http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bCUZX6g8BM&feature=related
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
2011 Reading List thus far
Because gardening just isnt' enough...
January- Life of Pi, Shining City (a play), Ruined (a play); The Sunset Limited (a novel in dramatic form)
February- Nobody Move (a novel); Vagabonding (travel stories/advice)
March- The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific (travel story); Pillowman (a play); Assorted Malcolm Gladwell articles; Anthem (a short novel); Still Life With Woodpecker (novel)
April- Promethea: Book 1 (Comic); Batman: Killing Joke (Comic); Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah’s Beard (Travel/History); assorted Stephen Jay Gould essays from Eight Little Piggies; assorted issues of Spawn (1-6) (Comic)
May- What Is The What (a non-fiction novel(yes))
June and July- Getting Stoned With Savages (travel)
July- Waiting for Godot (a play)
August- Mountains of Madness (story by H.P. Lovecraft)
"A voice from other epochs belongs in a graveyard of other epochs. As it was, however, the noise shattered all our profoundly seated adjustments- all our tacit acceptance of the inner-antarctic as a waste utterly and irrevocably void of every vestige of normal life. What we heard was not the fabulous note of any buried blasphemy of elder earth from whose supernal toughness an age-denied polar sun had evoked a monstrous response. Instead, it was a thing so mockingly normal and so unerringly familiarized by our sea days off Victoria Land and our camp days at McMurdo Sound that we shuddered to think of it here, where such things ought not to be. To be brief- it was simply the raucous squawking of a penguin."
-H.P. Lovecraft, excerpt taken from Mountains of Madness
January- Life of Pi, Shining City (a play), Ruined (a play); The Sunset Limited (a novel in dramatic form)
February- Nobody Move (a novel); Vagabonding (travel stories/advice)
March- The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific (travel story); Pillowman (a play); Assorted Malcolm Gladwell articles; Anthem (a short novel); Still Life With Woodpecker (novel)
April- Promethea: Book 1 (Comic); Batman: Killing Joke (Comic); Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah’s Beard (Travel/History); assorted Stephen Jay Gould essays from Eight Little Piggies; assorted issues of Spawn (1-6) (Comic)
May- What Is The What (a non-fiction novel(yes))
June and July- Getting Stoned With Savages (travel)
July- Waiting for Godot (a play)
August- Mountains of Madness (story by H.P. Lovecraft)
"A voice from other epochs belongs in a graveyard of other epochs. As it was, however, the noise shattered all our profoundly seated adjustments- all our tacit acceptance of the inner-antarctic as a waste utterly and irrevocably void of every vestige of normal life. What we heard was not the fabulous note of any buried blasphemy of elder earth from whose supernal toughness an age-denied polar sun had evoked a monstrous response. Instead, it was a thing so mockingly normal and so unerringly familiarized by our sea days off Victoria Land and our camp days at McMurdo Sound that we shuddered to think of it here, where such things ought not to be. To be brief- it was simply the raucous squawking of a penguin."
-H.P. Lovecraft, excerpt taken from Mountains of Madness
Monday, August 15, 2011
Veg Feasts(or, if you will, minor snacks)/Affairs in the Kitchen: 2
Late-night snack: fried tofu dog diced up with leftover restaurant potatoes and avocado over whole wheat pita bread spread with artichoke hummus. I slept like a baby that night...
I had thought of this all day while working in the field. A wonderful post-work meal! (stir fry is simply made up of Braggs' marinated tofu, slice zucchini, and snap beans)
Complete (and almost perfect) vegetarian whole wheat pizza
Before baking (topped w/ mozzarella, diced romas, and black olives)
Sauce fixins' (diced homegrown zucchini and romas, onions, garlic, basil, and oregano)
Homemade whole wheat pizza dough
I had thought of this all day while working in the field. A wonderful post-work meal! (stir fry is simply made up of Braggs' marinated tofu, slice zucchini, and snap beans)
Complete (and almost perfect) vegetarian whole wheat pizza
Before baking (topped w/ mozzarella, diced romas, and black olives)
Sauce fixins' (diced homegrown zucchini and romas, onions, garlic, basil, and oregano)
Homemade whole wheat pizza dough
Organic Backyard Garden 2011: Week 12
Tripod/Richard Nixon Rosita Eggplant
So much food... I'm beginning to experience the problem that many have warned me about. Namely, HOW CAN I USE ALL OF THIS? My philosophy on this is as follows: Use what I can, when I can. If I can't use it immediately, store for no more than 3-4 days, by which point I will have either thought of a meal to incorporate it with, OR find a new home for it (my dad, my coworkers, my mother's coworkers, etc...). If this does not succeed, there is always the Sacramento Food Bank, where I dropped off a large paper bag full of assorted veggies which I surely wasn't going to be able to eat before they went bad. And hey, at least someone in need will be eating them! And, most importantly, (I assume) they will not go to waste (ie- in the trash).
If all of this fails, and I forget or neglect some produce which then begins to turn, I have been chopping every bit of it up for either composting or worm bin food- both of which will eventually return to my soil.
Sunflowers
Rosita Eggplant
New plants... autumn sage!!
So much food... I'm beginning to experience the problem that many have warned me about. Namely, HOW CAN I USE ALL OF THIS? My philosophy on this is as follows: Use what I can, when I can. If I can't use it immediately, store for no more than 3-4 days, by which point I will have either thought of a meal to incorporate it with, OR find a new home for it (my dad, my coworkers, my mother's coworkers, etc...). If this does not succeed, there is always the Sacramento Food Bank, where I dropped off a large paper bag full of assorted veggies which I surely wasn't going to be able to eat before they went bad. And hey, at least someone in need will be eating them! And, most importantly, (I assume) they will not go to waste (ie- in the trash).
If all of this fails, and I forget or neglect some produce which then begins to turn, I have been chopping every bit of it up for either composting or worm bin food- both of which will eventually return to my soil.
Sunflowers
Rosita Eggplant
New plants... autumn sage!!
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Backyard Garden 2011: Week 11
Some thoughts over the past few weeks
Bees about. The deepness of the violets and purples of the Ichiban and Rosita eggplants.
The brightness of Sweet 100 tomatoes.
Anticipation for my first taste of my roma tomatoes, soy beans, and rosita eggplants.
The smell of the worm bin- seeing all of the life fostered in it, and knowing that the waste is not going to the landfill, and is instead going to feed my garden and soil in future seasons.
The simple joy of picking this season's first pole beans. It occurred to me, while fixing my eyes to a particularly bulbous bean deep within the recesses of the bean plant jungle affixed to a wire fence, that we are amazingly adapted for hand-eye coordination. I did not have to plan my attack, nor did I have to constantly refer back to bean, hand, bean, and then hand again to determine the trajectory which my hand should take to acquire the green morsel. Instead, I was so simply able to stare at the bean, jut my hand through the fence hole, and, without accidentally nabbing a single leaf or errant bean or stem, navigate through that jungle and affix my hand to that single bean that I'd been staring at. Simple, yes. Amazing, still a yes.
Anticipation of cantaloupe!
Relief at seeing new Beefsteak tomato growth!
Excitement at thinking of a fall/winter garden with a bit more experience under my (proverbial) belt.
The second application of organic Bloom feed to the garden, as well as the application of organic treatment for the aphids on my sunflowers.
Stoked!- Soy Beans, ahoy!
Soy Beans
Incoming Rosita Eggplant!
Bees about. The deepness of the violets and purples of the Ichiban and Rosita eggplants.
The brightness of Sweet 100 tomatoes.
Anticipation for my first taste of my roma tomatoes, soy beans, and rosita eggplants.
The smell of the worm bin- seeing all of the life fostered in it, and knowing that the waste is not going to the landfill, and is instead going to feed my garden and soil in future seasons.
The simple joy of picking this season's first pole beans. It occurred to me, while fixing my eyes to a particularly bulbous bean deep within the recesses of the bean plant jungle affixed to a wire fence, that we are amazingly adapted for hand-eye coordination. I did not have to plan my attack, nor did I have to constantly refer back to bean, hand, bean, and then hand again to determine the trajectory which my hand should take to acquire the green morsel. Instead, I was so simply able to stare at the bean, jut my hand through the fence hole, and, without accidentally nabbing a single leaf or errant bean or stem, navigate through that jungle and affix my hand to that single bean that I'd been staring at. Simple, yes. Amazing, still a yes.
Anticipation of cantaloupe!
Relief at seeing new Beefsteak tomato growth!
Excitement at thinking of a fall/winter garden with a bit more experience under my (proverbial) belt.
The second application of organic Bloom feed to the garden, as well as the application of organic treatment for the aphids on my sunflowers.
Stoked!- Soy Beans, ahoy!
Soy Beans
Incoming Rosita Eggplant!
Monday, August 1, 2011
A Morning in the Sierra
Relaxing while reading Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, listening to water crashing and swirling down the rocks around me.
Backyard Garden: Week 10
Compost, two different stages, 3 months in...
Worm bin, 2 1/2 months in. I'm loving not only the sense that I'm helping to create new and healthy soil amendment for the next seasons, but also in the fact that I've created an ecosystem for dozens of lifeforms in this very container.
A Beautiful Harvest
Soy Beans
Backyard Garden: Week 9
A filthy gardener with his first carrot. ...Yes, I know...
Beefcake? Beefsteak!
Mavras peppers. Pretty tasty, rather small (at least in pepper terms), and with only a mild head.
Pole Bean flowers
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