June 27, 2005 link
Everyday when I step outside, I am greeted by my old buddy Bert the Squirrel. At first I wanted to kill him, but now I kind of like him.
He lives in the tree near the entrance to my garden. I often see him doing his business around the yard, but he always scampers to the tree when I appear.
I don’t think Bert likes me very much. He climbs the tree until he is just out of reach, then perches there and barks like a dog. Ruff, ruff, ruff. He seems very protective of his territory, and it must annoy him to watch me picking raspberries. How dare I steal his delicacies! Sometimes I bark back. Ruff, ruff, ruff. No wonder he hates me.
June 24, 2005 link
The sprinkler has really helped perk up the plants. It’s 100 degrees F here today. Seems like a good time to stay indoors and write a long update.
- Arugula. Didn’t turn out very well. It got too hot/dry, so it made rangy flowers instead of leaves.
- Lettuce. In contrast, the lettuce continues to look great, which is surprising since it requires the same growing conditions as arugula. I’ve been picking and eating it regularly.
- Pole Beans. Good looking vines on the poles; about 4 feet tall. No buds yet.
- Bush Beans. About two feet high with purple flowers. I’ve never grown them before, so I can’t really judge if they are on-track or not. Look okay to me, though.
- Carrots. Didn’t germinate.
- Peas. A disaster. The vines didn’t take to the trellis I built; instead they just strangled each other.
- Zucchini. Happy little bushes.
- Tomatoes. Nice. They don’t mind the heat at all. About 4 feet tall.
- Sweet Peppers. Looking okay. Lots of leaves; no peppers yet.
- Hot Peppers. Fantastic. Covered with ripening peppers.
- Bush Cucumbers. Fantastic. Lots of yellow flowers, and lots of visiting bees.
- Dwarf Okra. I keep planting okra, but can’t get no satisfaction. This year’s versions are about 9 inches tall. Keeping my fingers crossed.
- Cilantro. It grew okay, but I didn’t get more than 1-2 servings.
- Rosemary, Chives, Sage, Mint. Good, as always. These are permanent plantings.
- Collards. Right on schedule. So easy to grow.
- Radishes. Not happy. Lots of stem, no bulb. After my first year’s success (7 pounds), I just can’t grow any radishes.
- Parsnips. Some germinated, some didn’t—leaving a patchy row. The ones that came up look very good, though.
- New Zealand Spinach. Never germinated.
- Broccoli. Why does it grow so slowly? It will probably bolt in this heat.
- Raspberries. Boo-yah! I’ve picked a few early berries, and the main crop is ripening quickly.
- Strawberries. Sending out runners. Not expecting fruit until next year.
- Winter Rye. Nearing the end of its lifecycle. I’m slowly cutting down patches, letting it dry and using the straw as mulch.
- Top-Setting Onions. I have exactly one perennial onion plant. It has clusters of bulbs on top of a stalk.
- Miscellaneous wildflowers and grasses. Not bad. Some of them died in transplanting. The others will be fine.
- Blueberries. Not expecting fruit for a few years. Green and leafy.
- Apples. Stolen from their containers.
And there you have it. It seems like a lot, but keep in mind that I only have 2-10 plants of each type. I’ll post some photos as soon as it cools a bit. The plants are all wilty in this heat.
June 21, 2005 link
It is very dry here. We had our normal cool, cloudy spell in early June, but it didn’t bring any rain. It hasn’t rained in a long time.
I’ve suspected that my watering efforts with the spray hose were not enough. The soil is bone dry every morning, and the radishes are bolting (producing seeds, rather than bulbs; usually caused by hot dry conditions) like crazy. I guess I hurry through the watering process without giving the plants enough.
So I bought a sprinkler today. So far, it is even more time consuming than the hose method. Every 15 minutes, I have to step outside and shift the sprinkler so it can reach different areas. It looks like watering will become a 2-3 hour process. Hopefully, I’ll get used to it and the plants will benefit from more water.
Which reminds me…I need to go shift the sprinkler.
June 17, 2005 link
That’s what I’m talkin’ about! The Chicago Sun-Times published today a set of architectural renderings from the “Visionary Chicago Architecture” exhibit in Millenium Park. The exhibit showcases 14 project ideas for the city of Chicago. The chance for any of these projects to be realized is slim, but I was so psyched to open the newpaper this morning and see what some of these architects have envisioned.
(I really wish I could display these images here. I searched the Interweb for electronic copies, but couldn’t find any. I’ll just try to describe them for now.)
The most exciting of the renderings was titled “The Farmer in the El”, and pictured an elevated CTA train station with a corn field and grazing sheep on the roof. A produce stand was located at street level.
The other cool one was a huge domed greenhouse, floating above the interstate highway, described as a “highway farm”.
(My descriptions are not doing them justice. I need to find the images and post or link to them.)
I’ve attempted to articulate my vision for a “21st Century Agrarianism” on this site many times, but always struggled to describe my ideas. When you argue the benefits of agrarianism, people think you are talking about a return to the past. It is so hard to visualize a city that integrates daily agricultural experiences into the urban fabric. People are trained to think of “the city” and “the farm” as mutually exclusive habitats.
These two architects are onto something. Their renderings finally put forth a visual representation of the “skyscrapers and strawberries” concept. Anybody viewing these images—even a child—can grasp the ideas instantly, and see that sheep pastures, corn fields and farmstands in our urban centers is not only possible, but desirable.
June 14, 2005 link
Somebody stole my apple trees. I left my house for about 45 minutes, and when I returned they were gone.
I purchased these two columnar apple trees this Spring. I paid $30 for each of them. It’s not really accurate to call them trees yet; at this point they were just apple sticks, really. I had planted them in large planters along the pathway that connects the street in front with the street in back. They had leafed-out pretty well, grown about 3.5 feet tall, and I was looking forward to picking some apples in a couple of years.
I imagine the feeling is similar to the country dweller who wakes up one morning to find his garden decimated by deer, or his corn patch ransacked by raccoons. Thankfully, we don’t have those kinds of problems in the city. But, in a way, it is more disturbing that a human being—who should know better—is responsible for yanking out two apple trees by the roots and running off with them.
I don’t think that the perps were acting maliciously toward me or my garden. I don’t think they sensed any value in the apple trees, and wanted them for themselves. I think it was just some excitable young kids who were transformed into lunatics by their last week of school before Summer vacation.
Here’s how I imagine it happening: There is an elementary school on the block behind my house. Some kids, on their way to school, decided to take a short cut through my yard. As they passed by the apple sticks, they were taken by the irresistible urge to pull them up and wave them around like lightsabers. Sticks plus boys equals joy.
Oh well. I’ll just shell out another 60 dollars next year and start more apple trees. Next time, I’ll put them in a less accessible location.
June 11, 2005 link
I added some photos to the 2005 Gallery
June 10, 2005 link
Friends or foes? Today while pulling weeds, I uprooted something that looked different from the familiar suspects. Ninety-nine percent of the weeds are either dandelions, violets, tree seedlings or cockleburrs. But this little guy was strangely familiar: fuzzy stem, extremely lobed leaves, pungent smell. Wait a second—that was a tomato plant I just pulled up! I smelled it again, just to make sure. Yep.
I thought back to last Fall, when I dumped some rotting tomatoes on the compost pile. One of the seeds must have germinated when I spread the compost this Spring. I’ve always heard that growing tomatoes from seed is difficult (I usually buy seedlings), but if they can sprout like weeds from my compost, then they must be easier to grow than I thought.
I also sometimes run across random onions or parsley plants. These are scattered throughout the yard. Sometimes I let them grow; other times I pull them up. Pulling weeds is not an especially pleasant task, but when you have the chance of discovering a friendly face among the enemies, it makes it much more bearable.
June 8, 2005 link
There’s been a good buzz recently about a book called Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv. Louv introduces the concept of “nature-deficit disorder”, and links it to growing rates of childhood obesity and Attention Hyperactivity Deficit Disorder. He argues that children’s unstructured outdoor play has been replaced by structured activities, such as soccer leagues or other games with parental-enforced rules. Louv also mentions the usual culprits of cultural change: TV, video games, the Internet, etc.
The result of the “less freedom, more safety” movement in child-rearing has been, in Louv’s diagnosis, a generation of children with little firsthand knowledge of the world around them. The pyschological effects of being overprotected and underexposed to the wilderness of their own backyards could, in the long run, prove disastrous for a generation of kids.
I’m generally suspicious of anyone who makes gloomy predictions about entire generations, or who invents scary terminologies to suggest that society is going down the tubes. My fellow Generation-Xers—“the worst generation ever”—turned out just fine, thank you very much. So I’m cautious to endorse Louv’s hypothesis.
The story of my own childhood provides me with a good way of looking at Louv’s ideas. I remember spending entire days (it felt like entire summers) outside, roaming the neighborhood on my bike or on foot. My favorite place to go was “the creek” a shallow stream that twisted its way through backyards, parks and along the edges of farms. In the creek’s shallow waters we caught clams, crayfish, water striders, turtles and frogs—and sometimes got scared away by a raccoon or opossum. I wasn’t alone in my fascination with the creek: it acted as a interstate highway system for local kids. On every visit to the creek, you would see small groups of your peers, heading from one side of town to the other. I never saw any adults wandering along the creek.
As much as I loved hanging out at the creek, I didn’t care too much for organized nature activities, such as school field trips to the forest preserve—designed to instruct us about “nature”. My own self-education and appreciation of nature was much more interesting and fullfilling.
For me and my childhood chums, that’s how it was. I suppose that paints us in contrast to descriptions of today’s kids. That creek still runs through my old neighborhood. I haven’t been back in many years, so I wonder if kids still use it as a playground. I hope so.
There’s a risk for all of us adults to sound like grumpy old people, denouncing change just because it’s different. Is that what Louv is doing? Thinking nostalgically about his own childhood, and criticizing anything that doesn’t live up to his idealized version of it?
Are children today really less connected to nature than we were? Are they any less fascinated by a fuzzy caterpillar? Do they truly have more interest in virtual reality than in building a tree fort or searching for frogs? I don’t know. If I were a parent concerned about nature-deficit disorder, I know the first thing I would do is plant a garden with my kids.
June 4, 2005 link
It was a hot steamy afternoon. The sun was shining full-strength. The garden was thirsty.
Before heading outside to water the garden, I decided to take ten minutes to water myself (have a glass of water and relax).
Suddenly, a quick thunderstorm swept in and did the job for me. I kept sipping my water and relaxing, watching the clouds dump their load. Then the sun came out again.
I love it when that happens.
June 1, 2005 link
Neil Steinberg raises a good question in his May 13 column in the Chicago Sun Times: Why does the advertising industry always use imagery of sailboats to signify success and security? Is it the collective dream of American men to dangle our feet in the water or pilot a sailboat across the Atlantic?
Mr. Steinberg points out the prevalance of these types of ads, then proposes an alternative. Why not show men in their gardens, tending tomatoes?
“Why don’t men garden in ads? I know lots of guys who garden, who are proud of their tomatoes. I sure am. Is it twee? Come by the office and say that to my face!”
All jokes aside, I think it’s true that men tend to get defensive when asked about their gardens. Even Steinberg, who claims to be proud of his tomatoes, gets surly at the suggestion that his pursuits are twee. We enjoy them privately, but most of us downplay their significance in our lives when talking to other men. We’re slightly embarrassed by it—as if our time would be better spent restoring classic cars or building a new deck. Mowing the lawn is respectable; planting a row of broccoli is not.
Is this the fault of narrow-minded adverstisers? Certainly not, but I wonder what would happen if ads directed at men started to feature photos of our brothers in the garden.
