There's a Book for Everybody

My son is exclaiming and sharing all that he is learning in his new all time favorite book ever, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From the Living Dead, by Max Brooks. Since getting the book on Tuesday, he has learned about Marshall Law, learned the gun terms caliber, magnum, and knows exactly what to do in case of a zombie attack--as you might guess, you should already have a plan...

Yesterday, my daughter came down the stairs, tears streaming down her face, quivery lower lip and sobbed, "Jack is dead!" Poor, poor Jack, Laura's dog, dies in By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My daughter cried for him as we talked about how guilty Laura had felt for not petting him more. We agreed that maybe she should go and pet our 23 year old cat. That would maybe help her feel OK.

I am hunting down vermiculite on line as they don't have big enough bags of the stuff in any nursery or gardening center around here. Why do I need a big bag of vermiculite? Because I am making a raised bed for vegetables and using the approach outlined by Mel Bartholomew in his book, All New Square Foot Gardening. With this approach, I make a soil blend and one third of it is vermiculite. One third is peat and another third is a mix of different types of compost. Because of the third compost, the garden is wonderfully fertilized and is truly organic. Hurray! I'm reading the book and tracking down my supplies.

My husband is reading about baseball or bicycle repair or VW bugs, or something that has a thing as its subject. You can't escape that if you're an industrial designer.

One time my husband and I were in an old post office and when we got out of there, my husband asked me if I had seen the very elaborate system they had for opening the windows that were high up. I guess there were bars and pulleys and cords and I hadn't noticed any of that. Not only had I not noticed the means for opening the windows, I was only vaguely aware that there had even been windows. I don't go around reverse engineering the world as my husband does and I rarely raise my eyes more than 20 degrees above the horizon--if that.

My husband was a bit surprised by that--how can you not notice if there are windows or not? I don't know. How can you not notice a tone of voice or a facial expression and how that contributes to communication? Hmmmmm?

All this to say, there is a book out there for everybody.

Happy reading!

The Birds Have Flown the Coop, Final Robin Update

This is a long overdue post about the robins that built a nest right on our living room window. The kids and my husband and I have been watching them over the past few weeks and seeing how the chicks were cared for and how they developed.

In my last post, I showed you the nest filled with four eggs:

I know that I saw at least three chicks being fed by both the mom and dad. Finally, I saw that all four had hatched out.

The parents were always around, coming and going to keep their growing brood fed. They were also very protective. I photographed them quite a bit, and I tried to be as unobtrusive as I could. I didn't want to freak out the parents. But, every once in a while, I was just too close for comfort and the mom or dad would try to dive bomb me. They would fly in my general direction any way with a mean look on their face. I can't blame them.

They also repeatedly chased squirrels out of the yard. Squirrels that, to me with my unaware human eyes, didn't seem to be doing anything egregious.

Here, you can see one of the chick's heads peeping out over the edge of the nest. They're still so little a this point.

They were fed constantly. And, when they weren't being fed, they were being sat on and kept warm.

Somehow, all four birds got fed, even with bigger ones trying to get a bigger share. Egalitarian birds, eh? How humane of them...

No!! Don't go!

Feed me, Seymour!

The birds grew with the constant care from the parents.

Look at the downy feathers on the tops of their heads. They're starting to get pin feathers too.

They're a bit bigger here.

At constant watch.

Hi guys!

There's your dad or mom right above you.

Look how big they are! How can you all squeeze into that nest/mud cup?

Notice the orange on the breast.

A few days after I took that photo, we noticed that one of the chicks was gone. And then another, later on the same day. And, by nightfall they had all left the nest. All that remained was an empty nest with some poop...

I took the nest down...

and threw it into the compost bin.

A nice ending to the beautifully constructed nest the robins lovingly built for their brood.

Good luck, little robins! We're glad we knew you when.

Compost Happens

Yesterday, I turned the contents of our newly constructed compost bin (by the way, thanks son, daughter, and helping husband). I took a pitch fork and brought the wet, moldering, brown leaves from the bottom and turned them over the freshly cut grass that my husband had earlier dumped into the bin. I saw some of the food scraps that hadn't broken down completely yet--sweet potato ends and onion skins and banana peels. But, I can also see that the process has started.

There are worms everywhere--they're loving it.

I know, at some point, that the internal temperature of the pile is supposed to heat up and it can even smoke. It will be cooking, but it's not quite there yet.

Do you compost? Where do you put your compost once it's sweet and ripe? Do you turn it often, or do you just let it slowly melt down, doing its own thing?

I am a bit awed that I can just throw any vegetable matter into a bin and will get a loamy dirt after a few months. To me, that is simply amazing.

Do you know The Weavers? They were a folk group that included Pete Seger and other fabulous signers. These were the kind of singers who have voices like bells; just beautiful to hear their harmony.

Lee Hayes, one of The Weavers, kept a compost bin. And, upon his death, his ashes were scattered on it and mixed in, just as he wished. I think that truly expresses the idea of dust to dust; ashes to ashes. We all melt into the earth when we go. What a great compost pile. What a nice way to become part of the garden he loved.

Here are The Weavers singing, Irene Goodnight.

Plans for Spring

Do you have any gardening plans for Spring? We are just starting and we really don't know what we're doing.

I have planted perennials in the past. Things like lavender and echinacea and some ubiquitous suburban hosta. I've planted tomatoes and zucchini and even a pumpkin vine that, unbeknownst to us, went shooting into the neighbors' yard where they very kindly mowed around it until we found out about it and saw that the only pumpkin was growing over there. We pulled the vine through back to our side and it grew a teeny, tiny green pumpkin that eventually blushed a little orange on one side. Poor thing. We've never really had a sizable vegetable garden.

This year, we want to grow tomatoes--lots of them. I want to make my own tomato sauce, catsup, pizza sauce, etc. I want to grow Napa cabbage to make more kimchi. Can I just say here that the kimchi I made is positively delicious? My gut flora thanks me every day. I want to grow lettuce and peas and zucchini and perhaps some broccoli.

I want to make a raised bed and enrich it with compost--as soon as we have some compost with which to enrich it. We want to make a compost pile with which to enrich our garden.

Inch by inch and row by row, gonna make this garden grow...