Dogwood Winter and Spring Returning

Tomorrow we're supposed to be back to 70 again for a daytime high. THE BEANS WILL GO IN THE GROUND! On days like tomorrow, my little nose is pressed against the glass at work (mentally, anyway), longing for the first moment I can get away to freedom and dogwood petals and birds rejoicing overhead while a silent cat sneaks up behind me through the clover and blooming violets. I will rejoice, as all creation does in the springtime of the year, looking forward to that Spring to come.

Dogwood Winter and Cloches

Covering plants is an important thing to do when the freeze warnings go out, but how? If you throw a sheet over the plants, your cat or another animal might lie down on the soft surface, crushing the tender plants below. Cloches are a solution to the problem. You can buy elegant, expensive, bell-shaped jars, or you can recycle available materials. We use cut half-gallon milk jugs and juice cartons to make inexpensive, temporary cloches. Cut 2- or 3-liter soda bottles work really well in climates where you leave the cloche on during the day, and a transparent bottle lets light through. You can even unscrew the top for air circulation. Here we'll only need protection tonight (and maybe tomorrow night), with a high of 54 tomorrow, so I'll remove the cloches tomorrow morning before work, and keep a close eye on the weather through the day. Hopefully I can plant Wednesday, because the beans and tomatoes need to go into the ground. We will see.

Dogwood Winter and Climate Change

I got up early due to an alarm-clock malfunction, so here is a pre-church post. We are due for a possible freeze Monday night. Yes it is April. Yes, our last average frost date is in March. Yes, that date is fairly meaningless around here. Our grandparents had knowledge of the weather that had to be carefully discounted by our educators for us to be re-educated in matters of "scientific" ecology, so that money can be extracted from us out of guilt for our existence, a.k.a. "excessive use of carbon". We are carbon-based life forms, after all. They knew that there would be many close calls and a few freezes between the blooming of the daffodils and safe planting time for sensitive plants. My grandfather finally got so frustrated with early spring warming causing his peach trees to bloom, then late frosts destroying the crop, that he bulldozed the orchard when I was a very young child. That's the risk of perennials. I remember peaches from a good year that seemed almost as big as my head. And I remember a grassy field at the back of the hill afterward.

They knew about blackberry winter, and dogwood winter, and other cold snaps when other things were blooming, that put crops at risk but could not be stopped. Farming terms and rainfall totals stopped being reported in local weather broadcasts when I was in my teens or early 20s. Now every drought, every flood, every snowstorm or heat wave or  "unseasonable" frost is "evidence" of "climate change". Perception of chaos in the weather is drilled into people who never go outside, except to get in a vehicle. Flooding in areas where people have traditionally grown 18-foot-tall varieties of rice is portrayed as unusual. Drought on a continent where many of the Caucasian explorers and initial settlers died of hunger and thirst if not assisted by the Aborigines according to the old stories (Australia- it was a penal colony for a reason) is seen as dreadful evidence that we are tipping the world into chaos. Umm, yeah. We had to be taught to disrespect old stories and people and ignore old books (after all, we're not taught good enough English to read pre-television sentence structures anymore) in order to believe what we are now told is "scientific fact-the debate is settled-DON'T LOOK OUT YOUR WINDOW!- DON'T ask the retired farmer in the nursing home down the street what's going on! just give us money for carbon trading and all will be forgiven!"

Yeah, they have some correct talking points. We may run out of easily accessible oil. We do use ridiculous amounts of energy for a lot of things. We have indiscriminately used horrible chemicals to do bad things to ourselves for the sake of convenience. Our grandparents were not stupid, and we have not "evolved" to be better and smarter than they, but rather have been culturally impoverished and rendered ignorant, cut off from their knowledge by a sense of technological superiority. I like to check some of the "doomer" sites sometimes, because they are collecting information about canning and homesteading that is quite informative. But their carte blanche acceptance of "global warming-oops, it is colder-climate change" gets really old. Sorry for the rant. Just amazed when otherwise seemingly sensible people accept political extortion as gospel.

Craving Beans and Rice

Years ago, I was a single teacher on a tight budget. That AFT 50,000+/year average salary does NOT apply to rural Southern counties. That's close to the maximum, with a Ph.D. and 20 years of experience, in one county in which I worked. Anyway... money was tight. I was paying for orthodontic services out of pocket, and other debts, and wearing the braces, so I could not eat hard, chewy, or sticky foods. Broke with teeth in braces, I did beans and rice in a very limited way: plain rice, canned beans, frozen mixed vegetables, and enough turkey ham cut in tiny, swallowable pieces to make it "edible".

Now I know how limited that approach was. I have two shelves of spices, vinegars, and oils in the pantry. I'm learning to grow my own herbs. I'll try drying them this year. You can do so much with beans! There seem to be endless variations on the rice 'n' bean theme- Caribbean, Mediterranean (Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern), Indian (and they have almost infinite local and regional variations), Asian (Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Korean...), African (seasoned with peanut butter and spices, full of nutritious greens), and even Native American (substituting cornmeal pudding or corn pone or potatoes for the rice). You can add a bit of highly seasoned meat for flavor, or not. Herbs and spices vary, vegetables or fruit added vary, cooking oil varies. You can have a lot of fun with it. Try it sometime on Google. If your money is tight, you may even find recipes including items you can forage from the wild in your area- just don't forage for mushrooms without an experienced, preferably elderly guide who knows what's what. Cooking from scratch with new recipes can be a relatively cheap way to treat yourself well without breaking the bank, using ingredients in season and dried beans and unprocessed rice (no precooked stuff in pouches. YOU CAN  BOIL WATER!). Try it!

The Night Life of Slugs

I have caught over 3,800 slugs in my tiny backyard in the past few weeks. In the process, I'm beginning to learn their habits. They are not vegetarian; they eat leaves and decaying plant material, but they also eat dead earthworms and bird feces. They like to crawl on cool, moist( but not soaking wet), smooth surfaces like hoses and bricks. They like to crawl up to the top of our brick wall on cool nights and lie there like miniature beached whales. Who knows why?

On rainy nights when the ground is saturated, things get really interesting. They look for dry shelter by crawling up walls. I have found them all the way up under the eaves of our detached garage. I caught 367 last night, mostly on the walls of the garage and the brick wall. I do not have to crouch and bend as much on rainy nights. They must really fear drowning. Tonight, after a sunny but cool day, I caught 270, many of them on the ground or in leaves. Most of that number are very tiny; maybe 10-30 a night are more than an inch long, with maybe 2 longer than 2 inches when stretched out. It is not as gross catching the tiny ones.

They are hermaphrodites, so Fred is Wilma, too. Some of those slime trails on your back porch at night are from their amorous adventures. EEEW! They can lay 50-200 eggs at a time, so I guess the thousands in my backyard should not be surprising. Hope these forays into the dark reduce their numbers soon.

More Spring Planting Preparation

Today was very rainy, with some severe storms mid-day. Half an inch of rain fell, with a bit more due tonight. If tomorrow is sunny, that will mean the soil will be wet for Saturday's planting, but that's OK. In the pre-dug beds, when the ground is wet, I can shove the stakes in the ground to support tomato cages and bean fencing without a mallet. I usually tamp them in a bit anyway for safety (2 stakes per tomato cage, several inches down, and bamboo stakes spaced as needed on the bean fencing, which is there to guide the plants up to the wooden fence). I'll have pictures when it is all set up. 

These are my okra and sunflower plants. They may not be ready for Saturday, but the beans definitely will. The cucumbers are questionable-we shall see.

Planting Time is Here

These green bean plants will have to go in the ground by Saturday. They are growing very, very fast. The tubes make planting them convenient, and provide a bit of protection from cutworms, or so I have read. I actually have not had any cutworm problems. Wow! Maybe soon we can eat our own green beans again! Maybe I'll have enough to freeze as well. Lord willing. We will see.