A happy sighting today…
Ben and I were sitting on the back deck at around 5 p.m. when we saw this little baby perched on the Texas tomato cages in the colonial garden. At first we just watched with binoculars and then I was able to sneak close enough to snap a photo. I wonder if this is the daddy in bluebird house #2?
Ben’s new approach to bird watching is to play "frozen statue" near the bird feeders. It’s quite humorous, really. And some of the birds come up and eat just a few feet from him! I should get a photo.
Who says I have to take tango lessons in Buenos Aires or do a raw food fast at an Indian reservation for excitement?
Robin
Hi, Sophie here. My mom can’t write her blog today because she is exhausted. She said today was extremely trying and she deserves a break.
She woke up at 6 a.m. with good intentions to get Ben off to his basketball game and tidy up before heading off to a big plant sale held by the local garden club. She got out the door in time to be early to the sale, although she had to answer a lot of questions from Dad about why she was taking the big pickup truck instead of her regular car. She said something about bringing home a jungle and Dad just shook his head. He does that a lot when he talks with Mom.
I took a nice long nap with Sarah and Dad. Sarah snores.
Mom came home in the early afternoon, but she didn’t have a jungle and now SHE was shaking her head. She told Dad that she went to get some breakfast before going to the plant sale. Apparently listening to the radio without the truck running is a bad idea because she said it wouldn’t start again when she was ready to go to the plant sale. She thinks AAA is going to kick her out of the club because she calls them too much about the truck. She also said she had to wait a long time for the tow truck to help her get started again and also at the car shop while they replaced the battery.
When she finally got to the plant sale, almost everything was gone. I think this made Mom very sad that she wasted time eating when she could have been buying plants, especially when she thinks she is fat anyway.
She told Dad she consoled herself by going to the local nursery and buying bags and bags of what she calls “composed manure,” but that smell an awful lot like a farm to me. Eeeewww.
When she unloaded her stuff and started working, it was already well into the afternoon. After a while, Mom looked around and suddenly seemed to think it was Talk Like a Pirate Day because she kept yelling “Aaarrrrrgggghhh!” But then she suddenly sat down in the dirt and put her head in her hands and made little whimpering sounds like my sister Sarah does sometimes. Dad came to help and spent a lot of time shoveling dirt around. This seemed to make Mom a lot happier and she stopped sounding so much like a pirate.
Mom planted lots and lots and lots of things today, including almost all the little baby plants she has been fussing over in the house. She also set up the pretty fountain that makes waterfall noises. But then she ruined everything and gave both me and Sarah a bath, which I did not feel was necessary.
Now I am tired like my Mom. And I smell funny.
–Sophie
Robin
A recent survey revealed that 85% of moms admit to “letting themselves go.” That probably goes a long way toward explaining the fashion statements of some of the ladies I encounter at the local Wal-Mart.
At least they didn’t consciously CHOOSE that particular look. It just HAPPENED.
One day, you wake up and decide, “Hey, I think I’ll just forego the eye shadow and lip liner today.” A couple days later, “You know, who really needs foundation?” The next thing you know—no makeup. After all, you only have 20 minutes in the morning before you have to drop off the kids and head out to work or your volunteer job at the school. And who has time to make use of that gym membership, right? The old hubby doesn’t seem to mind the extra few pounds. The flannel nightgown adequately camouflages it anyway. Any you can’t afford to shop at Nordstrom because Little Billy’s orthodontist wants $4,000 for braces and Little Sally’s teacher says you need to get a tutor to help her with math.
It’s a slippery slope.
That slippery slope is at work in the garden too. With so much going on, who has time to worry about a few weeds? And do the neighbors really care that you didn’t plant annuals in the front border this year? And eee gad, so that tree is dead. Who has $400 to pay someone to take it down right now?
See, I am not unsympathetic. I also have a job. (With a mean boss. Me!) I also face the same slippery slopes as the ladies at Wal-Mart, although I try to fight the twin evil forces of entropy and gravity and have the salon bills to prove it.
I also make regular promises to myself that I will call THINGS I WILL DO. Here are a few of the most recent THINGS I WILL DO and rough estimates of their associated time commitments:
-Generally pick up house and do laundry each day – 1.0 hours (probably MUCH more than that)
-Water outdoor plants and do general outdoor cleanup just to stay on top of things – 1.0 hour
-Cardiovascular exercise to burn fat and not get obese — .5 to 1.0 hours
-Yoga – 1.0 hours (or .5 hours 2x daily)
-Sitting (meditation to the uninitiated) — .5 hour
-Practice piano - .5 hour (at least)
-Study French — .5 hours
-Make a “slow food” dinner – 1.5 – 2 hours (at least)
-Household maintenance – pay bills, talk with repair people, making travel plans — .5Okay, so far that comes to about 8 hours a day. Factor in about 8 hours of sleep and a conservative 8 hours at work. That’s a full 24 hours already. And what have I left out? Oh, just a few things, like doing errands, talking to and caring for your kids, your dogs, your cat and spouse, eating, personal hygiene, having a social life, extra work (and there’s always that), travel for work…You get the idea.
Once, when Ben was quite small, Harry was at sea for the better part of two years and I was working a high-stress job at an ad agency, I came up with the idea of a 10 Minute To Do. The concept is elegant in its simplicity. The 10 Minute To Do was a list of things that I could accomplish in 10 minutes or less. For example, say I had 10 minutes before I head to leave to take Ben to the pediatrician. I could look at this list, strategically located on the refrigerator door, and select one of the many 10 Minute To Dos. Over a period of days, I could actually accomplish quite a lot.
Well, in the interest of continuous improvement, I have developed my New and Revised Garden 10 Minute To Dos. To get you started with yours, here are a few examples:
-Deadhead the flowers in a flowerbed. (You can even do this while talking on the telephone if you have a cordless headset like I do.)
-Re-pot a plant
-Sweep a sidewalk
-Water the outdoor container plants
-Water your indoor plants
-Pick up sticks blown down by the wind
-Clip suckers off of small trees
-Inspect bushes for early signs of disease or pests
-Take a soil sampleYou get the idea now, yes? Now go in peace and avoid that slippery slope.
Robin
Deep dark depression…Blessed misery…If that little rhyme doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because you didn’t grow up watching Hee Haw every Saturday night like I did.
It doesn’t translate well to 2007, but at the time, to my 7- or 8-year-old self, it was humorous and entertaining to see grown men and women dressed as country bumpkins popping up from behind hay bales delivering stoopid jokes and chewing on hay.
The reason this little ditty is apropos today is because I played a bit of hookey to work in the garden. But rather than it being an uplifting experience, all I could see were the problems. For example:
-The seedlings I transplanted looked pathetically small and vulnerable in the harsh, cruel sun. How will they ever survive?
-My hostas, astilbes, daylillies, lilies, helebores and other perennials need to be divided. Is it too late?
-There are a couple of beds with a BIG weed issue.
-There is a pussy willow bush that is just aching to be incorporated into a proper border.
-I have three other bushes waiting to be planted as well as a few extra hollyhocks that don’t yet have a home.
-My specimen trees need to have the suckers removed.
-I still have about 20 bags of mulch to deal with.
-The new bed next to the driveway is mostly leaf mulch on one side and topsoil on the other. However will I marry the two?
-I still need to set up my fountain in the back.
-I am finding volunteer cone flowers in odd places that need to be relocated.
-I still have house plants waiting to be repotted.The list goes on and on and on…When will I ever find the time?
Doom, despair and agony on me!
Deep dark depression. Blessed misery!
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all…
If you remember the rest, please let me know. It’ll drive me crazy until I find out.
Robin
I adore my mom. She does amazing things. She knows EXACTLY when I need a tummy rub, big food or to play chase with my rubber chicken. She loves me more than Sarah (I think). She also manages to be nice when people say things to her that make her eyes cross when no one is looking…
Here are some things that some people have said quite recently to my mom that show just how patient and truly kind she is:
“Your hostas need dividing.” (What Mom Wanted to Say but Didn’t: “No kidding, Sherlock. I also have about 100 seedlings ready to plant, 50 bags of mulch of spread, a bed to dig, weeding to do, the list goes on. In fact, you’re LOOKING at the list right now. See HOSTAS right there at the top? And OH. I HAVE A JOB!!!!” What She Said: “Yes, there’s never enough time, is there?”)
“That flower I gave you is really doing well.” (What Mom Wanted to Say: “Yes, indeedy. That flower you gave me happens, in fact, to be INVASIVE. That’s why there are 300 of those [bleep] things that have taken over half of the bed they’re in. I’ll never get rid of them.” What She Said: “Very well! Do you want some back?”)
“You look tired.” (What Mom Wanted to Say: “Really? I wonder why? I just finished working in the garden–by myself–for 8 hours then vacuumed the house and now I’m making bread to go with our homemade soup for dinner. I didn’t expect to look tired at least until I had cleaned the bathrooms and put up the laundry.” What She Said: “Yep.”)
“I’ll wait until that seedling is a little bigger before I take it home.” (What Mom Wanted to Say: “Oh, I’m happy to keep this little seedling alive until you’re ready for the responsibility of plopping it into the ground and giving it a bit of water. You want me to just give it to you when the tomatoes are ready to harvest?” What She Said: “No problem. I’ll let you know when they’re really mature enough to handle the move.”)
“I’ve been in this kitchen for TWO HOURS!” (What Mom Wanted to Say: “Eee Gad. TWO HOURS? However do you do it? You’re amazing!” What She Wanted to Say: Okay, that’s what she actually said.)You should all be nice to my mom. I’m a little worried that her eyes are going to stay crossed and someone is going to say something about her crossed eyes and she is going to say something back that she really doesn’t want to say about why her eyes are crossed and that she’s trying not to say something that she shouldn’t.
Okay?
Robin
I found this little plant at Behnke’s last week when poking around after my yoga lesson. How sweet is this little beauty? And named after one of my favorite things–pocketbooks!
But as with many beautiful things, the beauty is only transitory.
Because I may be one of the last people left who has never heard of the pocketbook plant, I went online to find out more about my new treasure. Sadly, nearly all the websites say that the plant is usually kept until after the blooms have died and is then discarded. New plants can be started from seeds that have been allowed to dry on the plant, but propagation is, from what they say, difficult.
So let me get this straight. It’s very beautiful, so we are encouraged to enjoy the beauty for the here and now. But when the beauty fades, we are to just toss it away on the trash heap with not a backward glance or regret? Just go on with our lives, buying other beautiful plants that we will also toss away when they have passed their prime. We shouldn’t even TRY to keep the joy the plant has brought us alive by giving it the chance to live again as new little pocketbook plants?
That’s just wrong. And it’s also a symptom of our society’s unhealthy fascination with all things beautiful and easy. (Think Britney, Anna Nicole Smith, Paris Hilton…The list goes on.) We are too willing to just walk away from things once they become difficult or ugly.
I say we put a stop to this wanton waste of pocketbook plant potential. I say, “Save the Seeds!”
I, for one, intend to harvest those little pocketbook plant seeds, plant them and let that plant live again.
Robin
I haven’t seen a public opinion poll about gardening and the chore that people dislike the most, but I’m quite sure that weeding would top the list.
The problem with weeding isn’t so much the weeding itself, although that isn’t actually fun. It’s the fact that when you’re weeding, you’re not doing things such as planting, trimming, training and sipping iced tea in the shade.
But your weeding chores can be accomplished much more quickly and efficiently if you have the right tool for the job.
I am a BIG believer in the right tool for the job. I have a kitchen FULL of right tools that I use on a regular basis–small chopper, big Cuisinart, breadmaker, mandolin grater, rotary grater, chef’s knife, melon baller…You get the point. The same holds true in the garden. If you have the right tool for weeding, you can get the job done in a fraction of the time.
Now Harry is not so much a connoisseur of the “right tool” concept. He prefers to grab whatever is handy and to flail away, whether it’s the right thing to do or not. Just yesterday when I wasn’t looking he used my brand new, shiny red hand pruners that slip into a little leather pouch that I can clip onto my belt AS WIRE CUTTERS!!!!!! (Do you sense my incredulity and outrage here?) As you can imagine, the clippers no longer open and close smoothly. They close and…stay closed.
Anyway, back to the right tool concept…
In the case of weeding, the right tool for the job is a stirrup hoe. When I finish telling you about this hoe and you try it for yourself, you will want to send me flowers. There is a handy contact form on this website, so just email me and I’ll let you know where you can send flowers and when I’ll be home.
The RIGHT tool for the job is the stirrup hoe. As you can see, it’s called a stirrup hoe because the business end looks like, well, a stirrup. I first read about this handy dandy tool in the book The $64 Tomato, an excellent book about one rabid gardener’s adventures creating an impressively sized garden.
Traditional hoes, and most other weeding methods, for that matter, work by chopping into the ground to disturb the weeds. This causes soil disturbance, which can lead to water loss in the soil. The bigger problem with using this type of weeding method is that little weed seeds are then exposed to the warm sunlight, causing THEM to grow. It becomes a self-defeating action to weed in this method because the very act of getting rid of weeds causes more weeds.
The stirrup hoe is used by inserting the stirrup into the soil and sliding it gently UNDER the weeds, cutting the roots of the weeds. It’s then a simple matter of raking up the weeds for disposal. You can cover a great deal of territory using this tool, without ever bending down, knee walking or grunting.
It is also more back-friendly. So if you know someone who has successfully avoided the whole weeding experience because of the back pain excuse, you can smile when you hand them this $14.95 RIGHT TOOL.
The contact form is to the left if you want to send me flowers now.
Robin
If you are stuck in the burbs but long for the bucolic beauty of the country and the peace of the farm life, I have good news. All this is just as close as your desktop computer!
There a number of webcams that you can visit to see slices of life on a real farm. I will admit that cow cams tend to be a bit dull, as the cows tend to stay in one place and sleep a lot. Not much action with cows. Horse cams show a lot of empty stalls as horses are the opposite of cows and tend to move around quite a bit. There seem to be no pig cams. (I wonder why?)
But chicken cams! Now you’re talking action! Chickens have a LOT of activity. Try out some of these chicken cams:
Fllying Skunk Farm – I rather like the weather station dials at the opening. The barnyard looks a bit dreary, but there’s always something going on. Today, there is a big FAT goat in with the chickens. One of the chickens has a HUGE feathery head that looks like he’s wearing a wig.
Thelma & Louise Cam – These are birds with personality! Admittedly, the video stream doesn’t always work properly, but the still photos are still worth it. I love the “Flu Stay Away” sign. Themla and Louise are very well informed birds.
HenCam — As I was researching these chicken cam websites, I had the good fortune of seeing a very serious and funky looking fellow in a polo shirt, pinstriped suit and filthy sneakers adjusting the webcam. I know his sneakers were filthy because he pointed the webcam at his feet at one point. He also spent a good deal of time staring directly into the camera lens over his head from VERY CLOSE. His mouth was twisted to the side at the effort. I felt like such a Peeping Tom! Anyway…about the chickens…It’s a very nice chicken cam.
We (I) have often considered getting chickens. I would love to have some colorful little birds making little chicken noises in the morning. I have read all kinds of books and always make a point of visiting the chicken barn at the county fair. Chickens are beautiful!
My mom loves the idea of my getting chickens. She loves to say, “Great! Now we can finally see how long a chicken lives!” (For those of you who don’t know, I am a vegetarian.)
By the way, I want to go on the record and say that I DO NOT approve of the genetic scientists’ efforts with their featherless chicken. Some call this “Frankenfood.” I call it just an abomination. The scientists point to the convenience. But, sadly, featherless chickens are not healthy chickens. They are prone to a whole host of problems and diseases. Isn’t the point to have HEALTHY FOOD?
I may have to get on the bandwagon to campaign against genetically modified foods if THIS is the type of horrors they have in mind.
Nuff said.
Robin
Did I get your attention? I thought I could use a gripping lead to entice you to read about…worms!
Most mornings (okay, SOME mornings), I lace up the old tennie pumps and head out for a walk. Mostly I just go up and down the driveway since the rural roads where we live have no shoulders could be hazardous.
The mornings after a rain, a lap takes twice as long as sunny days. That’s because I have to pick up all the rapidly-dehydrating worms and relocate them to the grass. Sure, I might stare straight ahead on the first lap, determined to keep going. But before long, I’m glancing down and start feeling horrid about just walking past these wriggling, suffering creatures. So I stoop down, gently pick up the worm and find a nice patch of wet grass and earth for him to recuperate.
The absolute WORST mornings for me are those when Harry has made it outside first. Sadly, this happens pretty frequently since he runs from 5 - 6 a.m. on weekdays and I am not that, shall we say, motivated. On those days, after a rain and when I head outdoors, I witness unspeakable devastation. Harry is a good person. But he runs without glancing down, not even thinking about what he’s doing. I can only hope that he misses some that I can rescue later. It’s ugly. Really ugly.
I can see some of you snickering now. (You know who you are. I know who you are.) But really, the whole motivation is as ancient as, well, Buddhism. There are Five Precepts (the basic code of ethics) in the Buddhist philosophy. The first precept of Buddhism is:
I undertake the precept to refrain from taking the life (killing) of living beings.
When you read Buddhist literature, you realize that most people interpret this as not just passively refraining from throttling your husband for leaving the kitchen all messy or your son for bringing home a stinking report card. Most extend this precept to an active practice of not doing any harm to any living being.
Are you following me here? The practice of picking up worms is an ethical practice that contributes to good karma.
This interest isn’t just because of my recent reading or the fact that worms are good for the garden. I have had a long interest in worms.
A while back, I had this brainstorm that since I hate going out into the cold to dump our kitchen scraps into the compost bin, we could just use a worm composter. (It’s called vermicomposting and the setup is called a home vermiculture system.)
What a grand idea! I bought this nifty Can-o-Worms that I set up in the basement. I ordered worm bedding (I kid you not) and a couple pounds of extra special redworms. I lovingly prepared the composter exactly according to instructions, layering in damp newspaper. Then ho, ho, ho. I was ready to go!
You feed your worms many of the same types of things that could ordinarily go into a compost bin–peelings of vegetables, leaves of lettuce that are brown, etc.
So here’s the problem. Worms really don’t eat that much. Maybe…maybe a WHOLE BUNCH of worms could keep up with a single person who doesn’t eat a lot of fresh vegetables. But these worms could not keep up with our family of three.
Frankly, I hate to report this part. I’m not sure what ultimately happened. I don’t know if our worms were overwhelmed with the bounty that they had at their disposal. I don’t know if the fact that they arrived in a snowstorm and sat in the mailbox for two days had something to do with it. But the worms met…well…an early demise. It was a very sad day for me when I went to visit with the worms and found everyone sleeping. Wait. They weren’t sleeping, cause they wouldn’t wake up. They were DEAD!
Bad karma here for that, no doubt. I hope to make up for it by picking up worms after the rain.
Robin
It was a busy day here, but there were still some interesting sightings and events…
First, the birds staged an interesting protest over the fact that I was late in getting out to fill their bird feeders. This photo probably doesn’t do justice to the congregation of cow birds that were sitting outside doing their best impression of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Good thing I had plenty of seed in the garage to appease these surly masses.
Also on the bird front, I spotted a bluebird today! No, I didn’t stalk the bluebird houses, as previously planned. I was just sitting quietly at my desk and when I looked up, there she was! I have two witnesses that can vouch for the sighting.
Good day!
Robin
