everything under the sun
Craaaazy quarter. It's over, now: yesterday, I turned in our final group lab report, my lab notebook, and my design for an intercrop to Steve. I bowed out a little and thanked him for an amazing quarter. He smiled when I said that.
Now I have half a day left or so before I go home for the break. Up North to San Francisco. Mom's birthday is on Sunday. We're spending it together - 42 years young - and we'll get to truly feel this special day. I try to make it known to her everyday how thankful I am that she is in my life. On Sunday, I will acknowledge how thankful I am that she has been on this planet for 42 years.
In this marvelous half-day, there's a lot of stuff to do in the Garden. Tim Galarneau just booked me for half of my half-day, giving a tour to some Stanford students. He also invited me out to lunch, but I think I may decline. So much work to do here...
The first real rain happened on November 1st or so. I'd planned to do my final seed-sowing at about that time - it helped matters that the day before College Eight and I had prepared the last two milpa beds - the two most in shade. I wasn't planning on watering them because the clayey hardpan is pretty saturated with water, and because there is an irrigation leak somewhere over there. Steve says it has been there for a while. No wonder. It would be wet all season, even in the depths of summer with minimal watering. There's a reason, I guess.
The alfalfa in those beds did not diminish at all. In fact, they were kinda impossible to pull out. I was originally planning to turn it into green manure - but hey, that means that the covercropping for the winter season's set in that area! Well, maybe not ...we did a number on the alfalfa with the efforts we had. Now I may regret it. Although the cover crop seeds have germinated, they are stunted, underdeveloped due to their lack of sunlight, the hard soils, and potential allelopathy caused by the huge bay-laurel tree that grows above it.
The hoophouse is looking good. The PICA seminar swept through it one cold Thursday evening, patching the hole in the door, pulling out all the weeds, rearranging the tables, laying down weed cloth, and starting some winter-growing seeds. I watered them, but then the person over Thanksgiving who was going to water didn't, and nothing has sprouted. Steve says not to bother, that the seeds would have already come up by now. :-( I could start new seeds and potentially get someone to water during the winter break, as David Griese and Tony will both be staying. Hey, at least they have each others' company. I wonder what they're going to do here, all by themselves? I remember what summer was like, initially. Interestingly, I would not mind staying by myself here, anymore - the Garden worked its magic on me during the summer. That's all the kinship I need in this place.
Maybe winter break will be a good time to catch up on my reading. All these amazing gardening sources that are out here, and I haven't gotten to touch a single one of them since everything got so busy. Well ...maybe one source.
I took Agroecology, PICA seminar, College Eight garden internship, and Community Agroecology Network (CAN) meetings with Steve, even though the latter two were not for credit. I've learned a lot about gardening, and a lot about Steve, in that time period. In his character, he is both humble and proactive; he offers warmth and familiarity, yet he promotes discipline and respect - a rare combination of traits in any human being. At the dinners, both for CAN and for seminar, he would wait until the last or second-to-last person got food before he began serving himself. And there were nights when there was nothing left, and he didn't eat. He never once complained.
One night, at the CAN meeting, Nick Babin, Daniel, and I presented about Agroecology. A lot of community members, including Karie the CAN coordinator, did not know much, if anything, about it. It was a humbling experience to teach these things, after having learned them for so long. I am not so technologically inclined - or more appropriately, I am afraid of slide projectors and other high-maintenance machines - so I drew these drawings to explain nutrient cycling. Karie held them up and panned them around, so it felt a bit like storytime while I was presenting. :-)
Next quarter I'll be joining John Borrego in Watsonville. A lot of people I know say that this will be an intense class. I'll have a pretty heavy workload - which I'm wondering now if I'll be able to handle in addition to caring for the PICA garden and giving tours at Seymour - but it will be rewarding to say the least. In Watsonville, you get to meet these members of the community who are on all sides of the picture and who, often, disagree with each other. This primarily agricultural community may offer me a glimpse of what it's like, so that when I begin exploring farms and agricultural communities on my own I might better understand the picture. There are so many complexities to see here...
Speaking of complexity, I really need to figure out what we're going to do about these winter plants that want to grow. The rats or raccoons or something have been coming after the brassicas - more specifically, after the purple cabbage leaves and pac choi. I've been setting traps, but no successes yet...
I just went out and checked. Nope, no catches. One of the traps - the mouse trap - has been set off, but nothing in it. The cabbages aren't looking any happier about life... *grumbles* Well, I am going to set out as many traps as possible before I go. I'll try setting them with different things - peanut butter, peanut butter with bread, Jim Velzy's Ivory Soap :), seeds, nothing at all on slim chance that they trip over it... Ach! Well, I'll be back in a week, for a long weekend to spend here. Maybe then I can at least reload.
The clouds this morning were amazing. At one point, I stood up on the hill leading from the Village to the bus stop and watched the sun come up. The clouds overhead were magnificent even more so before, when the sun alit them in gold from beneath the horizon. I greeted the sun this morning, bowing to it and doing a breathing exercise. Now I want to do that every morning, no matter where I am, to thank the Sun God. I will see the sunrises and sunsets of all days.
The full moon really does make things grow faster. In the two or three nights that it was out this week, the cover crop seedlings grew notably taller. At first, I wondered if it were because of the sun. The days have been gloriously warm and sunny, but not at night. It's been frosting at night. I think this is primarily because there haven't been clouds. All that heat that the Earth puts in during the daytime just goes right back out into space at night, and more severely too. I come out the next morning, and a fine layer of frost still remains on the redwood duff that we've put on the pathways and on my sleeping bag. I sleep outside some nights ...until about 3AM or 5AM or so. At that point, my body aches so much from the cold and my toes are so ice-pricked that I am forced to retire indoors. I usually sleep until 7AM at that point - otherwise, I get up at 6AM. I would take more walks around the Garden at night, but it is barely warm enough in my sleeping bag. Annoying, since I'd much rather be outside all night wrestling raccoons.
Either way, the Garden amazed and transfixed me this week, under the light of the full moon. I was menstruating, so I felt an even greater connection to the moon. The Garden, especially the collard greens, are watered in silvery light, and the shadows they make on the ground move with the slight breeze. I stood for a long time - with my arms extended heavenward and my feet making extension into the soils beneath - when the full moon was directly overhead, each night. The next morning, I began the washing ritual, slowly thanking the moon for what it does.
The health concerns have been improving, albeit slowly. My back pains have gotten worse since Aikido and Yoga classes stopped. They were helping, though. This time of year is bad because the cold gets into my muscles and bones and makes the pain worse. Now that the floor's clean in my room (I've stopped allowing shoes in my room), I can do Yoga in the mornings and at night. It makes it better sometimes. My dizzy spells - the ones that have been happening for years - have gone away. It's amazing. I still wonder if it were any one thing or if it were a combination of amazing things that has made them go away. I sleep more nowadays, retiring early most nights no later than 10PM - except for the nights when I have nightmares. It's hard to control those sometimes. :-( The food's been getting better lately, too. I used to pride myself on going all day without a bite to eat, but now I eat all day. I've noticed that the headaches and confusion states have stopped since doing that - but the repercussions are terrible when I miss eating. My weight has dropped too, ironically. Ah well. Hopefully, my health will be so much in order by September that I can practice Ramadan and honor the food. I will probably do it anyway, no matter what stage my health is at. When I fasted, back in May 2003, for that one week, I did it mostly so that I could honor all the food we eat - the food that so often is taken for granted. Now that I've gotten to know what it's like to produce my own food - and I will never go back to the other way of living now - I think it is time to renew that value with another fast.
There are ants in my room, haha. What could they possibly be looking for? All my food - the cornmeal, spices, hot sauces, müesli, quinoa - all those consumer goods I have, that I bought all those months ago, are sealed away. I've been watching them for a year, and it seems they're after my orchid plants. They like to farm a certain parasite on them, one that kills the orchids slowly, leaf by leaf. So I wash them with soapy water - carefully, of course - and it helps somewhat. Hopefully the parasites are seasonal. Either way, I'm going to have to take care of them today. I know they can survive the week without me, but still... They need to know that I've given them love before I go.
I could go on, but the plants are needing some attention right now. I need to water them deeply before I go. Hopefully, with these clouds, it will mean an increase in rain. We've not gotten rain (more like sporeadic, heavy mist) since November 1st. I want it to change, but that's something I have no control over. At least it has afforded us more time to turn soils :) More time to work organic matter into the hardened earth. Now, if we can just be careful enough to try not to plant half the Garden - considering our low turnout rates in terms of people, that hasn't been a problem - and instead to focus on intensifying what we have ...well... it'll be just fine.
Nature takes care of itself.
When I go home, I hope to start perennial herbs in my Dad's sideyard, ones that can survive with minimal care. Dad is a busy man and he often forgets about his plants. Mom, under pretext of the holidays, comes over and borrows both his plants and CDs and nurses his plants back to health. Mom has quite a green thumb. For Christmas, she wants me to make her one of the salad from the Garden that Marley and I used to make, but I don't know if I can. At least I can make her the dressing. There's no lettuce growing now, although we've tried. The Garden and I have tried. No seeds have survived the frosts, and no starts have survived the rodents. Luckily the gophers haven't been trying anything with the plants. They mostly just turn and aerate soil :) Nevertheless, I have been setting traps. Steve promises a Tecate for every gopher caught ;) Haha, just kidding, I would never go for a Tecate, or any beer, without extensive prompting but I do want to take care of the "underground architects" just in case they try something with the irrigation lines. After all, it hasn't been raining.
The other gift I'm "giving" Dad for Christmas will be to take care of his bathroom. Not the ideal environmental gift, since the painting industry is not the most sustainable. It will mean exposure to paints and potentially reactivating my asthma, besides. But he wants it done. His bathroom is infested with mold, he wants his apartment to look nice, and I have painting background skills. Besides, I can't think of a better Christmas thing to give him that doesn't involve spending a lot of money. I asked my parents to help me consolidate my things from three households into one, as my Christmas present. I don't want them spending any of their money on me; I'd rather it went to my college education fund, if anything at all [Mom's helping me with college as much as she can (and she's also trying to save to return to college herself), and I've been working and saving money since 8th grade. Between us, we've been covering our portion of the bill - the portion student loans aren't covering. This is something my mother has always wanted to do, this is her gift to me. Dad's saving up for retirement, so he can't help me. My godmother tries to help, but I won't let her: things are getting even harder on teacher-librarians these days, and it's taking a toll on her]. But in any case, I really need to spend time with them - that's the gift that really matters. What better way? And I don't really celebrate Christmas; I celebrate the Winter Solstice. :)
For my godmother, I was thinking of decorating her apartment. She really loves art from all over the world (she collects it during her retreats and the international librarian conferences), so it might be nice to find a cool way of displaying them. Plus, it'd really surprise her; she'll be gone for part of winter break. Family reunion in Atlanta, GA, or somewhere closeby.
Those raptors are going to start calling pretty soon. I'd better go see what they'll be talking about.
Peace,
...
...
.. (is a verb)
~Yvea
Now I have half a day left or so before I go home for the break. Up North to San Francisco. Mom's birthday is on Sunday. We're spending it together - 42 years young - and we'll get to truly feel this special day. I try to make it known to her everyday how thankful I am that she is in my life. On Sunday, I will acknowledge how thankful I am that she has been on this planet for 42 years.
In this marvelous half-day, there's a lot of stuff to do in the Garden. Tim Galarneau just booked me for half of my half-day, giving a tour to some Stanford students. He also invited me out to lunch, but I think I may decline. So much work to do here...
The first real rain happened on November 1st or so. I'd planned to do my final seed-sowing at about that time - it helped matters that the day before College Eight and I had prepared the last two milpa beds - the two most in shade. I wasn't planning on watering them because the clayey hardpan is pretty saturated with water, and because there is an irrigation leak somewhere over there. Steve says it has been there for a while. No wonder. It would be wet all season, even in the depths of summer with minimal watering. There's a reason, I guess.
The alfalfa in those beds did not diminish at all. In fact, they were kinda impossible to pull out. I was originally planning to turn it into green manure - but hey, that means that the covercropping for the winter season's set in that area! Well, maybe not ...we did a number on the alfalfa with the efforts we had. Now I may regret it. Although the cover crop seeds have germinated, they are stunted, underdeveloped due to their lack of sunlight, the hard soils, and potential allelopathy caused by the huge bay-laurel tree that grows above it.
The hoophouse is looking good. The PICA seminar swept through it one cold Thursday evening, patching the hole in the door, pulling out all the weeds, rearranging the tables, laying down weed cloth, and starting some winter-growing seeds. I watered them, but then the person over Thanksgiving who was going to water didn't, and nothing has sprouted. Steve says not to bother, that the seeds would have already come up by now. :-( I could start new seeds and potentially get someone to water during the winter break, as David Griese and Tony will both be staying. Hey, at least they have each others' company. I wonder what they're going to do here, all by themselves? I remember what summer was like, initially. Interestingly, I would not mind staying by myself here, anymore - the Garden worked its magic on me during the summer. That's all the kinship I need in this place.
Maybe winter break will be a good time to catch up on my reading. All these amazing gardening sources that are out here, and I haven't gotten to touch a single one of them since everything got so busy. Well ...maybe one source.
I took Agroecology, PICA seminar, College Eight garden internship, and Community Agroecology Network (CAN) meetings with Steve, even though the latter two were not for credit. I've learned a lot about gardening, and a lot about Steve, in that time period. In his character, he is both humble and proactive; he offers warmth and familiarity, yet he promotes discipline and respect - a rare combination of traits in any human being. At the dinners, both for CAN and for seminar, he would wait until the last or second-to-last person got food before he began serving himself. And there were nights when there was nothing left, and he didn't eat. He never once complained.
One night, at the CAN meeting, Nick Babin, Daniel, and I presented about Agroecology. A lot of community members, including Karie the CAN coordinator, did not know much, if anything, about it. It was a humbling experience to teach these things, after having learned them for so long. I am not so technologically inclined - or more appropriately, I am afraid of slide projectors and other high-maintenance machines - so I drew these drawings to explain nutrient cycling. Karie held them up and panned them around, so it felt a bit like storytime while I was presenting. :-)
Next quarter I'll be joining John Borrego in Watsonville. A lot of people I know say that this will be an intense class. I'll have a pretty heavy workload - which I'm wondering now if I'll be able to handle in addition to caring for the PICA garden and giving tours at Seymour - but it will be rewarding to say the least. In Watsonville, you get to meet these members of the community who are on all sides of the picture and who, often, disagree with each other. This primarily agricultural community may offer me a glimpse of what it's like, so that when I begin exploring farms and agricultural communities on my own I might better understand the picture. There are so many complexities to see here...
Speaking of complexity, I really need to figure out what we're going to do about these winter plants that want to grow. The rats or raccoons or something have been coming after the brassicas - more specifically, after the purple cabbage leaves and pac choi. I've been setting traps, but no successes yet...
I just went out and checked. Nope, no catches. One of the traps - the mouse trap - has been set off, but nothing in it. The cabbages aren't looking any happier about life... *grumbles* Well, I am going to set out as many traps as possible before I go. I'll try setting them with different things - peanut butter, peanut butter with bread, Jim Velzy's Ivory Soap :), seeds, nothing at all on slim chance that they trip over it... Ach! Well, I'll be back in a week, for a long weekend to spend here. Maybe then I can at least reload.
The clouds this morning were amazing. At one point, I stood up on the hill leading from the Village to the bus stop and watched the sun come up. The clouds overhead were magnificent even more so before, when the sun alit them in gold from beneath the horizon. I greeted the sun this morning, bowing to it and doing a breathing exercise. Now I want to do that every morning, no matter where I am, to thank the Sun God. I will see the sunrises and sunsets of all days.
The full moon really does make things grow faster. In the two or three nights that it was out this week, the cover crop seedlings grew notably taller. At first, I wondered if it were because of the sun. The days have been gloriously warm and sunny, but not at night. It's been frosting at night. I think this is primarily because there haven't been clouds. All that heat that the Earth puts in during the daytime just goes right back out into space at night, and more severely too. I come out the next morning, and a fine layer of frost still remains on the redwood duff that we've put on the pathways and on my sleeping bag. I sleep outside some nights ...until about 3AM or 5AM or so. At that point, my body aches so much from the cold and my toes are so ice-pricked that I am forced to retire indoors. I usually sleep until 7AM at that point - otherwise, I get up at 6AM. I would take more walks around the Garden at night, but it is barely warm enough in my sleeping bag. Annoying, since I'd much rather be outside all night wrestling raccoons.
Either way, the Garden amazed and transfixed me this week, under the light of the full moon. I was menstruating, so I felt an even greater connection to the moon. The Garden, especially the collard greens, are watered in silvery light, and the shadows they make on the ground move with the slight breeze. I stood for a long time - with my arms extended heavenward and my feet making extension into the soils beneath - when the full moon was directly overhead, each night. The next morning, I began the washing ritual, slowly thanking the moon for what it does.
The health concerns have been improving, albeit slowly. My back pains have gotten worse since Aikido and Yoga classes stopped. They were helping, though. This time of year is bad because the cold gets into my muscles and bones and makes the pain worse. Now that the floor's clean in my room (I've stopped allowing shoes in my room), I can do Yoga in the mornings and at night. It makes it better sometimes. My dizzy spells - the ones that have been happening for years - have gone away. It's amazing. I still wonder if it were any one thing or if it were a combination of amazing things that has made them go away. I sleep more nowadays, retiring early most nights no later than 10PM - except for the nights when I have nightmares. It's hard to control those sometimes. :-( The food's been getting better lately, too. I used to pride myself on going all day without a bite to eat, but now I eat all day. I've noticed that the headaches and confusion states have stopped since doing that - but the repercussions are terrible when I miss eating. My weight has dropped too, ironically. Ah well. Hopefully, my health will be so much in order by September that I can practice Ramadan and honor the food. I will probably do it anyway, no matter what stage my health is at. When I fasted, back in May 2003, for that one week, I did it mostly so that I could honor all the food we eat - the food that so often is taken for granted. Now that I've gotten to know what it's like to produce my own food - and I will never go back to the other way of living now - I think it is time to renew that value with another fast.
There are ants in my room, haha. What could they possibly be looking for? All my food - the cornmeal, spices, hot sauces, müesli, quinoa - all those consumer goods I have, that I bought all those months ago, are sealed away. I've been watching them for a year, and it seems they're after my orchid plants. They like to farm a certain parasite on them, one that kills the orchids slowly, leaf by leaf. So I wash them with soapy water - carefully, of course - and it helps somewhat. Hopefully the parasites are seasonal. Either way, I'm going to have to take care of them today. I know they can survive the week without me, but still... They need to know that I've given them love before I go.
I could go on, but the plants are needing some attention right now. I need to water them deeply before I go. Hopefully, with these clouds, it will mean an increase in rain. We've not gotten rain (more like sporeadic, heavy mist) since November 1st. I want it to change, but that's something I have no control over. At least it has afforded us more time to turn soils :) More time to work organic matter into the hardened earth. Now, if we can just be careful enough to try not to plant half the Garden - considering our low turnout rates in terms of people, that hasn't been a problem - and instead to focus on intensifying what we have ...well... it'll be just fine.
Nature takes care of itself.
When I go home, I hope to start perennial herbs in my Dad's sideyard, ones that can survive with minimal care. Dad is a busy man and he often forgets about his plants. Mom, under pretext of the holidays, comes over and borrows both his plants and CDs and nurses his plants back to health. Mom has quite a green thumb. For Christmas, she wants me to make her one of the salad from the Garden that Marley and I used to make, but I don't know if I can. At least I can make her the dressing. There's no lettuce growing now, although we've tried. The Garden and I have tried. No seeds have survived the frosts, and no starts have survived the rodents. Luckily the gophers haven't been trying anything with the plants. They mostly just turn and aerate soil :) Nevertheless, I have been setting traps. Steve promises a Tecate for every gopher caught ;) Haha, just kidding, I would never go for a Tecate, or any beer, without extensive prompting but I do want to take care of the "underground architects" just in case they try something with the irrigation lines. After all, it hasn't been raining.
The other gift I'm "giving" Dad for Christmas will be to take care of his bathroom. Not the ideal environmental gift, since the painting industry is not the most sustainable. It will mean exposure to paints and potentially reactivating my asthma, besides. But he wants it done. His bathroom is infested with mold, he wants his apartment to look nice, and I have painting background skills. Besides, I can't think of a better Christmas thing to give him that doesn't involve spending a lot of money. I asked my parents to help me consolidate my things from three households into one, as my Christmas present. I don't want them spending any of their money on me; I'd rather it went to my college education fund, if anything at all [Mom's helping me with college as much as she can (and she's also trying to save to return to college herself), and I've been working and saving money since 8th grade. Between us, we've been covering our portion of the bill - the portion student loans aren't covering. This is something my mother has always wanted to do, this is her gift to me. Dad's saving up for retirement, so he can't help me. My godmother tries to help, but I won't let her: things are getting even harder on teacher-librarians these days, and it's taking a toll on her]. But in any case, I really need to spend time with them - that's the gift that really matters. What better way? And I don't really celebrate Christmas; I celebrate the Winter Solstice. :)
For my godmother, I was thinking of decorating her apartment. She really loves art from all over the world (she collects it during her retreats and the international librarian conferences), so it might be nice to find a cool way of displaying them. Plus, it'd really surprise her; she'll be gone for part of winter break. Family reunion in Atlanta, GA, or somewhere closeby.
Those raptors are going to start calling pretty soon. I'd better go see what they'll be talking about.
Peace,
...
...
.. (is a verb)
~Yvea
posted by Yvea at 7:53 AM
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