(1) Silence.
On the rare occasions when we have big snow -- just snow, no wind or sleet or any other variations of winter storm -- the world is embraced in a white velvet silence. It's a true silence, an utter silence; the only sounds come from your own clothes when you move. The surface of the world is smoothed into innocent beauty while life sleeps beneath. We get the silence for a few minutes or hours a year, maybe once every several years; two years ago, it came as a gift on the winter solstice.
(2) Darkness.
No streetlights. No neighbor's porch lights. Mostly, no headlights except your own, winding along the roads back from town. Then, suddenly, a star of Bethlehem floating in the blackness! Oh, it's somebody's holiday lights on a barn across the valley. Around a curve, a perfect Christmas tree illuminated in red, green, and white. Or perhaps a blue one. Then darkness. Around another bend, a deciduous tree's bare branches outlined in gold. Another mile of darkness, until the world leaps into blinding, blinking glow from an extravaganza of Santas and reindeers and trees and stars and snowmen and sleighs, all packed into somebody's tiny yard and so fully lit that you can almost hear the electric meter spinning. Then, back into darkness -- the opposite of snowfall, a rich, deep, inky blue that showcases every star in the heavens.
With this combination, it's hard to resist singing, "Silent night, holy night / All is calm, all is bright . . ."
Happy holidays!
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Silent night
Two aspects of living in the rural north give special poignancy to the winter holidays.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Mammals R Us
This time of year, I become acutely conscious of being a diurnal mammal. As winter descends, so do my energy and curiosity, so that all I want to do is eat large amounts of fatty foods and sleep. My cats do basically that, and I envy them the luxury. The rest of the year, they want to be outside all the time; now, they only bestir themselves for a brief change of scenery or a trip to the outdoor restroom. I content myself with looking out the windows and using indoor plumbing.
The happiest moment of every day is when I crawl beneath the electric blanket. The unhappiest moment of every day is when I wake up in the morning and it's still dark.
Some lucky critters get to bury themselves in the mud or a den, or migrate, or in other ways escape the season. The unlucky ones are out still there rooting desperately for food and shelter. I often wonder how our forebears endured life without houses and furnaces and electric blankets and supermarket-bought food stored in refrigerators, with electric lights and entertainment to beat back the darkness while wearing warm, comfy clothes and driving environmentally sealed cars. How brutal life must have been in earlier ages! How grateful I am to never know!
Just as often, I think about the advantage of this climate. Sure, winter is a drag, but it brings important pluses. In our neck of the woods, we don't have to worry about region-demolishing catastrophes such as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, mudslides, and wildfires. I'll gladly take a few months of winter for all my life to avoid experiencing any one of those, even once! Likewise, having 3-4 months of deep freeze manages insect pests in a way that spares us from plagues in garden and body, as can happen in warmer regions.
So I'll resist that primeval urge to hibernate and hang on through another winter. Spring, like a rainbow after a storm, arrives at the end. Which is worth many months of cold and darkness.
The happiest moment of every day is when I crawl beneath the electric blanket. The unhappiest moment of every day is when I wake up in the morning and it's still dark.
Some lucky critters get to bury themselves in the mud or a den, or migrate, or in other ways escape the season. The unlucky ones are out still there rooting desperately for food and shelter. I often wonder how our forebears endured life without houses and furnaces and electric blankets and supermarket-bought food stored in refrigerators, with electric lights and entertainment to beat back the darkness while wearing warm, comfy clothes and driving environmentally sealed cars. How brutal life must have been in earlier ages! How grateful I am to never know!
Just as often, I think about the advantage of this climate. Sure, winter is a drag, but it brings important pluses. In our neck of the woods, we don't have to worry about region-demolishing catastrophes such as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, mudslides, and wildfires. I'll gladly take a few months of winter for all my life to avoid experiencing any one of those, even once! Likewise, having 3-4 months of deep freeze manages insect pests in a way that spares us from plagues in garden and body, as can happen in warmer regions.
So I'll resist that primeval urge to hibernate and hang on through another winter. Spring, like a rainbow after a storm, arrives at the end. Which is worth many months of cold and darkness.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
The annual giving of thanks
Every year at this time, people across America ritually gather to give thanks for what they have. I try to do the same thing mentally every day, counting my blessings -- difficult to do when times are tough, but always worth the effort because it revives appreciation of life and all that is good therein.
My personal thanksgiving ritual occurs at a different time of year. I wrote about it in the introduction to my book, Open Your Heart with Gardens:
"Each year, it happens afresh:
"After months of brown and gray and white . . . cold and hard and dark . . . the day comes when I step outside and behold a tip of green protruding from the ground.
"The first daffodil!
"The sight of it drops me to my knees, mentally chanting, Thankyouthankyouthankyou! Then I leap up into The Happy Dance because there at my feet lies proof that the world has kept turning, the invisible forces of the universe have kept churning, and Mother Nature has again fulfilled her promise despite everything I doubted and feared.
"Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"
No daffodils now, but the promise of rebirth associated with them is what I most give thanks for as the year draws down and cold and darkness pervade.
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
My personal thanksgiving ritual occurs at a different time of year. I wrote about it in the introduction to my book, Open Your Heart with Gardens:
"Each year, it happens afresh:
"After months of brown and gray and white . . . cold and hard and dark . . . the day comes when I step outside and behold a tip of green protruding from the ground.
"The first daffodil!
"The sight of it drops me to my knees, mentally chanting, Thankyouthankyouthankyou! Then I leap up into The Happy Dance because there at my feet lies proof that the world has kept turning, the invisible forces of the universe have kept churning, and Mother Nature has again fulfilled her promise despite everything I doubted and feared.
"Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"
No daffodils now, but the promise of rebirth associated with them is what I most give thanks for as the year draws down and cold and darkness pervade.
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Friday, November 5, 2010
Stick season
Here in the hilly section of Vermont, there are a lot of jokes (and complaints) about the weather. They're all true, by the way. It's the most weather-dominant place I've ever lived, which doesn't help with gardening!
Nevertheless, despite my own complaints, I like the weather here. It's dramatic and primal -- an Event, almost every day. And very rich with color. I've taken to determining seasons by color, since the calendar doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. Right now, rolling into November, we've entered Stick Season.
Stick Season is primarily brown and gray. With all the leaves down (except coppery beech and rusty oak), the landscape is a mass of brown and gray vertical lines overlaying brown and gray undulations. The skies are myriad shades of gray, usually roiling, reflected back by gunmetal gray waters. This monotony is punctuated by the aptly named evergreens, and given contrast by beige and mustard grasses, plus the surprising gold of larches and even more surprising shafts of golden sunbeams slanting through holes in the gray clouds.
In all, starkly beautiful. Soon to be blanketed with white. But it's nice to see the bones of the land for a little while, and to glimpse homes and other features normally masked by dense foliage. We get Stick Season in reverse during April, when the white blanket retreats and reveals the world naked before greens reemerge to clothe it.
So Stick Season is brown and gray. Winter is white, blue, and lavender. Not-Winter is green with fiesta-colored accents. Foliage Season is just the party colors. Some folks add Mud Season to this roster, but I lump that under Stick Season. The spring and fall are always wet and yucky underfoot, and in our immediate area we don't get the dissolving, rutted roads that suck vehicles in up to their floor pans (for which Mud Season is named), so I'll stick with my nomenclature.
The only problem is, Winter is 5 months long, Not-Winter is 4, Stick Season is 3, and Foliage Season less than 1. According to the calendar, each season is supposed to be 3 months long. Hah!
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Nevertheless, despite my own complaints, I like the weather here. It's dramatic and primal -- an Event, almost every day. And very rich with color. I've taken to determining seasons by color, since the calendar doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. Right now, rolling into November, we've entered Stick Season.
Stick Season is primarily brown and gray. With all the leaves down (except coppery beech and rusty oak), the landscape is a mass of brown and gray vertical lines overlaying brown and gray undulations. The skies are myriad shades of gray, usually roiling, reflected back by gunmetal gray waters. This monotony is punctuated by the aptly named evergreens, and given contrast by beige and mustard grasses, plus the surprising gold of larches and even more surprising shafts of golden sunbeams slanting through holes in the gray clouds.
In all, starkly beautiful. Soon to be blanketed with white. But it's nice to see the bones of the land for a little while, and to glimpse homes and other features normally masked by dense foliage. We get Stick Season in reverse during April, when the white blanket retreats and reveals the world naked before greens reemerge to clothe it.
So Stick Season is brown and gray. Winter is white, blue, and lavender. Not-Winter is green with fiesta-colored accents. Foliage Season is just the party colors. Some folks add Mud Season to this roster, but I lump that under Stick Season. The spring and fall are always wet and yucky underfoot, and in our immediate area we don't get the dissolving, rutted roads that suck vehicles in up to their floor pans (for which Mud Season is named), so I'll stick with my nomenclature.
The only problem is, Winter is 5 months long, Not-Winter is 4, Stick Season is 3, and Foliage Season less than 1. According to the calendar, each season is supposed to be 3 months long. Hah!
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Thursday, October 14, 2010
The cycle continues
Since it snowed the other day, I guess that means gardening season is over!
Starting last spring, each season has kicked in two weeks early. Summer was strange this year, perhaps because the weather was, well, summery! Sunny, hot, dry for long periods, unlike our cool and often too-wet norm. The pond got so low we could almost walk across it, and we had to ration water from the well. (Not any longer: In the past 3 weeks, we've had 14 inches of rain!)
Thanks to rain barrels, I always had enough water for the veggie garden. It performed terrifically for a change, this year giving what I've aspired to for a decade: a crop of huge, bug-free, sweet red bell peppers. Low yield but great fruits. Similar results with tomatoes, but another plague set upon them by August so I lost some at the end. As well, I planted different varieties in different locations and got correspondingly different yields and quality. Best performers grew in the lasagna garden. So far, all my vegetables have done best in that location, save for carrots, which like a deeper, more uniform bed.
I tried a new variety of cucumber and got many salads worth of big ones. Also tried a single plant of brussels sprouts, which grew straight and tall and produced abundant heads. It's still going despite a week of frost and a nor'easter.
Broccoli, always a challenge, was mixed: the Goliath variety I cultivated under bug screen indeed was gigantic, both plants and heads. The Premium Crop, in assorted planters, was smaller and didn't deliver much in the way of side shoots after the main head was cut. Oh well. Try again next year. Note that insect-barrier fabric is worth the trouble -- no green worms anywhere on the plants.
We had a great crop of strawberries and raspberries, but almost no blueberries. Why? Who the heck knows. Other dud crops were zucchini and morning glories. The first, I think, resulted from the wrong variety in the wrong soil, inadequately fed and watered; the second, I have no idea. I gave those morning glories everything they are supposed to like, yet only 7 seeds from an entire pack germinated, and of those, only 3 produced blossoms, and the vines never grew more than 4 inches high. Huh?
Just another gardening mystery. I find every season completely different; and although I learn a lot every time, I'm stumped in revolving areas year after year. Despite all the variables, I always get food and flowers. They just might not grow or produce the way they're supposed to!
Already I'm planning next year's layout. The joy of gardening is how it keeps you looking forward with new ideas and hope.
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Starting last spring, each season has kicked in two weeks early. Summer was strange this year, perhaps because the weather was, well, summery! Sunny, hot, dry for long periods, unlike our cool and often too-wet norm. The pond got so low we could almost walk across it, and we had to ration water from the well. (Not any longer: In the past 3 weeks, we've had 14 inches of rain!)
Thanks to rain barrels, I always had enough water for the veggie garden. It performed terrifically for a change, this year giving what I've aspired to for a decade: a crop of huge, bug-free, sweet red bell peppers. Low yield but great fruits. Similar results with tomatoes, but another plague set upon them by August so I lost some at the end. As well, I planted different varieties in different locations and got correspondingly different yields and quality. Best performers grew in the lasagna garden. So far, all my vegetables have done best in that location, save for carrots, which like a deeper, more uniform bed.
I tried a new variety of cucumber and got many salads worth of big ones. Also tried a single plant of brussels sprouts, which grew straight and tall and produced abundant heads. It's still going despite a week of frost and a nor'easter.
Broccoli, always a challenge, was mixed: the Goliath variety I cultivated under bug screen indeed was gigantic, both plants and heads. The Premium Crop, in assorted planters, was smaller and didn't deliver much in the way of side shoots after the main head was cut. Oh well. Try again next year. Note that insect-barrier fabric is worth the trouble -- no green worms anywhere on the plants.
We had a great crop of strawberries and raspberries, but almost no blueberries. Why? Who the heck knows. Other dud crops were zucchini and morning glories. The first, I think, resulted from the wrong variety in the wrong soil, inadequately fed and watered; the second, I have no idea. I gave those morning glories everything they are supposed to like, yet only 7 seeds from an entire pack germinated, and of those, only 3 produced blossoms, and the vines never grew more than 4 inches high. Huh?
Just another gardening mystery. I find every season completely different; and although I learn a lot every time, I'm stumped in revolving areas year after year. Despite all the variables, I always get food and flowers. They just might not grow or produce the way they're supposed to!
Already I'm planning next year's layout. The joy of gardening is how it keeps you looking forward with new ideas and hope.
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Thursday, September 23, 2010
"Nature abhors a vacuum"
This expression is attributed to Aristotle, so we know how long people have been observing zealous plant growth.
I experienced it intensely the other day, while clearing out scrub around fresh pine stumps. Back in April we had four 100-foot giants removed so they wouldn't guillotine the house when they came down in a high wind. Two of them were splitting, all were intertwined, and they stood about 15 feet from the house and were leaning in that direction.
The stumps remain in an area approx. 15x15 square composed of gritty sand that's been saturated with pine needles and fully shadowed for five decades. Scarcely anything ever grew below them -- until the ground was suddenly naked and in full sun.
Then, in four months, the most concentrated, diverse patch of wildflowers, vines, trees, and shrubs I've ever seen erupted. They occupied every square inch of the exposed wasteland, including dirt pockets collected in the stumps' bark. I recognized about two dozen by name and another dozen or two by sight; yet another dozen or more I'd never seen before, which is interesting because I study wildflowers and have laid eyes on most of what grows in the area.
Even more interesting, there were no baby pines. But there were baby ash and maple, sumac and poplar, even something that looked like apple; goldenrod and pigweed, johnny-jump-ups and Virginia creeper, wood aster, hawkweed, a metastasizing mint, a tangled mat of bedstraw, two particularly evil grasses as well as generic lawn grass, brambles, mullein, wild morning glories, assorted clovers and sorrels, violets, burdock, a clump of Siberian iris left over from a previous owner's garden, plus two sunflowers -- presumably contributed by birds.
I should have taken the time to look up each species in my field guide, but I became obsessed with finishing the clear-out by sundown. The resulting pile is so big I need the tractor bucket to remove it from the yard. I'm impressed equally by the volume and the diversity of this growth, as well as how fast and thoroughly it came. Makes garden weeds look wimpy!
We won't be getting the stumps dug out before winter, so I can count on having to repeat the exercise next year. After all, I just re-created the vacuum that Nature can't help herself from filling!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
I experienced it intensely the other day, while clearing out scrub around fresh pine stumps. Back in April we had four 100-foot giants removed so they wouldn't guillotine the house when they came down in a high wind. Two of them were splitting, all were intertwined, and they stood about 15 feet from the house and were leaning in that direction.
The stumps remain in an area approx. 15x15 square composed of gritty sand that's been saturated with pine needles and fully shadowed for five decades. Scarcely anything ever grew below them -- until the ground was suddenly naked and in full sun.
Then, in four months, the most concentrated, diverse patch of wildflowers, vines, trees, and shrubs I've ever seen erupted. They occupied every square inch of the exposed wasteland, including dirt pockets collected in the stumps' bark. I recognized about two dozen by name and another dozen or two by sight; yet another dozen or more I'd never seen before, which is interesting because I study wildflowers and have laid eyes on most of what grows in the area.
Even more interesting, there were no baby pines. But there were baby ash and maple, sumac and poplar, even something that looked like apple; goldenrod and pigweed, johnny-jump-ups and Virginia creeper, wood aster, hawkweed, a metastasizing mint, a tangled mat of bedstraw, two particularly evil grasses as well as generic lawn grass, brambles, mullein, wild morning glories, assorted clovers and sorrels, violets, burdock, a clump of Siberian iris left over from a previous owner's garden, plus two sunflowers -- presumably contributed by birds.
I should have taken the time to look up each species in my field guide, but I became obsessed with finishing the clear-out by sundown. The resulting pile is so big I need the tractor bucket to remove it from the yard. I'm impressed equally by the volume and the diversity of this growth, as well as how fast and thoroughly it came. Makes garden weeds look wimpy!
We won't be getting the stumps dug out before winter, so I can count on having to repeat the exercise next year. After all, I just re-created the vacuum that Nature can't help herself from filling!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Monday, August 23, 2010
Perfection
Yeah, we all know . . . nothing in life is perfect.
Well, I beg to differ. Late last week we had an Absolutely Perfect Day.
The sky was a cloudless, brilliant blue. The air was ideally comfortable for bare arms and legs and feet, with a light breeze air-conditioning your skin in the event you moved around enough to perspire. No matter what you did, you were comfortable.
And everywhere you looked, the scenery was beautiful. Lawns and trees still vivid summertime green, with color tinges creeping in to signal the pending change of season. But it's not here yet -- wildflowers and garden beds were still in full bloom, with vegetables and fruits adding bright dots of color between the foliage.
Birds and butterflies still darted about in their own color show before packing up for migration. Crickets and cicadas added music to the air.
It was a perfect day for doing anything outdoors, from hiking and boating to sitting on the porch with a book. If you couldn't get outside, it was a perfect day to look out the window, and open all the windows wide, and curtains, too, to let all the air and color and light flow through.
In our complicated and inconsistent world, it's good to know that Mother Nature can proffer up a perfect day now and then. And a joy to be alive when it happens.
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Well, I beg to differ. Late last week we had an Absolutely Perfect Day.
The sky was a cloudless, brilliant blue. The air was ideally comfortable for bare arms and legs and feet, with a light breeze air-conditioning your skin in the event you moved around enough to perspire. No matter what you did, you were comfortable.
And everywhere you looked, the scenery was beautiful. Lawns and trees still vivid summertime green, with color tinges creeping in to signal the pending change of season. But it's not here yet -- wildflowers and garden beds were still in full bloom, with vegetables and fruits adding bright dots of color between the foliage.
Birds and butterflies still darted about in their own color show before packing up for migration. Crickets and cicadas added music to the air.
It was a perfect day for doing anything outdoors, from hiking and boating to sitting on the porch with a book. If you couldn't get outside, it was a perfect day to look out the window, and open all the windows wide, and curtains, too, to let all the air and color and light flow through.
In our complicated and inconsistent world, it's good to know that Mother Nature can proffer up a perfect day now and then. And a joy to be alive when it happens.
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
The green wave
Here it comes!
Peak summer, and the garden runneth over. This time every year I regret planting more than one of a given vegetable on a given day back in spring. Now I have too many snow peas, too many broccoli heads; in a few weeks will have too many beans; and by the end of summer will have too many tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash. (I've never had enough red peppers, never mind too many!) At least with lettuce I've managed to stagger the crop.
As well, raspberry and blueberry bushes that came with the house are rolling into ripeness simultaneously. Hubby made it worse by starting a strawberry patch. We can't eat them all before they spoil and have run out of room in our freezer. How lovely to have enough to give away!
Meanwhile, the grass grows faster than we can cut it, the weeds regrow as fast as we can pluck them out, and certain perennials spread faster than they can be divided and transplanted. It happens that paying work peaks this time of year, so available time for picking and processing shrinks while everything expands.
Cruel irony that the best season is the shortest and most packed with demands and excitement. No wonder we always shake our heads in the fall and wonder where summer went!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Peak summer, and the garden runneth over. This time every year I regret planting more than one of a given vegetable on a given day back in spring. Now I have too many snow peas, too many broccoli heads; in a few weeks will have too many beans; and by the end of summer will have too many tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash. (I've never had enough red peppers, never mind too many!) At least with lettuce I've managed to stagger the crop.
As well, raspberry and blueberry bushes that came with the house are rolling into ripeness simultaneously. Hubby made it worse by starting a strawberry patch. We can't eat them all before they spoil and have run out of room in our freezer. How lovely to have enough to give away!
Meanwhile, the grass grows faster than we can cut it, the weeds regrow as fast as we can pluck them out, and certain perennials spread faster than they can be divided and transplanted. It happens that paying work peaks this time of year, so available time for picking and processing shrinks while everything expands.
Cruel irony that the best season is the shortest and most packed with demands and excitement. No wonder we always shake our heads in the fall and wonder where summer went!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Monday, June 21, 2010
The best week
This is it! The week we spend all year waiting for. The week embracing the summer solstice. The longest days of the year -- 15 and a half hours of official daylight, an hour more than that if you count time of light in the sky, when you can still see outside -- and the most glorious weather, the most exuberant blooming of flowers, the peak of birds and critters making babies -- the best time of the northerly year.
It passes so quickly . . . so this week demands that we look and listen and feel and appreciate and know joy. Then remember it all during the darker and colder majority of the year, until it comes around again.
So comforting to know that it will come around again!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
It passes so quickly . . . so this week demands that we look and listen and feel and appreciate and know joy. Then remember it all during the darker and colder majority of the year, until it comes around again.
So comforting to know that it will come around again!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Friday, June 4, 2010
Tis the season
Memorial Day is the target date for all gardeners in these parts to put in their vegetables. This year we were blessed with terrific weather for the week before and after, broken only by brief passages of rain to water it all in and refill the rain barrels. So, no problem meeting the deadline, despite having an injured foot.
As part of the annual planting marathon, I now rig up plant protectors; for instance, wire cages covered with lightweight insect barrier fabric over all the broccoli. An experiment with this setup last year worked, sparing half my crop from the little green worms that crawl out of the heads when you're preparing the harvest. This year I'm covering all the broccoli and hoping for a repeat performance.
Liking the barrier idea, I placed hardware cloth (metal mesh) over the green bean seeds so birds won't pick off the hulls when they rise to the surface ahead of the sprouts, and critters won't dig them up.
Then I put Wall-o-Waters around tomatoes and cucumbers. These gizmos, which are essentially solar teepees, are made by different manufacturers in different sizes and colors, all in a soft, durable plastic formed of tubes you fill with water. They protect tender seedlings from chill and wind, and can be pulled open or pinched shut as conditions warrant. In theory, they can extend the growing season by several weeks. I haven't used them long enough to prove this yet, but initial results are encouraging.
I always place a yogurt or butter tub, or similar plastic cup with the bottom cut out, around the base of all transplants. Originally I did this upon advice to discourage tomato hornworms; it seems to work against other undesirables as well, plus makes a contained area that holds water.
In response to last year's slug infestation, I purchased some Sluggo -- granules of iron phosphate that are toxic to slugs but, again theoretically, safe for pets and people. I'm not real sure about that, so I only sprinkled it in the areas under cover, so the birds won't pick it up and cats won't get it between their toes. I'm also leaving the bed unmulched, to make a dry and crusty surface for the slugs to suffer on while crossing, instead providing a moist haven for them to thrive in. This creates a lot of splash-up against the undersides of leaves, which can create disease conditions especially for tomatoes, so for them I put down fabric mulch. We'll see if that helps.
Where possible, I place some sort of frame around my plants at the beginning and end of season, to which I can attach plastic or fabric for frost protection. It can come as late as June 15 and as early as September 15, and it's so much easier to have frames already in place when you have to fling covers over everything. Someday I'll have cold frames and hoop houses, but until then I wing it with found materials, tie-wraps and clothespins, and a few reusable accessories.
Over time, even such simple protectors have proven their value in this chilly, erratic climate.
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
As part of the annual planting marathon, I now rig up plant protectors; for instance, wire cages covered with lightweight insect barrier fabric over all the broccoli. An experiment with this setup last year worked, sparing half my crop from the little green worms that crawl out of the heads when you're preparing the harvest. This year I'm covering all the broccoli and hoping for a repeat performance.
Liking the barrier idea, I placed hardware cloth (metal mesh) over the green bean seeds so birds won't pick off the hulls when they rise to the surface ahead of the sprouts, and critters won't dig them up.
Then I put Wall-o-Waters around tomatoes and cucumbers. These gizmos, which are essentially solar teepees, are made by different manufacturers in different sizes and colors, all in a soft, durable plastic formed of tubes you fill with water. They protect tender seedlings from chill and wind, and can be pulled open or pinched shut as conditions warrant. In theory, they can extend the growing season by several weeks. I haven't used them long enough to prove this yet, but initial results are encouraging.
I always place a yogurt or butter tub, or similar plastic cup with the bottom cut out, around the base of all transplants. Originally I did this upon advice to discourage tomato hornworms; it seems to work against other undesirables as well, plus makes a contained area that holds water.
In response to last year's slug infestation, I purchased some Sluggo -- granules of iron phosphate that are toxic to slugs but, again theoretically, safe for pets and people. I'm not real sure about that, so I only sprinkled it in the areas under cover, so the birds won't pick it up and cats won't get it between their toes. I'm also leaving the bed unmulched, to make a dry and crusty surface for the slugs to suffer on while crossing, instead providing a moist haven for them to thrive in. This creates a lot of splash-up against the undersides of leaves, which can create disease conditions especially for tomatoes, so for them I put down fabric mulch. We'll see if that helps.
Where possible, I place some sort of frame around my plants at the beginning and end of season, to which I can attach plastic or fabric for frost protection. It can come as late as June 15 and as early as September 15, and it's so much easier to have frames already in place when you have to fling covers over everything. Someday I'll have cold frames and hoop houses, but until then I wing it with found materials, tie-wraps and clothespins, and a few reusable accessories.
Over time, even such simple protectors have proven their value in this chilly, erratic climate.
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Sunday, May 16, 2010
The grass is always greener...
"I am not a lover of lawns. Rather would I see daisies in their thousands, ground ivy, hawkweed, and even the hated plantain with tall stems, and dandelions with splendid flowers and fairy down, than the too-well-tended lawn."
--William Henry Hudson, author and naturalist (1841-1922)
I agree!
It's lawn-mowing season again, and this time every year I rue the fact we have 2+ acres of lawn to manage. All we have to do is mow; not for us the fertilizing and feeding and obsessive grooming that many homeowners undertake in order to achieve perfect greenswards. We think grass grows just fine by itself (especially where you don't want it!).
Simply mowing it is work and expense aplenty. It's also very un-"green" because we have to use oil and gasoline to beat back field and forest. I've considered letting parts of the yard go wild, but that invites biting creatures closer to the house. By keeping a moat of trimmed grass around us, we limit the mosquitoes, ticks, and blackflies in our main activity area, and remove hiding places for bird and pet predators. Plenty of wilderness remains for them to prowl in.
In May, grass grows so fast and lush that we need to mow twice weekly. Can't be done, though, owing to twice- or thrice-a-week rain. By the time things have dried out enough to rev up the tractor, we need machetes just to find it!
As the season advances, we end up with half a wildflower yard anyway. Islands of clover emerge; we mow around them to leave a banquet for the bees. Volunteer black-eyed Susans pop up; we mow around them because it's too callous to destroy their cheer. And so forth. Ultimately lawnmowing becomes a gymkhana, zooming and dodging around obstacles in summer sport.
Then, before you know it, the season has flashed by and it's time to stow the mower again for seven long months.
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
--William Henry Hudson, author and naturalist (1841-1922)
I agree!
It's lawn-mowing season again, and this time every year I rue the fact we have 2+ acres of lawn to manage. All we have to do is mow; not for us the fertilizing and feeding and obsessive grooming that many homeowners undertake in order to achieve perfect greenswards. We think grass grows just fine by itself (especially where you don't want it!).
Simply mowing it is work and expense aplenty. It's also very un-"green" because we have to use oil and gasoline to beat back field and forest. I've considered letting parts of the yard go wild, but that invites biting creatures closer to the house. By keeping a moat of trimmed grass around us, we limit the mosquitoes, ticks, and blackflies in our main activity area, and remove hiding places for bird and pet predators. Plenty of wilderness remains for them to prowl in.
In May, grass grows so fast and lush that we need to mow twice weekly. Can't be done, though, owing to twice- or thrice-a-week rain. By the time things have dried out enough to rev up the tractor, we need machetes just to find it!
As the season advances, we end up with half a wildflower yard anyway. Islands of clover emerge; we mow around them to leave a banquet for the bees. Volunteer black-eyed Susans pop up; we mow around them because it's too callous to destroy their cheer. And so forth. Ultimately lawnmowing becomes a gymkhana, zooming and dodging around obstacles in summer sport.
Then, before you know it, the season has flashed by and it's time to stow the mower again for seven long months.
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Friday, April 16, 2010
Out the window, revisited
Little-known fact: Gardening can be hazardous to your health!
Some months ago, my mom stepped backward into her bucket of trimmings, went down hard, and cracked her hip. Some days ago, I stepped forward onto irregular lawn, went down hard, and severely sprained my foot. These mishaps deprived us for weeks of our favorite activities: gardening, walking, and birding.
Which renewed my awareness of why I live where I do, and why I've sacrificed so much to keep it.
We have windows. Lots and lots of them, all the way around the house. From any window I can see combinations of yardscape, fieldscape, woodscape, pondscape, gardenscape, skyscape, and mountainscape. So even if I'm stuck indoors, I can keep track of what's going on out there. And enjoy sunlight as well as starlight and moonlight, since we never bothered installing curtains.
Thanks to these windows, I can participate in the natural world even when disabled. City people surely feel the same about their views of bustling communities. Our neighbors happen to be furred, feathered, and leafed, but their communities still bustle, and I love to observe.
In fact, I spend way too much time looking out my windows, whether lame or fit!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Some months ago, my mom stepped backward into her bucket of trimmings, went down hard, and cracked her hip. Some days ago, I stepped forward onto irregular lawn, went down hard, and severely sprained my foot. These mishaps deprived us for weeks of our favorite activities: gardening, walking, and birding.
Which renewed my awareness of why I live where I do, and why I've sacrificed so much to keep it.
We have windows. Lots and lots of them, all the way around the house. From any window I can see combinations of yardscape, fieldscape, woodscape, pondscape, gardenscape, skyscape, and mountainscape. So even if I'm stuck indoors, I can keep track of what's going on out there. And enjoy sunlight as well as starlight and moonlight, since we never bothered installing curtains.
Thanks to these windows, I can participate in the natural world even when disabled. City people surely feel the same about their views of bustling communities. Our neighbors happen to be furred, feathered, and leafed, but their communities still bustle, and I love to observe.
In fact, I spend way too much time looking out my windows, whether lame or fit!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Monday, April 5, 2010
Backyard ecology
I love birds, and feed them year-round in sight of my windows.
I love cats, have four, and let them out year-round.
I live in the country where predators that eat birds and cats, and raid bird feeders, prowl the area year-round.
How to keep everybody alive and well?
First, I cleared the shrubs away from the front of the house. That eliminated places for the cats to hide and ambush feeding birds. I also hung trellis netting over the exterior of as many windows as I could get to, which prevents birds from flying into the glass. These two acts have almost entirely eliminated bird fatalities. And bringing in the feeders every evening has eliminated raids.
Second, we trained the cats to come in at night, though it remains difficult to keep them in during the crepuscular time (dawn and dusk), which is the true danger zone. Nevertheless, we haven't had an injury or disappearance in many years.
Third, we have a lot of stuff around the property -- vehicles, construction material piles, scrap piles, tools, and equipment -- which partially serve as territorial markers that repress predator traffic (while giving prey places to hide). It's not foolproof by any means; after all, I see fox and coyote prints sometimes quite close to the house during winter, and during the year the fishers passed through, they roamed wherever they pleased. I dread the day they return.
Nevertheless, we've done what we can do to minimize opportunity for critters to kill themselves and each other. This includes using no toxic substances in the garden or yard. The rest is up to fate or vigilance. In reward, we harbor many species of resident birds, the cats are healthy and happy, and our human selves get to enjoy the whole.
If only that balance extended to the rest of the world!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
I love cats, have four, and let them out year-round.
I live in the country where predators that eat birds and cats, and raid bird feeders, prowl the area year-round.
How to keep everybody alive and well?
First, I cleared the shrubs away from the front of the house. That eliminated places for the cats to hide and ambush feeding birds. I also hung trellis netting over the exterior of as many windows as I could get to, which prevents birds from flying into the glass. These two acts have almost entirely eliminated bird fatalities. And bringing in the feeders every evening has eliminated raids.
Second, we trained the cats to come in at night, though it remains difficult to keep them in during the crepuscular time (dawn and dusk), which is the true danger zone. Nevertheless, we haven't had an injury or disappearance in many years.
Third, we have a lot of stuff around the property -- vehicles, construction material piles, scrap piles, tools, and equipment -- which partially serve as territorial markers that repress predator traffic (while giving prey places to hide). It's not foolproof by any means; after all, I see fox and coyote prints sometimes quite close to the house during winter, and during the year the fishers passed through, they roamed wherever they pleased. I dread the day they return.
Nevertheless, we've done what we can do to minimize opportunity for critters to kill themselves and each other. This includes using no toxic substances in the garden or yard. The rest is up to fate or vigilance. In reward, we harbor many species of resident birds, the cats are healthy and happy, and our human selves get to enjoy the whole.
If only that balance extended to the rest of the world!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Thursday, March 18, 2010
My favorite sound
No, not music. Or birdsong, or waves against the beach. My favorite sound is water rushing down the hill a few hundred feet from my house.
Here in the rocky, forested hills, channels have been carved by man and nature for capturing excess water. Some of these are steep and create a muted roar when full. I see and hear them every time it rains, but the noise stops shortly after the rain does. Usually the channels are silent during the winter, except for intermittent, short-term melts.
This time of year, however, these dry beds become gushing, galloping streams for days or even weeks as mountainloads of snow succumb to temperature and gravity. It’s kind of like a bathtub emptying: water goes down the drain and land emerges.
It happens suddenly -- one day I step out the door and hear the rushing. It continues during dry weather, which is how I know the season has turned. This year, this week, I started hearing it again. It’s also the week that the daffodils broke through the ground and migrating birds started returning. These are my favorite events of the year. And so that rushing water is my favorite sound.
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Signs of spring
As the calendar progresses toward the vernal equinox, our landscape remains buried under two feet of snow and ice. But signs of spring are everywhere.
* We can now see out the windows at suppertime.
* Seed consumption at the bird feeders has dropped significantly.
* The cats want to go outside again.
* Everybody in the household (human and quadruped) has started shedding.
* Maple sugaring has begun.
Unlike previous years at this time, the forecast is for a long stretch of sunny weather with moderate temps. I'm hoping we get lucky and just melt into spring without further drama.
But even if a classic March blizzard comes through, those other signs of spring make it clear that the season has turned and the worst is over. Hooray!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
* We can now see out the windows at suppertime.
* Seed consumption at the bird feeders has dropped significantly.
* The cats want to go outside again.
* Everybody in the household (human and quadruped) has started shedding.
* Maple sugaring has begun.
Unlike previous years at this time, the forecast is for a long stretch of sunny weather with moderate temps. I'm hoping we get lucky and just melt into spring without further drama.
But even if a classic March blizzard comes through, those other signs of spring make it clear that the season has turned and the worst is over. Hooray!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Wacky weather
The big event this week was weather. It's been a big event all over the country (and the world) this year; our turn came with a bizarre and vigorous, multi-day storm that first dumped 2+ feet of snow, then 3 inches of rain, accompanied by big winds and followed by several days in a row of 1-3 inches of snow layered on daily, with a hiatus of sun, melting temps, and a gorgeous full moon squeezed in between.
For frosting on the cake, the first round included a stick storm -- big roof-denting pine limbs raining down on the house and yard. Thankfully, my spouse was on the ball and moved all the vehicles out of range before things got serious, sparing us a week on the phone making insurance claims. Luck took care of the rest. An impressive pile of thumpers fell around or between things, or just missed by inches. All we have to deal with this time is a very messy yard.
Less than a week ago I was standing in that yard feeling spring in the air and watching the ground start to emerge. But I've lived here long enough to know . . . it was only mid-February. Historically, this area gets the bulk of its snow in March. Way too soon to hope for deliverance. And, sure enough, Mother Nature proved me right.
Last year we didn't get the late snows. That's the exception, not the rule. Our worst snow, in fact, occurred the last week of March some years ago: 5 feet in 10 days, on top of 2-3 feet already on the ground. We snowshoed over cars without knowing they were there.
What's more amazing is how fast the snow disappears once the season decides to turn. And that day is coming soon. Only 4 weeks left until official Spring; within a week of that, daffodils will be poking through and the woodcock will arrive.
I can't wait!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
For frosting on the cake, the first round included a stick storm -- big roof-denting pine limbs raining down on the house and yard. Thankfully, my spouse was on the ball and moved all the vehicles out of range before things got serious, sparing us a week on the phone making insurance claims. Luck took care of the rest. An impressive pile of thumpers fell around or between things, or just missed by inches. All we have to deal with this time is a very messy yard.
Less than a week ago I was standing in that yard feeling spring in the air and watching the ground start to emerge. But I've lived here long enough to know . . . it was only mid-February. Historically, this area gets the bulk of its snow in March. Way too soon to hope for deliverance. And, sure enough, Mother Nature proved me right.
Last year we didn't get the late snows. That's the exception, not the rule. Our worst snow, in fact, occurred the last week of March some years ago: 5 feet in 10 days, on top of 2-3 feet already on the ground. We snowshoed over cars without knowing they were there.
What's more amazing is how fast the snow disappears once the season decides to turn. And that day is coming soon. Only 4 weeks left until official Spring; within a week of that, daffodils will be poking through and the woodcock will arrive.
I can't wait!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Gardening with trepidation
It's that time of year when the catalogues come out and garden plans are sketched and seeds get started. Normally my pulse rate rises as the promise of spring draws nigh.
This year, I'm feeling hesitant and a little wary. Increasingly erratic weather has made gardening more difficult, with less-satisfactory results, caused by too much or too little rain and plagues among the pollinators and insect eaters so that the pest equation is out of whack -- along with my yard's inherent shortage of sunlight and good soil.
Now I have to add plant protection devices, not only to extend the growing season, but also to help my vegetables survive the growing season itself! Such devices cost money, take time to assemble, and add more complication to an already hit-or-miss enterprise. The prospect inspires a great big sigh.
Of course, none of this will stop me. Like most gardeners, I can't bear the idea of not trying again. And again, and again . . .
Skipping a year -- or stopping altogether -- would upset my sense of life cycle and balance far more than any crop failures. Then there's the awe generated by the strength and creativity of plants themselves.
Short of catastrophic weather that strips away the entire surface (e.g., hurricanes, century floods, wildfires, and tornadoes), plants will survive anything. In the wettest years, the driest years, the pestilence years, the coldest years, a garden will always produce something. It will survive good-old-fashioned neglect, as well. I once rented an apartment in a farmhouse where nobody had gardened for decades. Yet asparagus still grew three feet tall in the front yard!
So I've got my seed order together and the garden plan drawn. I've started rummaging through scrap piles in the yard to find materials for making supports and frames for weather shields and bug screens. Recent home renovations have donated enough scrap copper to warrant trying that slug-deterrent trick I read about. Renovations have also opened up space in the living room (whose south end is floor-to-ceiling windows) to set up more experiments in indoor gardening.
Weather and pests be damned! I'm gonna have a garden no matter what Mother Nature throws our way.
(Now, what will I be saying about all this in September?)
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
This year, I'm feeling hesitant and a little wary. Increasingly erratic weather has made gardening more difficult, with less-satisfactory results, caused by too much or too little rain and plagues among the pollinators and insect eaters so that the pest equation is out of whack -- along with my yard's inherent shortage of sunlight and good soil.
Now I have to add plant protection devices, not only to extend the growing season, but also to help my vegetables survive the growing season itself! Such devices cost money, take time to assemble, and add more complication to an already hit-or-miss enterprise. The prospect inspires a great big sigh.
Of course, none of this will stop me. Like most gardeners, I can't bear the idea of not trying again. And again, and again . . .
Skipping a year -- or stopping altogether -- would upset my sense of life cycle and balance far more than any crop failures. Then there's the awe generated by the strength and creativity of plants themselves.
Short of catastrophic weather that strips away the entire surface (e.g., hurricanes, century floods, wildfires, and tornadoes), plants will survive anything. In the wettest years, the driest years, the pestilence years, the coldest years, a garden will always produce something. It will survive good-old-fashioned neglect, as well. I once rented an apartment in a farmhouse where nobody had gardened for decades. Yet asparagus still grew three feet tall in the front yard!
So I've got my seed order together and the garden plan drawn. I've started rummaging through scrap piles in the yard to find materials for making supports and frames for weather shields and bug screens. Recent home renovations have donated enough scrap copper to warrant trying that slug-deterrent trick I read about. Renovations have also opened up space in the living room (whose south end is floor-to-ceiling windows) to set up more experiments in indoor gardening.
Weather and pests be damned! I'm gonna have a garden no matter what Mother Nature throws our way.
(Now, what will I be saying about all this in September?)
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Counting chickadees
Next time you need a change of pace on a wintry day, position yourself in view of a bird feeder containing sunflower seed and try to count chickadees.
Betcha can't!
I know, because I keep trying and fail. The way chickadees swoop back and forth to snatch a seed, the speed at which they do it, the multiple directions they come from at the same time, and the fact that they all look the same, combine to make a dizzying, zigzag, constantly changing pattern that forces you to look straight ahead, sideways, and out the corners of your eyes simultaneously in order to keep track of them.
It's frustratingly fun, because chickadees are about the cutest birds to flit across the planet. In wintertime, they hang out with all the other adorable gray-black-white birds -- titmice, nuthatches, downy and hairy woodpeckers, juncos.
All of these spread out in summer, but during the winter they concentrate around our feeders. I watch them through the window or from outside, feet or inches from the feeders. The chickadees are so bold they don't mind my presence, and make cheeps and beeps in response to my refilling their tube.
Some people get the birds to feed from their hands, but I've never succeeded in doing that. Just the other day, though, I got one to perch on the cup of seed I held out and pick one from it while looking me in the eye. Someday I'd like to configure a hat to hold seed in the crown and sit outside with a book to see if they go for it. Maybe this spring . . .
Many weeks to go before that opportunity. In the meantime, I think there are 10 chickadees in residence this year.
Or is that 8? . . . 12? . . . 6?
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Betcha can't!
I know, because I keep trying and fail. The way chickadees swoop back and forth to snatch a seed, the speed at which they do it, the multiple directions they come from at the same time, and the fact that they all look the same, combine to make a dizzying, zigzag, constantly changing pattern that forces you to look straight ahead, sideways, and out the corners of your eyes simultaneously in order to keep track of them.
It's frustratingly fun, because chickadees are about the cutest birds to flit across the planet. In wintertime, they hang out with all the other adorable gray-black-white birds -- titmice, nuthatches, downy and hairy woodpeckers, juncos.
All of these spread out in summer, but during the winter they concentrate around our feeders. I watch them through the window or from outside, feet or inches from the feeders. The chickadees are so bold they don't mind my presence, and make cheeps and beeps in response to my refilling their tube.
Some people get the birds to feed from their hands, but I've never succeeded in doing that. Just the other day, though, I got one to perch on the cup of seed I held out and pick one from it while looking me in the eye. Someday I'd like to configure a hat to hold seed in the crown and sit outside with a book to see if they go for it. Maybe this spring . . .
Many weeks to go before that opportunity. In the meantime, I think there are 10 chickadees in residence this year.
Or is that 8? . . . 12? . . . 6?
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The relativity of hardness
When I was a suburban youngster, "hard work" meant applying yourself to school and chores, and following through on projects, and honoring the obligations of duty.
As an adult, "hard work" meant pretty much the same thing, extended into the employment arena.
It wasn't until spouse and I purchased a homestead in rural Vermont, and I undertook gardening and house-and-yard projects -- then, later, heating with wood -- that I learned a new meaning of "hard work." That's the kind that physically exhausts you into a heap and introduces minor injury into your life.
There's no value difference between these types of work and their degrees of difficulty. Hard work is hard work, in whatever form. But working in the physical realm has educated me in how other people live, and how our forebears lived, in away that all my school and office experience failed to do. It's become difficult to take things for granted, because I now know what's required to make them happen; and I deeply respect folks who labor for a living, because now I know how hard their lives can be.
Hard physical labor does have its rewards, in a sense of job-well-done, and increased strength, and sound sleep at night. You often see the fruits of your labors more quickly and directly than from intellectual endeavors. It's still just plain hard, though, and I can't say I love it. Nevertheless, it allows you to live economically, in that you don't have to pay people do everything, and you can get fit without having to buy time at a gym!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
As an adult, "hard work" meant pretty much the same thing, extended into the employment arena.
It wasn't until spouse and I purchased a homestead in rural Vermont, and I undertook gardening and house-and-yard projects -- then, later, heating with wood -- that I learned a new meaning of "hard work." That's the kind that physically exhausts you into a heap and introduces minor injury into your life.
There's no value difference between these types of work and their degrees of difficulty. Hard work is hard work, in whatever form. But working in the physical realm has educated me in how other people live, and how our forebears lived, in away that all my school and office experience failed to do. It's become difficult to take things for granted, because I now know what's required to make them happen; and I deeply respect folks who labor for a living, because now I know how hard their lives can be.
Hard physical labor does have its rewards, in a sense of job-well-done, and increased strength, and sound sleep at night. You often see the fruits of your labors more quickly and directly than from intellectual endeavors. It's still just plain hard, though, and I can't say I love it. Nevertheless, it allows you to live economically, in that you don't have to pay people do everything, and you can get fit without having to buy time at a gym!
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Winter salad
The other day in the supermarket, I stood griping about the poor quality of the vegetables I was selecting. Then my better self woke up and slapped me upside the head. It's the middle of winter, and there I was bemoaning imperfection in products that only grow here in summer, while surrounded by towers of fresh fruit and vegetables from all over the world!
Think of it. January. Two feet of snow on the ground. Daytime highs in the teens, below zero overnight. And I could still have salad. How wonderful is that?
Yes, I know about the evils of pesticides and industrialized agriculture. But this is the upside: fresh, whole foods year-round. There's room for improvement in how they are produced and transported, I won't argue about that. Meanwhile, I'll consume with gratitude all that farmers and orchardists make available for our nutrition and health.
While writing Open Your Heart with Gardens, I searched for simple ways that anyone could find pleasure and comfort from the living green world. Embarrassing to think I missed the obvious -- fruits and vegetables on the table 365 days a year! It takes little research to learn what our forebears had to endure between harvests. Think of them next time you peel an orange, stir a salad, slice bananas onto your cereal, or tumble berries into your yogurt.
In fact, next time you enter a grocery store, pause and appreciate the bounty. That will help make Thanksgiving a daily ritual instead of a once-a-year event.
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Think of it. January. Two feet of snow on the ground. Daytime highs in the teens, below zero overnight. And I could still have salad. How wonderful is that?
Yes, I know about the evils of pesticides and industrialized agriculture. But this is the upside: fresh, whole foods year-round. There's room for improvement in how they are produced and transported, I won't argue about that. Meanwhile, I'll consume with gratitude all that farmers and orchardists make available for our nutrition and health.
While writing Open Your Heart with Gardens, I searched for simple ways that anyone could find pleasure and comfort from the living green world. Embarrassing to think I missed the obvious -- fruits and vegetables on the table 365 days a year! It takes little research to learn what our forebears had to endure between harvests. Think of them next time you peel an orange, stir a salad, slice bananas onto your cereal, or tumble berries into your yogurt.
In fact, next time you enter a grocery store, pause and appreciate the bounty. That will help make Thanksgiving a daily ritual instead of a once-a-year event.
Carolyn Haley
Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
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