Tag: homelife

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Home Life Kitchen Garden

Rainy Monday

LAKE MACBRIDE— Rain fell against the bedroom window, framing the day for inside work. The forecast is for showers to end in an hour or so, with a chance of thunderstorms tonight. Today’s high temperature is expected to be 73 degrees. We need the rain, and welcome warm temperatures. Now that the ground thawed, moisture should soak into the topsoil for gardens, lawns, trees and field crops. I would have preferred to work outside this morning, but there is plenty to do inside. We’ll see how things go as the day progresses.

Yesterday, I made up more seedling trays. The CSA provided some used plastic trays which are now planted in yellow squash, cucumber and zucchini. They are situated near the south facing window in our bedroom, and there is not much room for more on the folding table.

To water the seedlings, I set up the lid of the recycling bin on a table in the garage and filled it halfway with water. I dunked the trays, one at a time, watering from the bottom. Each tray was warm to the touch as I carried it downstairs, evidence the south facing window was beneficial.

There is a significant investment of time in this year’s seedling experiment. Too, if the seedlings don’t sprout and mature properly, there will be the additional expense of purchasing from the farmers markets or grocery store. After cutting soil blocks at the CSA and seeing plants grow in the greenhouse, I gained confidence, and there is promise of success in most of the cells.

It has been 27 days since beginning my temp job at the warehouse. At the beginning, it wasn’t clear I could hack it, but that feeling has been overcome, and physical adjustments have been made and assimilated. With a start time of 3:30 p.m., the best hours of the day are mine to work on a multitude of projects at home. This inner focus, coupled with gardening, is what is needed most for the time being, while working toward a sustainable life on the Iowa prairie.

Categories
Home Life

A New Furrow

Dillon's Furrow Marker
Dillon’s Furrow Marker

LAKE MACBRIDE— March roared in like a lion, disrupting the solitude of our lake side home, and any short-term plans. New car, new jobs, new schedule, new everything it seemed.

Indoors activities dominated as snow fell, and the ground stayed frozen. To get back to a semblance of normal, there is comfort food: a Dutch oven of red beans and rice is simmering on the stove. A throwback to when I spent weekends preparing lunches for work during what now seems like ancient times— enslaved as I was to a career path I didn’t understand. Lunch today should be delicious.

While a lot is going on, it is not reactionary. More like letting loose the hounds on a life long in preparation. I have come of age. Remembering Yeats, “the ceremony of innocence is drowned.” Whatever naivety persisted is confronted with the existential need for action, tempered by diverse experience. The idea is to change, enabling a sustainable future. By now, it is well beyond the idea stage.

Like Lyman Dillon, I am at the ready to plow the furrow that would become a new road. I am ready to tame the wild turbulence of an angry March and turn it into sustainability. My commission comes from no Dutchman Van Buren, with his philosophy that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system. I have no fixed philosophies, just that slavery to a permutation of culture for its own sake is bankrupt. It is time to dig in.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Spring, but not All

Seedling Starter
Seedling Starter on a Heating Pad

LAKE MACBRIDE— A layer of snow covered everything this morning, indicating that the calendar start of spring meant nothing to Mother Nature.

A few days ago, I checked the soil in the garden— it was still frozen. During many a previous year, the lettuce had been in the ground for three weeks, and seed potatoes were in the garage, waiting to be cut and seasoned before planting on Good Friday, now just five days away. Spring is not all it was expected to be this year.

I decided to try starting my own seedlings again. In the past, I failed miserably, but after making soil blocks at the CSA, found the confidence to try it again. The cells are mapped out on graph paper, and yesterday, I started putting the trays on a heating pad set to low for a few hours at a time. When I looked at the green pepper seeds this morning, they had begun to take root after this first heating pad session. There is plenty of moisture in the soil mix, so I’ll continue the practice and see how the seeds sprout and grow. So far, so good.

In an effort to avoid the deadly intersection of cabin fever and spring fever, I have been exploring some new writers and found Girl Gone Farming, which is a blog by someone who recently moved to a farm in Pennsylvania after living in New York City for three years. Worth reading here, especially for readers who are city folk.

The snow continues to float through the air, morning has turned to afternoon, and it appear to be spring, not at all, in the garden.

Categories
Home Life

Sagrada Família Basilica

LAKE MACBRIDE— Runoff rainwater filled the ditch along the road most of yesterday, eroding the soil mixture laid there by the contractor last fall. The frozen ground could not absorb water, so it accumulated, and flowed downstream to Lake Macbride, the Coralville Reservoir and beyond. We needed the rain. There was talk of snow, but none stuck here, if it fell during the night— we continue to need the moisture.

While paying my property taxes, the newest Johnson County supervisor walked into the building, paused in the entryway, a lanyard dangling from his right pocket. He lacked purpose with which most people enter, perhaps he is still getting used to the building and position. He seems taller and thinner than he appeared in news media.

While in town, I stopped at Paul’s Discount store on Highway One and purchased some garden seeds. With the snow melting, it is time to get ready for planting. I bought some soil mix and a plastic flat to try starting seeds. Now that I have seen how it’s done at the CSA, I feel more confident about growing my own seedlings.

In 1974 I took a photo of the Sagrada Família Basilica in Barcelona. There was a story about it on television last night. It wasn’t a basilica then, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the unfinished structure as such in 2010. A lot of work has been done since my visit. It remains unfinished, but with hope for closure via completion sometime in the next decade or two. It has been a remarkable project, spanning generations.

As I write this morning, I am considering a name for the new weblog. The issue is not settled, but will be soon.

Categories
Writing

Brownies and the New Format

LAKE MACBRIDE— Last night I made brownies for the first time since I can remember. I saw the box of baking cocoa, the recipe on the package, and knew we had all the ingredients in the house. They came out very well, light and chewy, so I copied the recipe into my red book.

Have been preparing my new blog on a test site, and here is a very tentative snapshot of what it will look like. More to come as it develops.

Draft Blog HEader
Draft Blog Header