Overuse Injuries and Healing

I'm prone to overuse injuries due to my hypermobility. I injured both hands a few days ago at work, reactivating the tenosynovitis in one thumb joint and messing up the wrist of the other hand enough to cause numbness and intermittent pain. I had decided to push a few too many things through a syringe filter. Doc fixed the wrist with a "crunch" this evening, and advised ice in addition to the rest and night wrapping (in neutral position with the thumb at the side of the hand- get advice on this from a physical therapist or chiropractor or orthopedist) I was already doing. It was amazing to feel the numbness leave immediately, and all fingers (and thumb) reporting for duty without pain. If you find a good chiropractor, KEEP THE NUMBER!! I highly recommend Cole Pain Therapy Group in Memphis. They do physical therapy as well as chiropractic manipulations, they don't go neck-popping crazy on you, and they help you heal. Which, if you've had conventional doctors tell you to go away until the damage is done, then come back when they can give you drugs and surgery (a rheumatologist had the nerve to tell me that when I was a TEENAGER), is a wonderful, wonderful blessing. Hope comes in many forms, and it's a rare find when it comes with a white coat.

Bugs and Slugs

My chard is holy, and I do not mean sanctified. My carrots aren't able to get very big before something eats their greens to nubs. It is not out there when I look for slugs at night, nor when I survey for cabbage worms in the morning. Some carrots have come back and appear to be growing, though, so all may not be lost. I've hand- captured 7,104 slugs in the past 7 weeks in the backyard. It's getting a bit wearying in combination with long workdays.

Something has even snapped off 2 corn plants (so far) about a centimeter above the ground! I'm sad that my losses will be higher this year, but grimly determined to grow what can be grown back there. It is too important to keep the knowledge alive, and to extend my knowledge as much as possible, to let a few (or even 7,104) competitors get me.

Harvesting and Insecticide

Today I harvested one green onion (out of 3), 2 sugar snap peas, and a nasturtium flower. All went into dinner. It weighed a total of half an ounce. 

Verdict on the green onion: it had more pepper taste and less sliminess than those at the supermarket sitting under that water spray for who knows how long. I'm wondering if I still have time to interplant some more somewhere. Can't go near the wall of green beans according to the companion planting guides, and that's where I have space amid the surviving lettuces and radishes and carrots. 

The nasturtium did not taste radishy yet. It is at the back of the wall o' beans shown above. It really will be a wall of beans here in a few months. 

I saw a group of ants on the fence as I was harvesting the sugar snaps, and turned over a leaf to see a herd of aphids. Insecticidal spray time! I sprayed the cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower, too. Seems to be reducing the number of cabbage worms encountered. That is good!

The Corn Is Planted

Here is some of this evening's work: putting in corn seedlings from the germination test and planting corn in the ground to try again, this time in the bed that gets the most sun, in the middle. It's starting to look like a garden.

Interesting thing tonight- the slugs started climbing the garage and flowerpots before it started raining. Do even SLUGS have instincts we have lost to climate-controlled life? Just a thought, though I do like air conditioning in July more than I like predicting the rain. My bursitis lets me predict storm systems a lot of the time anyway, especially in winter. 

I'll be posting pictures from the garden over the next few days, for my records, weeds and all. Let's keep 'em growing.

Back from A Camping Feasibility Study

Sorry to express it in such a geeky way, but I embraced my inner geek a long time ago. This week-end we decided to do a mini-vacation to Mansfield, Missouri, to the Baker Creek Seed Company Spring Planting Festival. It was great fun!

We left on Saturday afternoon in the rain. It had rained, sometimes heavily, for much of the night. My husband grew up with a farmer Dad, and when he was small, they went camping on rainy days. As he said "The crops were being watered and the hay was too wet to take up," so they would pack into the old Pontiac and head for the hills. Black hills, that is. They lived in Nebraska, and often the Black Hills were north of whatever system was watering the farm. He was very excited to go camping in the rain.

We did not get north of the storm. Saturday night the rain stopped, and we camped in Historic Davidsonville State Park in Black Rock, Arkansas (pop 717). We were the only tent campers. I rented the tent very reasonably from work, but it smelled like wet, dirty socks. We had fun  cooking out under a lean-to my husband rigged up with a tarp and some rope. We slept in the tent and awoke at the 5:30 AM insistence of a hoot owl. We made oatmeal on a propane camp stove. We took everything down and headed for the showers. You could not adjust the water temperature, but it was nice and warm, and the showers were very clean and new-looking. By now the temperature outside was cooling, and I put on a part-wool sweater under my rain jacket. It started raining again. We toured the abandoned site of Old Davidsonville. Even the courthouse was gone. The town had started about when my ancestors settled in middle TN, in the early 1800s. Some of their buildings and cemeteries are still around. Nothing was left but bits and pieces at Davidsonville. 

We then headed for Mansfield. On the way we stopped at the tenth largest spring in the world, to watch almost 10 million gallons of water an hour gush over a dam, and tour an old, no longer used hydroelectric facility. It continued raining.

We arrived at the festival to be directed to park in a pasture, complete with fresh cow patties. We heard 2 gardening speakers, listened to an afternoon showcase of exceptional musical talent (I didn't know kids that age could do a Bach fugue on recorders), ate marvelous food (the restaurant charged for drinks, but took donations for the food), toured the stores (seed store was tempting, but I have no more ROOM!) , and tried (at first) to avoid the increasing muck. I wished I had my muck boots. 

We checked the on-site camping- a green, grassy field, but with puddles, rain, and a biting wind. We decided to come home, and stay longer next year if the weather is better. A little more music and we headed home, after a friendly Larry and company pulled us out of the parking area with a backhoe and chain.

Camping is definitely a feasible vacation for us. It is inexpensive, and can be fun under trying conditions if you keep a good attitude. We had fun. and I feel like we were gone and resting for many days. I knew we were in the right neighborhood when we drove through a small town and there were no bars on the pawn shop windows! It was a good break.

First Harvest Report

A fraction over one ounce (including the sugar snap pea day before yesterday) is the total so far. I never realized that sugar snap peas were so light! 4= 1/4 ounce. Yes, I pick them young, but you want to avoid unpleasant stringiness. It is small, but it is a beginning.

First  harvest report tomorrow, with masses and everything! Today I wanted to point out where to go for good recipes.

When you grow your own food, shop at a farmer's market, or join a CSA, suddenly you have lots of veggies to deal with. This is a good thing, but it sometimes necessitates learning new and creative ways to deal with beets or greens. What to do?

1. Your public library is an Awesome Resource. You can check out that book on Italian or French or Indian or Chinese cooking without spending a fortune, only to find out you really don't like that style of cooking very much. Ours is building its vegetarian/ vegetable-based section to a magnificent thing.

2. Blogs galore exist with recipes for every cooking style imaginable. Here are some cool ones:

http://simplyrecipes.com/

http://www.101cookbooks.com/

http://cheaphealthygood.blogspot.com/

These are a tiny sampling of the ones I have bookmarked- family style, Californian, and New Yorker. You can find Indian cooking videos from Manjula's kitchen on You-tube (these are especially helpful, because a lot of Indian cooking is passed mother to daughter, and thus is difficult to get from a written book), and even blended styles in some blogs. 

3. Do not discount the farmer's groups (Northwest Cherries, Sweet Bytes (for sweet potatoes),  The Mushroom Channel, Pulse Canada), which often post recipes to encourage people to purchase their food. I hate to call food a "farm product", though it is, simply because I consider that an inadequate description. Food is ideally something grown with care, nurtured through spring floods, bug onslaughts, and summer droughts, and finally brought to the table in triumph and joy. This beauty a "farm product"? I think not. Go fishing online- you might come up with something good.