking what successful vegetable growers have done at farms where I worked. The yield and quality of produce improved after I began using this fertilizer.
When I arrived at the warehouse, no one was around. I called ahead to determine if they had what I wanted. The trip is 35.3 miles one-way and I didn’t want to make it for nothing. When no person picked up the phone, I went anyway, taking a chance someone would be there. The main building was wide open, so I looked around. I walked through the office and warehouse and found no one. Despite about 20 vehicles in the lot, only two employees were there across the yard where a truck was being loaded. A driver was in his cab picking up a truckload of fertilizer. He asked me what I wanted and I told him. He said they would take care of it.
The office person loaded the truck, made necessary bills of lading, and dispatched the driver. He said it was their busiest day of the year and that he would get my fertilizer. Eventually another office person arrived and did my paperwork while the first loaded the two bags in the back seat of my car. I enjoy this annual pilgrimage to Monticello. What could be better on a rainy day?
It rained all day Monday and the forecast Tuesday was more of the same. The electric mower arrived Monday, so I’ll get that ready for use when the rain lets up. It was a concession to the fact I am aging, and can’t drive the John Deere on the steep side of the road without increased risk of a flip over. With the proper tool, it should be a safer mowing experience.
When it rains I am concerned about the downspouts from the roof getting clogged and flooding the window well on the east side of the house. With all the maple tree seeds flying around, it has gotten clogged previously. When I return from trail walking, I am sure to inspect the roof from the driveway to assess the amount of fallen seeds. Looks like everything went through the downspout so far. As I age, I try to avoid climbing up a ladder to clean the gutters. So far, I am down to once or twice per year. Would like to get that down to zero yet good help is hard to find.
Our community well was out of commission on Monday, which means I got out the large Rubbermaid drinking water container and placed it next to the kitchen sink for handwashing. I also got a gallon jug of store-bought drinking water to use in cooking and for coffee. We tried to use as little water as possible so we didn’t drain the lines. If the community does drain them, there is a public health procedure to follow to make sure unwanted bacteria doesn’t get into the lines and therefore into our vulnerable, unwitting bodies.
As I write on Tuesday morning, my main worries are getting out on the trail between rain showers for a walk. There are plenty of indoor chores to do, including a larger than usual amount of dishes for cleaning because of the water shortage. We actually need the rain, even if I’d rather get the rest of our garden in first.
Not sure what I will do the rest of Tuesday. There is plenty of work, so it will boil down to the most pressing chores. Rainy day or not, answering the question “what’s most important in our lives” is a constant activity. One we should relish while we can answer it.
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