Knit Me A Straightjacket

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Location: Wild West, United States

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Something to Blog About

I was asking myself the other day, What do I have to blog about? Well, I figured it out. Duh. The Garden. *sheesh* It's only the LOVE OF MY LIFE!!!

Don't mind me, I'm a little slow sometimes. Anyway, consider this the first of many posts about The Garden. I capitalize it because it's not just the vegetable beds I'm talking about. I am working towards creating a Garden of Eden, using the principles of permaculture, gleaned primarily from this book, Gaia's Garden. I could, and definitely will, talk in the future about the beauty of permaculture, but right now I want to revel in the joy of Spring, and if you'll forgive me the uncharacteristic behavior, share some of that with you.

Excerpted from a recent email I wrote:

...the gardening and yard work is in full swing and I am flush with spring. As my friend Karen put it, "the sap is running."

I think about it night and day, literally. I read up, make plans and drawings, dig, mulch, plant, mulch some more. I've already used a ton of planting mix (literally - got a truckload) to amend the garden beds old and new. Last year I started preparing a bunch of new beds by digging up and turning over the grass and/or laying a base of cardboard, dividing my kitchen compost between them, and finally mulching them deeply with leaves over the fall & winter.

I'm *very* pleased with the results. The one I did the most with, for the longest, last year is *perfect* - it didn't need any amendment. The shovel went right in and brought up beautiful dark soil full of fat worms. Doesn't get much better than that, especially considering that our native soil is about 95% clay hard-pan, utterly devoid of microbes and invertebrates and so hard some people actually use jackhammers on it. All that from piling scraps on it! Yay for
permaculture.

I find that I can't wait every day to get outside and do something with the yard. While I'm working I don't feel tired or hungry or hot or depressed. I totally lose track of time and have been late to pick up my daughter more than once because I was so absorbed in digging holes or
some-such.

I built another trellis onto the patio next to the front door, so that side is mostly enclosed now. It shades more of the patio and also shields some of the mess of kids' toys and things from the entry. When it comes to my landscaping, I'm not afraid of heights or power tools, of work or sweat. It's all a joy.

Pictures coming soon...

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Woo hoo! A new post!

Okay, need to catch up a bit.

There was this play at school, and MonkeyBoy was all excited to be in it. I signed up to help make costumes, and here they are (the play was the Little Mermaid):






Alas, the pressure turned out to be too much for him, so this is how he spent the performance, instead of being on stage:




We all had a good time and went out for ice cream anyway. :-)


Next: Easter, aka Spring

So you know I'm pretty much an agnostic/pagan/Jew/humanist, right? As you might imagine, this makes holidays, um, complicated. So I talk a lot about celebrating the rebirth of the Earth, all the plants coming back to life and baby birds and animals and all that jazz, but we still call it Easter, because that's what everyone calls it and it's just easier that way. So anyway, the new tradition in the last couple of years is that we hunt for eggs, both dyed ones and plastic ones with candy or money, and we have a tea party, and then we do something fun.

This year we went to the plant nursery to see the flowers and to the feed store to see the chicks on the actual equinox, then on that Sunday went to a park playground and had a great time. I especially enjoyed playing with the toy plane and the bubble stuff. Ahem.

Anyway, here are a few pics of the day:





In other news, MonkeyBoy decided that the Shag of Doom hairstyle (see above) was getting in his way and making him too hot, so he asked me to shave his head. Seriously. Check these out:





That's not even all of the hair. There was more, lots more. Then he wanted it shorter. We ended up at an eighth of an inch. He said no one, not even his teacher, recognized him at school. He thought it was hilarious.