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By Savannah, on November 6th, 2009
Autumn is in full swing here – the winds have picked up and its pouring down cold rain every day. That means that I’m starting to work on putting the garden to bed for the winter. It’s easy to pull the dead plants, but harder to gauge how long some of the others will last. And of course I didn’t think about this when plotting the space, so putting down the straw will be a haphazard affair. At least it will keep the weeds down over the winter and be mulch in the spring.
The good news is that we’re still getting food from the garden. The chard is producing and the broccoli and leeks that I planted as seedlings haven’t died yet. They may not survive much longer, depending on how cool it gets and how quickly it does so, but there’s hope yet. Not much, but some.
At some point, I hope to get out a summary of each plant we tried this year. Some, such as the zucchini, were amazing and easy. Others, like the herbs, failed for water. And still others totally bombed out. Can I just say that New Zealand spinach looks like nightshade? We ate none of that, or at least, I think that’s what was growing.
I’m already dreaming of seeds and sprouts for next year. We’ll definitely get the water situation sorted before it comes time to plant. I’ll even have a better system for starting seedlings, if I have my way.
By Savannah, on September 22nd, 2009
We’ve been picking peas and beans off the same plants in small quantities, just enough for a meal, all summer. We’ve had arugula and some chard pop up and been completely disappointed by the New Zealand spinach. It looks way too much like the nightshade we grow to risk harvesting any.
The joy of the garden this month has been zucchini. The small ones are great grilled, sauteed, roasted or any other form you can think of. Sometimes you can end up with too much of a good thing though.
I missed harvest on 2 zucchini by two days. At that point they were way to big to eat, so I just let them go until I had a weekend and the ingredients to make zucchini bread. By the time I harvested those 2 squash, they were 13″ and a whopping 19″ long.
So last Sunday I spent all day baking bread. I went through 15 pounds of sugar and 10 pounds of flour. I used nearly 3 pounds of walnuts and almost all of the appliances I’ve accumulated since I moved out on my own. If I hadn’t had a giant mixer or electric food processor, someone would have died. As it was, I had to hand shred all the zucchini (after discarding seeds) because my food processor is a pansy and doesn’t grate or slice.
But I made it. 12 hours and twenty two loaves later, I was done. And now the freezer is full of summer goodies that we’ll continue to enjoy all winter long.
By Savannah, on August 18th, 2009
There’s a good reason that I haven’t updated on the fish tank in a while. There hasn’t been much progress to speak of, only setbacks. We got the lighting attached to a temporary hood so that the plants wouldn’t die from lack of light. I works perfectly and my AHSupply lighting puts out a ton of light. I wasn’t quite sure hat bulbs to get, so I ended up with a mix of 6700 and 10Ks. From a color perspective, I think the 10Ks are too blue and won’t be getting them again. 6700s are designed to be more along the lines of natural lighting and the color spectrum definitely shows that.
But after this minor victory, the tank went sideways on me. It started a minor algae bloom which turned into a major bloom with hair algae. That stuff is nasty and nearly impossible to get rid of. The best advice I could find was to starve it out by feeding the plants (which require more complex nutrients than algae) and turning off the light. Also, pull it out manually.
Well, the whole point of a giant tank is that I don’t have to do this manual labor stuff. The bigger they are, the better they tolerate adverse conditions. So I started looking for little critters and other conditions that would help. I found a place that said that ghost shrimp eat hair algae, which turns out to be true. The best part is that some of them are even smart enough to avoid the goldfish and have been munching on algae like crazy and helping keep the tank clean. The other thing I found was chemistry.
Turns out that I live an an area with super-soft water. As in it’s a miracle that plants grow here because the water is so soft. It doesn’t have enough mineral content to properly buffer the tank and keep the pH or the carbon content in line. I found some suggestions for getting the pH under control, but the low hardness and buffering capacity was going to continue to cause this hair algae explosion. So I added some baking soda and poof, problem goes away. There are little strings of algae in there now, but nothing like the jungle before.
Following other aquarists advise, I bought some cuttlebone for a long term solution. That’s supposed to help with the hardness and buffering issues. I’m aslo planning to buy a CO2 system at some point, but those suckers are expesive.
By Savannah, on July 22nd, 2009
Last week my husband caught a very strange encounter in the yard. It seems our little white cat not only attracts elk while inside, she draws deer while outside.
 There she was minding her own business in the yard, when the deer appeared on the ridge. This deer was so curious about the little white cat (is it the color that attracts them?) that she wandered down to the edge of the fence. Of course the cat understands the fence and doesn’t panic, but goes on eating grass instead.* Eventually she was bored with that patch of ground and wandered away. This is where it gets weird. The deer followed her, around the corner of the fence and kept following until she got too far away to be interesting.
 But by that point, the poor deer had attracted the other cat. He’s big and dumb, so he went into stalker/predator mode. I swear he thought he could catch and kill that deer despite the fence. And for a second the deer bought it too.** It panicked and started running away, at least until the cat got close and she realized the cat was tiny and no threat. Then of course she returned to the fence line to check him out.
And started playing with him.
 See, when he got bored and tried to walk away the deer charged the fence, scaring him and making him get ready to fight. Then when she had the cats attention, she went into a classic dog play bow posture.*** I’ve never seen anything like it, and I certainly wouldn’t expect that from a deer. This little pattern repeated until the cat finally got fed up and wandered off for good. But it was a heck of a thing to watch play out. Predator and prey, playing together.
*Yes, she eats grass. Every day. No, I can’t stop her. It’s easier on all of us, houseplants included, if I don’t even try.
** This is probably related to the cougars around these parts.
*** I can’t even express how sad I am that I didn’t get any pictures of this. However, the rest of the shots start here.
By Savannah, on June 17th, 2009
 With the installation of the fence, and the start of nice weather, we’ve started letting the cats out for supervised playtime. This may have been a mistake. Now instead of coming home to cats who want to snuggle or chase things, we come home to the insistent yowl of “let me out.”
 The worst of it is that it’s not a constant that they get to go out. If it’s dark or raining, they’re not going out. I don’t want to have to go collect cats that aren’t ready to go back in when it’s time to go to bed. And I certainly don’t want to deal with the massive quantities of mud that would come in with them on rainy days. As you can see, some cats come in less white than they go out. But they love it, and they’re very good about cleaning up no matter how thoroughly they’ve rolled in the dirt.
The funniest part is that the Mister has decided that the whole yard is a catbox. He gets outside and instantly must use this new, clean toilet space. Before the fence, we had to watch for piles of elk poo. Now we have to watch for cat poo (he doesn’t cover anything, never has the lazy sot).
My main concern at the moment is that the yard is full of clover and the bees are loving it. Supervising for bee stings is going to be an interesting way to spend the summer.
By Savannah, on June 10th, 2009
 Last month I was finally able to get out into the yard and do some actual plant. After dispersing the 15 yards of topsoi and waiting for it to stop raining long enough to avoid walking in muddy glop, I hoed in 15 rows for planting. Each of these rows are 2 feet apart and 40 feet long. Long, standard rows seemed most sensible, as they would be easiest to hoe weeds out of. I’m hoping that the spacing works out, but for the moment, I can walk between the rows without crushing anything.
I’ve plotted out my planting in 10′x10′ squares, just so I can keep track of what is where. The plan is to phase some seeds in so we get continuous crops of things we’ll want all summer long. Spinach is high on this list, but beans and peas are there too. I’m figuring on 3 week intervals, but we’ll see how that actually plays out. Every time I make one of these crazy arbitrary decisions, I’m very glad that I’ve given this the Trial Year designation. I’m expecting that at least one of them will go terribly wrong and giving myself permission to totally muck stuff up is going to come in handy when that happens.
 Amazingly enough, some of the seeds planted on the 25th are already up and going strong. Beans, arugula and a solitary Yellow Crookneck start seem to be the frontrunners in this race. We haven’t had any real rain since the planting, and the heat has been terrible. I didn’t plan on needing to water so early in the season, but it’s been kind of relaxing to go out in the evening and stand there with the hose trying to make sure the seeds don’t dry out. Being zen in the garden with my husband and the cats was one of the big draws of this project, so I count that a win already. The food at the end is a big bonus, but not really necessary.
A listing of the seeds, for the curious:
- Chioggia and golden beets
- Black Beauty and Yellow Crookneck zucchini
- Mammoth snow peas
- Little Marvel peas
- Venture bush beans
- Xupar beans
- oregano
- Sweet basil
- New Zealand spinach
- rainbow carrots
- rainbow and regular swiss chard
- fennel
- Hubbard squash
- Southern Comet and hybrid broccoli
By Savannah, on May 21st, 2009
I’ve been watching the lastest “woman marketing” spree by Dell with interest. It’s hit feminist websites and mailing lists, and the response has been exactly what you would expect. The dumbing down of technology, with the special addition of making sure the wee lady-brains can understand that it’s useful for tracking exercize and dieting, has caused an uproar. But then, applying critical thought to most marketing schemes will always cause an uproar.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving Dell a pass on this one. I’m just saying that marketing, as a rule, has to play to the basest, most stereotypical parts of humanity. Tried and true crap like men like trucks and women like flowers. I get that this is their most reliable way to the dollars in your pocket. But when I saw someone trying to play this off on those grounds, that there are women out there that despise technology, so this is a valid and profitable stereotype, it just makes me crazy.
My mother was one of those technophobic women. The first time she brought home a computer, I had to set up the ancient Mac even though I’d never seen one before because she was intimidated by the instructions and color-coded cables (“Plug the purple prong into the purple hole, Mom”). She’s always been a fan of paper and pencil, carrying one of those old checkbook-style calendars around with her until well after my Dad bought her a Palm in 2004 or so. She resisted computers, even that tiny device, like it was going to eat her alive.
I’ve always tried to show her how to do the things she needs to do, or point her to resources so she can figure it out for herself. Showing someone how to fish has been my rule of thumb since my first 2400baud modem install into a 386. Sure, I cut my hand onthe sharp edges, but I got great advice during the installation. “Push really hard. You’re not going to break it.”
You’re not going to break it.
That’s the advice I’ve been giving her over the years. It’s almost impossible for her to mess something up to the point where it’s not recoverable, so she may as well play. And I think I finally have her converted. Not only does she send email like crazy (and use Snopes), but she’s latched on to that Palm like it’s a lifeline and ditched her paper calendar. She’s even thinking about getting a smart phone to reduce the weight in her purse.
You’re not going to break it. This is the advice we technologically inclined women need to give to our sisters. Maybe they can get over that technophobia. And maybe they’ll branch out from there.
By Savannah, on May 19th, 2009
The snow has finally (mostly) stopped. This means we’ve been able to get out and put plants in the ground. We finally committed to species for the shrubs and trees and purchased them. Black currants, 3 kinds of blueberries that take part shade and cold, and Spartan and Jonagold apple trees.
These poor little plants were sitting in their pots for a couple of weeks while we waited for a decent day to get then in the ground. Of course they didn’t wait for us, leaves and buds started appearing right away. They were so cute in their little pots, hoping to make fruit this year. We got lucky though and had a nice day to put them in the ground. It was relatively easy work, we’d had the foresight to rent an augur and pre-drill the holes. Watering them in was almost unnecessary since it has rained nearly every day since.
Now it looks like they’re leafing out like crazy. I’m not expecting actual fruit this year, but the trees should at least bloom despite the really late start. I can’t wait to get pictures of the blossoms.
By Savannah, on April 28th, 2009
 The fish tank stand is nearly done. All of the structural pieces are complete, including the dividers between the sections. This is remarkable progress, but it only makes it harder to wait for it to be deposited in its final location. The drawers below the bookshelves are assembled, only needing guides to be complete.
The hangup is the door for the center section. There must be a door, this is where all of the equipment will go. I don’t want to see canister filters and CO2 tanks, the workings of an aquascaped fish tanks are large and ugly. They detract from the simple beauty of the fish and plants. This center section was designed with an open back, to allow tubes and pumps and cables to run riot. How can I expose that muck to the world?
 So, the door. The door itself is beautiful. It matches not only the side detail of the stand, but also the store-bought china cabinet and sideboard. (Does this design detail make me obsessive? Probably, but when visitors see it, the flow through the greatroom furniture will be amazing.) The trouble with this amazing door is that they don’t make hinges that allow inset cabinet doors to open when they’re recessed. So there must be a workaround that allows this amazing door to actually open.
It’s funny; the recessing of the door/shelves/drawers was in the original plans but none of the people working on this thought about the implications of this detail until I started looking to buy hinges. I tried every hinge I could get my hands on to see if they would work, ending up with the cheapest mega-retail-chain hinge because it seemed closest to what was required. I sure hope it works out and we can find a way to finagle the door around so that it opens. I’d hate for this one detail to turn out to be a deal breaker.
By Savannah, on April 24th, 2009
The elk group that I’m involved with has started studying the local elk herds. We’re taking our $0 and the goodwill of the local community and translating that into scientific data.
the whole process has been very interesting. From writing and approving the plan (committees never do anything quickly) to gathering volunteers to implementing the data gathering, the whole process has been crazy. After the plan was written, the state agencies had to approve before it could be implemented. This wasn’t a real struggle as we had certified biologists involved, but I’d never seen anything like it.
The initial data gathering was a great surprise to me. After they put the elk out, blood, skin scrapings, feces and even a tooth are taken. It seems that these items give the greatest range of data – age, health, pregnancy, parasite load. The girth is measured and they put a collar around the cows neck. The collar will allow for tacking by triangulation later, showing the movements of the sub herd over time.
The initial data is showing that this winter was very hard on the herds. The elk are near to starving. This isn’t a big surprise, it just confirms that the elk have all travelled to the populated areas where the foraging is easy because people plant their yards full of goodies. this is exactly the problem, the easy forage brings too many elk into the area and they make the people crazy and themselves sick. Soon we’ll have better/more data to get the state to help us to encourage the elk to higher ground and out of people’s yards.
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