Author / Sixer

by Sixer

Learning from Old Growth

As my first major task of the new year I cleaned out my garden, trimming down the hen-and-chick’s tall, hollow stalks; giving the Japanese maple a severe haircut; and trying yet again to kill the only healthy boxwood in the entire neighborhood – the one that insists on growing between my air conditioner and my house.

One of the many, many reasons I do not like the boxwood is that it gives the wasps yet another place to build their nests. I admire wasps in theory, but I do not like them buzzing around my garden, holding me hostage to fear. When they first started visiting my yard, before they actually moved in, they would hang out in the sunny patch right in front of my door, or buzz up loud as jumbo jets to peer into my bedroom window. This did not leave a very good first impression. Since they’ve started nesting they actually have become less obnoxious, but I still like to encourage them to nest on the other, uninhabited, side of the pond. So when I saw little papery pods on the hen-and-chick I gave a long suffering sigh and assumed it was those wasps again, trying to over winter. It wasn’t until I was stuffing all the rest of the yard debris into trash bags, and realizing just how many pods there were, that it occurred to me they might not belong to wasps at all. After all, bees also overwintered in gardens too. There had to be dozen of other very nice, mild creatures that needed warm places to stay in these cold, dreary days. So as soon as the yard was cleaned, and the bags were dumped, and lunch was devoured, I looked them up. With amused horror I present to you an ootheca of a tenodera sinensis, or Chinese praying mantis.

It's all natural styrofoam!

Yes. It’s an egg case. Each one can apparently hold between 10-400 eggs, which is a large factor into why I don’t feel too bad tossing them. There were well over ten of these babies in my small yard alone – just the idea of 4,000 miniature warriors swarming all over my front walk is enough to make me squirm a bit. Other factors to consider: the tenodera is not native to Maryland and some think it threatens to push out other species of mantis. They’re also big enough, as adults, to eat frogs (no!) and hummingbirds (I’m not the only one that finds this scary, right?). Of course, all these excuses aside, they are considered a beneficial insect and, too, it’s not a good idea to get into the habit of eliminating things just because they give us goosebumps. Still, the large likelihood that some pods missed my pruning and remain safely attached to the lavender, or rosemary, or maple tree makes it hard for me to feel guilty.

I do feel bad about being found so ignorant of my own little piece of dirt – I discovered a bird’s nest in the maple tree while pruning that I had no idea existed, even though the tree is so close to my front window its practically part of my living room. I’ve vaguely known, and have been happy to know, that the number of insects in my yard has been increasing over the past few years (most obvious in the number of pill bugs and slugs I discovered this spring). I saw a praying mantis or two near summer’s end and thought nothing of them beyond a happy remembrance of childhood past. I didn’t realize how much they’d had made themselves at home here. I want my garden it be a place of life, to be safe and inviting for most “creatures great and small.” But I have never thought through what it means to share my yard, or taken the time to sit and visit with all the new faces moving in. Great big tasks, like clearing up the yard, look excellent on the to-do lists, but where do we put all the little tasks we must first do to ensure the great ones are done to best effect?
Nobody home

by Sixer

Naturally, the Garden

I might not know where I plan to be in five years, or what path my career will take me by 2030, but I not only have plans for my 2020 garden I have already bought seeds.

2019 saw growth for myself, as gardener, in two ways: first, I was finally able to start sprouts successfully, managing to keep alive three Okinawa sweet potato slips and about two dozen seedlings. True, many didn’t survive transplanting, but the fact they died outside of the house, from something other than me forgetting to water them, feels like a level up. I also kept much better records than normal. Not perfect records. Not even complete-but-lacking-significant-details records. No, they petered out with the warming weather, leaving me little insight into how my garden works past May. But this is still significantly more information than I’ve ever captured before. I’m excited to improve further in these areas, and to add a few more to my tool belt. Top on my list to try out in 2020 is succession planting, which will require a number of changes in my attitude (and additional care in transplanting seedlings). Also, I plan to devote an hour a week, every Sunday morning, to garden tending – maybe if it’s on my calendar it will actually get done. And maybe if I keep up with it I won’t be so prone to negligence come June.

So, those are my two 2020 personal goals. My goals for my garden are even more ambitious. I really, really, really, want to eat more veggies this year and somehow this desire keeps getting tied into my garden plans. To be able to provide a good portion of my food needs from my own front yard is the distant Ultimate Goal that all other yearly goals point towards. To that end, this year I want to effectively use the spaces I’ve already established, rather than introduce more spaces I do nothing with. I do need to buy more soil and supplements to build up my first box’s soil, and I want to try out a few grow bags this year – especially for my sweet potatoes. But my growing plans are still as audaciously unlikely as ever. I’m starting a butterfly section near my front door which, to start with, is going to have bronze fennel, orange milkweed, and whatever extra marigolds I get to germinate. I also might stick a ground cherry in there, if I have space. Long term, I hope to have zinnias, cone flowers, and perhaps another perennial with the power to entice butterflies and bees (but not wasps). I’m also going to stick marigolds, ground cherries, kale, and lemon grass in my lower front window bed, which has historically been neglected. Both of these areas have uncertain to outright awful soil, and are going to be wedding nightmares. Scheduled weeding will be a must.

The main box is going to be my Succession Planting Learning Arena (SPLA).

  • Season one, spring: Kale, lettuce, beets, radishes, carrots, string beans
  • Season two, late spring: Cucumber, tomatoes, basil, marjoram, marigolds, okra, cilantro, string beans, carrots
  • Season three, summer: Peppers (sweet and spicy), nasturtiums, okra
  • Season four, late summer/early fall: Winter radish, squash, carrots, lettuce, kale, beets, cilantro, garlic (from grocery store bulbs)


And then, finally, in the half barrel I’m trying out …… peanuts! They should be a lot of fun, especially since I went ahead and ordered the striped variety. Extra peanuts and peppers will, hopefully, go into grow bags.

Even if I fail miserably to reach my goals, it’s going to be a very, very yummy year.

by Sixer

Granola

Where did it start, this search for the great granola? A few years ago, for sure. Sometime before I stumbled across She Who Eats’ amazing blog, with its thorough analysis of flavours and ingredients. I used her matcha granola as a template for years, whenever I got tired of thinking about breakfast and wanted something quicker. I needed granola when I was making my own yogurt, as an excuse to continue the exercise. And then, just this year, in February, I had the idea for a granola bar. The idea . . . well, it was a good rough draft we shall say. But not something publishable. And anyway I found the best wheat cracker recipe shortly after and that fixed me as far as on-hand snacks went.

But still. Granola.

It ought to be so simple – crunchy clumps of goodness. Not too sweet, not too bland. And yet it stays out of reach, with recipes resulting in a kind of sugar coated crumble: great for sprinkling over things but not quite satisfying to eat. Too sweet, really, for breakfast every morning, or for an early evening snack. Not even Cooks’ Illustrated could break the mold of mediocrity. So when I decided to go off wheat this month, and therefore give up my beloved crackers, I knew something had to change. And so I changed it. The result: practically perfect. I mean, there are changes I have to make, and also changes  I want to make. But the basic essence of this is golden. If you have an afternoon, please try it out, make it your own, and tell me how it works for you.

Glorious Granola  – adapted from She Who Eats

  • 3 cups of oats
  • 1 cup of pumpkin seeds, the roasted and shelled kind
  • 1 cup of sesame seeds and sunflower seeds (in whatever proportion you wish. My sister requested less sesame)
  • 1 cup chopped dried fruit (I used mango and ginger. You’ll probably want to increase this to two cups)
  • ~ 1/3 cup sugar (I used Jaggery (which comes in chunks – I blended it), so this number is something of a guess)
  • 1/2 cup oil (you can probably reduce this to 1/3)
  • Vanilla Extract
  • 1~1 1/2 cup brown rice (hot from the pot, or else microwaved with a bit of the oil)


Put oven at 250 degrees and toast the oats for about 30 minutes

Mix together all the fruit and nuts and sugar (Obviously you can put whatever of these you want in – the above is just what I had on hand. I would probably put the sugar and any other flavorings right into the rice mixture next time). You can put some of the oil here, but this too I think could be put all in the rice mixture. When the oats are almost ready, blend the hot rice, oil, and vanilla (and possibly salt) until a smooth, thick liquid emerges. It takes a minutes or so. Pour this over the nuts et. al. Add the hot oats and mix it, mix it, mix it. You want everything to be perfectly combined. Press it into the bottom of a lipped pan. Go and wash the vessel you blended the rice in before it cools and becomes glue.

It takes about 50-65 minutes to bake. Halfway through pull out the pan and flip the granola over, breaking it up a bit into chunks, to ensure it dries out on both sides.

Let cool and enjoy!

by Sixer

On a Snowy Morning

 

It’s not the first snow of the winter, but it is the first snow of the year.

A thin blanket for a cold, cold beginning. There is something sad about it – is it the gray clouds which even now hover over the new-made world? The occasional gust of the wind, making the lonely chime sound its solitary note of cheer? Maybe it is the slight wish that this present had come not so close to Christmas, not so close to a time when presents are so plentiful.

I am off today. Off because of the snow. Yesterday was my first day back, and today is, now, another day off. I will enjoy today, but I will feel a bit guilty about it. I think this sums up my relationship with joy fairly well. If there really were a cosmic balance, a giant scale by which happiness and misery were dolled out,  what would I have in store for me but misery, in this life front-heavy with blessings? Misfortunes have been like lemons in a pie. How sweet, still, the sum of the parts!

2017 has been a well balanced, wholesome year. Less pie and more biscotti-with-whole-wheat. The theme has been, sometimes too overtly, community. This was the literal theme for my church’s women’s committee (“living in the light of community“). And the inferred dream of all the up and coming adults in the area. Two different bible studies were started this year, each at a different church. Each by different personalities, with different life experiences. Yet each established with the desire to build relationships with more people, and to build more people’s relationships with God. In the midst of all this, the Geekette established a new weekly tradition: dinner, Stargate, and excellent conversation. All theses things have been a peculiar kind of blessing for me. A direct answer to a prayer I made in 2015.

Answered prayer is kind of like a fulfilled wish list at Christmas. You look at your new treasures and wonder “Now what do I do with you?” Often, I think, when we ask for things – spiritual or otherwise – we only imagine having or receiving and we fail to fully think about using or living with. And this has been my experience with community this year. In bible studies, home, and at my church, I have suddenly found myself in that net of relationships that extends far under the surface of every group, like tree roots. Or mushrooms. And now that I am finding myself a part of it, I wonder what I’m supposed to do. What does a root do? It gathers what is necessary to grow and nourish the tree. Not by creeping up to the surface – which is rather my instinct, to find the light and be visible, to be the tree – but by functioning where it is placed, whether that’s rich or poor, loam or sand or clay.

Or, to summarize, though this year has been the year of community, the lesson I think I’m supposed to learn from it is the same lesson I have always resisted learning. Be still and wait.

Though the same, in looking back, I seem to see a nuance to this message which I have never noticed before. Or, perhaps, noticed only by its absence. The root does not wait, inactive, but rather waits through action. Its stillness is the quietness of living, content, not the motionlessness of death. And the waiting is not an impatient desire. An hourly frustrated expectation. The root, in its slow absorption of water and nutrients,  experiences the tree’s future second by second. The waiting is not for something to happen, but for what is happening to continue. The stillness is not in defeat, but in complete assurance that victory is present even here. Even now. Does the root have a certain point to which it desires the tree to grow? And does it chafe and fret if the tree grows slanted, towards the sun, or twisted in the wind, or thicker than its estimated girth? To wait is to live not just in expectation but in the daily fulfillment of that expectation. It is not a hope based on the whim of wishing, but one proved each day. Best seen in hind-sight, of course, but still there to be seen if one looks. To be still and wait is to look for God and to see Him, and to live looking and seeing.

I’m hoping that 2018 will teach me about friendship; about reciprocity, and thinking of others, and thoughtfulness in general. But if the lessons on being still and waiting are to continue I would not mind either. What once I considered boring I begin to find enticing. The meekness that once seemed incapable I now suspect is the most confident of all. If I could be still, in living; if I could wait, in the midst of achieving; if I could thread each day through the weft of God’s promises, instead of tossing them away like stray ends, or storing them up against some coming time – what need would I for pie to make life’s lemons sweet to me?

by Sixer

Na’ No’ Yo’ Normal Novel Writing

For some reason I really wanted to do NaNoWriMo this year – that crazy, month long sprint to 50,000 words. And every time I brought it up amongst my literary friends – and got the appropriately literary version of “meh” as a response – my intention doubled. Forget that I didn’t know which novel to work on, forget that I have three or four other projects going this month, forget that I’m up to my eyeballs busy. The only voice that really got through to me was the quiet one in the corner who, really, just wanted to cast on and start knitting. This gave me pause. Long pause. And though I kept up the gun-ho optimism, and signed in with a placeholder novel, my plans for November started to seem a bit desperate. I cast on for a cowl on Saturday (and have done nothing with it since, naturally) and today I realized what I was going to do about Nano.

    1. I will not be participating in Nano
    2. I will be writing

I’ve been reading teacher blogs at work lately ( . . . . I have no excuse for this ), and one I’ve come to adore is Michael Pershan’s Teaching With Problems, he talks in one post about writing slowly and well and deeply, and that makes me think about what kinds of writing I take enjoyment in. Not what I enjoy reading, although it’s interesting to think about how the activities are connected, but what I actively enjoy the process of crafting. I like research writing. I like writing about nothing while talking about things. I like snappy, funny, clever writing – but I tend to like it in flashes: warm, merry darts of sunshine amidst a subaqueous canopy of words. I liked my review for Princess Passes, and normally I hate reviewing, and I love my response post to the first chapter of tea table talks. I like thinking out loud on paper screen, and being prosy and vague in ways that you simply aren’t supposed to be in fiction or emails or text messages. So for Nano I will be writing. No, I will not subject you to a post a day, but I think one a week is a challenging-but-still-doable-well goal. I will aim for quantity (becasue that’s easy to measure) but focus on content (becasue that’s what we’re all here for, right?).

So here’s to the words to come, and the thoughts they might inspire.