A Very Wabi-Sabi Christmas

So I haven't blogged in a while. My lack of a camera is partially to blame, combined with a complete lack of focus, blog-wise. I think the biggest problem is that my blog, as a true reflection of me, is prone to run off in all directions, down every rabbit hole in pursuit of strange interests, obscure facts, and forgotten crafts. I have a collection of unfinished blog entries about coracle-building (see picture below), cooking with beans, and mead-making, just to name a few.

A coracle: Is it a boat? Is it a basket? Answer: it's both!

So I'd been taking some time off from blogging to wait for a theme to come to me, when my friends turned me on to the Japanese aesthetic philosophy of Wabi-Sabi. When I first heard someone make reference to it, I assumed they were talking about a Japanese cowboy, or mispronouncing "wasabi." Then I took the time to look it up online and found this wonderful essay from the annuls of the Internet, posted ages ago by who-knows-who, on a website called NobleHarbor.com. I don't know who to attribute it to, but here's the introduction:

"Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It's simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came."

Wabi-sabi pottery. The pots' flaws reflect the unique character of the craftsman and the process of their construction.

This may sound a little bleak to some. As Americans steeped in a culture that celebrates youth and newness and all things cutting-edge, we don't often like to be reminded of "the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death." Yet, it is this process that has fascinated me even since my teen years (admittedly, I was slightly goth), when I first discovered Zen Buddhism and began my search for a spiritual discipline that I could identify with. Years later, I'm still searching - but at the heart of my daily striving is the practice of mindfulness, or a constant, wakeful awareness of what I am doing at any given moment. Through mindfulness we develop a deep appreciation for the here-and-now, for in each moment lies the seed of our future activities and the fruit of our past actions. I am sitting in school because a thousand small choices led me here, and because I am sitting in school, someday I will be treating patients (I hope). We see the origin of our choices, our growth, and even our eventual decay and death. It may sound morbid, but it's not: because we will die someday, we are motivated to savor and celebrate every moment of our lives. We make the decision to be happy now.

Ikebana - the Japanese practice of floral arrangement - strives to recreate the accidental symmetry and balance of nature.

On Wikipedia's page about wabi-sabi, I found this great phrase that came to me like a revelation -- the theme for my blog. "Wabi-sabi represents liberation from a material world and transcendence to a simpler life." I LOVE that phrase: "transcendence to a simpler life." In this country, we tend to accumulate more and more baggage as we age: debt, material stuff, and our own stereotypes about the world. Wabi-sabi is about recognizing that, indeed, we cannot bring these things with us into the next life, and that all of the crap we gather around us are merely borrowed and will eventually pass into others' hands. We may keep only our experiences, and even those will die with us -- unless we share them with others.

So this blog is about my attempts to transcend into a simpler life. It's about becoming rich with experiences while finding ways to be more frugal in the material sense. It's about creating objects by hand and being present for their conception, their use, and eventually their decay. While Zen is often thought to condemn attachment to any kind of material objects, wabi-sabi expresses "...the idea that being surrounded by natural, changing, unique objects helps us connect to our real world and escape potentially stressful distractions." (Wikipedia). Food can be applied to wabi-sabi, too -- wabi-sabi is slow food, grown with love and cooked with care so we may recognize and respect the cycles of growth and death that continue to sustain us. And it's about sharing my thoughts and experiences with others so that any useful bits of knowledge I come across may serve as seeds for ideas and take on new life in the minds of others.

This Christmas, I'm celebrating wabi-sabi by making my own gifts by hand whenever possible or shopping on etsy.com. I'm striving to give objects with their own unique history that will age gracefully and be treasured for years to come. Let me just say, it's incredibly difficult to think of a wabi-sabi gift for a ten year old boy, but gift-giving should be a challenge -- and I don't mean challenging in the sense that you should have to knock down other shoppers at the entrance of Walmart on Black Friday, but a challenge to find something that will truly be loved by the receiver.

Crocheted wabi-sabi mitts, made for a very special someone!

Harvesting Wolf Peaches

In the course of my random research, I learned that tomatoes were once called "wolf peaches" because it was thought that the tomato, being a close relative of the deadly nightshade, was poisonous. For years after Cortez brought them from the New World to the old, tomato plants were grown only as novelty plants in royal gardens. Eventually, some brave soul must have decided to eat one, but it wasn't until the late 1800's when Joseph Campbell introduced his famous tomato soup that the plant's popularity really took off in America. Its high acid content also contributed to its popularity; it was a perfect candidate for another relatively new innovation: home canning. Since then, people have been cultivating tomatoes in every state, and the different cultivars reflect the characteristics of the regions they were diligently bred and developed through the painstaking process of selective breeding.

Cortez's wolfpeaches were probably a bit like the cherry tomatoes I pick every day -- small in size but tasting exactly like what they are -- little drops of sunlight and rain perfectly ripened on the vine. I've been using them to make salsa, pasta, and most recently panzanella (Tuscan bread salad). It's probably one of my favorite things. It was a big hit at our weekly dinner party and I promised I'd share the recipe, so here it is:

2 C cherry tomatoes, halved (or regular tomatoes, diced)
1 large cucumber, sliced (I used two cute little ones from my garden)
2 day-old baguettes, cut into bite-sized pieces. Or, you can use fresh baguettes, cubed and toasted in the oven at 400 degrees until slightly crisp.
1 small red onion, sliced thin
1 C basil leaves, chopped
1/4 C grated parmesan

Dressing:
Balsamic Vinegar
Olive oil
Sugar
Salt & Pepper

Toss all the salad ingredients together with the dressing until well-mixed. Serve at room temperature.

I borrowed this picture from another website because I forgot to take one. But if you do it right, it should look like this lovely photo!

Over the course of the summer, I've learned a lot about how tomatoes (and other plants) grow and what they need, what I want to grow again and what plants seem to just take up space. From where I stand now, in the middle of harvest season, I can say enthusiastically that my first garden has been a success, but I know what I'm going to do differently next time.

One of my mistakes that annoys me most is that I didn't grow a good, high-yielding, standard-sized tomato. I love the flavor and instant gratification of my cherry tomatoes, but their scope of use is pretty narrow. The same qualities that make them so delicious for eating fresh make them unsuitable for sauce or preserves - being composed mostly of juice and seeds, there wouldn't be much left of them after skinning, coring, and boiling them down. The romas I'm growing are great for sauce, but not much else. They are so dry and mealy the idea of trying to eat one fresh is actually pretty gross. And, Brandywine tomatoes are unmatched for flavor, but they are low-yielding, difficult to pick, and split if left too long on the vine. Purple Russian was pretty useless all-around, though the few that I did get to eat were tasty, juicy, and had a very interesting purple/forest green color that I've never seen in another tomato.

Purple Russian Glamour Shot - This is the stock photo they show you in seed catalogs! You can see a couple of my Ruskies in the very top image - not as purple as they appear here.

Bottom line: next year, I will be growing exactly one cherry tomato plant (probably Peacevine again -- I love it!), and I'll probably skip Brandywine tomatoes entirely. Even though I love their pretty leaves and their amazing, pumpkin-sized pink fruits, they just take up so much room for relatively little payoff. Instead I'm going to grow one nice, mid-sized heirloom. And, in spite of my love for the unusual and old-fashioned, I'm going to give in and grow some hybrids that will give me the yields I need to make all the trouble of canning worthwhile. Some pictures from one of my canning adventures:


Some things I've learned about tomatoes:
- "Crack Resistant" is a very good quality to look for, lest you be stuck with five 1-pound tomatoes that are rapidly splitting and oozing all over your hands as you're trying to pluck them from the vine. On the plus side, many surprise spaghetti dinners have started this way.
- Earliness is a nice thing in our short-season climate, but when you get a picture-perfect summer like we had, slow-maturing tomatoes are supposed to be of better quality.
- Heirlooms are great, but there's a good reason hybrids exist: they mature faster, produce more uniform fruits, have greater disease resistance, etc. etc.
- You probably don't need more than one cherry tomato plant in a small garden.

So that's my two cents. Oh, and after an entire summer cooking with tomatoes I've decided my favorite way to eat them is still like this: cut tomatoes and some good mozzarella into quarter-inch slices. Layer with fresh basil leaves on a pretty plate and sprinkle with sea salt and fresh pepper. Enjoy these marvels of selective breeding and think of that brave 16th century dude who dared to eat the first wolf peach!

Rites of Summer

What a magnificent weekend I had! Like many good ideas, these plans were conceived while chatting over a beer with friends at Elsie's, our neighborhood bar/bowling alley. Lisa, my friend, fellow archer, and intrepid camper, suggested that we take a trip to Devil's Lake in Wisconsin, to check out the sites in that area. We drove up on Friday and camped in Devil's Lake State Park, where we weathered a pretty significant night-long thunderstorm in our new tent (an MSR Mutha Hubba, which is worth every penny and more), and managed to stay relatively comfortable and dry. The next day dawned clear and bright and after the purchase of some trusty Aqua Socks, we met up with more new friends and took a trip to Pewit's Nest Nature Area, where we hiked/slid/swam down a series of waterfalls. I didn't get to take a picture, but an image search for Pewit's Nest yields a lot of stunning results, like this one:


As if that outing wasn't inspiring enough, our next stop was Dr. Evermor's Scrap Metal Park, where we walked amid hundreds of brilliant sculptures of birds, robots, and the Forevertron, the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world, which looks eerily like a doomsday device that's fallen into disrepair.

Sunday was beautiful, and we set out on what was intended to be a "short, easy" hike, which took a turn towards "long and difficult" when we failed to find the actual trail entrance (I blame the map's lack of detail) and somehow ended up hiking bits and pieces of pretty much every one of the interconnected trails on the bluffs and cliffs above Devil's Lake. Even though we probably looked a little out of place as we scrambled and picked our way up and down the jagged rocks in swimsuits (me) and cowboy boots (Travis), some of us pausing for smoke breaks (Tony) along the trail, the hikers outfitted in all kinds of fancy gear couldn't have had more fun than we did. While the highlight of Travis' hiking experience was probably when we spied a baby red squirrel eating a giant red mushroom he held in his little person-hands, I think my favorite part was sharing dizzying vistas high above the treetops with the circling turkey vultures at a natural rock formation called Devil's Doorway, or maybe identifying the myriad mushroom species we spotted in the damp leaf litter along the trail.

Devil's Doorway and the Lake below. None of these photos are mine, unfortunately! I'll try to post some of our pics soon.

Today I realized it's the last week of July already, which means the end of "High Summer" and the beginning of Lammastide. As many of you know, in spite of my lack of affiliation with any organized religion, I take a lot of pleasure in practicing the ancient rites associated with the turning of the seasons. The transition of High Summer into Lammastide (or Harvest Time, if you prefer) is marked by the Pagan holiday of Lammas, or Loaf Mass, on August 1st. Several years ago, I wrote a little book as a resource for myself or anyone else who enjoys celebrating these holidays, and this is an excerpt about Lammas:

"Nearly every culture throughout history has traditions and rituals tied to the harvest. After all, the survival of an entire community relied on the success of the harvest and whether or not there was grain enough to see them through the lean times of winter. In our modern world, where food seems to appear spontaneously upon grocery store shelves, it is easy to forget that what we are eating had its origins in the ground. Lammas is about remembering that it is essentially the Earth that gives us life, and our survival.

Around the same time that Lammas was being celebrated in Europe, on the other side of the world, the Hopi Indians celebrated the Green Corn ceremony in order to give thanks for the harvest and to purify themselves for another ritual year. People cleaned their homes and fasted in order to cleanse their bodies and spirits. According to Kavasch & Baar, “Renewal and forgiveness were, and continue to be, the touchstones of the Green Corn rites.”

Lammastide begins during the last week of July. This is a good time to go camping or to take a trip to the country in order to witness first-hand the bounty nature gives us at this time: the corn ripening in the field, flowers beginning to go to seed, baby geese nearly grown and readying for their first autumn migration... It is hard to imagine that winter lurks right around the corner, but the days are already getting shorter and soon it will be time for children to start preparing to return to school. Hence, it is a good time to clean the house and to purify one's space by burning sage and incense. Decorate with fresh summer flowers. Spend some time in the garden on the day the feast shall take place, meditating on the delicate and miraculous balance of life on earth, and giving thanks for the things that grow and sustain us. If no garden is available, visit the local farmer's market and appreciate the bounty displayed there. On the eve of the celebration, burn ceremonial incense and allow no harsh electric lights to be used after 6pm. Bake a bread man as described in Aereaus' diary entry*, including (if possible) herbs harvested from the home garden. Serve a special dinner whose menu includes many other items from the garden (or local farmer's market). During the ceremony, toast to long life and continued prosperity, break the bread man and, during the meal, reflect on the high points of summer."

*A bread man is a loaf of bread, baked with the first grains of the new harvest and fashioned into the shape of a man. This loaf represents the grain/solar god of ancient Europe, who is thought to give his life every year as a sacrifice for our continued survival.

A depiction of Lugh, the Grain God, being sacrificed at the harvest.

This Lammas dinner, I will certainly have a lot to reflect upon! Visiting friends and family, pursuing my passion at school, and spending long days in the woods - it's been quite a summer.

A Tour of my Garden

After a brief blog hiatus, I am back and ready again to share my escapades. As usual, most of them are food-related.

Julie's kitchen herbs: creeping thyme, sage, lemon grass, and chamomile, to name a few.

Let me start by saying the garden is looking amazing these days. The peas are mostly done, but still pop out a pod here or there, which I usually just eat right off the vine. I made a few mistakes with the peas -- the biggest being I didn't plant enough! Also, I've learned that peas, being one of the first plants to send out sweet, succulent shoots during a time when relatively little else is growing, are irresistible to rabbits. After trying every other method I could think of (predator urine, some organic repellent called "Bunny Barrier" that I'm pretty sure was composed of the ground-up carcasses of other rabbits, CD's on strings, pinwheels, and chili pepper spray), I've resigned myself to the fact that a physical barrier is the only surefire way of keeping bunnies out. Julie thinks chicken wire is ugly -- and I agree -- but my small yield was probably due to the fact that the bunnies all the leaves as soon as they emerged from the ground, and it took the poor plants at least two weeks to recover and grow new ones.

Julie's black violas - small but striking.

Anyway, the peas are done, the kale is getting woody, the spinach is long since past and the lettuces are bolting, but that's okay, because the leviathan squash plant that was once an innocent little seedling in my windowsill has completely taken over that part of the garden.

"Oak Leaf" lettuce, getting ready to bolt. The giant leaves in the background belong to the encroaching yellow squash.

Cucumbers are climbing, and thorny little junior pickles are happily multiplying.

Fair Physalis, or "Peruvian Golden Berry" Groundcherry, loved by me and every Japanese beetle in the garden.

My groundcherry, the mystery fruit that nobody can tell me much about, is putting out delicate, lantern-like husks every day. Its leaves are downy-soft and it has morning glory-esque black-eyed flowers; it would be a wonderful ornamental if the Japanese beetles hadn't completely disfigured it! Also, the plant receiving more light seems to be doing better than those subjected to some shade - a note for future groundcherry gardening.

Calendula (aka: "Pot Marigold") on the left of the path, and regular marigolds on the right. Calendula is a great companion plant for just about anything.

Calendula is a workhorse of a flower and I pick handfuls of blossoms every other day, which are currently drying in my kitchen (calendula is good for making soaps and ointments). I started these indoors from seed, and they took off magnificently in the border as soon as I planted them.

Basils - "Purple Ruffles" on the left and Holy Basil on the right. Its flower spikes attract pollinators.

Basil is another plant I can count on to harvest every day. We have about seven varieties, but I really only end up using the purple ("Opal" and "Purple Ruffles") or basic Italian ("Italian Large-Leaf") varieties on a regular basis.

"Peacevine" cherry tomatoes - so-called because their high antioxidant content is supposed to foster a feeling of inner peace!

The real show-stoppers right now are the tomatoes. They are beastly. My two cherry tomatoes ("Peacevine" is the name of the cultivar) are becoming downright problematic. They refuse to stay in their cages, sending out new runners faster than I can prune! Their taste is phenomenal - the best cherry tomatoes I've ever eaten. I'll for sure be growing them again next year, but I won't be putting them in a position where they can shade other plants, like my poor, stunted peppers. My "Calwonder" organic bell pepper has yielded exactly one pepper, "King of the North," zero, and my random purple pepper doesn't even have a flower. The jalapenos are doing well -- I'm sure the squirrel that tried to steal one now thinks twice about messing with this potent little plant!

"Early Jalapeno," flanked by "Siam Queen" and "Opal" basil. The basil is a good companion plant for peppers and tomatoes, and looks pretty in the border.

"Purple Russian" is the ugly stepsister of the group, with her curled leaves and stringy stems, and yet she is flowering and setting fruit just as reliably as the much prettier "Brandywine" plants that I lovingly started from seed.

Brandywine, thought to be one of the best-tasting tomatoes, is also the prettiest!

They have "potato-leaf" foliage, and our neighbor admitted she didn't know what they were until they started flowering!

"Roma" tomatoes -- an old stand-by with loads of pear-shaped little fruits.

"Roma," the only hybrid I'm growing, is producing almost as prolifically as my Peacevines, which surprises me a bit since I started the Roma seeds as a bit of an afterthought, and they're about two weeks younger than the other tomatoes I started from seed. I've been feeding every other week (or when I remember) with "Mater Magic," and watering only when the plants start to look stressed. I have quickly become convinced that Mater Magic is indeed magic, especially when combined with all this heat, humidity, and rain that we've been getting this summer!

Above is a typical day's harvest for early July. We're just starting to get summer squash and there's more basil than we know what to do with. As we transition into the hottest summer days, we say farewell to salad season and eagerly anticipate pestos and marinaras to come!

Bikes!

My new bike project, a 1970's Steyr-Daimler/Puch.



My Old refurbished 1981 Schwinn Caliente, the "Schwinn Goose:"



Inspiration for the Schwinn Goose:

My Mormor, touring in Europe in the 40's!

May Day and First Harvest Recipes

Anyone who lives in Minneapolis should know a thing or two about May Day, but for my far-flung friends who may be reading this, let me give you a brief description (I apologize - I didn't take any pictures this year). Every year around the first of May, 70,000 people from all walks of life turn out for the parade and festival in the Powderhorn neighborhood of South Minneapolis, which is put on by Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater. Heart of the Beast is well-known for their incredible floats and giant puppets constructed entirely from trash and reclaimed material, made by hundreds of volunteers. While they put on an AMAZING Halloween show every year, they're probably best-known for their May Day parade (the biggest in the country!), which involves an awe-inspiring number of people-powered floats, art bikes, masked children, and musicians. It's a spectacle that weaves threads of political activism, tolerance, and good old fashioned Pagan values into a cloth that any aging hippie would be happy to make a poncho out of. Sometimes the metaphors can be hard to decipher, but there's always a moment or two that manages to bring my heart into my throat. One year, it was a long-haired boy on stilts pouring a fistful of seeds into my hands. This year, it was the roar of the crowd building as they rowed a canoe with a giant, flaming sun to where we waited on the shore. Why, do you ask, would this mean so much to me?

May Day, or Beltane as it was traditionally known, is a Pagan celebration honoring the return of the fertile half of the year. In Ireland, this (warning, nudity and fire is involved) is what they do, which is considerably more exciting than anything we have here, but in Minneapolis, May Day has a special meaning - the parade is the first big, outdoor celebration that brings everyone out of the woodwork and into the streets, and there's always this sense of deep camaraderie that pervades over everything else. It's a sense of, "We put up with months of the nastiest weather seen in any American city for this -- good people, great events, amazing bike trails, and flowers everywhere!" When they carry that giant, papier mache sun across the lake in Powderhorn Park every year, it basically signals the triumph of light over dark and the passage of yet another winter.

Everything in the garden is growing well, in spite of a powerful little cold-snap that brought us sleety snow only a night ago. My tomatoes are outgrowing their setup in my kitchen and I'm anxiously awaiting a stretch of warm days so I can start to put them outside. After the purple leaf scare I repotted them and gave them a light feeding of some stinky organic stuff called "Mater Magic." They've since shot out in all directions and are full-fledged "plants" now rather than "seedlings." I'm preparing to give the peppers the same treatment and I'm hoping they'll thicken up a bit when they have more room to stretch their roots. My alpine strawberries are looking cute and are unstoppable now that they're potted up. During their hardening-off stage, they've taken considerable abuse from the wind and rain and rapid temperature changes, and I fully expect them to thrive when I can finally plant them out. I read that, having been started early, they might fruit the first year. Our standard-sized strawberries (purchased as plants from Home Depot) already have a few green fruits. It's been so long since I've had a fresh strawberry... I'm watching those little plants pretty closely!


Today we celebrated our first "harvest," working together to bake up a delicious rhubarb crisp (recipe courtesy of Penzey's Spices), boiled dandelion greens, some amazing tempeh burgers, and a single morel mushroom I found growing under the tree by my patio. We were so impressed by the size of the rhubarb leaves we decided they'd make lovely hats, which we wore throughout the entire cooking process!


The Leafy Bonnet Rhubarb Buckle Recipe

4 cups chopped rhubarb
1 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup oatmeal (old-fashioned or quick, NOT instant)
1 generous tsp. cinnamon
1 stick butter, melted

1 cup white sugar
1 cup water
3 Tbls. cornstarch
1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 350° F.
Grease an 8″x8″ baking pan or 9″ pie plate.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, brown sugar, oatmeal, cinnamon, and melted butter. Mix together with fork or fingers until it forms crumbs. Press half this mixture into the greased baking pan for the crust. Spread the chopped rhubarb evenly on top.

In a small saucepan, combine the white sugar, water and cornstarch. Cook over medium heat until it forms a clear syrup, stirring frequently, about 4-6 minutes. Add the vanilla, stir, then spread over the rhubarb and crust. Cover with the remaining oatmeal mixture.

Bake at 350° for 55 min. to 1 hour. (until rhubarb is bubbling and topping is nicely browned). Take it out of the oven and look as pleased with yourself as I do here.

Another great recipe that takes advantage of an early-maturing herb is chicken-in-a-biscuit -- vegetarian style, of course! My mother used to make this recipe when I was growing up and it's still a fun and easy comfort food.

Chickenless Chicken-in-a-Biscuit

2 packets neufchatel cheese, softened to room temperature
4 veggie chicken filets (I use Quorn naked cutlets) or 4 boiled chicken breasts, chopped
1 small bunch chives, minced (I usually use about the equivalent to 1/2 serving of spaghetti noodles - I have problem with measuring after they're all minced!)
2 tubes refrigerated crescent rolls
Salt and fresh-ground pepper, to taste

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees or according to the directions on the crescent roll package.

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine cheese, chicken, and chives. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Roll out the dough and separate into rectangles (2 crescent rolls), placing onto well-greased baking sheets and pinching together the perforations where necessary. Spoon filling evenly among the eight rectangles of dough and join the sides to form neat little pockets. Pinch the seams closed. They can also be frozen like this ahead of time to be baked when needed. If you want to add some extra calories, you can brush the tops with melted butter.

Bake for 20 minutes or until the outsides of the biscuits are golden brown and flaky.

Trial & Error

"Spring break" is over and it's back to the daily grind at school -- if you can call it that! I'm taking a light course-load in hopes of catching up on the more "practical" side of my education. So far, each trimester I've loaded myself up with as many credit hours as I think I can possibly handle, and as a result I feel like I've definitely set myself up to graduate way ahead of schedule. However, the time that I've spent observing the doctors in clinic, making herbal formulas, or actually sticking needles in people, is negligible by comparison. My goal is to start seeing my own patients in the fall, and I want to be as comfortable with my technique as I can before I find myself face-to-face with a stranger in a blue gown trying to figure out what I'm going to do next!


Spring in Minneapolis continues to be beautiful. Each day imparts its own tiny miracles; each day I enjoy the products of sunshine, rain, and the rich black soil that this part of the country is famous for. Observing the yards on my block (like my neighbors' above) is like watching a slow-motion fireworks display; one week, it's the tulips bursting into bloom, then the magnolia trees with their papery blossoms, and the crab apples, sour cherries, and finally the lilacs, making the whole neighborhood a heavenly-scented landscape of pastels. I can't even get over it; I think we Minnesotans appreciate it doubly because winter is so drab and miserably cold. That first day it stays above forty degrees we're out on our bikes, hot on the trail of the first robin of the season.

Our garden is actually starting to look like a garden! The peas are about six inches high, and the first batch of seedlings I started indoors were planted out on April 15th. So far, I haven't lost one! The leafy brassicas lead the pack: kale, spinach, lettuce, and radishes are in the ground, and will be keeping us in salads for the next few months to come. The carrots are coming up, trying to gain a foothold among the weeds. On May 1st, the next batch of babies will have their turn. Creeping thyme, echinacea (which haven't been doing much since the hardening-off phase began... I'm hoping they're putting their efforts into growing some good roots rather than just dying slowly), sweet alyssum (my first plants to bloom!), and spearmint are next, along with some seeds.


Meanwhile, under the growlight, my tomatoes and peppers are doing their best to recover from my first (noticeable) newbie gardener mistake. Amidst all my efforts to provide the adequate balance of light and moisture, I somehow overlooked the fact that a plant's gotta eat something. When I potted up all of my tomato guys, I put them in the same seed-starting mix that I'd planted the seeds in to begin with. At first they were happy. Then I noticed they were starting to turn purple. I thought it was sort of pretty, until the purple progressed into a much sadder yellow, and finally an alarming black on the tips of their leaves. I looked into the problem on GardenWeb and found out that purpling means they're not getting enough phosphorus. It's not a very common problem because most gardeners know enough to realize that growing plants need nutrients, and pot them up in garden soil, or compost. I promptly repotted them in a mix of potting soil and regular dirt from the yard, and now I'm watching them change back to a nice shade of green.


Gardening, like life, is a process of trial-and-error. No matter how much you read or how much advice you seek, you still have to make your own mistakes and find your own way. So far I've learned:

- You can never have enough room under the grow lights. Therefore, grow only what you really want! Some plants are not really worth all the effort because it's easy to buy satisfactory varieties at garden stores at a relatively low cost. Seeds worth starting indoors are things you can't find anywhere else: rare varieties, medicinal herbs, and plants where only organic will do. I'm glad that I'm growing "Rugen" Alpine Strawberries and horehound inside, since I can't find them anywhere, but in retrospect I wish I'd sought out some more exciting pepper and squash varieties since I think I could pretty easily find the same one's I'm growing at any Home Depot.

- Indoors is no substitute for out. Even the best indoor conditions are likely to yield seedlings slightly inferior to those started outside, as nature intended. The grow lights seem bright, but one or two little bulbs are nothing compared to the natural light of the sun. Seedlings started inside also tend to get crowded and pot-bound, and stressed from all the moving and fussing they are often subjected to.

- Don't mollycoddle your seedlings too much. Every day I try to prepare them for the conditions they'll be facing when they're actually outdoors. I start hardening them off way before most books have told me I'm supposed to - exposing them to the elements a little at a time - so that they're fully acclimated by the time I'm ready to plant them in the ground. I also read that it's a good idea to shake, flick, or otherwise harass your growing seedlings to mimic the movement of the wind. My tomatoes - purple leaves and all - are growing really thick and stocky stems as a result of this treatment. They're going to be good little fruit-producing soldiers when they get out into the garden!

Me and an alpine strawberry seedling!

Ostara, Easter, and Engagement!

What a wonderful spring it's been! I could not be happier with the weather, my neighborhood, or the miraculous way things have unfolded, both in the garden and in my life. My pea plants have been emerging, poking through the soil beneath their little make-shift cloches cut from salvaged two-liter bottles. Their neighbors the carrots -- at least, I think they're carrots -- are popping up, along with some kale seedlings, while indoors, everything under the grow lights is absolutely -thriving- ... except the lungwort and shiso, but I'm trying not to give up on them yet. I just transplanted some of the kale and lettuce I started inside into their own pots, and divided the tomatoes. It's always hard to decide which seedlings are the fittest and which ones get pinched. It makes me feel guilty, snuffing out that little baby plant life when it struggled so hard to pop out of that seed! I've been saving some of the best seedlings I had to pinch, pressed between the pages of my giant copy of "Guide to Country Living." I'm hoping to make a great gardening journal to document all of my experiments and then I'll glue some of those failed seedlings inside.


So if the recent explosive popularity of fantasy and comic book-inspired movies is any indication, I'm not the only one craving a little magic in this era where dealers of technology are constantly waving the latest imagination-crushing gadget in our face, trying to tempt us with promises that we can "watch YouTube on a horse." Man. If I have anything you could call a religion, I can safely say that watching YouTube on a horse, while riding on a beautiful beach for God's Sake, would be a mortal sin. But anyway, in this world of iThis and Twitter-that, I find it nice to practice the old rituals that our ancestors have observed for thousands of years. Ostara is one of my favorites. Falling on the Spring Equinox, it's a fertility festival in the purest sense, a celebration of the returning light in which the dark half of the year gives way to the time of planting and growth. In pre-Christian times, the ancient Europeans would celebrate the rebirth of the sun god, who dies every year at the end of the harvest season only to be born again with the return of Spring. It's probably more than just a happy coincidence that the sun god of Ostara (which should be sounding a lot like "Easter" to you by now, both in name and tone) should happen to share a rebirthday with Jesus Christ; after all, it's a good time of the year to be reborn. We are reminded that just as the Earth itself "dies" in winter and is "reborn" in the spring, birth and death are not permanent conditions but merely part of a larger continuum that we can't completely understand. My favorite Buddhist author, Thich Nhat Hanh, comes close to describing the mystery in his typically simple/beautiful fashion:
"One day as I was about to step on a dry leaf, I saw the leaf in the ultimate dimension. I saw that it was not really dead, but it was merging with the moist soil and preparing to appear on the tree the following spring in another form. I smiled at the leaf and said, 'You are pretending.'"
This past weekend, we celebrated the Easter side of things at Travis' parents' house in South Dakota. There was a delicious strawberry-spinach salad and the best damn veggie korma I've ever made, followed by a surprise marriage proposal! It was a surprise even for me (Yes -- I was the one who did the asking!) at Rumors, in Madison, while Travis' friends' band, The Coltcockers, were playing. Many of Travis' friends were in attendance, back in their hometown to celebrate the holiday, and the mood just seemed strangely perfect. I yelled, "We should get married!" over the music, and Travis responded with something to the effect of, "There's a microphone right there. Why don't you ask me for real?" And the next thing I knew, I was on the stage, asking him, blurting out something in front of everyone about how much I loved him blah blah blah... I don't remember the details because I was pretty much overcome with a deep and terrifying sense of, "Oh God, what am I doing!?" But he said yes. And even though it wasn't planned, it didn't involve a trip to any exotic destination or even a ring, I feel like it was very much in keeping with how we like to live (spontaneously) and how much we love our friends and our family.
We're engaged! And not very photogenic, apparently.

The Garden Begins!

Last weekend, we celebrated the unseasonably warm weather by starting work on our garden. I've pretty much given up on the idea of forest gardening at my own apartment; the space we have to work with is extremely small and barely gets any sunlight during the day. What little gardening I do at home will probably be purely aesthetic in nature. However, we're lucky enough to have two of our best friends -- Julie and Tony -- living a mere six blocks away from us, and they have a huge, gorgeous space for gardening that they've generously offered to share. As we've been working on getting it tilled and laid-out, curious neighbors have all come out of the woodwork to give their two cents, and all seem happy that we're returning the space to its former glory. We had mentioned that the soil is unusually rich (especially for the middle of a city lot!) and one neighbor told us that, years ago, the whole neighborhood was an apple orchard. Really though, this is amazing soil. It looks better than the bagged stuff we've been bringing in! The weeds sure have been loving it. Common mallow has pretty much taken over the entire back yard, and some of the suckers have been a real challenge to pull up. I'm sure that we'll be in for quite a battle as the weather continues to get warmer.

So, since Julie and I each have a different gardening focus this year, our garden is going to be dual-purpose; Julie is working on growing culinary and medicinal herbals, and I'm growing mostly vegetables -- which is sort of backwards, considering I'm the one going to school for Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine! My goal is to test out different growing techniques on a small scale. Some things I'd like to try:

- Companion planting

- Succession planting

- Natural fertilizers

- Growing native plants to attract pollinators

Here are some of our veggies, herbs and flowers, growing happily under the growlights.

I initially tried to use all-natural materials (in this case, peat pots) rather than flats made of plastic, but Julie's seedlings seemed to be thriving better than mine in a Burpee grow system, so I bought one of those when it went on sale. Here's Julie's flat of seedlings. The zucchini are getting a little leggy and out of control...

I also have an interest in putting our plants to use in more than just salads -- not that I don't love a good caprese salad on a hot day. Some things I'd like to try:

- Herbal remedies (both based on TCM principles and my own hodgepodge of collected knowledge). For instance, I really want to make my own horehound cough syrup and lozenges, but rather than the usual recipes that include only horehound and sweetener, I want to include some Chinese herbs, like balloon flower and astragalus.

- Herb-infused vodkas and vinegars. A place in town makes a mean basil vodka martini. I will definitely be trying to make my own basil vodka

- Herbal Teas (This is more Julie's area of interest than mine)

- Plant-based dyes

I'll be sure to share all of my successes (and failures!) as the summer comes and goes. Here's a picture of our garden, all laid out and ready to go:

We've been creating our stepping stones from salvaged pieces of paving material from around the neighborhood, and the pea pyramids are from tree prunings. I think they have a very nice Blair Witch sort of feeling.