My current inspiration is a decorative image of a rooster, made in China, and purchased at a home, farm and auto supply store.
Eying the clearance aisle wooden chickens for weeks, I finally bought one at a deep discount. The price tag was not much and the cash register receipt describes it as a 17-inch wooden rooster on a base. Deciding what to do with it will be more expensive in time and consideration. I just had to have it, as if an urge from the great beyond struck me.
“It represents nothing about us,” said a person who saw it.
It may represent most things that matter today I thought. It has the potential to present everything wrong and much that is right about living in the United States in 2016.
The task for the next few weeks is to ferret out the meaning of this black, red and grey bird. A meaning beyond its Chinese chicken-ness.
Sunday’s indoor task was to process 14 quarts of soup stock made on Saturday in a water bath.
That was easy because mostly it is about filling jars, waiting for the water to boil, then setting a timer.
That part of the mission was accomplished.
The rest of the day was outdoors where I planted hot peppers (three varieties of Jalapeno, Serrano and Bangkok), put Brandywine tomato seedlings in the ground, and filled in the small number of gaps where first-planted seedlings didn’t take.
I mowed and collected grass clippings for mulch — a two hour project that was repeatedly halted to clear the tube leading to the bags. There were more clogs than usual. Once mulched, I re-arranged the fencing and installed a lightweight high fence around the kale-hot pepper plot to deter deer from jumping the fence. It looks home made, but was no cost and will serve.
A rabbit was munching or resting in the former lettuce patch. It ran for the thicket as I approached.
Despite a tiring day of work, not everything got done as planned.
With zero percent chance of precipitation until 10 p.m., I expect to finish spring planting today.
The plan developed yesterday was modified. Carmen decided there wasn’t enough soil blocking to make it worth a trip to the farm this weekend. It was alright by me. My soil blocking work is almost finished with only winter crops remaining to be started.
Except for processing quarts of soup stock in a water bath, today is planned outside until the work is done.
Turk’s Turban Squash Seedlings
The rain let up yesterday long enough to weed. Encouraged by the condition of the soil, I cleaned space in the plot under the locust tree and planted cucumbers: slicers (Marketmore, Olympian and Poinsett), Diva seedless, and pickling (Northern organic and a hybrid). I designed, built and installed new welded wire vertical cucumber cages to save garden space. It’s an experiment growing cucumbers under the locust tree, but a couple years back I tried it and the morning shade appeared to be good for the plants, protecting them from the intense and long sunny drought conditions we often find in Iowa.
Once finished with cucumbers, another short, heavy rain came through, curtailing additional outside activity for the day.
Plenty of seedlings remain to be planted, given away or composted.
Monday morning I moved the last two trays of tomato seedlings outside.
Since February, seedlings crowded around the windows of our bedroom. Now the race is on to get them in the ground.
Ours is a garden designed to keep expenses low and minimize our carbon footprint. I’d prefer a small greenhouse though we didn’t have resources to make one this year.
Seedlings are coming along well. There are way too many of some varieties and once the garden is established, excess will be given away or sold.
Saturday I planted 26 kale plants — three varieties in two rows. This is a money crop for a food to funds project I am working on for Iowa Physicians for Social Responsibility. Like many non-profits, our discretionary funds are limited. We hope to convert kale to cash for projects outside grant specific projects. There is never enough of those funds. Not sure how it will go, but I’m doubling kale production from last year which had everyone in my network who wanted it flush with the green and red leaves.
With the early lettuce harvested, the next crops are spring garlic and onions, turnip leaves, radishes and oregano. Once the tomatoes and peppers are in the ground there will be a sigh of relief and the tenor of late spring will turn to summer.
Leaves of potatoes burst through the surface of the soil revealing robust growth and hope for a crop.
During last night’s inspection I realized why many of us garden — we are born of the soil and all it produces.
Recent rain boosted everything.
I’ve been seasoning seedlings outside and am ready to plant them all. The question is weather and availability. There is slight chance of rain today so the soil should be dry enough to work. I have a couple of hours of daylight when I finish at the home, farm and auto supply store. If all goes well, another plot can be planted with kale, cucumbers and beans tonight.
In A Sugar Creek Chronicle: Observing Climate Change from a Midwestern Woodland Connie Mutel produced an engaging narrative of her efforts to cope with change while living on a parcel of Oak – Hickory forest in Northern Johnson County, Iowa.
The narrative is about climate change as the title suggests. It is also rich with descriptions of the flora and fauna of the region and how her life as a Midwestern ecologist, wife, mother, and cancer survivor has changed and is changing because of our warming planet.
It was hard to put the book down once I started reading.
The narrative is a combination of autobiography, new journalism, scientific research and advocacy for the political will to take action to mitigate the causes of anthropogenic global warming and its impact on our climate before it’s too late.
What makes the book important is less the scientific discussions about climate change, and more how Mutel copes with a life she believed held stability and predictability as key components. In telling her story Mutel articulates a personal perspective of current scientific research about climate change in a way that should provide easy to grab handles on a complex topic.
The idea that carbon dioxide causes global warming is not new. Around 1850, physicist John Tyndall discovered that carbon dioxide traps heat in our atmosphere, producing the greenhouse effect, which enables all of creation as we know it to live on Earth. That story has been told time and again.
The benefit of reading Mutel’s observations is one finds a lot in common with her life, on many levels. Her inquiry into global warming and climate change provides us a window not only to her world, but to ours.
Tomorrow’s 142nd running of the Kentucky Derby serves notice the race is on to finish spring garden planting.
Planting is never completely done.
What I mean is putting seeds in the ground and moving the 10 trays of seedlings from our bedroom to the garden soil by Memorial Day.
The coming weekend will be prime time for planting.
Our warehouse club sent a notice of a fruit and vegetable recall yesterday. Here’s the scary first paragraph the company posted on their web site:
As a precaution, CRF Frozen Foods of Pasco, Washington is expanding its voluntary recall of frozen organic and traditional fruits and vegetables. We are performing this voluntary recall in cooperation with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because these products have the potential to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. The organism can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Although healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea, Listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women.
We checked all of the noted items in our freezer and there were no recalled items. The recall renewed interest in growing as much of our own food as we can and knowing the farmer on the rest. It is hard to avoid consumer products produced in large quantities, but the Listeria hysteria is a reason to minimize their use. The perfect attitude adjustment going into the garden work weekend.
There is a lot of work to do during the next three weeks. I’ve been reviewing weather forecasts since Monday and it looks like a chance of rain Saturday afternoon, but otherwise, clear.
It will be a rush of digging, raking, planting and mulching. A pivot point toward summer.
We are blinded and forever changed by our experiences if we are lucky.
Insights and epiphanies are few in life’s span. They can shape who we are and the choices we make in profound ways.
Some become passions and border on enthusiasm. Enthusiasm as in close to spiritual ecstasy, or possession by a god or the devil.
It began when I was three years old.
In the basement of our home at 919 Madison Street in Davenport, I was playing on a swing set my parents set up. It collapsed and the next thing I knew I was laying in a pool of my own blood. Mother rushed me to Mercy Hospital where the physician made me breathe ether poured in a funnel before stitching me some 50 times to close the wound on my forehead. I stayed in the hospital for what seemed like a long time. My parents visited every day at least once.
It never occurred to me that hospitals existed, or that so many people outside our home were employed with systems that nurtured the sick and injured. It gave me comfort and curiosity, then, and now.
I began Kindergarten while we lived on Madison Street. Mother had me walking about three quarters of a mile to school for the half-day sessions.
One day I got lost.
The way was to walk North on Madison and then East on 10th Street until I reached the stairs on the steep hill that was Riverview Terrace Park. From there I not sure, but believe I walked North on Washington Street to Twelfth Street, then over to Marquette where I turned South until Jefferson Elementary School was on my left. It was a long trip for a Kindergartner.
One day I took a shortcut on the way home and got lost. My homecoming was delayed much so my mother came out to look for me. She set out on foot and eventually found me on the steps of the park. It was a scary thing for a young person. It taught me to persist in the face of the unknown.
When I entered the seventh grade, we occupied a new school the parish built a block from our home. It was a terrible separating from my childhood friends as I was selected to join other seventh and eighth graders in an advanced class. The nun told us we were college bound and needed to begin preparing. I didn’t like the separation from my neighborhood pals, and occasionally I would hang with them at the Cue and Cushion, a local pool hall. That wasn’t meant to last. It was a blessing and a curse that we were separated. Less fun, more studies and some isolation from the roots I had formed with neighborhood kids as a grader.
My father’s death in 1969 was sudden and jolting. I had begun to consider college, and during a conversation with Mother after Dad’s death offered to give up those plans to help her adjust. She encouraged me to go to college and that forever broke me from the home where I’d lived in childhood. Once I left home, I would never really return.
My college years, military service and graduate school were a long transition from homelife in Davenport to living in the broader world. I experienced the world’s diversity during those 11 years and became a global citizen. In the end, I decided to stay in Iowa where Jacque and I met while working for the University of Iowa. We married in 1982 and to say it was a life-changer is an understatement. I hope we will remain married until death do us part.
The arrival of our daughter in 1985 was another formative experience, one that changed everything in a positive way. Having been lucky enough to be a parent, I discovered the tremendous opportunities and challenges of providing a home life so they could become a responsible citizen. It gives me a great deal of pride to see how she has grown and changed over the years since she entered the world. If all the world’s a stage, her entrance was notable and her performance enduring.
The decision to leave the transportation business after more than 25 years shaped how my life has played out. With that decision came a new world of engagement in society. For the first time, I’ve been able to concentrate on living how I want, writing, distracted only by the existential demands of society. I don’t know what enduring writing will be produced, but without the commitment that began July 3, 2009, nothing of my current life would be possible.
In reasonably good health, in a safe environment, much is possible. Where shall I go? I hope to be on the road to some usefulness in society.
The Bernie Sanders campaign is laying off hundreds of staff members, indicating either he is planning to throw in the towel after California, or that he won’t be placing people currently on his staff in local political organizations for the fall campaign. Maybe both.
The presidential nominating party may not be over, but most of the guests have left and the hosts have begun cleaning up the mess, getting ready for a return to normalcy, which in Iowa means organizing for the June 7 primary elections where there are contested races, and the fall campaign beginning after the Labor Day weekend.
Political campaigns will work through the summer, and there is a filing period in August, but each year, regular people engage in the election cycle later and closer to the election. For folks like me, politics takes a holiday after the primary elections until the fall campaign. We have lives to live.
I’ve written about the county supervisors race which has been reduced to a series of special interest forums in Iowa City and Coralville, along with fund raisers and whatever else each campaign sees fit to do.
I missed the first forum last night. Bottom line was I couldn’t afford the $5 in gasoline and an hour of driving on a work night. Stephen Gruber-Miller covered the forum for the Iowa City Press Citizen and here’s a link to his article. They say people in the county seat can access video of the event on their local cable television channel, but the service does not include Big Grove Township.
My trouble with picking three candidates for supervisor is besides the incumbents, I don’t share a view of the county with any of them. My relationship with the county seat is tenuous at best, although I likely benefit from the economic engine that is the University of Iowa. I’ll pick one of the two business people for my third vote and see what decision the urban centers make for me. No need to decide until late in the race, early June most likely.
The other primary election that matters is for U.S. Senate and I support State Senator Rob Hogg over three other candidates.
Politicization of our lives has become a detriment to living, so the compulsion I felt toward campaigns during the George W. Bush years is in remission. I work on issues, but like with the climate crisis, they represent human values and shame on those who politicize them or frame them in the false paradigm that is conservative vs. progressive. People like billionaire Tom Steyer is who I have in mind, but it applies equally to all of the billionaire class members.
My summer will be eking out a living on the margins of society, hopefully making enough money to live on, reducing debt, and finding joy in simple pleasures. We don’t need politics for that.
Yesterday was a spring day as good as it gets. I took advantage of it and worked outside.
The kale seedlings have been slow-developing, so I put them in direct sunlight. The day’s growth was noticeable. I transplanted the scarlet variety into bigger pots to give them room to grow. They were laggards of the three varieties and best liked in my distribution network. Indoor bedroom germination has never been optimal, but a few hours in sunlight made a difference. More seedling sunning is planned today.
Yesterday’s garden work included planting three kinds of onions, basil seeds, Easter egg radishes, leaf spinach and arugula. I’m moving on to conditioning the soil for everything else.
A sign of the times, I planted the last seeds in pots: zucchini to get a head start for early May transplanting. It won’t be long before the danger of frost is past and everything can go into the ground.
Something is growing in the carrot planters, but I’m not sure it is carrots. Will wait until the leaves show what they are.
The first cut of lawn is the best. The unevenness of early growth gets smoothed over to produce a transient, semi-manicured look. There is a lot of trim work to do, with minor clean-up. The clippings fell where they may providing mulch for the expected long and dry spell. I’m first to admit I don’t care for lawn mowing. The restrictive covenants require me to do it about twice a month.
The apple trees won’t have a good year. Two of them have zero blooms and the Red Delicious has only a couple dozen. The pear tree should bear fruit based on the abundance of blooms. There were plenty of pollinators flying around, including a bumblebee trying to fly up my pants leg.
I gave some excess onion sets to a neighbor and she reciprocated with some “walking onions.” They were ready to eat, but I stuck them in the ground next to one of the composters.
There is always more to do in a garden. We are thankful for each day of clement weather and sunlight.
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