Category: butterbeans

art, butterbeans, coffee pot posts, collage, consumerism, Coronavirus Chronicles, Mixed media art, Reading, voluntary simplicity

Sunday morning coffee pot post

Laurie

And, OH! This coffee is so good. I put a big scoop of Trader Joe’s salted caramel hot cocoa mix in it. Divine. I’d really like to go back to Trader Joe’s today and buy more of this and a bunch of frozen dinners to take to work, but I considered what it would be like to go to TJ’s on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I think I’ll wait on that. I’m pretty new to Trader Joe’s since my first grocery shops were always the farmers’ market then Deep Roots then a local grocery. We listened to a story about Trader Joe’s on NPR and were fished in…it was a lovely experience. It’s good that it is on the other side of town.

The other place we shopped heavily during the pandemic was Costco, and we had a lot delivered. Once vaccines became widely available I stopped doing grocery delivery, realizing that between the mark-up on the products and the tip that I gave the shopper, I wasn’t saving any money. Sandy and I are – gasp, I’ll say it – hoarders and we got ahead on groceries at some point several years ago and our closets are generally full enough that we can get by for a few months if needed. I also have water stored in sterilized glass apple juice bottles. At first it was prepping in case of civil war or some other calamity. Little did we know how useful this would become so soon. I have to remember to rotate out the food, though. I donated some to the graduate student food drive for the food pantry this week.

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I have most of my grocery shopping for Thanksgiving already done so I’ll go to Deep Roots for my coffee, bread, yogurt, etc. today. My sister provides the turkey and cornbread dressing and dessert and lots of casseroles since she is the primo chef in the family, and retired, and enjoys it. I’ll bring my asparagus/mushroom/almond casserole and marinated goat cheese from Goat Lady Dairy and butterbeans from Smith Farms. We have our assignments and that has always been mine. Usually I grow the butterbeans, but I let that go this year.

One thing that we WON’T do is go shopping. I’ve celebrated Buy Nothing Day for years now, which is the Friday after Thanksgiving. It blows my mind that anybody actually enjoys that frenzy. We stopped giving physical Christmas gifts a long time ago. We still give each other presents, but they are not tied to any one day or obligation. It happens by whim when we see something that we know that someone would enjoy. I strongly believe that is the way gift giving should work.

Frugality is much on my mind, as I spin toward the goal of early retirement. I never thought that there was a chance that I might be able to do it, until my financial advisor at work told me that if I could live on 11% less, I could. Well, I have cut out a lot of fat during the past twenty years, but there is still 11% that I can cut. One thing that I did was I started putting a lot more in my retirement account. So now I know that I can live on what’s left.

I just don’t know how people can rent these days. We are so lucky (and smart) that we bought our house in a decent neighborhood at a good price and paid the mortgage off. Sandy rented his condo out so much more cheaply than the surrounding apartments. He said that he always remembered that when we first moved to this street the landlord said that he wanted to provide young people with an affordable place to live. I really liked that guy and it sounded really noble but we also had leaks and a hole in the bathroom floor. It wasn’t totally altruistic – he didn’t want to fix the problems. Then he sold us the house really cheap! Still, rents are insane these days and I don’t think that I could afford to rent an apartment on my salary if I had to do it.

Yesterday I broke down and decided that I had to take some allergy meds. I had stopped them when I realized that they were triggering my restless leg syndrome. It has been rough. Sleep was weird for the past 24 hours. I slept well on Friday night and late on Saturday, took the 24 hour Allegra-D, then Sandy and I went out for lunch and checked out Jerry’s Artarama. I came back and sat down on the sofa looking at my Kindle, and each cat settled down on each side of me and purred. I was so content and relaxed, I didn’t have a headache, and I could breathe! Then out of the blue I got really sleepy and took a three hour nap. The kind where you lay your head down and don’t move for three hours. These two things totally screwed up my sleep last night, so I spent from 1-4 a.m. stretching my feet and legs and back and cracking my toes and knuckles. At some point I turned on the light and started reading The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and wow. That was hard to put down. So it was another late sleep this morning. I’ll try to make it through the day without meds and a nap until bedtime tonight.

Jerry’s Artarama, which I didn’t even know was in Greensboro, y’all. It’s in a part of town where I never go any more. I need a source of inexpensive framing supplies for my artwork that I plan to sell, so I joined it. I bought a cool little device that you pour acrylic paint into and it has a marker tip – I chose the inch wide one. I hope that it will work well with stencils. I also bought a cheap stand-up easel for Sandy, black gesso, and a clip on glass panel for a matted print that we had bought from Ireland back in 2012.

One thing that I learned from this trip and the Dick Blick catalog, is that I need to get away from the 8×8″ size work. I bought a lot of wood panels in that size and I can make those hang-able, but there isn’t much choice in pre-made mats or frames in that size. When I make my prints this winter, I’m going to pay attention and cut my papers to standard sizes before I print them. I want to mat or frame my collages and prints and paintings for sale, but I don’t want to spend a lot of money on it. I’ll use a local frame shop for the ones that I want to keep or put in a show.

I spent in the wee hours of the morning thinking about what I’m going to do with this…thing…I made last weekend. And, as often happens, my inspiration took off when thinking about Lake Waccamaw. This is going to be the base for a real mixed media piece, with painting and leaf printed cloth and driftwood and maybe bones?

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I worked on this collage some last week and I like it. It will probably be part of a book, though.

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butterbeans, More gardening

Community Garden Plots

Laurie

The one in front has a fire ant nest where those inherited day lilies are and about a dozen Henderson bush lima bean plants, as well as one okra, one tomato of forgotten variety, and one eggplant. I’ll be planting something here soon. Maybe more okra to go with the big butterbean harvest I hope to get from those towering bean poles in the background. I picked a double handful and hope to get enough extra to freeze for the winter. Lima beans don’t flower when it is very hot, and I got a late start on planting these. We finally had a break in the heat so I hope to get a good fall harvest.

(When I refer to butterbeans, I mean small lima beans, preferably green. Not the big brown mealy ones I’ve seen referred to as butterbeans, ugh. It’s a regional thing, I guess.)

Back Forty, butterbeans, fiber art, Greensboro North Carolina, More gardening, Rebel stitching

Here we go again

Laurie

(Note: I forgot to click Publish when I wrote this on Monday night.)

The week before fall semester classes begin is always a huge adjustment. It feels like going from 0 to 60 suddenly. Gone are the quiet days with few people on the hallway. Now I get to meet about 30 new people and do some public speaking. I’ve come to think of this as my “Sanity Box,” a little box of magic that I can take out during a lunch or other break and just hem squares or stitch them together. No major thought is going into this. Just doing.

A lot of veggies and figs have to be dealt with also. I am much better this year than I have been most Augusts. I attribute this to adding fish oil and vitamin D to my daily supplements. My therapist had suggested the fish oil, and I was vitamin D deficient for a long time. I feel better physically and mentally, although I still tire very quickly. The muggy heat doesn’t help. Yesterday evening I picked tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, eggplants, and figs, then cooked for a couple of hours. I still have a lot of cucumbers and figs to do something with. I don’t want to get out the canning equipment – it just seems like too much for too little, and I am not a huge pickle or jelly fan – but I don’t want them to go to waste. This weekend I put some cucumber slices in with my tomatoes and peppers in the electric dehydrator. They came out wispy and delicate, like soft thin leaves. I might experiment with this more. Sandy and I are planning a repeat of making fig newtons this weekend. Last year he made some good ones, but he baked them on the wrong kind of pan. The filling was great, though.

The butterbeans are overwhelming at the UNCG garden. Very tall and thickly planted. There was a lot of Japanese beetle damage at first but I outplanted them, I think. Hardly any beans, though. I think that the intense heat wave in July stopped them from flowering. I hope they will produce soon so I can get some bean in the freezer before a heavy frost happens. I pulled up most of the eggplants and the lemon cucumber vines. I was tired of them and the eggplants were buried by the bermuda grass and peppermint that I lost control of very early on. Once the Roma tomatoes and one zephyr squash plant are done, which should be before the end of the month, I am abandoning that plot. However, I do think that the grass and mint may have helped hold in moisture during the dry spell when I was traveling.

Sandy and I walked downtown on First Friday, heard music with friends on Saturday, and went to the Greensboro Science Center and out to dinner with a dear out-of-town friend on Sunday. So we had a busy social time. This poodle at Gate City Yarns agrees that Sandy is great and tried to lick him clean.

Lord, I just want to sleep and play in the studio. Daydreaming about going to Ireland. All the books I want to read. Weaving with cloth strips keeps nagging at me to come back to it. There are not enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do. How do people get bored at home?

Back Forty, butterbeans, coffee pot posts, critters, Greensboro North Carolina, Lake Waccamaw

Saturday Morning Coffee Pot post

Laurie

Before I start the series of posts about our trip to Idaho and Wyoming, I need to sweep out my brain of the things unrelated to that first. So I made a second pot of coffee.


Looking at the remnants of Florence from the air.

First off, we were not affected here at my house in Greensboro by Hurricane Florence. There is some flooding in the Greensboro area, but our housesitter kindly put a tarp on our outside basement door and sandbagged it for us, as well as securing the stuff on the front porch and the yard. We have a damp basement but it did not flood, and not even many limbs down since we had the large maple tree taken down a few weeks ago. Good timing that, and one reason I wanted it done before hurricane season began.

Lake Waccamaw is a whole different story. It took a direct hit. We won’t know the full extent of the damage for a while yet because the houses that belong to our family are on Canal Cove Road where the lake has merged with the canal and swamp behind it. Not only does that mean that there is 2-4 feet of water inside those houses, but that there are trees down under the water and alligators and cottonmouths and mats of fire ants enjoying a new range. My sister and brother-in-law prepped as best they could for several days and evacuated to Chapel Hill, where fortunately they had not sold their house yet. They know that the pier may be wiped out and the pontoon boat came loose and has been floating around bashing into stuff. Her furniture including antiques from my mother’s house are almost certainly ruined. The pier is not insured. The house and boat are, although the boat is really old and not worth that much. Fred and Weezer’s house, where we love to stay and I have written about many, many times, is underwater, as it was during Hurricane Floyd.

I have not heard from my brother in Lumberton, but he is not on the side of town that floods. My cousins are. I talked to him on Friday and they were hunkered down. I think that the main concern for him will be the farm. It backs up to Ashpole Swamp which backs up to the Lumber River near Fair Bluff. He leases most of the acreage but raises a few cows. It is beloved place for him, as the lake is for me.

So. I will update when I know more. Waters were still rising down east the last time I checked, and hopefully they will crest and go down soon. After Floyd it took two weeks before the roads were passable and Florence was worse.

The tomatoes and basil were looking rough, and what figs ripened seem to have been eaten by birds and ants. I cut the basil back hard and will make pesto and freeze it in an ice tray for cubes of flavor during this winter. I harvested two huge trombincino squash and one is actually a little past its prime. We’ll see whether it is just as good with a good peeling. The cheese pumpkin doesn’t seem to have been attacked by critters (fingers crossed). The vines have taken over our small back yard and would be producing like crazy but the fruit is rotting on the vine at a very young stage. I suppose this is blossom rot and will amend the soil if I plant these again. I have a new small crop of butterbeans and some banana peppers. A monarch butterfly laid eggs on a variety of milkweed I planted and the caterpillars have eaten up the plants. I don’t know what they will do now. I hope that they eat other plants. I collected seeds and will replant more next year. (I didn’t even know that these flowers were a variety of milkweed!)

Our application to install solar panels on the roof has been approved. We are waiting to make an appointment for a site visit. I know that some extra rewiring will need to be done in the attic first, and I’m hoping the same company can do it.

We came back from our wonderful vacation and went straight to work the next day, so it took a while for me to catch up on work, laundry, groceries, garden, and personal emails. Sandy is working again today and so I will have uninterrupted time to blog about our trip, if you are fond of my travelogues.

Also, as usual, I hope to get back to weaving this weekend. I have a frame loom waiting to be warped for a fringeless tapestry, and loads of inspiration.

Back Forty, butterbeans, tapestry, Tapestry Diary 2018, weaving

Labor Day

Laurie

You know, it’s ironic how many people have to work on Labor Day. My husband volunteered to work, like he often does on holidays. He likes the holiday pay and we rarely do anything special on holidays anyway. But I remember retail work, and I salute those of you in retail and restaurants and other service work who do not get a choice. I welcome the four day week after the stress of the beginning of the academic year, but it ain’t nothing like the stress of my old jobs.

Plenty of Roma and cherry tomatoes are ripening and I’ve been drying and cooking sauce every few days. There wasn’t any bicolor corn at the market this Saturday and I am rather spoiled for that, so I didn’t freeze any this weekend. I gave in and bought fresh shelled butterbeans (little green lima beans) for the first time maybe ever and was shocked at the price. It was fair, just as the price of shelled pecans is fair for the amount of work, but those are two food items I never had to buy before this year since either my mother or I grew them. I bought bell peppers and dried and froze them in strips. A friend is giving me his okra from his CSA bag, so I blanched and froze some and put the rest in my butterbeans. Half of the butterbeans were blanched and frozen and saved for Thanksgiving. I hope that I will have a second crop soon that is much better than the first crop was. The Sugar Baby watermelons are producing, but I am not impressed. So many seeds in such a small fruit. Also picked arugula that had been sheltered by the potato vines.


My big garden success was this tromboncino squash. It’s rare that I get more than a squash or two when I attempt to grow them because of squash borers and my laziness in combating them. This is the second one – the first was eaten by bugs. I picked it at exactly the right time. The rind is tender, the seeds undeveloped, and it is delicious. I sure hope I get some more. I sliced up the neck thinly and dehydrated the slices. Just tasted one and I was surprised at how tasty it is. The rest will be cooked in a casserole with vidalia onions and cheese and crackers today. There is a second vine growing along with this one that looks to be either the candy roaster squash or the cheese pumpkin that I expected. They are taking over the back yard!

We have a house sitter for our trip and I am so happy about that! Our neighbor does a great job in feeding and visiting the cats (he likes our front porch too) but we have a friend who is selling her house and needs a place to stay, so it is a mutually beneficial arrangement.


Here’s what I chose for the tapestry diary for the months of June and July, now that my weaving block is broken and my brain is back from circling the hole. I have to weave a little at a time and walk away but I am enjoying it. I got a massage yesterday and she was surprised that I didn’t hurt more than I did and recommended rest for the rest of the day yesterday. There’s a funny English word with two meanings: rest. Anyway, I have to get back to doing my stretching exercises regularly and when I get back from our big trip I’m going to start taking a yoga class again to keep me on track.

I bought CBD oil balm this week and have been using it on my elbow. So far, so good. As long as I don’t lift anything or hold a book or a Kindle for a long time in my left hand, my elbow is fine. After a few weeks of trying this I’ll report back.

We are still waiting to hear about our application to the city to install solar panels. Turns out that they either didn’t get my first fax or lost it and it didn’t get on the agenda for the historic district commission. The city planning office has been great to work with, however, and I was told that they may be able to approve it on their own based on other applications that have been approved. I’m excited about the prospect.

It’s possible that my next entry will be from Idaho, Wyoming, or after I get back from our next big adventure. I have a lot of house cleaning and prep work to do before then, and I am going to weave this afternoon.

Back Forty, butterbeans, More gardening, Permaculture, Slow Food

Back Forty Update

Laurie

Lots of flowers are growing in this new hugelkultur bed in the front at the end of my driveway, along with lots of volunteer “mouse melons,” tiny watermelon-like fruits that taste like cucumbers. I’m using them as a ground cover – did not plant them. I believe that is a Juliet tomato there that I didn’t have room for anywhere else so I just popped it in there. It might be a Roma. There’s not any fertilizer in this bed. There is mint and parsley and feverfew and calendula. I’ve pulled out the ageratum in this photo. For next year’s bloom there is hollyhock and evening primrose, and the garden balsam blooming now which should reseed freely.

So many cherry tomatoes! And a few Roma tomatoes, although quite a few have blossom end rot despite me putting Epsom salts in the planting holes. Maybe I forgot on that particular one. We have had so much rain and it has been muggy hot, so the new garden bed in the back is lush. I gather tomatoes every day and I try to pick them just as they start to ripen to keep them from splitting, and so that they don’t tempt hungry birds and critters. The ground cherries don’t make it indoors. I eat them on the spot.

^^^Ageratum grows everywhere, and I like to keep some to bloom for the bees in the fall, but it’s one of those plants that is selfish and wants all the land for itself. Now that I’ve pulled out most of the ageratum, this bed is devoted to herbs this year. There are three kinds of basil, mint, feverfew, tarragon, borage, and parsley (which was overwhelmed by the ageratum and did not grow well this year). In between there are a couple of dozen foxglove seedlings that volunteered from last year, and a few rudbeckia that survived the groundhog attack by hiding in the ageratum. The celery and kale did not survive the critter attack. The motion sensor spraying device there is out of business, and didn’t work except on humans. There are a few lamb’s quarters left in there that I eat for greens. Next spring this bed will look awesome with foxglove flowers and the bees will love it. Herbs will be shifted somewhere else next year.


^^^If I get any candy roaster squash from these vines (I see the harbinger of doom in the back of the photo) they will be huge, like pumpkins but oblong. Right now they seem hellbent on Back Forty domination. No squash in sight so far, just flowers.


^^^Butterbean Survivor – there are a few bean vines that survived the groundhog feast, and some of the damaged ones are trying to play catch-up. I’m picking beans now, but only enough to add to other dishes.

^^^”Rudbeckia Survivor – The groundhogs think that these flowers are very tasty so I’m proud of this tough little survivor that made it to full bloom.

Back Forty, butterbeans, coffee pot posts, Market report, Slow Food, voluntary simplicity

Saturday midday coffee pot post

Laurie

Normally I don’t drink coffee past noon, because of my sleep issues. Today I am breaking that rule. I’ve got a spurt of energy going for me today and I don’t want to lose it!

The tree removal has been moved to Monday. He started on Thursday, and stopped after taking down one big lower limb and the bottom of the sky fell out. I mean flash flood warning heavy rain. I watched from the back door and the white clouded sky behind the limb was like a flash of light as it fell to the ground. I can already tell that these two guys are gonna be good at this, which is a very tricky job. A double trunk, about 80-100 feet tall as I estimate, covered high up in wild grapevine attached to other trees, and way too close to two houses. It’s not a good idea to climb trees with a chainsaw when everything is wet and slippery.

One secondary benefit, because we did not have this in mind when we decided to take down the tree, is that we have a perfect roof for solar panels. The quote we got from NC Solar Now impressed us. We will have to tie in to the power grid through Duke Energy’s meter and pay a meter charge, but in the optimistic view that big storage batteries might get cheaper and we will still have a reliable operating national power grid, it will be a few years before we can think about going off-grid. It’s probably a good idea to try this first anyway. They think that because our power usage is pretty low, twelve panels could cover most or all of our electric needs.

This is one way I can help make the world a little better, and it makes me feel better too. Although I strongly feel that it is too late for us to turn around the tidal wave of climate change – of course it is already here – I believe that we need to do what we can to adapt to the new reality.

It is a good day today. It’s not raining at the moment, which I’m grateful for, and even though I had an awful recurring dream in which I have somehow married an old boyfriend who stalked me for years and I am bewildered and horrified as to how I got into such a predicament, such dreams do make me grateful for the opportunities I have had in my life and the choices I’ve been able to make. I often wonder how things might have worked out if I had made different decisions at key times in my life. So many times I didn’t know it would be a major fork in the road. For example, what if I had chosen UNC Chapel Hill instead of UNC Greensboro? My life now would be entirely different. What if I had not dated another old boyfriend here in Greensboro? I would not have met Sandy, my husband. What if I had not gone to Oregon to take a tapestry workshop with Pam Patrie? I would not have the wonderful friends and connections in the tapestry world that I have now.

Then sometimes I think that what I thought were important decisions really weren’t. For instance, I don’t think that my degree in Studio Art is worth all that much, although that is where I first learned to weave and do woodcuts. I’ve learned much more going out into the world beyond Greensboro and taking classes.

What if I had decided to head out west or emigrate to another country? Who knows how completely different, for better or worse, my life would be?

It’s too late to emigrate to Ireland. I’ve had to accept that. You have to have an income of $55,000 individually or $110,000 as a couple combined. We will never make that much money. Canada doesn’t want retirees at all. There’s not even that option to check on the application. I don’t want to move south. We’ll check out Portugal next year, but I’m realizing that nothing is a given in this world – we can’t know that any place in it will be better than here by the time we are ready to go.

These days, I am looking at aging in place. I still hope to move west to Washington or Oregon, but that will be a while. I am not willing to give up a good job that is secure for now before I get to age 62, and I might have to wait until 67.

In the meantime, our house value is going up, up, up. The house next door sold immediately for an insane amount of money. The new neighbors are currently in Bangkok, where one is teaching at American University. They plan to move in in November, and have arranged for Armando, a young man who worked for them for several years, to take care of the yard. I might employ Armando myself. He thinks very highly of our new neighbors. It all seems good.

Today, it is still humid and the mosquitoes unfortunately did not drown in the deluge. The temperature is still below 90 so we have the doors open and the fans on. I have been to the Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market and bought peaches, corn, eggplant, yellow squash, potatoes, and sweet peppers. We have lots of cherry tomatoes and some Roma and Better Boy tomatoes ripening in the back, although the groundhogs have eaten a few that are not protected by wire cages. They don’t bother the ground cherries or herbs, so I have those. The candy roaster squashes are taking over the back – if they bear fruit and the groundhogs don’t eat them, they will be huge and a nice source of food for this winter. Not all the butterbean plants were eaten and a few that were damaged are playing catch up. I’ll have a few but probably never enough for two servings or freezing. The few I’ve shelled have gone into soup.

I’m about to slice and dice and fire up the dehydrator, maybe blanch a few veggies for the freezer.

I’m toughening up. I’m thickening my skin. I’m getting ready. I’m also being kind to myself when I need downtime.

Halfway through Bella Poldark, the last of the book series. I will be sad to see it end. Then I will catch up on the TV series. I canceled Sling when the price went up this month, which included HBO. I will miss AMC but I’ll figure that out. That, along with the 2% raise I’m getting, will pay for the solar panels.

Only one photo this time – my new steampunk loom, Rosie, which I need to warp up once I catch up on my Fringeless online class.

Back Forty, butterbeans

Back Forty (and Front Forty) Update

Laurie

I think that I may be done with gardening for the weekend. Many of the unwanted plants (AKA weeds) have been pulled out, more seeds planted, general clean-up of wire cages and poles achieved, some plants and seedlings transferred from one area to another, and the bean trellises erected.


Before and after

Most of the tobacco sticks I brought from the farm have rotted in the humidity of the garden, but I have saved long poles from tree trimming and house renovation. There are some squash, pumpkin, and watermelon plants in there. I hope that they have a fast growth spurt to get above the butterbeans!

The woodchuck knocked over one of the wire cages last night and ate my beet greens. I may have to set my water deterrent motion sensor lower. This is the first indication of damage since I set it up. There has been heavy rain so I’ll try spraying this small animal deterrent stuff again late this afternoon.

Little tomatoes are on the plants I purchased, and the Romas that I grew from seeds are doing well. I think that the Principe Borghese tomatoes will be healthy too, but I replanted them after killing the first batch. I don’t think that I will ever use peat pots again. These will go in the compost tumbler. The Sugar Baby watermelons have enjoyed the heavy rains and have flowers. So do the Jacob’s Cattle beans.

Pulled out what peas survived the woodchuck. I got to eat about five sugar snaps off the vines. I planted okra seeds where they were, and leaving the pineberries to spread out in that bed over the coming year. We tasted one pineberry each and they were tasty, but gone quickly. I guess I’ll decide after next year if they are worth the space devoted to them, and give them the benefit of the doubt since they were transplanted in late February.

I have decided to plant herbs in the hugelkultur bed near the front door. There will be flowers, mostly garden balsam. I believe one hollyhock has germinated so that may have to be transplanted to its own large space. Since the arborist wants to take the tree out on the south side of the house, I’ve been moving some of my plants to other places so that they don’t get trampled or smushed. So some peppermint, parsley, and a borage volunteer went in, and I planted more basil seed there and several other spots around. I think that I might be one of the few people on earth that has problems growing zucchini or basil. I’ve given up on zucchini, but I’ll never stop trying to grow basil.

Next weekend will be spent in Wilmington and Topsail Beach. Going to a Leslie Marsh book workshop and she will have an indigo vat. She says that if it is not tapped out we can dip a couple of small items/bundles, so I’m going to wait to weave on the silk tapestry until I get some indigo dyed thread to work into it.

After I wrote the blog post yesterday, Sandy volunteered to go with me to the opening reception of the Tapestry Weavers South show at Yadkin Cultural Arts Center in Yadkinville, North Carolina, about an hour’s drive from Greensboro, so I took some photos there. My phone’s battery was weak and some of the photos show it, but I’ll try to get a post up with those photos this week. It is not far off I-40 and the show will be up through July 28.

Back Forty, butterbeans, coffee pot posts

Saturday morning coffee pot post

Laurie

It’s almost noon, and this is the end of the coffee pot, but I was trying to get a few things done around the house.

Which is not easy these days, between physical problems and mechanical problems. The mosquitoes are out with a vengeance, as I knew they would be after all this rain. Sandy can’t get the lawn mower working and the repair guy is backed up for several weeks. I tried to charge the battery to the electric weed whacker, because the little bit we have that needs to be cut down can be done with that, but the battery is not charging. Sandy is about to take the mower apart, after trying several suggestions given to him by the repair guy. He seems pretty determined not to buy a new one. I gave my hand-powered reel mower away because we never use it.

We are draining the rain barrel at the front corner of the house and moving it to the back corner where we can put it up on blocks and attach a hose to it. That may do the trick as far as providing me with untreated water that I can store until needed and also help with the wet basement.

The seed starting this year has been a big disappointment – I don’t seem to understand how much water to provide. Either I provide too much or too little. I may as well have started my seeds in the ground for the most part. Several of the Roma tomatoes are doing well, though. I’m a little discouraged about the garden and my ability to care for it, although it is twice better than it was last year!

I have hooked the hose up to a motion sensor battery powered sprayer to try to deter the groundhog. He seems to like hanging out under the back house. I looked under there and he whistled at me in surprise. Now I know why they are also called whistlepigs.

The lima and cannellini beans came up almost immediately, and the Sugar Baby watermelon seedlings are doing well. I planted the tromboncino and Candy Roaster squash seedlings the other day and will use the greenhouse frame as support for these. Also I could not help myself and planted some cheese pumpkin seeds in the bean bed along the fence. There really is not room in my entire yard for these big winter squashes, but the squash borers will probably get ’em anyway. One weekend task will be to set up the trellises for the pole beans so I don’t rely totally on the fence for support.

I guess that most of the mystery seeds that I threw in this planter are beets. The broccoli is doing well in here, to my surprise. Maybe it likes being crowded and ignored.

Now I’m thinking about getting Justin to dig us an outer ring to the garden bed, spiraling out like a galaxy or a snail shell.

We are getting estimates for the removal of the large silver maple now that it has been approved by the city. This is a national historic district so we have to get a lot of things approved, which I don’t mind so much. It may have saved a few good trees and keeps people from tearing down historic houses and building cheap student housing, so I’m okay with it. There is poison ivy around it and on it, so I guess I’ll pour some vinegar on it and see if that kills it. We should have more sun in the Back Forty and both our house and the house next door will be much safer in a storm when it is removed, so as much as I hurt when trees are cut down around here, I feel okay with this. I feel like it is necessary. It will definitely be very expensive. Goodbye, tax return.

I hope that the arborist doesn’t trample my front garden too much taking the tree out. I think that I’ll transplant some of this thyme to the hugelkultur bed. Maybe some other herbs, but I do have some flower seeds germinating there.

I’ve learned that some seeds do better as volunteers that when I try to start them in a pot. This is a borage volunteer from last year’s plants. Ground cherries are the same for me. Maybe I will fling the rest of the seeds into the back garden and see what happens. The problem is that I might not recognize them as plants that I want.

Okay, I’m going to spend time weaving during the rainy and muggy parts of this weekend, and making bundles for dyeing the pockets for my alchemist’s apron. So glad that we screened in the porch! It’s almost as good as being at the lake. These daisy fleabane flowers are ready to go into a bundle.

In closing, good things can come to those who wait. I bought this biennial flower last year. I don’t even remember what it is, but it is a welcome splash of purple now that the foxgloves and comfrey has dropped their blooms.

Back Forty, butterbeans, coffee pot posts, depression/anxiety, dyeing, Nature printing, Permaculture, Slow Food, whining

Sunday morning coffee pot post

Laurie

Time for another long rambling post. Guess I’ll make a second pot of coffee.

It is hot and humid this weekend, with highs in the 90s. Anyone who is not in denial about climate change is not surprised about any freakish weather. I understand those who feel helpless and just can’t bear thinking about the future for their children. I wish that they’d try to face it, but I get it. It makes me very depressed also. What I can’t understand is those who flat out deny that it is happening because of human activity and that we don’t have to make any changes to our lifestyles to slow our journey toward the cliff ahead, whether it is because they worship money or political parties, or because they have opted out of critical thinking out of sheer mental laziness.

Well, isn’t that a cheery way to start a post on Mother’s Day? It’s not my favorite day. It’s also a day that I am glad that I made the decision not to bring any more children into this world. I definitely appreciate the hard work that most parents, especially mothers, do all of their lives. I know that I couldn’t have done it if I had wanted to, and I hail those feminists who came before me who worked so hard to ensure that I had a choice, unlike my own mother.

Believe me, I hold back a WHOLE LOT when I write on this blog these days. Mainly because I’m tired of complaining and politics in general.

I’ve been working hard this week to get the garden planted. Now I have the area along the fence to plant, and Sandy and I have decided to use the greenhouse frame as a support to grow trombincino squash on. I took off the greenhouse cover and pulled up the landscape fabric yesterday. My only concern is that this area doesn’t get enough sun now that the trees have leafed out, but I’m going to try it anyway. I used to plant in this area back when the entire Back Forty was in food production. In the meantime, I’m going to put down cardboard and landscape fabric in another sunnier area to prepare for moving the greenhouse later this year.

The Jacob’s Cattle beans germinated well. Not so much for the saved Henderson bush lima beans, but they were a bit old. I’ll replant in the blank spots. These were planted around the outer edge of the bed.

I planted a lot of green beans. A “yard-long” bean and “Brio” bush beans that I got from the Greensboro Permaculture Guild seed swap in the middle of the bean-shaped bed – really, how could I not fill this bed with beans? A few leeks down the center between Roma tomatoes. Pat Bush’s heirloom “beautiful” beans, which are more like crowder peas, and Kentucky Wonder snap beans in pots around the fig tree, which we nearly butchered in late winter. It is coming back though. I need to keep it small.

The herb and lettuce seeds don’t seem to be germinating in the area that did not get dug up. I’m thinking that ants may have carried off the seeds. There are lots of ants, and I am afraid that they are being pushed (and eventually will be replaced) by fire ants into our lot. Fire ants are definitely nearby.

Yesterday I bought some more mints, a French tarragon plant, and a pack of Sugar Baby watermelon seedlings, because why not? They were a quarter a piece and if it doesn’t work out, so be it. Two went into big pots, and I’m going to find a few spots for the others.

Suddenly the back faucet doesn’t leak. The front faucet, which I have been bitching about being cut off under the house where I cannot crawl, works. I KNOW that the back faucet leaked, and Sandy says he didn’t fix it. I am not so sure about the front faucet, but I haven’t had a plumber under there for a few years, so could I have been using it all this time instead of hauling the hose and watering cans back and forth?

Have I lost my mind? Really? I have slipped into that middle-aged worry that I am developing Alzheimer’s. It runs rampant in my genes. It is my greatest fear.

I ordered an animal deterrent for the groundhog problem that is a motion detector that hooks up to the hose and sends out a surprise blast of water when set off. Then Sandy reminded me that since the faucet leaked it was not a good idea to leave it on. So I canceled the order and was going to call a plumber tomorrow. Now it seems that I won’t have to. I wonder if Justin fixed it and didn’t tell me? I guess I’ll reorder the groundhog thingie.

Yesterday I clipped vines and stray trees from along the fence and I really missed him. We ran out of time (and my budget) for him to do several things that we planned. He should have a newborn son by now, so he won’t be available for a few weeks.

Tomorrow I will have my sixth adjustment at the chiropractor, and I’ve reached the phase that I am tired of it and wondering whether I am chucking my travel and hired help money down a black hole. He gave me some suggestions for how to manage my hip pain for those long drives and flights. Since I have a long drive coming up on Thursday, I’ll give it a try but honestly, he wasn’t very encouraging about me being able to prevent all my pain. Sitting for more than an hour aggravates that compressed disc and radiates pain out to my hips. The pain source is in my back, not my hips, and that was confirmed by my orthopedic doctor. So that has not improved my mood. You always like to think that you’ll get better, or healed completely. It’s part of accepting the aging process.

Anyway, I did a little eucalyptus bundle experiment with some leaves I found out back. They may be too old. I soaked them and wrapped some iron/vinegar mordanted cotton cloth and silk thread around sticks and a stone, then steamed them for an hour or so. I’ll unwrap them this afternoon when I spend some creative time with a friend. I should leave them wrapped longer, but I’m not that patient right now. Maybe I’ll do a few bundles and let them sit while I am gone for my long weekend coming up.

We are so proud of our friend Gerald Wong, who walked his talk and ran for Congress in the Democratic primary this week. He got lots of votes despite having to work out of the area (he is an over-the-road trucker) and not taking donations. My friend Zha K was a warrior for him here at home, going to events as a surrogate and doing research. We celebrated election night on the Wongs’ back deck on Tuesday night.

I am going to take a Sabbath today. I enjoy working in the garden and planting but it’s time to rest.