I didn’t get anything else planted yesterday, but I yanked and dug out as much of the mint as I could find. Considering the huge network of roots I found, I have no illusions that it is gone forever. It was quite impressive, and it was a stupid act on my part to plant it there in the first place, since I knew better. Short-term vision, something I deplore in politicians. I had to sacrifice a couple of my favorite flowers, since the roots ran beneath them. Now I will have to be vigilant about spotting it and digging up new shoots as they come up.

I can still get mint for my tea or lamb (if I can ever afford it again!) in the area between my house and the next door neighbors’, where pretty much nothing can be planted because of all the buried utility lines and the closeness of the houses. My neighbor is pretty free and easy with Round-up and I learned early on not to plant next to the property line on that side.

I bought pine straw mulch for the back bed and the former mint area this time, since I am so disgusted with the seedy wheat straw I bought the last several times. But instead of putting it down yesterday afternoon, I spent five hours weaving a bicycle basket. I have my priorities.

The basket is not finished, but I’ll post a photo when it is.

Oh, and the Sugar Ann snap peas are ready. They are not as sweet as the Sugar Snaps that I’ve planted in the past, but still good.

And, unfortunately, the mosquitoes appeared yesterday afternoon. The lovely evenings on my deck will come to an end very shortly.

Today’s work in the Back Forty:

Transplanted 7 Pineapple Tomato seedlings, 6 unknown type heirloom tomatoes (I’ll dub them “surprise” tomatoes), and 2 Zephyr squashes. I planted the yellow pear tomato in a big pot. Also planted some okra and butternut squash seeds that I saved from last year. I learned from experience and put soda bottles over where I planted the okra seeds. The past two years the okra seedlings were eaten as they came out of the ground.

I have a lot that I want to accomplish tomorrow. I want to pull up the rest of that mint if my elbow will stand up to it and mulch down that area. There are more transplants and seeds to be planted. Having the faucet at the back of the house is very nice.

I also wrapped some bulrush in a long rag rug and soaked the whole thing down this morning, with the anticipation of starting to weave a bicycle basket tomorrow.

The Deep Roots Taste Fair was relaxing and fun. Staffing the information table this time was not so taxing since most people there were already familiar with Slow Food and I didn’t have to explain it to any children. The music was great and there was good food to sample, cute babies to watch, and excellent conversation. Two people volunteered to sit with me at the table and it was nice to have the company and to be able to get up and walk around when I wanted or needed to.

I’m not feeling so great though, since I received some very bad news late yesterday afternoon about a friend with inoperable brain cancer. This is the second weaver from our guild to suffer this. I was looking so much forward to reconnecting with the guild and getting his ideas and mentoring on my basketry. He is such a gentle, sweet, generous man, and has been a source of great encouragement to me in the past. I feel quite lost and worn out today and will probably go to bed early. It seems like I start coming out of depression only to get hit with some horrible news - what a roller coaster year so far.

I’m in a mood where I’d be pretty happy if I didn’t see or hear another human being for at least a week or so. Unfortunate, since I’ve got Slow Food extrovert-type stuff to do all weekend, including staffing an information table, when all I want to do is weave a hat with the bulrush I received this week.

But, at least I gots my bees. Mason bees, I think. The kind that bore holes in wood? I don’t care, I like them and god knows we need all the pollinators we can get these days. The bee in the rhododendron this afternoon didn’t care about people either, though. I tried to get him to pose for posterity, and he told me to buzz off, he was busy.

I’m having to use my big watering can and the rain barrels to water the Back Forty right now, because my only outside faucet has apparently been busted for some time now, raining down a big puddle of water beneath my front porch. Plumbing estimate for installing a new faucet in a warmer, more protected place: $190. Adding a second faucet to the back corner of the house: another $190. Good thing I keep saving up this money for a down payment on a new car - I keep needing it for other things. One day I hope to actually shop for a car.

Okay, technically I don’t need two faucets, but as you can see I have a tangle of hoses which I occasionally hook up to soaker hoses. And the hose crossing the sidewalk in the front of the house has been a safety hazard for a long time. Believe it or not, I actually go through the water in all four rain barrels from time to time, and I’m not forgetting the first year I started this project, when it didn’t rain for months and everything died.

Now that I’ve neurotically excused myself for spending this money, let’s move on to the tomatoes.

Brandywines have been planted - 11 of them! In the primo spot of the Back Forty for sun, right behind where the greenhouse USED to be. I started moving the Amish Paste tomatoes to the container garden in the front yard.

Hooray, used to be!

Zone One is the herb garden, basically. The paving stones were all dug up from underneath it.

Last year’s lawn = this year’s broccoli, fennel, turnips, brussels sprouts, and beets, among many other things!

I did something new and easy this afternoon. I just happened to have some very fresh milk (as in, it was still in the cow 48 hours ago) and there was a thick layer of cream on top, so I decided to take a shot at making my own butter. I remembered that Jeff and Joyce had done it and I had also seen it done at a Slow Food potluck.

All I did was skim the cream off the top of the milk with a little ladle, put it in a clean jelly jar, screw the lid on tight and shake it.

That’s it. The butter formed after ten minutes or so (I wasn’t timing it). I drained off the buttermilk and drank it, and it tasted much better than store-bought buttermilk. I put the butter in a little bowl and covered it with some plastic wrap.

I didn’t wait for the cream come to room temperature. I didn’t put a marble or a rock in it. I just shook a jelly jar with cold heavy cream. I don’t think it matters if your milk is from the store or direct from a cow.

Cool. I’ll do this again.

I also indulged myself a bit this afternoon, and bought a nice big pitcher from a local potter at the Pottery Festival at the Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market. I’ve found the secret to going to these shows, and it’s to have a focus for what you’re looking for. Otherwise it can be really overwhelming!

Now I’ll have something nice to serve lemonade in and to make iced tea in. I didn’t feel very good about steeping hot water in a plastic pitcher, after all the bad things I heard about that. I firmly believe that if you serve and eat food with beautiful handmade things, it tastes better.

I’m taking down the greenhouse this afternoon, I hope. It will be good to have it out of my sight! It’s been useful, but it is absolutely butt-ugly and offends my delicate sense of balance. It will be in the way in my storage area for a long time, but it’s nice that it folds down without having to take the whole thing apart.

What a great day And tonight is Sopranos night. It’s the only show I ever watch on TV, and I will be so very sorry when it is over for good. If you’ve never seen the Sopranos and you don’t get what the big deal is, rent it or check it out from the beginning on DVD, so that you have all the threads of the story. Although it is still understandable when you begin watching it in the middle, it’s those nuances and the twisted humor that makes it excellent; otherwise it is just a violent mob show. Don’t watch the reruns on cable - they will be too watered down. I think that it is the best written television series ever.

After the final season ends, I doubt that I’ll watch any more television. Seriously. I don’t feel the need. I’ll rent DVDs and check them out from the library from time to time, but most network television these days is boring. It seems to me like whenever there’s something really original on (Arrested Development, Firefly, Deadwood, Dead Like Me) it gets cancelled before it gets a chance to gain enough viewers and it leaves you hooked and hanging. I’m disgusted and I’d rather read or listen to the radio anyway.

Although I have been fairly successful in kicking out the narrator, most of the reason that I haven’t been blogging is that I don’t have much new to say that I CAN say. The event at VT severely rattled me and other than the work I described in my most recent Back Forty Update, I’ve turned to reading and weeding in my spare time. Calls and visits from friends, old and new, have raised my spirits. Thank you, friends.

Yesterday, I visited the Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market as usual and bought:

Shrimp
Hamburger
Milk
Onion
Potatoes
Beets
Mushrooms
Oranges
Smoked Goat Cheese from Goat Lady Dairy
Five-Seeded Bread from Simple Kneads
Red Pepper/Walnut Spread from Do-Re-Mi (Masoud and Anna from Zaytoon)

I’ll supplement these purchases with greens from my garden, tomatoes that I canned last summer, and rice and beans from Deep Roots Market.

Yesterday evening, I was talking about how I do most of my grocery shopping at the Farmer’s Market and only a few minutes later the conversation turned to Wal-mart, where it was stated that it was best to buy your food at Wal-Mart because it was so cheap. At this point in the evening, I was way too tired and had had one beer too many to get into this subject so I turned and walked away.

Food is such a complicated subject - there are so many reasons why the food at Wal-Mart is not the cheapest, but it can’t be covered in a quick party conversation. It would also have to include the question: have you tried any alternatives to cheap Wal-Mart food? Or are you just comparing it to other grocery stores? Is it really that you don’t have time to plan meals and cook? Because unprocessed food, in the long run, is less expensive. Then there are all the political and health and environmental reasons.

I understand not having the time to cook and plan meals (been there quite recently) but I just don’t buy the “local food is too expensive” thing. I eat local/organic food most of the time. I think that most people who announce this haven’t tried anything else for any length of time, or they are not willing to make adjustments to their diets to include new foods that are seasonal and less expensive. Also, it’s not necessary for any diet to be all or nothing. Most lasting changes are made one choice at a time.

At the same time, it is hard to judge eating organic or local if you compare only one higher-priced food to another. I found that once I got to the point that I was buying most of my food locally and at the co-op, I was not making unnecessary purchases just because I had a coupon, and the careful thought that I put into my purchases meant that I was making every purchase count. I don’t just throw stuff into a buggy. “Organic” doesn’t necessarily influence me the way it once did, so I’m not willing to pay extra just because something has the USDA label. Overall, I’m now spending about the same as if I was shopping at Harris Teeter, but I’m making healthier choices that contribute to our local economy. I can’t address the Wal-Mart thing because I have never shopped for food there. Buying from Wal-Mart would leave smudges on my soul, and that is way too expensive. I can’t picture a Wal-Mart without also seeing the decimated small towns and closed businesses that Wal-Mart left in its wake.

Somewhere recently I saw a figure for the average amount spent on food per person per week and it boggled my mind. And people think that I’m spending too much on food? Wow. Some serious brainwashing has been going on. Update: According to Liz’s post, the feds say it is $121 for a family of two. Not at this house.

Here in Greensboro, a couple who has taken on the huge task of showing us in very practical terms that it is possible for most people to eat local foods on a tight budget is Jeff and Joyce at Low Mileage Food. Joyce set up a group project called Nitty Gritty that gives a cost analysis of the meals prepared. (I had a lovely visit from Jeff and Joyce yesterday afternoon - thank you, J&J!) Donna Myers at Epicourier is another Slow Food person who feeds her children healthy food, much of it purchased at the Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market. These people are not rich. Both web sites have set up discussion forums for us to share information.

In fact, I think I can safely say that not one of the four of us would shop at a Whole Foods even if we had one in town, simply because we could never afford it. I hope that one day eating local, unprocessed foods becomes a mainstream lifestyle and overcomes the elitist myth. The health and economy of the world’s peoples may depend on it.

Before I get any comments about how the poorest people cannot afford anything except from Wal-Mart - let me say here that I am not talking about the poorest people. If you’re suffering and hungry, then you do whatever you can to survive. But one of the reasons that the gap is widening between the rich and poor is because of Wal-Mart, and I believe that those of us who can afford not to support their policies and practices have a moral imperative to boycott Wal-Mart.

I’ve been gone longer than usual, but I’ve been a little depressed and needed to back off the computer some. Allergies. Headaches. And human behavior, including my own, on multiple levels in many situations, has been less than perfect, to put it mildly. And we can’t even blame it on a full moon. Does the new moon suck the sense out of humans, I wonder? Did we head for low tide in our cranial cavities all at once? Who knows. Around here, it’s been happening for a while.

Anyway, I spent some time in the Back Forty yesterday. I moved the tomatoes back out to the greenhouse. Asparagus crowns went into two permanent areas - the raised frame next to the blueberries and about midway back on the left side where I pulled out the collards.

Most everything got through the Easter freeze fine, except I don’t expect any fruit and the fig tree’s new leaves turned crispy. I’m not sure about it.

Normally I wait to plant beans, but I kept hearing people talk about planting beans. So I decided to give it a try and planted bush beans in the middle of the center bed in front of the white cherry bush. In order, from front to back: Golden Rocky Wax, Royal Burgundy, Black Valentine, and Soldier. When they’re done I’ll plant the area with fall crops. I also planted nasturium and sunflower seeds.

I transplanted a few basil plants. It’s probably a little too cool yet, but they were suffering and needed to get out of the little pots. I didn’t want to transplant them twice. Something likes to eat the cutting celery. I just put a soda bottle greenhouse over my last seedling. These are the seeds that I got from the Old Salem gardens. I guess that I could plant more, if I had room. If one survives, that will be enough since I also have lovage.

The lettuce is still going strong and I’ve given it away as fast as I can. The Buttercrunch Bibb seems to be getting a little bitter.

I cooked up a mess of turnip greens yesterday. If it doesn’t shoot up into the eighties soon, I might get another pot or two of them still. If not, fine. I’m pretty sick of greens.

The arugula bolted last week so I pulled it out and put ground cherries in its place.

I think that this may have been the first year that I have always had something in the Back Forty that I could harvest at all times.

On the weaving front, I warped up another hatband on the inkle loom and have been weaving on it from time to time. I also ordered five pounds of bulrush (called “natural rush”) from H.H. Perkins. I have no earthly idea how much five pounds will be, but I figure that dry rush will be very lightweight. If it’s not much, I’ll still have time to order more before I go to Lake Waccamaw in early June, when I plan to really dive back into this stuff in a major way.

Jan checks out…

the cattails

on the Rivercane walk at John C. Campbell Folk School.

Given my experiences of the last few days, this Daily Show clip gave me a much-needed good laugh.

If you know me, you’ll get it. If you don’t, it’s appropriate, trust me.

Update: This new blog made me laugh so hard, it gave me the hiccups. You have to read the comments and be a faithful reader of this blog to understand.

Being away from technology for a week and concentrating on creating non-virtual artwork has shown me that I am way out of balance. I’ve known it for quite a while, but twelve hours alone on the road there and back gave me a lot of time to think seriously about it.

There are many, many posts that I’ve written in my head that never make it to this blog. I’ve reached a point where a voice in the back of my brain is narrating my life, somewhat like in Stranger Than Fiction, except it is me. This is not new for me; I remember thinking in third person as a child. I was so fascinated with reading books that I wrote the story of my life in my head as I rode my bike to the playground.

The thing is, I need to do what I’m doing and not think about writing about doing what I’m doing.

So, at least for a while, I’m going to try to break my blogging addiction, get organized, and weave. I’ll still post Back Forty Updates, because it is useful and easy to document my garden online instead of in a notebook. And I’ll still post photos, because I love that part of what I’m doing most of all. Maybe once I begin to weave again, I’ll post photos and short posts about my artwork. I’ve documented my artwork online for much longer than I’ve been blogging.

I’m evicting my narrator so that I can move back into my brain. That means less time online, and more time in the studio and the garden. This week was an exception - I had a lot of special things to post about my trip, and I needed to make a clean sweep of my brainpan. I still have a few photos to post, but now I’m bravely going out into the studio and dusting the cobwebs off my loom.