Lifescapes

Getting Started

 

I planted broccoli and tomatoes in seed trays a couple of weeks ago, and planted up the broccoli yesterday, in homemade paper pots. I always plant too many seeds: going to start practicing some discipline here. But tomatoes are so tricky here in Central TX: I want to do several varieties, to see if I can find one that's early enough to get a decent crop before summer's heat. Last year: 55 days of 100-degrees+, which is a record. And the drought continues.

Today, I'm planting a few horseradish roots in the garden. One of my favorite herbs, and very easy to grow. Multiplies like crazy, though, so be careful where you put it. It'll be there for a long time. Longer than you want, maybe.

I spoke yesterday at Zilker Gardens in Austin, to the Austin Herb Society. Wonderful food, great audience. I practiced my Shaker talk on them: "Earth's Rich Bounties: The Shakers and Their Herbs"--one of the talks I'll be giving on this year's book tour. Penny Appleby helped me sell books, with the proceeds going to Story Circle--we sold nearly $900 worth! Thanks, all you Austin herbies, from me, and from Story Circle. I had a great time.

Books and writing. It's catch-up week. I've just finished reading/correcting the galleys for Together, Alone, and am working on the copy-edited manuscript of The Tale of Applebeck Orchard, both out in September. (Two books in one month: that'll keep me busy!) I've also been learning to tweet on Twitter. (I know, I know, but don't blame me.) I've even managed to post the Twitter links to this blog, so you can read them either here or there. I'm using Twitter to spread the word about the upcoming book publications, and to share some of the material from China's website. I've also been over at Facebook. Busy. Hoping to get back to Holly Blues this coming week.

Books and reading: Finished William Catton's Overshoot (difficult, conceptually challenging, a paradigm-shifter that should be read by every single citizen of this earth) and have started Michael Pollan's Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, which is considerably easier and more enjoyable to read.

Reading note. As most gardeners will testify, the desire to make a garden is often followed by a desire to write down your experiences there--in a notebook, or a letter to a friend who gardens, or if, like me, you make your living by words, in a book. Writing and gardening, these two ways of rendering the world in rows, have a great deal in common.--Michael Pollan

At the edge of the woods

 

Summer before last, it rained. And rained and rained. And the daffodils loved it. They haven't had much rain since (only about 17" in the past twelve months), but the bulbs seem to have plenty of stored-up energy from that long-ago rainy July. The blooms are beautiful this spring, all along the edge of the woods. Behind them: a dark, dense thicket of elbow bush (sometimes called Devil's elbow, for its habit of snagging you as you try to pass), dogwood, redbud, poison ivy, and Texas mountain laurel. The ground is covered with a thick brown litter of oak, hackberry, mulberry, and elm leaves--the trees that make up the woods. We've never tried to "cultivate" or "civilize" this bit of woodland: for me, it's a small fragment of true Texas wilderness, a remainder, reminder of the larger wilderness that is now gone.

Wild things in our woods: Last night, an armadillo blundered out of the trees when the dogs were out for their "last call," resulting in much chasing and loud barking. Rabbits live there, too, and raccoons and possums and squirrels (a nuisance, and worse, at pecan-harvest time). Coyotes and feral pigs and deer pass through along the creek--a dry creek now, nothing like the lovely, brimful creek you can see in the photo (top left) on the blog. A few years back, a hawk built her nest at the top of the mulberry tree and raised three babies: I saw them, one forgettable evening, peering down from the nest, their fuzzy yellow heads sunlit. Another day, through the binoculars, I watched her feeding them bits of green snake--delicious, to judge from the way they gobbled the pieces. There's a lot of wildlife in our woods, and I cherish each glimpse of it.

Remember the project I mentioned a few weeks ago? Peggy and I have finally finished it: a complete makeover of the Story Circle website. A huge job--we started the website back in the late 90, and (a dozen years later) it was in serious need of reorganization. Check it out. SCN is a unique organization, and I'm very proud of the efforts of so many women, in support of women's stories. You're always welcome to join us, you know. It's easy. You can find out how, on the new website.

Gardening. It's planting time for spring gardens in central Texas. I've put in snow peas and English peas, fava beans, more spinach, carrots, beets--early stuff. The seed potatoes are ready to go in today. Under the lights: broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes. Our last frost: mid-March. First frost: mid-November, which gives us an 8-month growing season. But we can garden year-round, if we plan for it. It's better if we get decent rains, of course.

Books. I'm wrapping up An Extraordinary Year, which has turned out much differently than I expected. I'll submit it, but without expectations. I've changed this year: I've learned new things that have altered my view of the world and the way I see myself in it. Truly an extraordinary year, but I'm not sure whether this makes for a book people will want to read. We'll see. Next on the to-do stack, for the coming week: galleys for Applebeck Orchard and Together, Alone.

Twitter. I'm not a huge fan of "social networks," but they're helpful in putting out the word about the books. I have a new Twitter page: www.twitter.com/AboutThyme. I'll be posting herb lore, facts, and info several times a day, with links to various parts of my website. I'm pleased with that site (thanks to Peggy's good work) and want to share it.

Reading note. The survival of wilderness--of places that we do not change, where we allow the existence even of creatures we perceive dangerous--is necessary. . . Every farm should have one; wildernesses can occupy corners of factory grounds and city lots--places where nature is given a free hand, where no human work is done, where people go only as guests. These places function, I think, whether we intend them to or not, as sacred groves--places we respect and leave alone, not because we understand well what goes on there, but because we do not.--Wendell Berry, Home Economics

Broccoli beauty

 

I started these plants from seed at the end of July and left them under a fluorescent light with a home-made self-watering system through August, while I was gone (thereby demonstrating to myself that I don't need to hover over my babies). They went into the garden in September, and began producing at the end of December--would probably have produced larger heads if we'd had more winter rain. This is the second crop: lots of stir-fry in our future. I'll cut these off further down the plant--maybe they'll crop again. I've seeded another batch for transplanting in late March. For more than you want to know about broccoli history, lore, and nutrition (lots of Vit A and C, calcium, folic acid, even some protein), go here.

Also in the works: I'm presprouting seed potatoes, have turned over the potato bed, and hope to get potatoes in the ground by the end of the week.

Still no rain--some on the way as a Pacific front comes through this evening, but we're not expecting much. It's going to take several long, strong rains to replenish the ground water and restore the aquifer. Too much residential building in our area, too many wells--aquifer levels are dropping here, and so is the pressure. We're not on the Edwards, but on the Trinity, which (in our area, anyway) has never been very productive.

Hill Country gardeners/locavores, I've been thinking of organizing a Yahoo group for us who are crazy enough to want to try to produce some portion of our food here in the Hill Country, where gardening is a serious challenge. If you're interested, please leave a comment. Or if you know about an ongoing group, let me know.

Book stuff. I'm still editing my way (this is the final pass, I hope) through An Extraordinary Year, which I hope to finish in a couple of weeks--working every day on it. Pitched another mystery project to my editor and am waiting to hear. Times are very tough in the publishing business, so I'll understand if she has to say no and extraordinarily privileged and grateful if she's able to say yes. If it's a yes, you'll be the first to know, I promise. I'm beginning to think book promotion thoughts for the year. Bill is going with me on the April tour: TX, VA, PA, OH, KY, IN. If you're in the neighborhood of one of our stops, please drop in and say hi.

Reading note: In  my view, homeland security derives from having enough potatoes.--Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

 

Cabbage

 

Lots of leaves, not much cabbage head (the winter has been warm, and the garden didn't get watered over the holidays). We're eating the tender leaves (not the older, tougher ones). We like them (sliced thin) with potatoes (also sliced thin and sauteed or steamed), carrots (also from the garden), sliced sausage (low-fat kielbasa), plenty of garlic, a spoonful of balsamic vinegar, tumbled together in the skillet with beef broth or what-have-you. A hearty winter supper, with hot bread.

More garden stuff. I've been spading the beds (we now have five raised beds (one 4x16, four 4x8), adding compost and manure (donated by our pair of cows--not milk cows, mowing machines). Planted spinach, more carrots (never too many carrots), radishes for Bill, two rows of edible pod peas, two rows of fava beans.

If you're in the Austin area: I'll be speaking at the Austin Herb Society's Herb Seminar on February 21. Details here. The topic: Shaker herbs--that's Shaker, as in the religious group that grew and marketed herbs in the nineteenth century, and collected and recorded a great deal of information about American wild-gathered medicinal plants. (I say this because somebody emailed me the other day, wondering what kind of herbs you shook out of a shaker.) China's new mystery, Wormwood (out in April), takes place in a fictional Shaker village in Kentucky.

More book stuff: I'm on Twitter now (at the urging of book promotion guru Dani Greer), @susanalbert. I don't have time for a lot of social networking (if I did it all, I'd never have time to write!). But with the book tour coming up, it seems like a reasonable thing to do. I really need to get back to Goodreads, though--had a lot of fun over there last spring. Three books coming out this year (Wormwood, The Tale of Applebeck Orchard, Alone Together: A Memoir of Marriage and Place), so I need to put on my book promotion hat and get my act together.

Reading note: When we comprehend our actions over time, we see what we do in terms of a story. . . As we move forward from yesterday to today to tomorrow, we move through tensions building to climaxes, climaxes giving way to denouements, and tensions building again as we continue to move and change. Human time is a storied affair.--Dan P. McAdams

Garden stuff

 

From my fall garden, I learned that root crops (carrots, beets, parsnips), cabbage, and broccoli do well here. We're carrot lovers and could eat them at every meal, so they'll be a garden mainstay from here on out. These went into slaw and soup and were especially good steamed, with ginger and a little butter.

Interesting thing about broccoli: in the supermarket, we can buy only the flower bud--the rest of the plant goes to waste. But the leaves and stems are tasty: chopped, cooked in olive oil with garlic, onion, and a splash of balsamic vinegar--salt, pepper, hot sauce to taste. The chopping goes faster if you roll the leaves first. Good over pasta. My cabbages are slow to head up (not enough cold weather, I suppose), but the leaves make very nice cabbage rolls. 

Dry, dry, dry. I can water the garden, but there's nothing I can do for the fields and trees, which are suffering. Central Texas is going through the worst drought since the 1950s. There's been almost no rain in 17 months, and the weather folks have changed our category from "extreme" to "exceptional," the worst in the country. Most of the creeks are dry, our little lake is dry, and our rancher friend Dolly has sold off half her cattle: there's just no grass. Our cows are making do now, but unless we get rain soon, they'll be in trouble too. Nothing on the horizon, either--the La Nina "event" in the Pacific is sending our normal late-winter rains elsewhere.

Writing: I'm going back through the entries in the journal/book I wrote in 2008, getting it ready for UT Press (due end of March). Another couple of weeks on that project, then back to China's Holly Blues, for a final edit. I've started a new journal for 2009: calling it "Mosaics." I'm using a software program called LifeJournal that I purchased through a Story Circle link (which means that Story Circle earns a bit through the purchase). I like it very much, especially the "topics" feature, which lets me tag every entry (and parts of entries) with a topic--then I can search later, by topic. If I'd had that for the 2008 journal, it would have saved me an enormous amount of work. If you're interested in the software, please check it out through the Story Circle link at the bottom of the home page on our book review site.

Reading note: Until I moved to western South Dakota, I did not know about rain, that it could come too hard, too soft, too hot, too cold, too early, too late. That there could be too little at the right time, too much at the wrong time, and vice versa. . . I had not realized that a long soaking rain in the spring or fall, a straight-down-falling rain, a gentle splashing rain is more than a blessing. It's a miracle.--Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography