Garden

Oh how I wish for more gardening space, and more sanity so that I might have better planned things, but as it is I went and planted some new seeds today.


Had I been more thoughtful I would have invested in only heirlooms and natives, but sadly I didn't. Still, the new seeds are all of this line.

Hollyhocks (watchman) - heirlooms. sooooo cool. I have high hopes but I have never grown them before so who knows. Four seeds starting in the bedroom. We'll see.

Flax Blue and California poppies - both natives growing in a pot together should be really beautiful if they take.

Artemesia (sweet annie) - heirloom and a mix of native wildflowers started in another bucket

Watermelons (stars and moons) - heirloom started in small pots. Don't really know that i have room for this, but I'm gonna try.

If I am some where grow worthy next year I am going to try an all mint menagerie as it is I have some orange mint which is lovely.

Garden

Two tomatoes going strong.
Two fuscias also chugging along though one was near dead when i bought it, it's doing much better.
Gladiolus and oregeno doing well
Peas all viney, though no peas yet
Cukes and beans just planted

As it Stands

At this moment things are very bad...

1. Hard drive crash ate my thesis

2. Separated from my wife

3. Unable to focus therefore very little work is getting done

4. It's winter

5. Started smoking again

I think this summarizes all of it for those who might have wondered what happened to me... where i went and all that.

I am still alive but that's about the extent of it.

In the next week I've promised myself that I will try to work on an introduction for my thesis. This needs to be done. We'll see if any actual progress is made.

Introduction So Far

On November 9, 1989 representatives from fifteen countries gathered together to discuss the politics of food. From their discussion the Slow Food International movement was formed and began to promote their manifesto that, “[i]n the name of productivity, Fast Life has changed our way of being and threatens our environment and our landscapes. So Slow Food is now the only truly progressive answer” (“Manifesto” par. 8). Since its inception the Slow Food movement has spread to 122 countries. This movement is not the only one of its kind. In recent years the focus on food has been a critical part of the ecological movement, introducing new concepts and even new language to describe the human relationship with food (locavore for example). These movements represent a sensible ordering of thought around a logical central idea. Food is a logical point around which to organize ones feelings and actions regarding their relationship to nature and resource use, because food is one of the few items that make obvious human reliance on and interconnection with the natural world.

The body of American literature contains multitudes of works focused on humanity’s relationship to the natural world. Many of these works, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, rely upon a worldview which vilifies the urban and elevates the wild as a sacred place apart. This tension between urban and wild is a central element in Willa Cather’s 1925 novel The Professor’s House. Characters such as Tom Outland and Louis Marsellus seem emblematic of this dichotomy. Even their names provide support for this concept, Outland (out-land) as the mesa dwelling place apart, and Marsellus (mar-sell- us) as the eager capitalist who Cather portrays as corrupter of Outland’s legacy. While this division has been widely accepted in many circles for generations, the concepts of glorified “wild” and vilified “capitalist” are not in the end polar opposites, but rather reflections of a similar human desire to manipulate and organize the natural world while conveniently ignoring the relationship between humanity and nature that exists at all levels of landscape.

A useful place for interrogating this binary in The Professor’s House rests in Cather’s representation of gardens. According to garden enthusiast and philosopher Mara Miller, “[t]he task of the garden is to mediate those tensions or polarities which are important for a given culture” (25).

Ending with a Boom/ Beginning with Slow Food

It was the last regular day of 121 for my classes today. We ended on a great note, especially in my 10 am class. They were so intensely interested and interactive, it was tremendous. We laughed and joked and learned. I was totally delighted by the experience and I hope some of them will end up in my 214 class. 

In my own work, I've been pleasantly surprised to find that very little has been done addressing food and ecocriticism. In my brief preliminary search I found only a few links. One of the most interesting was a Call For Papers that I wish I'd found sooner.  Even this however does not make the link between food, ecocriticism and fiction. It seems much more interested in the literature of slow food or locavore movements. 

I am eager to really begin the paper, hopefully my enthusiasm will last. 

I also need to find a copy of "Loving Ourselves Best of All". A brief glance at this article has me pretty excited.

O Tomorrow...

Tomorrow I have a test in Espanol, and my conferences start for paper two. It is rough. I don't really understand my Spanish that well with regards to verb conjugation, and I don't know why, but my students seem awfully confused lately, as though midterms sucked out their brains. My plan is to have them read their essays out loud to me while I take notes or ask questions about what I hear. We'll see how it goes.

In the joys of Sunday, my garden is doing well. We ate fresh strawberries this morning, and there are beans ripening. One sunflower has blossomed and many more are on their way. The peas have blossoms also. Oak leaves are crowding the lettuces, and it is a daily battle fending them off. Soon I'll be planting chard and kale. The herbs look great and the pansies too, some gladiolus soon to bloom. Sweet Oregon!

Summer Strikes Again

Our allergies have been bad and the temps high. It's lovely here in the Willamette Valley. I potted up about 18 lettuce seedlings yesterday and they're looking good. Bird and I moved the cukes out back, and we noticed a little spotty mildew on the leaves, hopefully the better air circulation will help keep it under control. There have been red and white breasted nuthatches, mucho chickadees, hairy woodpeckers and downy woodpeckers too. I hate to go back to school with the weather so nice... eh

Draw Me A Mesa

So today after Cather and Gilman, Betj and I had a tremendous discussion about The Professor's House (which is fast becoming one of my top three novels).  Our discussions are always enlightening but in the presence of a chalkboard, as our talk was today, this characteristic was heightened. I took a sketch from our blackboard elaborations home with me in hopes that it might yield a fine paper. We'll see.

In other news I've committed myself to presenting my first draft thesis intro within a few weeks time. I guess I had better start working on it.

Sustainability Sunday: Garden Quick Glimpse

I spent a chunk of the day winterizing the garden. I got some cull wood to build a little drainage shelf for some of the bigger plants. I dismantled the tomato plant and put in tulips, crocus, radishes, and broccoli. Things are looking good out there. Now I just need to build a little plastic lean-to to keep the heavy rains off. I'm thinking bamboo and old shower curtains.

The mid to late summer plantings are doing well. We've had a cuke and there are plenty more on the vine getting bigger and tastier everyday. The purple beans have been offering a steady supply. The leeks are still teeny but doing well. The strawberries are booming, and the fuschias are blooming.

Sustainability Stumbling

So this past weekend I decided it was time for me to get some new clothes for school. Clothes shopping is a huge issue for me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is my dismay over how fashion is used to "shape identity" in the consumer culture. If it were up to me I would own all second hand or hand made clothes, but my well-fed girth prevents the first and my lack of skill prevents the second. This being said I was prepared to spend some money on clothing that was either locally made or union made. 

I purchased a t-shirt at the Eugene Saturday Market from a guy who does batiking. The shirt is great and although it is not organic I felt pretty much ok because I was supporting a local artist. I still needed pants so I decided to find some Carhartts, since for as long as I can remember Carhartts are union made in the USA. 

Upon arriving back home I was dismayed to see that the pants I bought were Hecho en Mexico.

Boo...even Carhartts!!! Is there nothing sacred? I feel a bit bad about buying this gear, but mostly I am irked by the corporate decisions that I've just learned about (too late).

I guess I need to hunt up some sewing patterns...and some time.

New sustainability goal...one tub per week of recycling. Reducing packaging even more...yay.

New garden scavenging mission....free 5 gallon buckets and old clear plastic shower curtains

Fruit of the Harvest: part 1

The past few days have been full of harvesting, prepping, and cooking. We've gathered blackberries, plums, pears and apples. We've also had a steady flow of tomatoes from the garden, and some beans have been collected as well. Add to this a great buy on Italian prune plums at the grower's market and that has made for busy times. It's also made for delicious times well worth sharing (click the links for photos of the delight).

First:  Blackberry Crisp

4 c Fresh Blackberries

1-3 Tbs of Organic Sugar (some say 1/2 cup, but that is way too much) 

2 & 1/8 cups Organic Whole Wheat Flour

1/2 c Organic Brown Sugar

1/4- 1/2 cup Margarine or Butter

1/2 c Oats

2 Tbs Lemon Juice

Cinnamon

Coat the berries with lemon juice, sugar, and 1/8 cup of flour. Pour these into the bottom of a pan 9x13 should do it.

Mix Margarine, the rest of the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and oats until crumbly. Spread this mix over the berries. 375 for 30 minutes.

Second: Garden Bean & Corn Salsa

3 green onions diced

1-2 Tbs diced jalapeno

1/2 onion diced

3-4 ripe tomatoes diced

1 can corn

1 can beans rinsed (black or mixed beans)

cilantro

1 lime worth of juice

2 Tbs olive oil

pinch of salt

Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl and enjoy. Refrigerate the leftovers.

Of Pie Charts, Pirates, and The Changing Light

I am up to week eight with my daily PowerPoints, which are essentially skeletal lesson plans designed to trigger my memory regarding what I want to teach on a given day. While it might seem neurotic and rigid to do such a thing I assure you that the PPT's are largely tongue in cheek. Each day starts with a pie chart showing how many classes are left in the term. Students seem to find it funny, though maybe they just laugh to amuse me. Either way. 

To pass the time while I slave away there is a random ipod mix playing in the background. The pirate music is especially rousing!

Autumn is coming, and it's not just the TA madness that tells me so. I have been noticing the sad decline in light that crosses my little patio. When we moved in last February there was just a small patch where sun shone for more than an hour or two. This little patch will be my winter garden zone. 

The summer garden is in transition.  The tomatoes on my "Willamette" are ripening and the others are large and yellow-green. Some of the gladiolus, which oddly enough never flowered, have started to brown. Meanwhile the fuchsias and strawberries have decided with determination to bloom again so white and pink flowers abound.

Lots of work to do, both here and at school, between now and November.

Garden Delight

We're down in Grants Pass for Bird's 10 year High school reunion. While I am not overly anxious for the reunion I am having a great time here at the Wicks Casa. Their place is delightfully located in the mountains well outside of town close to the Applegate River. Their garden is stupendous and I am filled with envy.

I woke up this morning to the sight and sounds of Bird and Rhonda working hard to push a wheel barrow of corn up a steep gravely slope.
Now many hours later all of that corn is shucked, blanched, cut and packed into bags. We also blanched, peeled, cut and dehydrated a box of peaches, and picked, prepped and vacuum sealed green beans.


It was a delightful and productive day.

Sunday with Soil, Sustainability, and Cinema

We went to the garden center today and picked up some more seeds and soil. There was a lot to be done in the garden this weekend. First order of business involved stabbing a number of holes into the bottom of a forlorn and lidless rubbermaid tub thus transforming it into a cuke-topia! There are two fair sized cucumber plants comfortably situated in there now. I also re potted another bean plant, harvested a crop of baby carrots, re-tied the tomatoes and trimmed the fuscias, tomatoes, and strawberries (which have amazingly started flowering again).  By the end of the day there will be some newly planted peas and lettuce.

Since it is Sunday I thought I'd put my dos centavos in about sustainability. On my mind at the moment is soap. We really love the new citrus Dr. Bronners. We use it for hands, dishes, and laundry. We've even cleaned the toilet with it. We get the liquid in bulk which saves on money and plastic. We also have a few Ecocloths that we recently picked up. This link is for a similar product since at the moment my memory on the exact brand we own escapes me. Oh, another thing about cleanliness and sustainability is the issue of chemical hazards in soaps, shampoos and beauty products. The website called Skin Deep will tell the consumer what products contain potentially harmful chemicals.  (cha-ching...maybe more next Sunday)

Tonight we're watching the film version of The Age of Innocence. I'm hoping it will be as well done as Ethan Frome.

A Sustaining Conversation #1 (maybe a new Sunday Tradition)

Chickadees and Nuthatches have returned to our feeders. The squirrels, who ravaged and destroyed several feeders in spring, have pleasingly gone elsewhere. I find myself excited for autumn although the season here is not much like autumn back home.

The tomatoes have many many little green tomats and I've had to be dilligent about pruning and re-tying the one we've staked. Lesson learned: although stakes cost 50 cents and cages cost 2.50 the cage is much less time intensive, possibly worth it. The baby bean and cuke plants are getting bigger, and the peas that I planted in April are still occassionally issuing a pea or two. The carrots don't seem to be maturing, so perhaps the lesson here is that unlike radishes, carrots don't do that well in a container. Mini-gladiolus have yet to flower, the fuscias are pretty much done flowering, and the herbs are doing well, though they certainly would benefit from being placed in larger pots.

Recently Bird and I have found ourselves answering a number of questions about ecology and sustainability. This is logical I suppose considering that she has a degree in Natural Resources, and I am also a lover of living things. As I think about the questions we've answered and the advice we've given I realize that it might be worth while to share some of that here. We're not saying we're the greatest, we've got many things we'd like to do better, but here are some of the little things we're up to in order to reduce our ecological impact.

House: Since we aren't homeowners we had alot of room to choose with regard to our dwelling. Originally we moved into a large freestanding house >1500 sq feet. In Albany, about 10 miles from Corvallis. After testing out our ecofoot print one day (lots of online quizes to do this) we realized how wretched this choice was for our sustainability goals. We quickly decided to move to a much smaller apx. 500 sq. feet rowhouse just >2 miles from campus. 

Electricity: Aside from the obvious (turning off lights/appliances, unplugging things not in use, using compact fluorescent light bulbs) we also purchased our power through Blue Sky which is all alternative source energy (mostly wind). It is slightly more expensive, but not much (for us an extra 2.00 or so). Options like this are avalable in many places ( in New England,  in Midwest,  and South).

Recycling and Composting: We have worked hard to reduce the amount of trash we make. On average the house of three adults and two dogs produces an average of 2.5 gallons of trash per week. While we think we can do better and are working to improve we do dispose of our trash in Bio-Bags, so at the very least this will help to promote the faster breakdown of our garbage. The rest of our stuff we either compost or recycle. The big thing about recycling that we're trying to promote (especially Bird because she worked for a recycling place) is that you must, must, must Only Recycle Things That Are Actually Recyclable. Putting non recyclable stuff in the recycling contaminates the bins and can cause recyclable materials to be turned to waste.

Food: Here's another area where the choices for reducing impact are many. Here in Casa Colibri we are nearly vegan, a food choice that substantially reduces eco-impact. I say nearly vegan because we have recently become much more concerned with local food as a sustainability practice. When it comes to local food we're so lucky because we live in the fertile and hippy filled Willamette Valley. Here there are tons of organic growers nearby. We buy organic whenever possible. There are certainly some foods that we will only eat organic. Organic is sometimes expensive, but buying locally and in season helps us to remediate these costs. We also dry and freeze items we buy in bulk while they are cheap. Hoping to learn how to can soon for more preservation options.  Another helpful thing involving food is the abundance of bulk suppliers we have down here in Oregon. We buy everything from sugar and maple syrup to canola oil  and soap in bulk. We use and reuse our own containers cutting down on waste and saving money.

 Our Current Sustainability Goals: Stopping our junk mail (we get so much and it is lame!), increasing our gardening capacity, stopping all plastic use and purchase, no new shopping bags, increasing local food purchase, reducing waste to 3 gallons every 2-3 weeks, stopping cellphone use.

Long Term Goals: an extremely fuel efficient vehicle, a green building as our dwelling, all organic, 0 waste, off grid technology (solar, greywater)

Good Finds, Great Foods, and Garden Delights

Today I tried my best to get some work done on the thesis. I started out hearing from Betjemann (superhero lit master/thesis advisor). He essentially assured me that my original thesis idea was probably worth sticking with. We're meeting up next week to discuss it. In the meantime I've been advised to look into Italian Villas and Their Gardens in hopes of some info pertaining to water. Of course in this text I would likely find writings about fountains, ponds etc... I haven't followed this advice yet, but I did read a good essay today; Peter Hays "Undine is Us". The essay gave a good overview of how Undine (The Custom of the Country) is an embodiment of American materialism at its worst. I was also pleased to find several passages in The Fruit of the Tree which referred to swamps and marshes. I am still trying to figure out what state Westmore mills is set in so that I can better guide my historical research though I suppose it doesn't make too much of a difference if it's in New York or New England since the industrial histories of the two are quite similar.

In an effort not to let my whole day be consumed by Edith I took some time to cook world class awesome pancakes, prep a fruit salad, a garden salad, and make a pizza. Of all these I must say the pancakes, although I make them frequently, were amazingly superb. How to make such awesome pancakes?

1 cup whole wheat flour (organic of course if possible)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp cinnamon

pinch of salt

1-2 tbsp raw sugar (or brown sugar)

2 tsp vanilla

1-2 tbs oil

1-1.5 cups water or soy milk

To this deliciousness I added liberal amounts of Wilt's Blueberries.

I also gave my garden some attention. We've finally run out of lettuce. I harvested the last head today and it has been consumed (yum). The tomatoes are looking good, the strawberries also look awesome and have been taken inside to avoid fruit loss to the marauding Western Scrub-Jays. The garden, small as it is and totally done in random containers, has been very productive for us. We've harvested six heads of lettuce, a large pot of salad greens, two types of peas, two types of radishes, cilantro, lavender, sage, oregeno, and strawberries. Still in the works are garlic, carrots, two tomato plants, gladiolas, beans and cukes.