Picked a strawberry today!

An important thing happened in 1776. I stole this line from the linked video I hope you'll have time to watch it as you enjoy your Independence weekend.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpnFeyMGUs8
This weekend for me is an opportunity to catch up on a whole list of odds and ends in the garden. Thus in order to get to it today I'm going to allow the video to stand on it's own (which I think it does quite well). I have tried to sneak in a few blogs between sending out links. Thus if you for some reason find a bit of extra time, I hope you'll scroll down to some previous brilliance, pop a comment on, or perhaps check out a link time didn't allow for previously. And gosh get out in the garden! Doug A.

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Taste like cucumber

I've got to start us off with Waylon Jennings' classic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxll2-th4Gc Deb and I went down to our cabin in the mountains for the Memorial weekend. More exactly we went down to our tiny RV on the property next to the cabin. The cabin floor is close to finished and thus the bed and all are stuffed in the bathroom awaiting warm weather and the final coat of shellac. A 20' RV two adults and two dogs makes for close quarters, especially when it starts raining. That said there is something quite wonderful about playing rummy 500 by lantern light with Deb. It's way too easy in a marriage to get to plinking along in your little path and forget how nice it is to have a wife you love. I suggested to Deb that although the RV is getting on 40 years old we could probably get a pretty penny for it if we marketed it as a marital therapy tool. (therapy dogs extra!) Being a gardener I have sprinkled some seeds as the cabin h...

The tomatoes are red the gardener is blue

I'm stuck in a loop. I think that's what software programmers call it. I know the roots of this hopelessness are firmly planted in the utter destruction of our cabin and property in the forest fire that I alluded to in the last blog's prologue. Knowing the source of a polluted stream doesn't really help if your just wallowing in it. It's the wallowing that is the loop. A sporadic series of should haves and could haves that leave you so second guessed out that I've got little mental energy to accomplish all but the littlest things. Musically speaking I got da blues! The music is Billie Holiday - Lady in Autumn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npoe5XeeMYE&list=PLbYb5_Imn1rsDMoIU38jxi_O0aRaYj4CG 'cause given my mood - well, it was the obvious choice. If you're a libertarian like me it's hard not to on occasion reflect on a woman who's life included heroin abuse, alcohol abuse, abusive relationships and died at 44. The line between libert...

Bleeping grackles

I've just spent the last 15 minutes searching bird guides on-line and on paper to try to figure out what is nesting in the grape arbor. It looks like a nuthatch or wren that has dressed to go to work for UPS. It's incredibly tiny and quite cute but clearly not one to be pushed around. When I first saw it at the beginning of summer it was trying to take over a bird house I had created out of an old boot. Some chickadees had moved in and I was thrilled to see the house used. The chickadees had dutifully carried a boots worth of material from the yard to their nest. At a moment when both the male and female were out collecting material my little UPS bird 'discovered' the boot. He sat at the hole pulling material out. Clearly their tastes in furnishings were different you could almost see him (her?) shaking his head "this straw with those drapes - come on!". The chickadees returned and a battle royal ensued with it ending with two ...

The price of free

I came in when I heard the thunder but was intentionally not going to write. Couldn't live up to that commitment when Pryor Baird & the Deacons started playing Little Red Wagon. I can't find a YouTube link so I'm substituting with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEmvBdRLg4k and I'll leave you to find this driving rhythm. If you're thinking I've heard Little Red Wagon done by___. Yeah everybody done it. Some versions are so slow and deep delta bluesish that you gotta figure heroin was on the menu. This is I think you'd call it more Chicago blues with a staccato driving beat. No matter what you call it my hands started slapping the desk and that led to slapping this keyboard. For some technical reason beyond my imagination the stereo has flipped past the rest of the CD and gone on to John Mayall Plays John Mayall. It's John Mayall so I'm not going to argue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3BK8-Mmn1s&list=PL94gOvpr5yt2BTHyFMsHR...

Three Little Birds

It's Saturday the day before Mother's day so I'll start with a little eye candy for the ladies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8nm_jvE_Xs Jake is essentially the MSNBC (vs say Fox) version of the youtube movie I shared last time "Back to Eden" which emphasizes wood chip based gardening. While the whole video is worth watching I especially liked his gardening philosophy which he touches on around the 10 minute mark. Got to jump off topic (quelle surprise!) Jimmy Cliff has me boogieing to Let Your Yeah Be Yeah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDp_7kSli0w Jake's 'just start making mistakes' philosophy is akin to my own. I can't tell you how many gardening books (Permaculture books are the worst) devote chapter after chapter to 'creating your plan'. Yeah I would have killed a lot fewer plants and my fruit trees would have been planted years ago not to mention a quality watering system. No doubt people with 5 year life plans ...

notes from the bunker - a thought on freezes in spring

The snow from yesterday is mostly melted as I write. The only thing left to be figured out is was there any serious damage. It was really little more than a simple spring storm with a bit of a hard freeze or near hard freeze last night. Possibly again tonight. The mizuna and arugula I had put out last week under a little row cover of plastic got an added bit of fleece for protection. I'm sure they'll be fine, pretty cold hardy stuff. A bit more of a worry is some spinach and lettuce which I'd also put out. It was being killed off by some unknown thing on my window ledges indoors and thus was at least as safe outside. I had, knowing that the storm was coming, covered these with Wall O Waters. Wall O Waters are kind of the PPEs for plants in spring. A brilliant little invention which adds a good measure of protection from temporary light freezes. Hard freezes are something again and this is a bit early for my normal sowing of spinach and lettuce, so I'll hope. If I'm...

Notes from the bunker -Spring

If you want to find the most interesting things in my garden you have to go to the edges. It's the first full day of spring. This being Denver, after a couple weeks of 60°s to finish off winter, I'm looking out at 3 or 4 inches of snow and ice. Highs today perhaps the 30°s. Nothing really unusual in that. My desk calendar might be printed in black and white "SPRING BEGINS" but any gardener knows that it's not that binary a world. Heck it's not even analog as in a smooth gradual transition. Weather at a mile high is predictable in the sense that winter will be colder than summer but not in the sense that you can't have an 80° day in February and a freeze in July. It's more a what are the chances thing. That gamble is part of the joy of gardening. It's also why the heart of my garden is located in the best sun, in raised beds with the best soil and best access to water. Ya gotta stack the odds some years just to have a chance. Ah but those ed...

After the Garden

Those of you who know me know I hover somewhere between Catholic and agnostic. Thus when I say there are surprisingly few words about Adam in the Bible, you know I had to look to check. If you need to check it yourself go ahead you'll see. A little about how he came to be, a touch about Eve, a bit about that garden thing and then on to what the kids did. Really, I expected a lot more! I mean what about that day Adam was sitting outside the garden fence thwacking a stick against a tree?! He was just thinking, I don't want any more sadness God. Yeah, yeah I know it's your plan and I'm not supposed to question it but your plan sucks! He flipped his middle finger towards heaven. As he did a hummingbird who had become blind landed on it. Yeah, see that's what I mean God. How am I supposed to fix this? Sure I can name it and that's fun but how can I fix the pain in the world? Look at the old garden! It's an overgrown jungle. I need pruners, saws and a shovel...

Eating hope

Adam sat in the sun huddled under a blanket Eve had knitted. Scattered to his right and left a sketch of his new garden and a half dozen seed catalogs. Eve called these his garden porn. To grow a garden you have to guess the future and act in the present. Importantly, that begins with a guess. Some parts were clear; the average last frost, which plants could survive frost, the needed indoor start time for those and the later plants. That schedule had to be married to the best guess of what he wanted to grow and what might grow, again a guess. Once past the guessing a brief bit of pleasure gathering the seeds and ordering what was missing. Adam looked at the sketch and knew from past experience this was about as good as his garden would look. Sure there might be some unexpected wins, a seed or plant that surprised. The unexpected wins would be more than offset by bad weather, pests, or just hopes that never blossomed. Poppies make heroin. Hope is like heroin. Last year ...

A Fog

If you've never been in a fog so thick that you can't see where to go, to read it sounds like a flight of fancy. I've been in such a fog as a young man driving home. You're creeping along a highway hoping what you're taking for a white line means something. Simultaneously, you're desperately eyes locked on the road ahead and fearing what might be coming up behind you. For some reason you feel compelled to get to the safety of home. Adam was in such a fog. Adam had walked most of the way to Nod with his son Cain. To lose one son was a misery too great to bear. To never see the other again made it a journey he'd had to take. That was days ago and he'd been following the sun and the stars West back to Eve, his garden, and his dogs. The fog had begun lightly that morning with the path closed in but clear. Now he was on his knees looking as the path clearly split. Perhaps the Y would rejoin itself just a bit down the way. Perhaps one simply ended beyond w...

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