Blogging pause

Friends and readers all,

You may have noticed that posts have been erratic in recent weeks. This makes it official: expect more of the same. Planning my sister’s memorial has taken most of my emotional energy, and working the gardens most of my time, to say nothing of my physical energy; between the two there’s not much left. Yesterday I arrived in Toronto, and tomorrow I start driving my parents to Maine for the gathering. I may not manage to post anything until after I return, in about two weeks.

I’ve also been a lousy blogging buddy recently, my visits to others’ blogs having dropped catastrophically. Don’t break out the champagne yet, though; I miss you all and promise I’ll be back to plague you in the near future.

Be well, and may your gardens thrive. See you all in a couple of weeks.

--Kate

Crazy Weather

I keep planning to write a post about yard work, of which there has been plenty, but the weather conspires against me. It’ll warm up nicely, I’ll take a deep breath and relax; well, winter’s over at last, I’ll be able to get out into the garden soon... And two days later, wham, six to twelve inches of snow. Even when the temperatures rise, it takes days for all that to melt.

(One area in northern Montana got four feet of snow sometime in May. It’s not city gardeners who are really suffering; it’s ranchers, who have been losing sheep and cattle by the hundreds. Early spring is lambing and calving time, not a good time for blizzards.)

Ups and Downs

A couple of weeks ago I stopped by Planet Natural* for some manure, and look what happened. The place is dangerous. (I did get the manure, but it was too heavy to haul onto the lawn for a photo.) The bamboo compost bucket (as seen on ComposterConnection!) was a gift from Eric, bless him, who kept pressing me to buy a bigger basket.

Him: It’s for a good cause!
Me: I don’t need a bigger basket.
Him: The proceeds buy eyeglasses for blind Indians in Arizona! Or something.
Me: Blind people don’t need eyeglasses, Eric.
Him: You know what I mean.
Me: I don’t need a bigger basket!
Him: Oh, all right.

As he went off he may have been muttering something about how I shouldn’t blame him if my conscience bothered me, but I wasn’t sure.

So—which season is this?

Here’s the scenario: You’ve been hearing the sound of raindrops on the roof for hours, when it suddenly stops.

Here’s the question: How should you interpret this phenomenon?

Here are the options: It’s possible (taking a broad view) that you have just been transported to Mars, where it doesn’t rain. It’s also possible, if unlikely, that you have gone suddenly deaf.

Leaving aside these somewhat farfetched possibilities, you might conclude that it has stopped raining. Seeing as how it’s June in the Northern Hemisphere, this would be the most obvious conclusion—and the correct one, except that there’s a hidden assumption underlying that statement: “It’s stopped raining” generally implies “It’s stopped precipitating.” And while the former statement is currently true, the latter is false.

In other words, my good friends, it has started snowing.

Blow by blow: compost tumbler assembly

(Update: If you want to know how to do this quickly, stop reading and check out the Assembly Video at Organic Compost Tumbler. You'll find it in the menu at the bottom of the page.)

Vegetable oil at the ready, I’m poised to assemble my new composter, the one all the folderol was about a couple of weeks back. It's mine courtesy of  Chris of Organic Compost Tumbler in exchange for a review, which won't happen until I've had a chance to put it through its paces.

This Urban Tumbler started its tumbling career early, before it even got out of the box. Boxes, to be precise, as there were two. The wheelbarrow being otherwise engaged, I had to get them into the backyard without the benefit of wheels. I could just get my arms around the smaller one, so off we went together, traveling sideways so I could see approximately where we were going. The bigger one, which contains the tumbler itself, its two halves nested, isn’t outrageously heavy, but it’s so bulky I had to roll it. Of course, I could have put the pieces together and rolled the tumbler itself, but my eagerness  didn’t allow for such rational steps. The back yard is the designated assembly center, and all assembly shall occur there, dang it.

Belated update: prairies and garden plots

No time for reading blogs, no time for posting—what is the world coming to? I should have posted over a week ago about an upcoming trip, but I had this foolish idea that I’d be able to post while away. Yes I know, ridiculous. My husband can manage it, but he only needs six hours of sleep a night.

I’ve been in Wisconsin and Minnesota for the past week. The original reason for the trip is far from jolly—Steve’s step-mother of 25 years just died, quite suddenly, of complications from cancer treatment, and in an bizarre turn of events, her disabled but independent son died five days later. It was a sad time, but a good gathering of friends and family.

Non-compost-mentis

So here’s the question for the day, people: can I turn a compost tumbler that’s a great fit for someone who’s almost two feet taller than I am? Let me explain.

Just yesterday afternoon I closed a deal with Chris of Backyard Gardening Blog to review what he modestly calls the World's Greatest Organic Compost Tumbler. Now, my first reaction to most offers is to say no, absolutely not, but, well, Chris made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: he’d give me a tumbler in exchange for an honest review, a promise not to sue him if it turns out that I can’t rotate the thing, and my next child. This decision required careful consideration, but after about three seconds I went with the tumbler. (Please don’t tell him I’m 55 and past all that childbearing business.)

BGMD In Praise of Seasons

   Pink and white carnations—one desires
    So much more than that.
            Wallace Stevens
            “The Poems of Our Climate”

        I.
Moving back
to Minnesota? say friends
in L.A., in New York.
They try not to sound rude,
but they fail;
their voices soar and drop
like ill-flown kites in spotty wind.
They think we are out of our minds.

Spring birds

Despite the snow, the robins returned, en masse. I have never seen them in such numbers. When I drove down the alley behind my house, five, ten, a dozen would lift off from the puddles left by melting snow. Nor had I known until then that they ate juniper berries.

This is the lounge where Kate lay

Contest categories are listed as pages in the right sidebar.

Yesterday was warm and so dry that by the time you finished hanging clothes at one end of a clothes line, you could start taking them down at the other end. I know, because I hung out the first laundry on the line that Steve had put up that morning.

Today, we get this:



which has inspired this: