Touch the earth, rest your spirit

The lettuce is almost ready to be cut for salads. I am still cutting chard for greens which is lucky because my NZ spinach isn't growing very fast. Yesterday, I cut some beet greens and pulled up 4 beets. Since I have 3 heads of cabbage in the refrigerator, I think I will grate the beets and saute them with some shredded cabbage. That ought to make a nice purple veggie for something different. I also have peas, carrots, yellow squash, cauliflower, chard, beet greens, and broccoli in the fridge. It is a garden bounty! I think I'll put together some shishkabobs with some marinated chicken and the squash, carrots, Brussels sprouts and cauliflower. I'm thinking it will be quick and easy on the grill. I've got some garlic flavored olive oil for 'kabobs.

I've left a few broccoli plants to go to seed. I'll do the same for the cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage. One of my cabbage plants is snail bait, so I think I will collect the seeds from it. It is a nice, big plant, too. I have already pulled up and hung the mustard pods. I have the stems with the pods hanging upside down inside of a paper grocery bag. I can hear the seeds rattling in the bag, so I know this is working. I'll do the same for the rest of the brassicas. I was trying to clean out a few of the raised beds enough to plant some bush beans, but lo and behold, the Brussels sprouts appear to be doing something. There are some marble sized sprouts!! This is the best result ever so far! Most are pea sized, but I think they are actually growing! We've had so much rain that my garlic is done. Usually, it is ready in July, but the stalks are yellowing so I pulled them. They are now curing on the picnic table, AKA Bev's breakroom, next to my little Malabar spinach vine (haven't decided where to move it) and my 7 artichoke plants (there were 8, I guess a bird grabbed one??).

Friday I picked some large leaves from the cabbage plants. I used them to make cabbage rolls. I have a lot of ground venison in the freezer, so I mixed up some meat. I season it, add rice and special ingredients for special dinners and cook it. I used 4 pounds of ground beef, 3 pounds of venison, and 1 pound of ground pork, onions, ketchup, rice, garlic, soy, worchestershire, etc. This time, however, I wasn't thinking-I usually use more venison than beef, but this batch is beef heavy because I got distracted. At any rate, I made 3 batches of meatballs, a meatloaf(with just me and Skyguy, I get 3 meals from a meatloaf), two batches of seasoned meat for stuffing Poblanos, and of course, the cabbage rolls . That's 9+ meals from 8 pounds of meat. One day I will look up all the nutritional data on my meat mixes. The cabbage rolls were okay-a bit tough and chewy because I did not steam them first, but edible. I think I will try this with grape leaves next. I have plenty of those as well. I went out this morning, picked a few dozen leaves, washed them, rolled them, blanched them, and preserved them in brine in a pint jar. Today, I planted a few more okra seeds, as well as a pack of royal burgundy bush beans. I went through all of my seeds last night and I need to continue downsizing. It is still early in the season, so I am going to try to grow some gourds and some pumpkins. I found some Aquadulce Fava beans from 2000 and did a germination test on them. Would you believe that more than half of them germinated??!!?? Wow. So I will use them as a cover crop and chicken feed this winter.

In the meantime, I thought I would share some garden pictures I took yesterday. The first two pictures are related. I've named them, Spot the Butternut and Spot the Cukes. You should probably click on the pics for a larger image if your eyes are like mine. The third image is a skinny image of one of my Brussels sprouts' stalk where you can see the little sprouts beginning to form. The fourth image on the page is of course, my breakroom/workarea . I've been getting a head or two a day from my Cauliflower bed (last picture on the page). I probably should pull up the plants once I harvest the initial head, but I have heard that if you leave it, it will grow small heads after a few months, so I am leaving the plants in the bed. The sixth one I called mixed veggies. In that picture there are potatoes, yellow squash, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and cabbage. I planted the Bloody Butcher Corn directly behind that bed, and you can't see it in this picture, but back where that scrawny looking Brussels sprout is, top center, I have planted a row of okra on the edge of the bed. I wanted a little height to help as a pollen block. As it turned out, the other two varieties of corn did not germinate, so the pollen block is unnecessary, but for the record, there is also okra in this picture, they are only 3 inches tall though. :) Image #5 is one of my yellow squash plants. I have two, one in the ground(picture #5 ) and the one you see in the bed of mixed veggies (picture #6 ). I am experimenting and waging war on squash bugs. The separation is part of the plan.

Yesterday, we cut back some Chinese privet that had become trees. It was starting to shade out my elephant ears and the fig trees. Skyguy cut them back to 6 foot trucks with the chainsaw, and next week, I will be chipping the tops to go to the compost bin. We also mowed this weekend, watered the Paulownias, and messed around in the garden some, staking tomatoes and whatnot. I saved some of the larger branches/trunks from the privet and hopefully I will make a few more trellis' for various things. I think we will also make a ladder, and maybe a rustic table to go between the Adirondack chairs.

This evening, we went back to the lake and paddled. We got an earlier start this time, and we paddled for over an hour, almost constantly. We discovered a few scratches and places on the keel that need work, some sanding, varnish, etc. and Skyguy wants to replace the decks and move the seats, so we decided that this will be the last paddle for a few months until the canoe work is completed and my new bent shaft paddle is completed and when my foot is healed. I hope we will be able to get back on the lake by the first of August. In the meantime, we will be biking more.

I got some sun this weekend, partially from working in the yard in a tank top. Skyguy said my shoulders were already sunburned before we left, but I did not feel it. I put SPF30 on at the lake, but I still burned. I'm so pale. There was no sunscreen when I was growing up other than zinc oxide. I just wore shirts over my bathing suit. As many times as I was sunburned as a kid, it will be a miracle if I die without having skin cancer. If I get skin cancer, it will truly piss me off, because I've never really laid out or tried to tan like some people do, I just burn easily. The best tan I ever had was accidental. It was back in 1981 when I was running over 50 miles a week. I was living in western Arkansas that summer, and it was a scorcher. Even though I ran in the evening, it was well over 100 degrees. I really enjoyed running. If only my joints were not screwed up,,,,it would be great to run again, but it won't ever happen. At this point in my life, it is paddling, pedaling, and tai chi. We won't count the walking and the yard work and the gardening.

Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. -Henry Beston

Canoes and Critters

Skyguy and I went paddling yesterday at Rocky Mountain Lake. If you live anywhere in the north Georgia or northeastern Alabama area, this is a really nice lake. There are several lakes on 5000+ acres owned by Oglethorpe Power. It is about 35 minutes away, but worth the drive. The fishing lakes are used as backup lakes for the power plant and have been stocked and opened to the public since 1996. Unlike some of the larger reservoirs, these lakes are not polluted and it just feels clean, the way a lake should be. The lakes are entirely no-wake lakes and no jet skis are allowed. It is a quiet place to camp, fish, or canoe.

Anyway, it was after 7 when we got there, so we did not paddle much, just enough to get the boat christened again and to get our own feet wet. Still, that canoe will hum across the water, so we covered a lot of ground in the 45 minutes we were out on the lake. We paddled into a lake sized cove and saw a muskrat diving nearby. I'm not sure what he was diving for, but he did not seem bothered by us. I saw one of the largest herons I've ever seen-that sucker had an 8 foot wingspan, at least! On the way back to the dock, a mallard hen with her crew passed us going in the opposite direction. It was good to get some upper body exercise, and of course, just be out in the natural world. On the way back from the lake, just before dark, we saw a fox run across the road. If I absolutely had to ID it, I'd say it was a red fox, but it had enough gray on it to make me really wonder if the two species interbreed. I've only seen a few foxes in a my life, so every sighting tells me that they are still a viable predator in this area.

Speaking of predators, it seems I have a something eating my hens(2 lost to date). No, I don't think it is the young hawk that has refused to leave the nest area. I believe it is a possum. The attacks happened at the same time both days(yesterday and today), at the same place, and I found the carcass at the same place. It all happened in the chicken run, which is dog proof, but not coon or possum proof. Yesterday, the bird was about half eaten, and today the bird was almost picked clean the way raccoons eat. However, raccoons like the crop, and this predator left the crop. Today's predator ate all the meat, most of the innards(except the crop). Leg bones were cleaned down to the feet. The head was still attached, but barely, as the neck bones and the neck itself was all but gone.

I suppose the predator could also be that feral cat. I don't know. As of today, I have 25 birds in the main coop, and 9 roosters in the old coop waiting to be put in the freezer. We are now in a poultry fortress lock down, and the birds won't have access to the moat until I think the coast is clear. Just in case you are unfamiliar, the 'fortress' is a 8x25 chicken run made of 2x4 wire with rabbit wire at the bottom, metal siding at the bottom(to prevent digging), and 2x4 wire covering. It is not snake or weasel proof, and a small possum might be able to get in. It was designed mostly to prevent airborne predators and canines. It is the best I can do right now. The coop is 8x9 and can be totally locked down, but the bird have to be able to walk around outside some. It is too hot for them to stay in the coop all day, but I will lock them in at night. Stay tuned.