Reading Dirt

Mother's Day at the Oregon Garden

2010-05-10T20:51:00.000-07:00

Judging by how full the parking lot was, not to mention the garden tram, I think half the folks in the area had the same idea we had: if it's sunny on Mother's Day, let's drive up to the Oregon Garden!

Fortunately, there's a lot of garden to see, so once we were in, it wasn't crowded. Busy enough, but not crowded.

This early in the season, at Silverton's elevation, bloom time is a little behind the valley floor. It's been a cool, late spring to begin with, so while the tulips were done and the rhodies were out, irises were just barely getting started.

We said hello to the "pot people," a friendly terra-cotta couple in the children's garden;

The little garden train, a new feature, was up and running -- after the train was stolen a few weeks ago, found, and returned!

The green wall, a feature that's becoming the darling of architects trying to plan for sustainability, is looking bare in patches. Even the experienced gardeners at the Oregon Garden are still investigating ways to keep green walls green.

The monkey puzzle tree looks so wonderfully architectural, but having lived with one in the back yard, I'm not eager to plant one again. Those sharp, triangular leaves, long summer grass, and bare feet just aren't a good combination!

The day was marvelously sunny, just warm enough for shirt sleeves and for lying in the grass, looking up at the tulip tree:

Alas, the Cooley iris walk wasn't in bloom, but I found this gorgeous specimen just opening up:

What do you think? A cute little water feature like this in the back yard? Shouldn't take long, I think... given an unlimited budget and a large crew of burly men...

Rhodies were in bloom, including this striking specimen in pink and yellow:

The home demo garden featured this living fence of espalier apples. Amazingly, there were no wire supports for the branches. Must figure out how they did that because I want an apple fence in my garden:

This utility shed has a green roof, which is hard to see with the sun behind it...
...but easier to see from the lawn above, on the other side. Now there's some "green architecture" that works. My son is at Portland State, where several of the buildings have green roofs. Scientists studying them have found various insect fauna starting to move in, the beginnings of a whole rooftop ecosystem.

We had lots more to do on Mother's Day, including a trip to the land of Yarnia -- the rest of the story is over on my knitting blog: Of Gardens, Yarn, and Bacon: A Mother's Day Tale.

As though we needed another reason to eat chocolate...

2010-05-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

Now there's a study out of Johns Hopkins suggesting that compounds in dark chocolate may help protect the brain from stroke injury.

I'm looking forward to future prescriptions for Sees, Godiva, Dagoba...

And we've got to get ourselves back to the garrrrdeeennn...

2010-05-02T19:54:00.000-07:00

It's been a long and busy winter and early spring, what with teaching and being out of town for conferences, running here and running there... I didn't even get time to grow my own starts this year, alas.

But here we are in May, past the last average frost date by two weeks, it's a sunny weekend, so dare we start some summer planting?

We dare!

This morning started with some plant shopping, yielding a nice little haul of annual flowers and some veggies. I even found Brandywine and Cherokee Purple tomato starts at the garden center. Add a gallon of stinky fish fertilizer, that magical stuff, and we're off.

Yeah, dinky little starts tucked into their garden beds don't make for impressive photographs, do they? But they will once summer gets going.

Since "last average frost date" is just an average and isn't always to be trusted anyway, I tucked the tomatoes, squash, and melons in under tomato cozies and cat litter jugs with the bottoms cut out. Lettuce, chard, and spinach should be just fine.

Around the garden, the Irix tenax is in bloom:

As are these sky-blue dwarf iris:

Columbine have been popping up everywhere in fresh new colors each year:

Salmon pink and deep burgundy together -- stunning!

And doubly stunning when seen from below, looking up at the overhanging pine and the blue sky:

It's beginning to look a lot like suuummmerrr!

Kitty Woes

2010-01-15T07:37:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted with my knitting blog)

This is Mr. Licorice, sometimes known as Mr. Fangs and Claws:

He came to us as a half-grown abandoned kitten that wandered into a co-worker's garage. Out of all our feline herd, Licorice is the only one who goes outdoors on his own. Even though he's neutered, he acts like an intact tom: aggressive, territorial, foul tempered when he's indoors; aggressive, territorial, and happy to be petted and adored when he's outdoors. Prozac failed to curb his behavior, and while tempting, I can't keep him under sedation all the time. So we had him microchipped, put a reflective collar on him, cross our fingers and hope for the best, knowing that outdoor cats are exposed to all sorts of risks.

Well, Licorice must have run head-on into one of those risks, because Monday evening he came in with an open sore on his chest that on inspection looked like an abscess that had opened up. He seemed chipper enough and had a good appetite, but the next morning it was still open and oozing and had a foul odor, so I confined him to the sick kitty crate for observation and called the vet. Most likely he'd gotten into a fight with another cat, and since the wound was on his chest, he was not the one who backed down! Yeah, that's our Mr. Fangs and Claws.

Wednesday morning (after a dose of sedative so getting him in the kitty carrier wasn't quite as bad as wrestling a cactus) he went into the vet's office. By then he'd developed a fever and the wound was still draining. When the vet got him under anesthesia and got the abscess open, it was pretty bad. It had gone deep, the fluid inside was thick and smelly, and there was a patch of skin that had gone necrotic. If we'd tried to treat this at home, he wouldn't have lasted long.

So Licorice came home that evening and went straight back into the sick kitty crate. He was pretty agitated and loopy coming off the anesthetic, so I covered the crate with blankets, trying to calm him down. The next morning he was very quiet and subdued, probably hurting from the surgery. His appetite was good, though.

And this morning he's a little brighter and demanding to be let out of his crate (sorry, it's kind of a nasty view of the drains in his incision):

He's eating well and using the litter box, so recovery looks good, but he's not a happy kitty. Hates the plastic cone. Hates being confined. Hates it when the other cats come and stare at him.

Poor, sad kitty:

That was a $600 hit to our bank account, and we were already tapped out helping my mother-in-law buy heating fuel. I think we've got just enough left for groceries until payday, but we're going to have to be reeeeal careful.

Blog Action Day: Garden for the Globe

2009-10-15T13:54:00.000-07:00

It's Blog Action Day 2009, and this year the theme is global climate change.

A garden blog seems like the perfect venue to talk about going "green" to address global climate change and reducing one's carbon footprint. After all, one can plant a tree to absorb carbon dioxide and photosynthetically transform it into wood and other plant tissue. Problem solved. Right?

Well...it's a start.

Think about where to locate that tree. On the south side of a house, a deciduous tree can shade the house in the summer, reducing the costs of keeping the house cool. On the north side, an evergreen can block chilly winter winds, reducing winter heating costs, while a foundation planting of woody shrubs can protect the house as well. Stick with small trees that top out at 20 feet or so, and you might have your trees and solar panels, too. Choose shrubs appropriate for the climate, and you reduce water usage as well. Now we're cooking with gas... er, solar.

Using trees to take up carbon dioxide and cutting heating/cooling costs to reduce carbon output is all good, sure. But solving the global climate change puzzle is going to take a lot more than planting a tree and turning down the thermostat. It's even going to take more that putting up a solar panel and thumbing your nose at the electric company trucks.

What got us into this mess in the first place was the use of fossil fuels to energize an industrial revolution which led to an out-of-control consumption-based economy. Mother Nature took hundreds of thousands of years to put all that petroleum and coal into the ground. Humans have burned up perhaps just shy of half of it in less than 200 years. That's a lot of carbon, all at once. Of course it's going to have an impact.

What have we gotten in return? We have fast transportation, machine-produced goods, labor-saving appliances, hot-and-cold running water, central heating, fresh produce year-around, and all the other former luxuries that we now consider daily necessities and would be loath to give up.

We live in a society grounded in consumption. We haven't always been this way. In the past, people of the US took pride in their productivity. Most people lived on small farms. People cooked, sewed, spun, and knitted. They worked wood, braided rugs, made milk into butter and cheese and apples into pies and cider. In the country, people grew most of the food that they ate. Even in the suburbs, while houses might have a lawn and flower beds in the front, they more often than not had a kitchen garden in the back.

In the mid-20th century, particularly after WWII, American society had a turn-around. After scrimping and saving for two World Wars, after giving up butter and meat, after endless scrap drives, after knitting for the soldiers, people were tired of economizing and were pleased with the message from Madison Avenue: luxury goods! Modern living! Why cook from scratch when you could buy ready-cooked in a can, all the work done for you in (what was presented as) a clean, hygienic factory kitchen? Why be so old-fashioned as to knit or sew when you could buy ready-made?

And so we became consumers instead of producers, happily contributing to an economy that was based on more and more people buying more and more stuff per capita every year. The price for the luxury of buying everything ready-made and on-demand was increased pollution, increased carbon emissions, and depletion of natural resources. Global climate change was the inevitable result, and it's not thousands of years in the future. It's right now.

Our consumer-based economy is neither economically nor ecologically sustainable. We can't keep it up. We must change, and do so before the economy and the ecology collapse irrevocably. We must do so intelligently, thoughtfully, and with care in choosing what kind of economy we can sustain.

And what does this have to do with gardening? Take a peek back at those farms and homes I talked about earlier. What was in the back yard? Yep, the humble kitchen garden. Where were most people living? You got it -- on local farms, supplying people in the area with fresh produce, meat, and eggs.

If global climate change is the demon child of the industrial revolution and the transformation of producers into mass consumers, the way out again is to become producers once again and become more thoughtful consumers. Eating locally is one avenue. Eating locally reduces our reliance on produce shipped from faraway countries, and you can't get much more local than your own back yard. There's also nearby farms and farmer's markets. Buying local not only reduces one's carbon footprint, it also keeps money in your local economy, which keeps local businesses and farms alive and preserves meaningful employment in your area.

Natural landscaping is another avenue. Outside of the kitchen garden, thoughtful choices among native and near-native plants can reduce water consumption, contribute to carbon-sequestering, and support local wildlife. Organic gardening methods put carbon-rich humus in the soil, which increases carbon-sequestering.

Then there is the more cerebral part of organic gardening. As the gardener goes through the seasons, learning from books and by (sometimes hard) experience about which plants to choose, how to care for them, and which pests to watch out for, the gardener connects to the natural world and the rhythms of the seasons. Thoughtful choices in the garden, from which pest control methods to use to which plants to choose, can lead to thoughtful choices outside of the garden. If I don't want to put poisons on my plants, do I want poisons in the household cleaners I use? If I'm concerned about the health of my soil, what about the soil of our nation's farms? What do I care about the latest fashions or must-buy products when I have a harvest of tomatoes and corn to take pride in?

By some religious traditions, humans began life in a garden. With a little effort, maybe it will be gardens that keep us alive as well.

I eat local because I can...

2009-10-13T20:12:00.000-07:00

A long, busy summer has gone by since I last took the time to sit down and garden blog. There's something about the late summer, with the heat and the whole yard drying to a crisp and even the weeds punking out that kind of diminishes garden fever, until the spring catalogs arrive.

This summer I've had lots of landscaping projects in mind, but knowing that we were about to have the roof torn off of our house and reconstructed gave me pause: "Hmm, those guys are paid to demolish and build, they're not paid to tiptoe gently around the tulips." Nope, not at all. And I'm glad, now that construction is underway (pictures to come -- the transformation on our house is astonishing) that I did put off my summer projects. It looks like a mini-tornado has been through. Fortunately the shrubs next to the house are practically indestructible.

Eating local, whether out of the garden, the farmer's market, or nearby farms, has been a common theme this summer, and will continue all winter. I've dried several pints of sun-dried tomatoes, canned whole bushel (42 pints) of peaches from a local farm and 40 pints of pears from a friend's pear tree, and froze 60 pounds of blueberries from a blueberry farm. Oh, lordy, the flavor of home-canned peaches is incomparable. Nectar. Ambrosia. Food of the gods. I'm glad I put up double of what I usually put up, so I don't have to try to make them stretch and can have home-canned fruit salad when I want. Alas, I missed the cherry harvest and didn't get cherries put up. Try again next year.

All those shiny, colorful jars of produce look so nice on the pantry shelf, and give me a smug, self-sufficient feeling. If we're snowed in this winter, we'll certainly have enough fruit to eat. Maybe not a whole lot else, but fruit, yeah, we have it!

Friday Finds

2009-06-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy week, so not much gleaned. There IS a lot going on in the garden now that the tomatoes are leaping out of the ground, the strawberries are producing, and I see today that the pie cherries are turning. Pictures to come!

A few things I've stumbled across:

Have an iPod Touch or an iPhone? Here are 10 garden apps for you to play with, from plant encyclopedias to local eating databases.
What do you do when your city is losing population and neighborhoods are turning into ghost towns? Does it make green sense to bulldoze vacant houses, after removing any thing recyclable, and return the land to nature? There are both pros and cons to the plan, of course, but it's interesting to see that "negative growth" doesn't have to be a dirty phrase.
Bloggers have an ethical code? Apparently so, according to this study!

Friday Finds (a day late -- so sue me)

2009-06-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a draining weekend so far. A funeral double-header. Seriously. Two funerals in one weekend. I'm doing a good deal of quiet knitting and flower-planting this weekend.

A few interesting finds from the last week or so:

Goats instead of lawn mowers? More and more communities are seeing this as a good idea. And corporations, too -- check out the Google Goats.
USA Today finally caught on to the concept of Urban Farming.
Want to keep locally-owned businesses in business? Join the 3-50 movement. Choose three locally-owned businesses -- actual storefronts that are not franchises -- and spend $50 each month at each of them. The effects can be enormous. Hmm... I think between the garden center, the local pet supply shop, and the new crepe and gelato restaurant, I spent my 3-50 cash for the month and then some.

The Oregon Garden in Spring

2009-06-09T19:27:00.000-07:00

On a sunny weekend not long ago -- Memorial Day to be precise -- we decided to get out of the house and do something. The summer-like air called us outdoors and off we skipped to The Oregon Garden in Silverton (which I think was a much better plan than going to a movie, which was the first thought).

The garden owns over 200 acres of land, once a horse ranch, and about 18 acres have been developed. Moonstone Hotels owns a luxurious lodge with conference facilities in the grounds and took over the garden finances not long ago when the garden was having serious financial problems. With their sponsorship and the presence of the hotel, the garden is on track to success once again.

From the highest point on the slope, one can look down at the garden, wild bits and landscaped bits alike, and off across the Willamette Valley to the Coast Range in the distance:

The series of ponds that connect to one another down the hillside are more than just pretty. They also provide wetland habitat, and, believe it or not, filter treated municipal water, which irrigates and provides nutrients for the garden.

We caught the electric tram for a quick tour around the garden to spot things we wanted to see on foot later. For a public garden of its size, it has a lot of variation, innovation, and charming little bits like this green roof on the pumphouse for the water garden:

The children's garden was one of my favorite spots, for all the imaginative features packed into one spot. The garden sports a dragon windvane:

As well as a couple of pot people:

And a Hobbit house for the kids to play in, running through the tunnel or rolling down its slopes:

And even a huge sandbox complete with dinosaur bones to unearth:

Kids can wonder at the vertical garden and peer at all the little succulents growing on its face:

For the smallest visitors, a miniature garden features tiny houses and riddles painted on rocks:

Beyond the edges of the developed gardens is a stretch of native prairie that is slowly being restored. In the midst stands the Heritage Oak, an Oregon White Oak over 400 years old:

Who says public gardens have to be only ornamental? Here the vegetable gardens demonstrate square foot gardening:

I plan to install an espaliered apple fence like this in my own garden:

And of course there were formal gardens, with some pretty amazing fountains and sculptures:

That's only a sampling. You'll have to visit the gardens yourself to see the rest!

Darkness

2009-06-05T21:52:00.000-07:00

We just learned that the mother of a family we know in the neighborhood, whose son is one of my son's buddies, passed away quite suddenly and unexpectedly. She leaves behind a husband, grown son, and two school-age daughters. Must see what we can do for them.

Friday Finds

2009-05-29T22:15:00.000-07:00

A round-up of interesting, more-or-less garden and ecology related stuff I've run across this week:

Deputy Dog blog shows that without a doubt solid waste pollution is a problem. Holy Shamoley, is it a problem!
Frances Moore Lappé, whose career as an environmental activist started with the classic cookbook, Diet for a Small Planet, says that we're going to have to make a few simple but fundamental changes in our thinking if we're going to even have a planet to hand on to future generations.
Susan Harris at Garden Rant shows a terrific Stickwork Summer Palace built entirely of natural materials. Looks like a soft-serve ice cream made of sticks and straw. I want one!
Every now and then the New York Times gets it right with a gardening article. This time it's one on making a salsa garden. (Yes, that's me, the country kid, snarking at them city slickers.)
Needled, a needlework blog, shows beautiful photos of the gardens at Arfin, in Scotland. Drool. Now where am I going to get the money to go to Scotland, because now I must go!
Another excuse to go to your locally-owned garden center or nursery: The 3-50 Project to stimulate your local economy.

Memorial Day 2009

2009-05-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

To Dad (Air Force, Korean War), Grandpa (Army, WWI), and great-great-Grandpa (Union Army, American Civil War) who served this country, and to Uncle Richard (Army, WWII) who died for it:

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

Going Vertical

2009-05-15T08:52:00.000-07:00

The satisfyingly messy project is done -- though if I repaint the trellises, I'll use a brush next time. Even with tarps down, the spray paint went everywhere. I also ended up spraying more paint on the dropcloth than on the narrow slats of the trellises -- not terribly cost-effective. But they are done, dry, and up, adding a splash of gaudy color and a vertical element to an otherwise altogether too horizontal front garden:

The melons I grew in the greenhouse and moved to the cold frame are now planted below and tethered to their trellises, with some flat rocks spray-painted black sitting at their feet to soak up a little extra solar heat. The Charentais melons still look a little bedraggled from their move. Too soon an exposure to full sun, perhaps? Though the new leaves look better:

Sugar Baby watermelons look a little more sturdy. We'll see how they do. Melons are always a chancy proposition in this climate:

The tomatoes and peppers are all snug in their Kozy Koats until night temperatures warm up again. I'm trying the technique of clipping the leaves from the bottom half of the stem and burying the stem horizontally, with the remaining leaves sticking up. The plants grow adventitious roots from the leaf nodes (terms which my students should recognize -- right? Right?), making the whole plant sturdier and giving them more roots to draw up more nutrients and water.

The weather for the next couple of weeks is supposed to be in the 70s and 80s, great for these neotropical crops, but couldn't it have started a few days ago, instead of the day after the field trips are over? But then again, we got only light sprinkles and no torrential downpours while we were out, so there's that to be thankful for.

Students in the Mist. With Orchids.

2009-05-14T19:45:00.001-07:00

Field trip week!

This week I took three groups of biology students into the field to do some basic ecological data gathering to come up with some descriptive statistics of the forest. The Cronemiller Lake area in McDonald-Dunn forest (owned by Oregon State University) has extensive stands of Douglas-fir regrowth, some of it fairly old, with a nice selection of native shrubs and not too many invasives.

There was a great deal of this native to contend with -- good ol' Poison-oak:

Leaflets three, let them be, right? Only, it's also a really, really good idea to be familiar with Poison-oak's many growth forms, including vigorous and rampant vines, which made taking the circumference of the large trees a bit of an adventure:

I was trying to get some shots of students at work, which, when taken from the relative safety of the trail, were coming out with a whole Gorillas in the Mist effect.

There... look closely at the base of the large Douglas-fir... you can just see them:

Ah, there's one member of the troop, moving apart from the others:

Oh, and look at this! Isn't this exciting?
Several more emerge from the shelter of the thick shrubs:
And now the sun comes out and we break into a clearing where several groups were hard at work here:

And here:
And that was another thrilling episode of Students in the Mist!

While supervising students and wielding the camera, there are, of course, ample opportunities to get pictures of the forest flora. A vine maple here, its leaves shiny with the morning rain that (hooray!) ceased before we set out:

Hazelnut leaves and catkins catching the afternoon sun:
The plumy white flower and triple triangular leaves of Vanilla Leaf, with the foliage of Fairy Bells in the foreground:

Baneberry, a sensitive species, was in full bloom. It seems to be doing well despite last year's trampling herds of students:
Lots of lovely yellow Wood Violets:

And the wild Bleeding Hearts were in full bloom:

Wild Iris turned up in the clearing:
As did Waterleaf, just coming into flower:

But the prize for the flower-spotter is tiny little Calypso, a native orchid which stands only a couple of inches high:

The garden in May

2009-05-04T18:57:00.001-07:00

My current project -- satisfyingly messy, and gaudily colored. I wanted some kind of trellis or something for my melons to climb over, and had plans to build such an item, but on shopping for the materials at the local hardware store, I found some inexpensive wooden trellises and heavy hardwood stakes that would suit. I sprayed them all with a coat of primer, then with some gaudy outdoor enamel. The trellises are brilliant blue, while the stakes that will support the tomatoes are deep purple. That ought to wake up the neighbors.

I had extra time this weekend to work on the project. There was a case of H1N1 flu confirmed at my university, and we shut down for a couple of days while the diagnosing was going on and to prevent any spreading of the virus. For once, I'm all caught up with my grading. We'll be back in business tomorrow, since there don't appear to be any more cases.

Elsewhere in the garden, I came across this ladybug amongst the Aubretia while I was weeding, and the bright little beastie contrasted with the purple and green made such a pleasing picture that I had to dash indoors for my camera:

My teeny pond needs pulling apart and cleaning, and I should probably get a real pond liner instead of black plastic, but it still looks all wild and woodsy with the ferns, cyclamen, and hellebore popping up around it.

Isn't this a fabulous arum? I can't recall the name of it, but I bought it at a plant sale that benefits one of the local historical gardens. I like the long antennae thingie emerging from the mysterious hood.

After the disappearance of my blue glass gazing ball, I moved my little elfin figure to a more secluded spot. A fan of sword fern makes a nice backdrop, with blue geranium and fuzzy caterpillar fern coming up in front.

A little kitten figure, a monument to a 9-week-old kitten who died of coccidia a few years ago, sleeps under the ferns, too.

Lettuce and peas are doing well. We're getting drenching rains today, so they're all getting watered in.

My plants from the greenhouse came home last weekend and are acclimating in the cold frame. They and the trellises will be installed next weekend.

While my lilac bush is still small, its blooms are mighty. These clusters of sweet-smelling blossoms are heavenly!

Now if only this rain would slow down long enough for me to get ahead of the weeds that are romping unchecked all over my yard.

The garden -- under glass

2009-04-28T19:02:00.001-07:00

My summer garden so far! Right now it's just a collection of black plastic pots and youthful, if rather exuberant, seedlings, but this weekend they'll be coming home to spend some time in the cold frame before going out into the garden.

I started these back in March, when everything was cold and blowy, long before tomatoes and melons and squash and peppers should be out in the garden. I my climate, the highly variable Pacific Northwest, such neotropicals pretty much have to be started indoors if you want them to bear fruit. To succeed, plants started indoors need plenty of light. The average window won't do, even if it's south-facing.

A climate-controlled greenhouse is ideal, but rather over-budget for my garden. So now, shall I confess? I borrowed a greenhouse:

Over on the right are the glass shelves my plants are on. This is the greenhouse on the roof of the building where I teach. Nice, huh? I figure I should use the resources that are at hand, and that was one resource very much at hand!

Earth Day Arugulence

2009-04-22T18:53:00.000-07:00

Dahlings, haven't you heard? All this digging in the dirt... er, soil, mixing in manur... er, quality organic plant enhancements, and growing vegetab... er, hoity-toity organic produce, is so terribly faddish these days that it's only for Hollywood celebs and something us ordinary mortals can safely ignore?

Yeah, I didn't get that memo, either.

Maureen Dowd, however, in an editorial about Alice Waters, comments on a growing backlash coming from certain segments of our society against the rising popularity of backyard vegetable gardens. They're fads, you see. People falling for this silly organic stuff. The realm of both chic, elitist yuppies in search of fashionable greens and aging hippies who can't forget the 60's still piddling around in their among the weeds and the weed in their back yards.

Mere arugulence, y'see.

Strange. I grew up in a family where gardens were for saving money and for growing fresh, healthy produce that produced healthy (and sometimes fresh) kids. My parents were born during the Depression, and my grandparents gardened their way through those hard years as a means of getting by.

To dismiss gardening as a mere elitist fad, as arugulence, is a slap in the face of every frugal family that managed to feed itself by getting a little dirt under their nails.

What ever happened to the American kitchen garden? It was crushed under the oncoming steamroller of Consumerism of the 50s, which was driven by a distaste for the scrimping, saving, and doing without of the Depression and the war years. Back alleys disappeared in the new suburbs, front yards were given over to driveways and a tidy facade, and the back yard became not a service entrance and a place for the kitchen garden, but the new outdoor living area.

In recent years, several forces have contributed to the rise in vegetable gardening. One is a growing movement against lawns for ecological reasons: lawns are expensive to maintain both economically and ecologically. Another is a slight but increasing recognition that suburbs can only grow so much and farmlands shrink so much, as suburbs sprawl out over rich farmland, before there isn't enough farmland to feed all the people in those houses. It only makes sense to let some of the farmland that is now suburb give back. Another factor is the recession that we've been falling into for the last couple of years, the full brunt of which we're finally feeling.

As we hunker down for the worst, people are more and more interested in learning survival skills: gardening, spinning, knitting, and the like. Whether we need these skills for survival now isn't the issue. It's about knowing you could grow your food, raise some hens, and knit your own sweater from wool you've spun if you had to that brings a little comfort. And for some people clutching their pink slips and wondering how they'll get through until the next job turns up, that backyard veggie garden may be the means of feeding the kids and giving them something interesting to do all summer.

Arugulence? I think not.

Oh, noes! Organic gardening threatens the American Way!

2009-04-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

Or so the Mid America Croplife Association would have it. As you've probably heard by now, Michelle Obama has taken a page out of the life story of First Families of a century ago and is having fresh produce grown on the White House grounds in an organic vegetable garden. Backyard gardeners nationwide are grinning. Vegetable gardens are back in fashion again for multiple reasons, including economics, health, environmental awareness, an interest in a locavore lifestyle, or simply because they want tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, not the flabby imitations we're greeted with all winter at the supermarket.

But wait! Not so fast! According to a letter sent from MACA to Mrs. Obama, the White House veggie garden could be the beginning of a dangerous trend! If people farm all their own food individually, well, it could be the downfall of our society! Better to let the professionals take care of the farming with their superior technology. Or something like that.

Like the only choices are "grow it all yourself on a small farm" or "grow nothing?" Let's take some of their claims apart and see what they're made of. I already posted most of this response on one of the forums on Ravelry, so a few readers may have seen this.

Many people, especially children, don't realize the extent to which their daily lives depend on America's agricultural industry. For instance, children are unaware the jeans they put on in the morning, the three meals eaten daily, the baseball with which they play and even the biofuels that power the school bus are available because of America's farmers and ranchers.

Yes! True! Absolutely true! And exactly the reason why kids should be in the backyard happily digging in their own gardens! If I had my way, the prerequisite for my biology class would be to spend a summer growing an organic garden and observing the microwildlife that inhabits it. Then we'd all have a concrete, common point to start with when we have discussions of ecology, diversity, and the like. As it is, we have students like the one who, when asked, "So why don't the cells in the onion have chloroplasts? Where does the bulb part of the onion grow?" replied, "I don't know. I've never seen an onion tree." This is a college course, mind you. We as Americans are so far removed from our food sources that the resulting ignorance about our food is appalling. Even my biology majors, when shown a stalk of broccoli and asked what part of the plant it was, couldn't recognize flower buds when they saw them -- except a couple of them who had grown broccoli in their own gardens and knew what happened if they didn't cut the head before the buds burst.

Agriculture is the largest industry in America generating 20% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. Individuals, family partnerships or family corporations operate almost 99% of U.S. farms.

And they're threatened if people grow a few tomatoes and some fresh lettuce on the back porch? Really? Wow. I think this letter says more about the industrial food complex than all of Michael Pollan's books put together.

Today, an average farmer produces enough food to feed 144 Americans who are living longer lives than many of their ancestors.

Are we hinting here that it's because of chemical-based agriculture that people are living longer? Because one doesn't necessarily follow the other -- little factors like, oh, indoor plumbing, clean municipal water supplies, and advances in medicine just might have something more to do with that.

Technology in agriculture has allowed for the development of much of what we know and use in our lives today. If Americans were still required to farm to support their family's basic food and fiber needs, would the U.S. have been leaders in the advancement of science, communication, education, medicine, transportation and the arts?

The rise in influence of American culture in these areas began well before chemical-based agriculture, when many more people were living on family farms. So what are we saying here? Pesticides make us better artists and engineers? Farmers are ignorant slobs who don't contribute to the arts and sciences so let's have fewer of them doing more with bigger tractors and more chemicals? Huh? This statement really needs to be thought through, because it doesn't flatter our American farmers at all.

We live in a very different world than that of our grandparents. Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and aging parents. The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family's year-round food needs.

Well, heavens to Betsy, so few of us can grow a garden large enough to supply all the produce we need to feed us for a year, so let's not garden at all! What a pitiful argument! It's not an either-or situation by any means. Our choices aren't limited to "grow all your own food" and "grow none of your own food." You can grow veggies in a tub on your apartment balcony and devote just a few minutes a day to the operation if you want to.

Much of the food considered not wholesome or tasty is the result of how it is stored or prepared rather than how it is grown.

This, after the whole tomato recall hysteria? And the spinach recall affair? Food handling begins in the field and does affect produce quality. This is true of both organic (what used to be "traditional") farming and "conventional" (or "chemical") farming.

There's one other factor that's not being considered here: the variety that is grown. Most commercial varieties are selected for their shipping and storing qualities, not for their flavor and "wholesomeness." Since most Americans have been raised on plastic strawberries grown out of season in Chile and shipped to the U.S., too few of us have known what a real, warm-from-the-sun, fresh-from-the-vine, peak-of-ripeness strawberry even tastes like. Waxy, flabby tomatoes in the produce section can't hold a candle to a fresh-picked (but tender-skinned) Brandywine or Cherokee Purple, but who is going to know if they don't grow their own? The heirloom varieties aren't sold in the produce section. Lucky are those with a farmer's market nearby where heirloom veggies can still be found. And as for asparagus, if it's not fresh-cut from my own garden, don't even offer it to me. I'm spoiled that way.

Fresh foods grown conventionally are wholesome and flavorful yet more economical.

More economical than what? Be specific. I hope they're not hinting that it's more expensive to grow a vegetable garden. Of course it all depends on how you go about vegetable gardening. We don't all have to grow The $64 Tomato as one book title proclaims. Some of us can exercise more sense.

Local and conventional farming is not mutually exclusive. However, a Midwest mother whose child loves strawberries, a good source of Vitamin C, appreciates the ability to offer California strawberries in March a few months before the official Mid-west season.

I won't comment twice on the quality and flavor of those berries, not when I have much better varieties in my own yard. I won't even begin the argument about eating with the season, and that there are other sources of Vitamin C besides strawberries shipped from afar and stored so long that their vitamins have already begun to degrade. All I'll say is that this is still no argument against growing a backyard garden. Think of how much more Junior would appreciate those berries if he grew them himself in a big pot on the back porch -- and how much more he would learn about where his food comes from.

Look, if putting a veggie garden in behind the White House and encouraging people to grow a little food themselves is a huge gigantic threat to the farming industry, the industry has bigger troubles than anyone realized. Nor are its issues going to be solved by discouraging people from encouraging others to garden and depend totally on supermarket produce. Michelle Obama isn't saying, "Hey, everyone should grow all their own food instead of buying food from the store." We can't all raise chickens, milk cows, and orchards, not in the fringe of grass and shrubs around your average McMansion. But for much of my life I've seen good farmland bulldozed and covered with housing developments, because as every builder knows, building on nice, flat land is easier than building on unfarmed slopes. We've lost acres and acres of prime farmland to suburban sprawl. Isn't it only fitting that at least a little of that land should give back in the form of a home vegetable garden?

One Million Gardens project

2009-03-30T13:32:00.000-07:00

How many vegetable gardens are there in the U.S.? The One Million Gardens campaign is trying to find out! Their goal is to register one million vegetable gardens -- home gardens, community gardens, even container gardens on apartment balconies -- by the end of 2009. Check it out, register if you like, and find other gardeners on the site.

What the &#%$????

2009-03-07T08:03:00.000-08:00

At one time I had a beautiful glass ball ornament in my garden:

Today, I do not:

There's no trace of broken glass. Someone walked into my garden and took it.

What is the matter with some people?!?!?!? Do I have to have a razor-wire fence and a locked gate just to have something nice outdoors?

Garden fever relapse -- the planting begins!

2009-03-01T15:02:00.001-08:00

Here we have lettuces, kale, chard, and indigo, all labeled and lined up in their neat little pots under the grow lights. Another set of pots -- the tomatoes, peppers, melons, broccoli, and cauliflower -- are set aside to go to school with me. There's a little corner of the greenhouse I've asked to use, where I can grow a few things out of everyone's way.

With the peas in the ground and more seeds in the pots, this year's garden is underway! The ennui of winter vanishes in a cloud of seed catalog fumes. Sniiiiiffff... aaaahhh! The sweet aroma of potting soil in the morning!

February Snow

2009-03-01T14:51:00.001-08:00

Washington's Birthday just went by which, according to my grandmother, is time to plant the peas. Accordingly, I planted them, two packs of peas all soaked and planted and most of them tucked in under some Reemay cloth. I'm not sure if the reason I've seen so few pea seedlings coming up in the last couple of years is cold springs, or if I need to hold off on planting, or if the crows and squirrels are after them. With the Reemay to protect some of the peas, I'll find out!

But lookee here -- no sooner did I get my peas all nestled down in the sweet earth than last Thursday we woke up to this:

Ah, that's the old twisty Hobbit Tree that finally broke in the last ice storm and just got shorn of its branches, which will now suport a climbing rose. And that's Toast, mother of the kittens we took in two summers ago, sporting about in the fluffy white stuff.

And that's snow! More snow!

Licorice, outdoorsman that he is, doesn't think too much of this and decided maybe he could stand to be inside for a while:

My garden was all aslumber under its blanket of white, and the coverlet of snow on top of the cold frame actually kept the last of the lettuces underneath from freezing:

Snowdrops in the snow, looking a little bedraggled in spite of being all covered with their namesake:

Within the snow, a souvenir of summer:

And was there more to come? Hmmm... looking at this sky, what do YOU think?

Ah, but the main roads were navigable and all had melted away by evening.

Happy 2009!

2009-01-01T11:39:00.001-08:00

Wow, 2008 ended with a bang. I went into finals well (at least as a profess or I give the finals instead of taking them) with a 101 degree fever and a vile cough, which turned into pneumonia. Then, just as school let out, the snow began and lasted a week and a half. In the middle of the snow we had an ice storm, which dealt the final blow to the dying Hobbit Tree. Check out all the ice covering the branches -- the broken branches now sprawling across the garden. A tree service is suppose to come soon and give an estimate for cutting the thing down and hauling off some of the other broken limbs and debris. I'm going to leave about 6 feet of trunk for the Lincoln Constance rose to scramble over.

Then the power went out on the Solstice, the longest night of the year. For three nights we were without heat and light. We have a gas furnace, but of course it requires electricity to run the thermostat that kicks it on and the fan that distributes heat. We do have a gas water heater that's independent of the power source so we could at least get a hot shower, and we filled the tub with hot water and put the birds in the bathroom to keep them warm.

On Christmas Eve morning, just as we were despairing of having power for Christmas, the lights and the furnace came on. My son was still stuck up in icy, snowy Portland were most of the buses weren't running, but his girlfriend came to the rescue when she borrowed her mother's car with studded snow tires and drove him down Christmas morning. Best two Christmas presents ever!

It was a little more end-of-year excitement than I really wanted, and all told, 2008 has been a good year to come to an speedy close.

So may 2009 bring us many good things. May good fortune cling like cockleburrs and ill luck be as rare as fern seeds. May our gardens grow happiness and may the only things we lose be our debts. Happy New Year, everyone.

An off-topic political message: VOTE!

2008-10-29T13:15:00.000-07:00

Dearest U.S. readers, consider all those who have struggled, fought, and suffered for your right to cast a private ballot in any election, from the Revolutionary War to the Suffragettes to the volunteers right now who oversee elections to make certain they are conducted fairly. Honor them by casting your vote on or before November 4. (For those in Virginia and other places were the dumb flyer went out telling people of a particular political party to vote on November 5th -- ignore it. It's a stupid, desperate attempt by some to negate the votes of others.)

But when you vote, vote informed!

Rumors are flying at the speed of electrons around the internet about both presidential candidates. Make abundant use of Snopes.com, obamafactcheck.org, and mccainfactcheck.org, and factcheck.org to check your facts. Here is just a sampling of the many false rumors about both candidates that need to be trashed:

Rumors about John McCain:

"McCain admitted to being a war criminal who intentionally bombed women and children." Fact: It was only when he was coerced by torture in a Vietnam prison that McCain wrote this "confession." In a 60 Minutes interview, McCain admitted that he cracked under the pressure.

"McCain fathered an illegitimate black child." Fact: John McCain and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy McCain had found Bridget, who has dark skin, at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh.

"McCain wasn’t born in the United States so he’s not a citizen." Fact: McCain was born on a U.S. military base in Panama to U.S. military personnel who are U.S. citizens.

Rumors about Barak Obama:

"Obama’s career started in Bill Ayres’ living room. Ayres is a known terrorist." Fact: Ayres was a radical in the 60s and did commit illegal acts – when Obama was 8 years old. Later as adults they were both hired by William Annenberg to serve on the Woods board. They do not “pal around” as rumors claim.

"Obama is a Muslim" Fact: Obama is a Christian. And even if he weren’t, the U.S. Constitution grants everyone freedom of religion. There is no religious requirement for the presidency.

"Obama wasn’t born in the United States so he’s not a citizen." Fact: Obama was born in Hawaii two years after Hawaii became a state. The birth certificate can be found in the public records in Hawaii, and a birth announcement appears in the archives of the local newspaper.

"Obama plans to raise taxes for 95% of U.S. citizens." Fact: Obama’s plan actually lowers taxes for people making $200,000 or less – the majority of U.S. citizens.

"Obama suspended his campaign and went to Hawaii to [fill in unfounded rumor of your choice]." Fact: Obama's grandmother is dying and he suspended his campaign to be with her, as any good grandchild ought.

Vote informed! Look up the facts, read your voter's pamphlet, think, question, reason -- and most importantly, VOTE!

ETA: Comments will be screened. Nutjobs from both ends of the political spectrum need not waste their time trying to post rants.

Blog Action Day: And the Garden Shall Feed Us

2008-10-15T16:28:00.000-07:00

This is a world of action, and not for moping and groaning in. ~ Charles Dickens

It's Blog Action Day, and the theme this year is poverty. This got me pondering the connection between gardening and poverty. In a world where increasingly "gardening" is something the professionals do while the homeowner is a way, and in some posh districts, the nurseries refrain from referring to their customers as "gardeners," where is the connection between the garden and the poor and hungry of this world?

The obvious connection is via the kitchen garden. Ever since the first creative person poked a seed in the earth in the understanding that a useful plant would emerge from it -- I picture women who had been observing waste middens and the food plants that grew from them, or children playing with their food as children will do -- people have been gardening as a means of staving off hunger. The coleworts grown alongside peasant cottages in Europe, kitchen gardens of the great estates, maize fields of the native people of the Americas, rice paddies in Asia, wheat and barley fields and date palms of the Middle East, all yielded food in concentrations that could be stored, sometimes for years, to fend off starvation in times of famine.

Here in the U.S., the kitchen garden long held prominence in farms and later in suburban back yards. In Colonial times, the old-style square bed gardening learned from England was favored as a means of growing useful potherbs and medicinal herbs in a small space. As European settlers moved westward into the wide open spaces, the kitchen gardens expanded into plowed plots with the now-familiar long, straight rows that the young 'uns had to hoe between to keep the weeds down.

As people moved to the suburbs, they often gave up their rural habits, but the habit of frugality still held sway. While the front yard was more often than not a showpiece, with manicured lawns and flowering shrubs, the back yard was entirely utilitarian. Deliveries of milk, ice, and groceries came to the back door via the back alley. Clotheslines spanned the back yard, and the kitchen garden held court in a sunny corner.

The Great Depression led to a surge in gardening, even among apartment dwellers. Railroads looked the other way as people plowed up strips of land alongside the tracks to grow vegetables. Golf courses gave way to the plow to allow community gardens. Food production increased as more and more people found ways to feed themselves through gardening, and production continued with Victory gardens during the second World War.

The post-war years introduced new ideas about disposability, pre-packaged covenience foods, and consumerism as a way of life. "Citizens" became "consumers." The frontyard-backyard arrangment was turned around as new housing developments eliminated alleys to cram more ranch-style houses into smaller spaces. Backyards became the living space, groomed and pampered, with a lawn for kids to play on and maybe a pool to frolic in. The front of the house now held the garage entrance and became the place to set out the garbage cans and receive deliveries. In a new era of luxury and convenience, the backyard garden began its decline.

By the 1980's, gardening was at an all-time low. But along with economic, ecological, and energy crises of the 90's and the "aughts" came a resurgence in gardening -- and not just decorative gardening, either. Vegetable gardens are making a comeback. Community gardens are bringing fresh produce to inner cities. And with the generous nature that so many gardeners exhibit, food banks are also benefitting.

With the current economic crisis, food banks are feeling the pinch, and gardeners are pitching in by supplying surplus produce. While the ubiquitous zucchini may get looks of askance, there's plenty of produce that gardeners can contribute from their bounty.

The Garden Writers Association started the Plant a Row for the Hungry program, encouraging gardeners to do just that -- plant an extra row to help feed the hungry. Currently, about 25 million people in the U.S. are in danger of going hungry or seek emergency food. There are over 70 million gardeners in the U.S. Do the math -- if all 70 million planted an extra row of corn, an extra tomato plant, an extra squash vine, imagine all that produce arriving at the food backs, ready to feed people in need.

Even better are programs that teach impoverished people to garden for themselves. The working poor may be fortunate enough to own houses, where backyards can be converted into gardens. Renters and apartment dwellers may have access to community gardens -- or may organize to begin one. The American Community Gardening Association has resources to assist the development and maintenance of community gardens and to develop sustainable communities.

Because really it comes down to that -- sustainability. It's not just about feeding the people we have. It's about making sure that we can continue to feed and house people in the future. Teaching people to garden can teach them about how the ecosystem works and how to value the earth as a provider of resources. It can also teach everyone valuable lessons about the work required to feed us, lest we sit back in our comfortable middle-class homes, munching Crunchy Munchies from a box while watching the television, and forget the labor and ecological impact involved in bringing those Crunchy Munchies to us.

Reading Dirt

Mother's Day at the Oregon Garden

As though we needed another reason to eat chocolate...

And we've got to get ourselves back to the garrrrdeeennn...

Kitty Woes

Blog Action Day: Garden for the Globe

I eat local because I can...

Friday Finds

Friday Finds (a day late -- so sue me)

The Oregon Garden in Spring

Darkness

Friday Finds

Memorial Day 2009

Going Vertical

Students in the Mist. With Orchids.

The garden in May

The garden -- under glass

Earth Day Arugulence

Oh, noes! Organic gardening threatens the American Way!

One Million Gardens project

What the &*#%$*????

Garden fever relapse -- the planting begins!

February Snow

Happy 2009!

An off-topic political message: VOTE!

Blog Action Day: And the Garden Shall Feed Us

What the &#%$????