Duendesday: New Duende Order

{a day to check in with a 10 yr old’s doings}

It’s officially official – She’s 10! WOWZA! Where did all that time go?! And why couldn’t each phase, each age, just been a little bit longer…she is marvelous and we love to watch her grow but it still has a bit of sadness with it. My little babe is a lovely young peach.

It was a great birthday weekend (she said it was the best she could remember!) – thank you to all who celebrated safely with us. It was so good to see Dave & Pear (we were getting used to seeing them at twice a month or so throughout the year, this was the first we’ve seen them since February!), the girls have such a good time playing together (like country mouse and city mouse) while the ‘adults’ get into animated and enjoyable discussions about history/philosophy/politics, and eat good food – this birthday I made D a big Pink Panther cookie (at least she could see the Pink Panther in it – ha!). And Nana, Uncle Cameron, & Angela came for strawberry cake the next day to blow out the candles and open presents. Duende’s dream came true when Nana got her a couple of little ‘confetti cannons’, too (she loves confetti, I mean, it’s a little crazy – ha!).

As for those presents – she was ridiculously happy to get a disco light that hooks up to her music (matching flashing pulses – ow!), and her own handcrafted hammer for her projekts, and to make sure she’s not using it for rocks we got her a rockhounding kit (bag, book, rock hammer/chisels, jewel loupe, goggles, whistle with compass) and some other goodies.

The big present was a 10gal fish tank – resplendent with castle, glow plants, and then Glofish – however, (and yes we set it up 24 or so hrs in advance) the first batch died within hours. Oh, how my peach cried. So, we got another couple of Tetra skirtfish after ‘more’ advice, adding some beneficial bacteria and they died by bedtime. Then we did more research and found that ‘New Tank Syndrome’ can be a thing, and you can either treat it with an ammonia/nitrite (which are toxic to fish) fixer or you can keep sacrificing fish until the beneficial bacteria overpower the bad. I wish we would have known about the former instead of basically the store’s recommendation to do the latter – it seems like a better solution for children and fish, if you ask me. Though the treatment takes longer, it seems kinder all around – hopefully the next couple of fish in a few weeks make her happy. I should’ve just got her a karaoke machine.

All in all, it was a good birthday. She’s outside making ‘potions’ now, I’m sure soon she’ll come in for a smoothie (we’re all smoothie obsessed in here), and request some family game time…10 it is, so 10 it must be. ❤

Homestead Happenings

We like ‘cracker day’ around here – Josh baking all the different flavors of crackers – Duende and I stealing them as we pass through. It’s always food food food around here – ha! And that’s the running conversation – food as health and medicine, food as politics, food sovereignty, local food, food as a family, preserving food – right now we are simultaneously having a conversation about how amazing the body is to break down the energy stored in your food to use (but only if you chew it and are able to process it – enzymes! prebiotics! probiotics! ooooh, metabolic processes…and versus a 10 yr old who thinks she can just chuck tiny cheese cubes into her mouth and swallow, like cheese vitamins, she used to do it with frozen peas when she was 3 – she decided she needed one a day, every day).

We are getting the fledgling chicks out in a daily playpen right now, too – they are loving it – they love to find a bug and then relay fight for it, they get so excited and animated. Hilarious! The tiny meatbirds are still too little, still cute and fluffy yellow, snuggled up together in the corner of the brooder. Meanwhile the chicken coop is coming along for the former and chicken tractor plans being made for the latter.

The garden is looking pretty nice, I still keep finding seedlings to throw in but the bulk of the planting is done for now. I may consider succession planting the green beans or replacing the peas with haricot vert in the near future (I’ve given up on brassicas/cruciferous – the cabbage moth/caterpillars and aphids really get to me, and my beets failed – or rather, I failed to keep them properly weeded and therefore competition-free) – though I have too many eggplant/gold – green – and cocktail tomato/lemon cucumber/celery/melons/orange bell peppers and still huge amazing summer and winter squashes that are no longer seedlings but full-on fruiting plants and still some companion plants – borage/marigold/johnny jump ups/basil…

Let’s keep crossing our fingers that the oven works another week – please feel free to share our soon to be desperate need and community building projekt for the Rock Bottom Homestead Hearth.

Monday Musings

Lost in the Milky Way

Some of us are like trees that grow with a spiral grain
as if prepared for the path of  the spirit’s journey
to the world of all souls.
It is not an easy path.
A dog stands at the opening constellation
past the great helping hand.
The dog wants to know,
did you ever harm an animal, hurt any creature,
did you take a life you didn’t eat?
This is the first on your map. There is another
my people made of  the great beyond
that lies farther away than this galaxy.
It is a world that can’t be imagined by ordinary means.
After this first one,
the next could be a map of  forever.
It could be a cartography
shining only at some times of  the year
like a great web of finery
some spider pulled from herself
to help you recall your true following
your first white breath in the cold.
The next door opens and Old Woman
counts your scars. She is interested in how you have been
hurt and not in anything akin to sin.
From between stars are the words we now refuse;
loneliness, longing, whatever suffering
might follow your life into the sky.
Once those are gone, the life you had
against your own will, the hope, even the prayers
take you one more bend around the river of sky.
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Recipe Thursday: Lemon Kale Salad

I joined a book club a few years ago. I knew better but I dream about compatriots that share the same sort of ideas I do and want to get together and talk about them. I was uncertain about this group – though they were all very nice and funny and smart, we were just very different. They had a way about them that I will never have, I can’t really articulate what way that is, I just know I don’t and won’t have it. Their ideas came from Atlantic Monthly and likely The New Yorker, mine come from anywhere and everywhere – the weirder the better. I stayed for about 4.5 books and then we parted ways. But up until our realization that we were not a good match, we drank some wine, ate some foodstuffs, and vaguely talked about the books we read.

I didn’t get any really good new authors out of our brief relation but I did get this salad. It’s so good. It’s crazy good. My child loves it, I love it – everyone who has tried it, loves it. It’s addictive – there is something about the massaging/salting/garlic & lemon process that makes it impossible to stop eating. In fact, if I ate this salad as often as I want to, I’d probably fit in an airplane seat better (not that I’m going on an airplane any time soon). It’s smashing – and holds up really well, even until the next day.

Lemon Kale Salad

Serves 4-6 as a side, unless you can’t stop eating it yourself

2 bunches Curly or Red Russian Kale (stems removed, ripped into bite-size pieces, rinsed)
a shake or two of Coarse Sea Salt
drizzle or two of Olive Oil
1 Tbsp minced Garlic (or more to taste)
2-4 Tbsp Lemon Juice (or 2 Lemons, to taste)
1 little tub (8oz) of Ciliegine Mozzarella Balls (halved, saving a little juice from tub)
2 cups (or 8oz) of Cherry Tomatoes (halved)

Optional (to make it extra sexy, though it doesn’t need it):
1 cup Kalamata Olives (pitted and halved)
1/4 cup toasted, sliced Almonds

The secret is really in the process: massage your rinsed/ripped leaves with a shake of Coarse Sea Salt and a drizzle of Olive Oil until you feel the leaves start to break down a bit (sometimes a little liquid is in the bottom of the bowl when you are done) – you don’t want them mushy but you want to feel them give (about 5 minutes of good rubbing).

Add all the other ingredients, stir, and taste for seasoning – feel free to add more lemon, garlic, salt to the bowl as necessary.

I think we’re going to put some Salmon steaks on the grill and eat this tonight! Enjoy!

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Tuesday To Happen

Oh, it is a lovely place to be these days – at Rock Bottom Homestead – and all the good things start to outweigh the bad (I’m convinced it’s in the New England water – the memory wiping of the Winter woes and the extra powerful elixir of the Summer loveliness). The butterflies are here (the Yellow Swallowtails arriving with the late Lilacs, Painted Ladies with the ‘Foils – Bird’s Foot Trefoil & Cinquefoil, and Monarch caterpillars on the Milkweed) – the Junebugs are here, the Lightning bugs are here, the Dragonflies have been here for a bit with the Hummingbird Moths – all lovely and amazing bugs to maybe make you forget about the bad bugs for a minute (Black/Deer Fly, mosquitos, ticks – just for a minute).

The Bee Balm is shooting straight up into the air like red fireworks this year, spreading like wildfire – soon the Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds will come and make their nest in the Willow tree above them. I hear Nuthatch, Catbirds, and Doves frequently, the Song Sparrow and Phoebe have already laid eggs and their chicks are off – and I just heard the crazy cry of the Pileated Woodpecker out back. The clover is growing at top speed – I’m foraging red, white, and pink for tea along with my bursting chamomile, a few random lovely mullein (the primrose has the year off), and awaiting the calendula. I should get out there and get some young raspberry leaves before they fruit. The drying racks are filling up with good stuffs.

And the shelves are filling, too! With whatever the Farmers Market is brimming with (and may I say, the FM here at Augusta is doing a great job at making it easy and safe to shop and support local living, I hear Portland is really good, too – please take advantage of all the hard work the farmers and purveyors are doing to get real food to you! I have to say, I think this shift has been good for my engineering our foodstuffs – I may never have to go to a big store again). This last week, basil, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, beets, scallions, rhubarb, and cukes are readily available. We made pesto pizza (with homemade ricotta and Maine Mushroom Co mushrooms), strawberry cake, pickles – all kinds of goodies!

Please don’t forget to check out and share (unfortunately for this endeavor we are not on social media, but if you are – feel free to pass us on!) our Community Hearth project – we think it’s a great step towards building new connections to our food systems and our peoples! The Queen of Scapes thanks you so much (as do we all)!

Monday’s Muse

During the blaze of noon, between two sumptuous thunderstorms, the mud of Russian roads serves as a drinking establishment for the male Blues, but not every damp spot is suitable; the intensity of visitation is determined by a certain average saturation of the soil as well as the greater evenness of its surface. On an attractive spot like this, with a round, runny border and a relatively limited diameter (rarely exceeding two feet), a group of butterflies settles at close quarters; if one startles the gathering, it rises en masse and remains suspended in a “sorting” hover over the given spot on the road, descending to it anew with mathematical precision….
Only the air cooling toward evening, or the arrival of clouds, puts an end to the banquet. I have had occasion to observe the presence of one and the same specimen of Meleager’s Blue sitting from eleven in the morning until a quarter to six in the evening, when the long shadow of a nearby oak had reached the very spot where, besides my friend and a few other engrossed Blues and a handful of golden adonis, there remained (from three in the afternoon) a small cluster of boyarishnitsa (Black-veined Whites), whose general appearance was reminiscent either of little paper cockerels or a regatta of sailboats heeling this way and that. In all those hours the composition and size of the gathering would vary and more than once I inadvertently shooed away my Meleager while fishing out some trifle I needed from the general heap.
Now, with the onset of shade, it would soar with elastic grace and, having chosen a bough to perch on — a choice not at all typical for Lycaena in a normal state, but quite characteristic as a temporizing maneuver for a butterfly that has left a “drinking place” — would settle on a Rubus leaf, as if hoping that the dusk and the chill were but the passing influence of a cloud and that, in a moment, one could return. In a few minutes I noticed that it had dozed off; with that, the observation ended.
~ Vladimir Nabokov

Tuesday Happenings

Sometimes the happenings are subtle – sometimes not. I’m reading this lovely book which channels the Japanese and Chinese calendar custom of tracking time via the changes in nature (the Japanese alter the classic Chinese, in lieu of their different weather/flora/fauna/environment and awareness/fashions) – the author tries to explain some of the enigmatic phrases which describe a 4-day ‘natural shift’ and compare them to her own experience in California’s Bay Area. It makes you think about how you would name your own 4-day stretches (from June 21-25, the book marks this time as when ‘deer breaks antlers’) – for us in our little micro-eclime, it might be when ‘all the roses appear’ (or rose chafers, depending on your attitude – little devils that eat everything – apple trees, lilacs, grape leaves – little jerks, though if I started on the bugs I could do a whole calendar for sure – just tracking the bug cycles – good and bad, mostly bad – around here).

But back to the roses – this property has rose abound. When we moved in there were many ‘cultivated’ roses – little red rose bushes lining the drive in a railroad tie bed with a trailing/climbing rose at the end that could make it up the railing (and eventually engulf the front door). I’m sorry to say, I am not a rose fan. They are thorny, high-maintenance, and only ‘surface pretty’, and there can only be one of me like that around here! We started finding more of them here and there in small gardens that needed tending (i.e. moved).

And then we realized that we were also surrounded by wild roses, in every thicket, along every wall, behind every tree – the tiny white wild rose (which bears no useful rose hips, creates hedges, chokes everything and is basically a giant weed). So we got the bright idea (ding! see the lightbulb?!) of using all the roses to ‘fence’/hedge in the front road line. It’s a busier road than we had anticipated and many people seem to think it’s a good place to throw trash (we’ve quite the collection of lottery tickets) and we don’t want our wandering chickens to wander into the road. They look lovely that way (though we keep finding more, and Josh trims great 2-story tumbleweeds every year and burns all the refuse despite the fact that they grow right back if you don’t keep an eye on them). I also envision a great Sleeping Beauty thorny hedge that keeps our little faerie land safe and sane.

May you be able to notice the subtle happenings in your life. It’s all in the details.

 

 

Monday Musings

Despite its so-called progress, our modern society tends to look back to a simpler time, even though pioneer days were probably harder and more isolated than life today. This yearning isn’t nostalgia, which is a longing for an airbrushed memory. It is a genuine subconscious draw to knowledge that has been obscured by innovation, progress, and improvement. We don’t need to remove or reverse modern innovation and give up our sidewalks and television sets and computers. What we need to do is discover how to connect in our modern environment to that earlier knowledge that is waiting for us to find it again.

~ Arin Murphy-Hiscock

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