The job of taging and sorting bundles of berry bushes is a spring time annual event for our fruit club. The list of people able or willing to meet out at the Ruffus's blueberry farm to help to sort was missing the needed hands. I decided that John and my grandchildren could join me and we would lend support.
Mira, seven, had Friday off of school for teachers enrichment day so on these days she often accompanies her brother to school and acts as a student teacher in the small private preschool Ahman is attending. The four of us ate our car lunches of peautnut butter banana sandwiches, oranges and grapes heading northwest toward Hood Canal and Ruffus's hill top home. The day of low clouds and rain, high lighted the moss cover forest and we all talked about a world made for dinosarus movies.
With four other people, we got to the task of color coding 200 bushes of five different varieties. These bushes three and four years old, all grown by a nursery in Oregan for the national market. The large building, Ruffus uses for this, is the place his camper and extra vihecles are usually stored.
Mira teamed up immediately with a high school student using yellow tape, Ahman and John were on my team, we unbundled variety and marked them with red tape. Then the square dance started . Some stood in place and handed off bushes and some ran the line and gathered one of each variety to make a new bundle of five. Ahman was in charge of green, John manned the red station, Mira handled white. There were three of us running to station to station gathering and bagging. Soon I notice that when I got to Mira she had my remaining colors ready for me. She quickly saw how the dance work and creating a hibrid of our movements.
Before all it was over, we noticed that Judy had come out of the house with a plate of homemade cookies and tea and juice. We all stood around, muddy hands and feets muching on cookies and recounting the bundles we had made for the fundraiser of our fruit club.
Mira spoke up, " Each year I get this day off of school and I can come back next year and help out again." My heart smiled along with the faces of everyone else.
The view from Ruffus's property looks south to the Black Hills, north toward the National Olympia Moutain Park and immediately below is the southern end of Hood Canal. Friday the sheet of white fog offered no view at all. Artists camp on his property to paint the view.
Someday this summer I am going to pack another car lunch , I have to take Mira and Ahman back to the site for the view and we can remember the day we sorted blueberry bundles.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Peas, Potatoes and Peat Moss
It is that time of spring when the peas are started in a pie tin in the house. I put my three varieties between wet paper towels and for a couple days and then they go in the ground. The sprouted seeds have a head start and the birds are less likely to get to festive on them.
The sign said, '26 kinds of potatoes seeds', well, that would stop my car for a look,see even if I did not want to grow potatoes. I have learned in the past couple years that potatoes rank right up there with the most commercially poisonous process of food growing there is in this country. The fact that potato farmers grow what the family eats separately from the contacted commercial fields says about about the chemicals they are required to put on those potatoes. It is hard for the average American to just start a potato patch like their grandparents had but if it was possible, it makes food sense.
Potatoes are a cool weather crop and are as easy as any crop in the world to grow. In fact, there is a popular system of growing them in straw bales or throwing the seeds on the ground and simply cover the whole area with old straw or a couple inches of grounds.
I remember my parents growing potatoes and I did try my hand at it in a small area of six feet by six feet last year. This year, I am getting a little more serious about my potato crop and using a long narrow patch of ground on the side of the house that gets the afternoon sun. I picked out four varieties for random reasons that make little sense, two early maturing and two mid-season types. I will cut these organic seed potatoes so each piece has a couple eyes and put some sealer dust on the them so they don't rot in the ground. I realize from last year that home grown potatoes are little treasure of favor.
Imagine the people in Peru have 3,000 varieties that they cultivate but basically there are two kinds, whites and reds. Whites store the better for winter and bake the better, the reds boil the better and taste nicer. Catalogs offer 50 different varsities, that is probably more than my curiosity will be able to work though.
With the addition of haskap berries, the Japanese blueberries research patch, that I planted in the fall, I am more interested in seeing that all my berry bushes are given the best opportunity to produce this season. I trim my old blue berry bushes and yesterday I spread peat moss around each one of them. There is a current thought going about gardening circle not to use peat moss but in truth there is little else that blue berry bushes love as much as peat moss. I will put my peat moss in the back corner of the garden shed and not talk about the contraband if the garden police come to my yard.
The sign said, '26 kinds of potatoes seeds', well, that would stop my car for a look,see even if I did not want to grow potatoes. I have learned in the past couple years that potatoes rank right up there with the most commercially poisonous process of food growing there is in this country. The fact that potato farmers grow what the family eats separately from the contacted commercial fields says about about the chemicals they are required to put on those potatoes. It is hard for the average American to just start a potato patch like their grandparents had but if it was possible, it makes food sense.
Potatoes are a cool weather crop and are as easy as any crop in the world to grow. In fact, there is a popular system of growing them in straw bales or throwing the seeds on the ground and simply cover the whole area with old straw or a couple inches of grounds.
I remember my parents growing potatoes and I did try my hand at it in a small area of six feet by six feet last year. This year, I am getting a little more serious about my potato crop and using a long narrow patch of ground on the side of the house that gets the afternoon sun. I picked out four varieties for random reasons that make little sense, two early maturing and two mid-season types. I will cut these organic seed potatoes so each piece has a couple eyes and put some sealer dust on the them so they don't rot in the ground. I realize from last year that home grown potatoes are little treasure of favor.
Imagine the people in Peru have 3,000 varieties that they cultivate but basically there are two kinds, whites and reds. Whites store the better for winter and bake the better, the reds boil the better and taste nicer. Catalogs offer 50 different varsities, that is probably more than my curiosity will be able to work though.
With the addition of haskap berries, the Japanese blueberries research patch, that I planted in the fall, I am more interested in seeing that all my berry bushes are given the best opportunity to produce this season. I trim my old blue berry bushes and yesterday I spread peat moss around each one of them. There is a current thought going about gardening circle not to use peat moss but in truth there is little else that blue berry bushes love as much as peat moss. I will put my peat moss in the back corner of the garden shed and not talk about the contraband if the garden police come to my yard.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
a view of marriage
Elizabeth Gilbert's new book on marriage, COMMITTED will probably not be read by many women over 50 and mostly enjoyed by women under 30. Gilbert challenges too many traditions for older women and the young generation simple takes many of the changes in marriage for granted. Against all the odds of success, she explains in this book, why she is taking the chance and getting married again.
Never could I think of a more difficult subject to write about than that dance, I call marriage, having taken vows of marriage three times I have firm ideas about what can make and break relationships. I think she succeeded with this book but even Gilbert said she totally started over on this project after finishing the first go around.
Gilbert is at her best when she writes like an interviewing journalist. She is very good at observing, very curious and has lots of insights to add. It also should be added that she is not afraid to treat the subject like a research paper and educated herself on the whole field of marriage historically. She became a little boring when examining her own motives and personality, although she is painfully honest and blunt. By nature, memoirs and autobiography matter is narcissistic, I suppose.
Understanding her personality is much easy for me now that she has written so opening about the women in her family. There is a gathering in that bloodline of strong women, independent thinkers and determine hard workers. Personally, I identified easily with her mother, probably a person close to my age.
Humor and openness must a characteristic of her family and husband because she is very revealing, 'eye only' standard was thrown out with printing of this book.
I found my interest level uneven while reading it. In the end, I like her as a writer and am amazed at some of her work but as the NYT reviewer said, I look forward to the book about her grandmother.
Never could I think of a more difficult subject to write about than that dance, I call marriage, having taken vows of marriage three times I have firm ideas about what can make and break relationships. I think she succeeded with this book but even Gilbert said she totally started over on this project after finishing the first go around.
Gilbert is at her best when she writes like an interviewing journalist. She is very good at observing, very curious and has lots of insights to add. It also should be added that she is not afraid to treat the subject like a research paper and educated herself on the whole field of marriage historically. She became a little boring when examining her own motives and personality, although she is painfully honest and blunt. By nature, memoirs and autobiography matter is narcissistic, I suppose.
Understanding her personality is much easy for me now that she has written so opening about the women in her family. There is a gathering in that bloodline of strong women, independent thinkers and determine hard workers. Personally, I identified easily with her mother, probably a person close to my age.
Humor and openness must a characteristic of her family and husband because she is very revealing, 'eye only' standard was thrown out with printing of this book.
I found my interest level uneven while reading it. In the end, I like her as a writer and am amazed at some of her work but as the NYT reviewer said, I look forward to the book about her grandmother.
Friday, February 19, 2010
The heart matters more than the brain
A surprising miss titled book I recently read is THE SECRET TEACHING OF PLANTS by Stephen Harrod Buhner, subtitled The Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature. One would assume from the title that this book is about plant life but instead this book is about how the heart of a human being is the most overlooked intelligence organ in the body. Yes, it is astounding!
Buhner gathers evidence from remarkable people who experienced and saw the world though their heart like Henry David Thoreau, Luther Burbank and George Washington Carver and Masanobu Fukuoka.
I understand though my education that the brain, the mind, is the best way of reason, observe and understand the world around me. It is, at best, a linear way of taking in information. Think of a camera, no matter how fast it shows something two dimensional. Another example of brain/linear thought is the line from Los Angela to San Fransisco is 500 miles. If one walked the coast line between those two cities is would be much further because the shoreline is not a straight line. The point is that our mental perception of the world is only one way to understand the world and it maybe the less important way.
The heart is more than a muscular pump it is a electromagnetic generator and receiver, 'it is highly evolved organ of perception and communication'. The heart as it turns out has a brain of its own. It processes a battery of information about our bodies but also knows how we think and feel in our conscious.
The indigenous people of the Amazon were asked how they used two very different plants which also had many varieties of each one to form a highly useful drug, singularly these plants are deadly. The answer was that they used their heart and listen to the plants. In modern Western cultures we identify ourselves with the matter above our eyebrows and not with the center of our chests. We are in period of time that information is spread so quickly that we have focused on our brain skills and not our heart skills.
This book is part poetry, part science and at times a very slow read. I am sure than anyone that spends sometime with it is reminded of all the moments they have had with quietness and reflection. There is an energy that overcomes and refreshes.
The book is fulled with quotes and a favorite of mine is by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
And now there is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Buhner gathers evidence from remarkable people who experienced and saw the world though their heart like Henry David Thoreau, Luther Burbank and George Washington Carver and Masanobu Fukuoka.
I understand though my education that the brain, the mind, is the best way of reason, observe and understand the world around me. It is, at best, a linear way of taking in information. Think of a camera, no matter how fast it shows something two dimensional. Another example of brain/linear thought is the line from Los Angela to San Fransisco is 500 miles. If one walked the coast line between those two cities is would be much further because the shoreline is not a straight line. The point is that our mental perception of the world is only one way to understand the world and it maybe the less important way.
The heart is more than a muscular pump it is a electromagnetic generator and receiver, 'it is highly evolved organ of perception and communication'. The heart as it turns out has a brain of its own. It processes a battery of information about our bodies but also knows how we think and feel in our conscious.
The indigenous people of the Amazon were asked how they used two very different plants which also had many varieties of each one to form a highly useful drug, singularly these plants are deadly. The answer was that they used their heart and listen to the plants. In modern Western cultures we identify ourselves with the matter above our eyebrows and not with the center of our chests. We are in period of time that information is spread so quickly that we have focused on our brain skills and not our heart skills.
This book is part poetry, part science and at times a very slow read. I am sure than anyone that spends sometime with it is reminded of all the moments they have had with quietness and reflection. There is an energy that overcomes and refreshes.
The book is fulled with quotes and a favorite of mine is by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
And now there is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Ice Cream and Stateroom 3404
Imagine that once a year there is a special ice cream produced with the richest cream and eggs of the season. People plan each year for the big event. Well, for a few years for many sorted reasons you did not purchase the ice cream and then finally after five years you have a chance to purchase not a quart but a gallon of this special ice cream.
One couple takes home the ice cream but the man of the house finds the ice cream too rich, too much of a change to the diet and is very uncomfortable about this food. Day after day, he sampling from the gallon of delightful ice cream but it is becoming very clear he is getting sick from the ice cream. Now his wife is growing more concern each day and decides come what may, to throw out the ice cream. They simply have to go back to their routine diet.
This is what happened to John on this trip. The adjustments were overwhelming and the stateroom to far away for him to find.
We came home. Now that we are back to our routine things are improving day by day.
One couple takes home the ice cream but the man of the house finds the ice cream too rich, too much of a change to the diet and is very uncomfortable about this food. Day after day, he sampling from the gallon of delightful ice cream but it is becoming very clear he is getting sick from the ice cream. Now his wife is growing more concern each day and decides come what may, to throw out the ice cream. They simply have to go back to their routine diet.
This is what happened to John on this trip. The adjustments were overwhelming and the stateroom to far away for him to find.
We came home. Now that we are back to our routine things are improving day by day.
Some Travel thoughts
My husband, John, can shut down a security check point more rapidly than three men in long robes with side arms. John can also spot a pretty blond faster than two college boys on spring break and finally he can entertain a young child across an airplane or a restaurant more than two puppies and a whistle could.
From a long line of nomads, my ancestors moved across an ocean to put my birth place here on this land, I have lost my sense of wonder about travel. I firmly believe that Thoreau had wisdom when he said, 'beware of all enterprises that require new clothes'. His thoughts about being well traveled in Concord, I am taking to heart.
We have come home early from a cruise. (That is whole story that is separate from this discussion of travel.)
From the first days of going camping with my two children forty years ago until this past week, I have always have a spirit that could not be totally quieted by being in one place. The sights of different people, landscapes, foods were necessary for my wide corner of curiosity. The stories that hang on old buildings and ancient roadways I have read about, the books that told of people that conquered, stood up to power, the saints and sinners of history maybe, just maybe, called me to review, because maybe, I had been there before!
This week a white haired, plain looking woman in her eighties turned and said, "I have been to all the places she has been talking about, what's the point, who cares, who really cares. The thing I hate about cruising is the talk about how serious was the last illness and how many places I have visited around the world." She was referring to a couple in front of us explaining to a gentleman about world ports and travel.
There are a few pieces of luggage that are on the shelve that are for the taking. Our backyard is the new location for observing and learning. I am going to reread Thoreau and use his perspective.
From a long line of nomads, my ancestors moved across an ocean to put my birth place here on this land, I have lost my sense of wonder about travel. I firmly believe that Thoreau had wisdom when he said, 'beware of all enterprises that require new clothes'. His thoughts about being well traveled in Concord, I am taking to heart.
We have come home early from a cruise. (That is whole story that is separate from this discussion of travel.)
From the first days of going camping with my two children forty years ago until this past week, I have always have a spirit that could not be totally quieted by being in one place. The sights of different people, landscapes, foods were necessary for my wide corner of curiosity. The stories that hang on old buildings and ancient roadways I have read about, the books that told of people that conquered, stood up to power, the saints and sinners of history maybe, just maybe, called me to review, because maybe, I had been there before!
This week a white haired, plain looking woman in her eighties turned and said, "I have been to all the places she has been talking about, what's the point, who cares, who really cares. The thing I hate about cruising is the talk about how serious was the last illness and how many places I have visited around the world." She was referring to a couple in front of us explaining to a gentleman about world ports and travel.
There are a few pieces of luggage that are on the shelve that are for the taking. Our backyard is the new location for observing and learning. I am going to reread Thoreau and use his perspective.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Warm Sunny Day
On Sunday the clouds and sun were sharing the sky and the warmth of the day encouraged me to spend the part of the day outside. As a gardener within five minutes the jobs appear, this time it was pruning one apple tree and list grew.
Of course, when I am in the yard my 'ladies' make noise and walk the fence until I open the door and let them roam the yard. Sometimes they fly across the yard for 40 feet about a yard above the ground. Other times they festive on the grass one foot from the coop and dance their two step slowly moving across the green.
There are a few that think winter pruning is not a good thing because the rains doesn't allow the cuts to heal. Others have the whole scientific movement of fluids in the tree in the cold months and say it is the best time to prune. I fall in the school of people that think a little pruning a few times a year is best. Apple trees are easy for me to prune I have a mental picture of what a well shaped tree should look like. Also I have a goal of keeping my tree manageable for me which means I don't have to get up on a ladder.
Peaches trees are a problem on all accounts for me. My dreams of harvesting three or four trees loaded with peaches is dieing a slow death. I took out one tree last year and on very close examining the remaining three, I see one have problems, a honey type sweating. Last year I harvested six peaches, return on space is not worthy for a peach orchard. This summer Georgia better make it's way to my yard or plans will be made their replacement.
In the meantime, I move from the orchard area to be back fence and prune the espaliers. I am learning how to grow a third tier to these trees and pruning is very important to forming this. These trees provide a lovely cover of the back wall of cedar fence and even if they did not produce any fruit for me they are attractive to view. Fortunately, they are my oldest trees and after I thin them they still produce bounty of fruit. If I was doing any grafting these cutting would be valued as scion wood but I have no interest this year in starting my own trees.
Even with one week of below freezing temperatures I think my two fig trees are healthy, will be ok this year. This maybe the year that my young pears and apricot trees give fruit. I am happy to say the plums, apples, Asian pears are mature enough not to be hurt by the sudden cold. Dealing with fruit I have learn to understand that berries are easy to grow and offer so much in the way of production and good taste and health. My new bed of Haskap berries, added to my blueberries and goji berries will needed to be cover in some way this year to protect from the birds.
Red is my smartest hen and she is always the first to wander into the kale bed or start digging in my berry bed, off I go with my rake and wave her off. Our shared time together in the yard is finished off this Sunday with the "ladies" finding some nice soft warm soil next to the house and they had a dirty bath. John and I have a Paris lunch on the small patio next to their coop, little Italian wine and last night's pizza.
Of course, when I am in the yard my 'ladies' make noise and walk the fence until I open the door and let them roam the yard. Sometimes they fly across the yard for 40 feet about a yard above the ground. Other times they festive on the grass one foot from the coop and dance their two step slowly moving across the green.
There are a few that think winter pruning is not a good thing because the rains doesn't allow the cuts to heal. Others have the whole scientific movement of fluids in the tree in the cold months and say it is the best time to prune. I fall in the school of people that think a little pruning a few times a year is best. Apple trees are easy for me to prune I have a mental picture of what a well shaped tree should look like. Also I have a goal of keeping my tree manageable for me which means I don't have to get up on a ladder.
Peaches trees are a problem on all accounts for me. My dreams of harvesting three or four trees loaded with peaches is dieing a slow death. I took out one tree last year and on very close examining the remaining three, I see one have problems, a honey type sweating. Last year I harvested six peaches, return on space is not worthy for a peach orchard. This summer Georgia better make it's way to my yard or plans will be made their replacement.
In the meantime, I move from the orchard area to be back fence and prune the espaliers. I am learning how to grow a third tier to these trees and pruning is very important to forming this. These trees provide a lovely cover of the back wall of cedar fence and even if they did not produce any fruit for me they are attractive to view. Fortunately, they are my oldest trees and after I thin them they still produce bounty of fruit. If I was doing any grafting these cutting would be valued as scion wood but I have no interest this year in starting my own trees.
Even with one week of below freezing temperatures I think my two fig trees are healthy, will be ok this year. This maybe the year that my young pears and apricot trees give fruit. I am happy to say the plums, apples, Asian pears are mature enough not to be hurt by the sudden cold. Dealing with fruit I have learn to understand that berries are easy to grow and offer so much in the way of production and good taste and health. My new bed of Haskap berries, added to my blueberries and goji berries will needed to be cover in some way this year to protect from the birds.
Red is my smartest hen and she is always the first to wander into the kale bed or start digging in my berry bed, off I go with my rake and wave her off. Our shared time together in the yard is finished off this Sunday with the "ladies" finding some nice soft warm soil next to the house and they had a dirty bath. John and I have a Paris lunch on the small patio next to their coop, little Italian wine and last night's pizza.
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