Bees first, then (maybe) chickens.

When I saw chickens on Sunday at the farmers market, it of course renewed my interest in raising a few. For the eggs. The idea of raising chickens who will happily produce protein for my dinner table is very appealing. No need for store-bought meat and chicken and fish that has been god-knows-where and is full of god-knows-what. There are obstacles to overcome: local rules and regulations, keeping a vigilant watch over the hens while they're out of their house so the hawks, foxes, and raccoons don't get them, convincing my husband that this isn't a crazy idea.

I talked to a beekeeper and hen-raiser on Sunday. He told me one thing that has stayed with me. He said, kindly and not condescendingly, "just don't turn your chickens into pets." Even though I really do want to raise chickens for the eggs (and for a little meat when the chickens, you know, pass on) I fully acknowledge that I would turn chickens into pets in short order.

I think I'll start with bees and graduate to chickens if the bees work out. I don't think I'll have an emotional attachment to bees. Although now that I think of it I do have an emotional attachment to my worms. I'll keep on thinking about this.

Still hanging in there.

From bottom to top: Parsley, chives, fennel, and burnet (or something like that).

Chickens! I want chickens!

A post-Halloween porch in Takoma Park. Who's the guy to Bill Clinton's right?

Until I hear otherwise I'm saying that Cyradaria/SEC is right. It IS Shimon Peres. Picture lifted from here (a very odd website).

Hmmm. Maybe my FaceBook gardening habit is worse than I thought. See links below.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33626149/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1935698,00.html

But I'm hooked! I'll be careful... although one article hinted that you can be careful personally but if another "friend-gardener" isn't careful then you're at risk too. The economics of it are very interesting. Although I'm not sure I believe all the statistics in one article. For example, one said that FarmVille claims to have 60 million players. 60 million? really? I guess maybe worldwide, but still.

Picture is from a front flower bed, about a week ago. Amaranth, celosia, and 4 o' clocks (Mirabilis jalapa), also called marvel-of-Peru and beauty-of-the-night. Aren't those great names? The amaranth and celosia came up from self-sown seeds, and next year I should have lots of self-sown 4 o'clocks too. The deer don't bother with any of these plants until late in the season (now), but even now they really don't want to eat those 4 o'clock plants, which are so big and bushy but must taste horrible. Ha! to the deer! I'm going to plant tons more next year too. And nasturtiums, which they hate. And Russian sage. That's about it unfortunately. Well, butterfly bushes of course. And tickseed and eucalyptus. And rosemary and thyme. I guess it's not too bad, planting only things the deer won't eat. I walked outside tonight just after dark and a couple of small deer were about 15 feet away eating my clover. They looked up at me but then kept on eating. And I heard more across the street, and more to my left. It's kind of weird now, knowing that all night long there's a parade of them criss-crossing my gardens and yards.

First frost last night. Nasturtiums got bitten. Sad.

An email review from my friend SEC (aka cyradaria) who saw Bruce & the E St Band on Monday in DC.

Last night: Best concert of the Bruce dates I’ve seen to date. A real mix – mostly Born to Run, with some Irish foot stomping music, a smattering of the Rising, plus a lilting encore of Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher with back-up singers moved to the front as soloists. Very high energy. Everyone at their performance peak. Greatly improved sound system – really rock and roll – and a greatly improved stage. Not the simple stage but there were several wings and a mid-audience mini stage where he came out for a bit and moshed it back to stage rapidamente. Very warm, personal performance. Performed Lenny Sullivan’s favorite song -- -- Cowboy Pete – up-tempo. He also did No Surrender which isn’t often performed.

[review used w/ permission; photo used without permission but I got it from some sleazy celebrity website so I'm not too concerned--is that wrong?]

The park next door.

In progress.

11 months and 3 weeks of the year the bucks are not in sight, or at least very rarely. But in the last week they have been everywhere.

He's eating my clover in the foreground. The real grass behind him is my neighbor's lovingly cared for and seeded and aerated and pampered year-round lawn. I wonder if my clover-planting bothers her? She would never say. I wonder if left alone my clover would take over her grass? (Sounds a bit competitive, doesn't it?)

Is an hour a day too much? It's spread over 16 hours, but still.

Facebook has these gardening "games" and I'm hooked on two of them. You grow crops and flowers, raise animals, harvest and plow and plant. It's fun. More mindless than Solitaire I think. Is 1/16th of an hour too much time to devote to this, I ask myself.

Bread advice sought. I mixed up a batch of bread dough, Thurs night? Fri night? and forgot it. Found it Sun night and baked it. Tastes fine, but...

....can bread dough go bad? With only flour, salt, yeast, and water as the ingredients in this famous Sullivan Street bakery recipe, it seems unlikely that the bread is tainted. Any opinions out there among bread makers?

I'm posting this picture (from last winter) for Michelle in Massachusetts.

Her birds of prey post is well worth a visit. This hawk, a red-shouldered I think, enjoyed the fresh suet on my deck last winter. Usually, when I put out the kind of suet you buy at the grocery store--processed slab-like hunks of fat--I attract lots of creatures: mostly woodpeckers and chickadees and nuthatches, and of course squirrels. But when I offer up fresh suet from the local Amish market, even the crows and hawks and vultures stop by. Those processed blocks don't pass the smell test is my guess. Hawks know when there's really fresh meat to be had.

Lessons learned about food. Rose sauce.

Agnolotti di Spinaci
Housemade stuffed agnolotti with spinach and ricotta in a spinach pasta served in a tomato or cream sauce

This is what I ordered last night at Da Marco's. I asked for the tomato sauce, not the cream sauce. It was great. But, when the owner stopped by and I quizzed him, as I so annoyingly do quite often, about the ingredients in the tomato sauce, I learned that he makes his tomato sauce with... cream: called rose sauce. First time I'd heard of it. I've been reading a lot of books about food lately, especially chain-store food--like you get at Chili's and TFIG for example--and I thought that food was bad because of all the hidden ingredients and multiple deep-fryings. And I learned years ago that lots of restaurants, good and average, often drizzle melted butter on top of their vegetables. But I didn't know that when I ask for "tomato sauce" instead of "cream sauce" I may still be getting a cream sauce. The owner also told me he uses skinned plum tomatoes for his sauce but he doesn't start with fresh ones and remove the skins and seeds on-site. I guess that would be asking too much, even of a small restaurant. But I DO wish he'd start calling his "tomato" sauce by its rightful name: rose sauce.

Is this also late blight? Looks buggy to me. Teeny fungi. Good band name.

Say what you want about her, her husband, her politics, his politics. She's one cool first lady.

credit TBA

You can get your next brain respiration treatment on 14th Street, just a few blocks from the Washington Monument.

I sauteed some of these green tomatoes last night along with some Mahi Mahi. I liked it. That's one of us.

I heard someone, on Stephen Colbert I think--one of my primary news sources, say that we should eat only catfish, tilapia, and carp. Not sure I'm going to follow that advice. Now if I was still feeding small children I'd be more attentive, but hell, what's the point at my age?

Nasturtiums never give up. These formed the basis for a good salad last night.

The deer love all the clover I've been planting to replace grass. (What's that on his back?)

You gotta love a first lady who says this about French fries...

"...my favorite food in the whole wide world are French fries. I love them. Dearly. ... Deeply.

"I have a good relationship with French fries, and I would eat them every single day if I could. I really would,'' she said.

Photo from wikipedia, where they have many words saying "it's OK for Pam to use this photo."

The pond next door. Two days ago, maybe three.

On the far. far left (you really can't see it) is the beaver lodge. The park people think the family left, and I tend to agree with them. For one thing, no new trees have been felled in months. There were at least three in the beaver family, maybe more. I'll miss them but am glad I got to watch them work and build and grow (and slap their tails at me at night) for the almost two years they lived here.

I don't know what these are but they bloomed all spring, summer, and fall in a shady spot.

I mixed them in with some polka dot plants (Hypoestes phyllostachya) in a color combo no one would ever recommend. But I kind of like it. I read today that the polka dot plant is evergreen. We'll see.

Such a pretty mystery bug on Queen Anne's lace, in the park next door.

Grasses are at their peak in my front yard right now.

Garden "art."

Here's one way to deal with my inability to throw out old stuff that has sentimental value. I inherited this pitchfork from my parents. I have no idea how old it is. I like to pretend that it belonged to my great-grandmother (or father) and he or she used it to pitch hay on their farm. It's possible. When the handle broke off earlier this year I was crushed. I used it only for my compost pile. It's been hanging around the garage and carport since then, getting in the way, reminding me daily that I should toss it out. Now it has a home in my herb garden. And it doesn't seem to have pissed anyone off...yet. (I'm married to a non-hoarder; it's a struggle. For both of us I mean.)

Bald cypress. A deciduous conifer. Didn't know there was such a thing.

What's with these tomatoes? Black rot? Mold?

It looks like blossom end rot but the black spots aren't on the blossom end. Am I being too literal?

Not the last one but close to it. The deer left me a few beans. I'll miss these in the winter (tomatoes, not the deer).

Nasturtium. Painfully beautiful.

Deer way, way in the distance. They're on their usual trail. This is the entrance to the park next door.

My two pumpkins. Came up on their own, from my compost I guess.

Today is BAD--Blog Action Day. An unfortunate acronym but here's my 2 cents.

I've been trying for a year or so to read enough about climate change to have a shot at a slightly well-informed opinion on this subject. It's taken me that long to figure out that the subject is way too complex for me to have a truly well-informed opinion so instead I have a list of thoughts-questions, interesting people who have unconventional opinions on climate change, and a couple of fascinating historical weather events.
Thoughts-questions:
1. The subject would be easier to talk about if we could forget about whether or not humans caused the situation. Of course, our actions (like when the first humans dug up some trees and planted a garden) are causes but there are other factors so why waste time blaming or denying?

2. I believe what I read (in the IPCC report, for example) about the trends and likely causes of our current global warming (deforestation, burning fossil fuels, too many cattle on the planet, etc), but I have no faith that humans have the ability to stop or reverse the trend. With a massive, massive effort we could maybe slow it down but that's it. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't change our ways.

3. Every country should be looking for fossil fuel alternatives b/c fossil fuels are running out, they're dirty, and we have to be international hypocrites (and total ass-kissers) to keep the Saudi oil flowing into our oversized cars. I still don't like nuclear power plants even though I know we have 80 or so plants in this country and France gets about 80% of its electricity from nuclear energy. Have we been lucky or is it really possible to keep them safe from angry evil-doers of all stripes and human error?

4. Our two biggest problems are overpopulation and dwindling supplies of water. If I wanted to be, you know, part of the solution, instead of buying a Prius I should lobby on behalf of reducing population growth or increasing research on how in the hell we're going to have enough water in the future.

Interesting people with unconventional opinions on climate change:

Freeman Dyson:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?_r=1

James Lovelock:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock

Interesting weather and geological events:

Mount Tamboro and the Poverty Summer of 1816
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tambora

The cooling of 535-536 AD (leading to widespread famine, drought, and plague): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535–536

Next book I'll read about all this stuff:

The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization (Paperback)
by Brian Fagan

High up in my magnolia tree. Wasp nest?