First Thanksgiving in New York

Next week we're going to New York!  But we won't be eating any turkey or doing any black Friday shopping.  Instead we are scouting out a new home, taking an art class in a refurbished country school house, staying in what promises to be the best bed and breakfast ever and partaking of as much hand-hewn and home-brewed awesomeness as time allows.  And hopefully bringing home a suitcase full of lady-made Worcestershire Sauce. 

Of course Tristan and I are coming down with colds just in time.  I'm sure our fellow airline passengers won't mind the scent of garlic, eucalyptus and osha root wafting from us.  Making new friends is always best accomplished with a runny nose. 

Lick

We went to the Lick Observatory in California once.  Our friend Mike drove us there, on an old, nearly one lane road up the side of Mount Hamilton.  It is a truly historic and spectacular place.  Because we happened to be there at the same time as someone actually important we were able to see certain areas that are restricted to ordinary visitors.  Also while we were there a storm rolled in.  We quickly headed back down the mountain, stopping when we could so that I could collect giant pinecones, in the snow and rain, for an as yet unrealized wreath project.  The pictures I took are almost invariably crap, but here's this one:

Tristan at the Lick Observatory

And here's the conversation that took place when I showed it to Tristan today:

Tristan:  "I don't even remember that."
Marianne:  "You don't remember going to the Lick observatory?!"
Tristan:  "I remember throwing up."
Marianne:  "What?"
Tristan:  "On the drive down the mountain, I threw up!"
Marianne:  "Ohhhh yeah." 

I don't know what else to say.  This is probably not worthy of a blog post, but what is, really?  I suggest reading about the Lick observatory and visiting if you can.  If you can stomach the white-knuckle drive there and back, of course.

bonus crap photo of usually restricted activity

HELLO CLEVELAND!!!!!! I DON'T CARE IF IT'S A CLICHE!!!!!

The other day Tristan showed me how to make a song on my ipod repeat indefinitely.  I had no idea until then that this function existed.  This brand new information answered an old, nagging question of mine:  How could one specific song on a five-year-old's ipod have 500 listens in only a matter of months?  The song was 'Dry Bone Valley' by Mastodon and the excessive listens were discovered not long after I'd given him The Hunter.  Can you think of a single song you've purposely listened to 500 times?  In three months?  I got nuthin'.

Tristan loves Mastodon.  They were the first band he'd ever seen, in Chicago with Deftones and Alice in Chains in 2010.  He was four.  Since then the love has been non-stop, and has sometimes driven me bonkers ('Curl of the Burl', really?) but mostly towed me into fandom myself.  That they're pretty great live doesn't hurt, either.  The most recent record, the one with the swansong-sounding title, has been the soundtrack of choice during kitchen cleanup since it came out.  Which is high praise in this household.

Anyway, after that first concert, Tristan never seemed too interested in seeing another.  I took him to see Opeth and Katatonia at First Avenue in October of 2011 and he was having none of it.  Which was fine, we left the show and I managed to see Opeth and Katatonia play together again TWICE in 2013!  Unfortunately Katatonia played not a single song that I knew (and I have something like NINE of their records).. but I digress. 

So out of the blue in summer of 2013 Tristan asks to see Mastodon for his birthday!  It was such a proud moment.  At first I thought we'd be trekking to Europe to be able have the chance to see them in July, but they were actually touring the states that summer, playing some terrible outdoor festival.  BUT there was an off-date with MACHINE HEAD in Cleveland!!  We took the train, stayed in an historic hotel, ate amazing food, hit some "museums" and it was WONDERFUL.  Fucking Cleveland, man.. who knew?!

Tristan at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tristan at The Arcade

Nice cubby in our room at The Arcade

Tristan at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

NASA Glenn Visitor Center

pretty self-explanatory, I think

Tristan and Lake Erie

I don't have a picture of Tristan at the show because I didn't even take my phone.  I probably could have taken a picture of him with Mastodon's rad drummer Brann Dailor, who stopped to talk to us when we were eating outside earlier in the day at the awesome Greenhouse Tavern, but of course I didn't.  Brann is such a sweetheart, and Tristan was so confused as to who he was.  It took all sorts to stop myself flailing my arms and yelling "THIS IS THE MAN THAT WROTE THE SONG YOU LISTENED TO FIVE HUNDRED TIMES IN THREE MONTHS!!!!"

It might seem crazy to everyone else, but traveling for concerts makes all kinds of sense to me.  I have done it forever.  I flew to Canberra, Australia to see my very first show (Mr. Bungle) when I was seventeen.  I could produce a long list of bands I've traveled to see and dozens of reasons why concerts are the best reason to go anywhere, but basically it boils down to the fact that passion for music is universal and music is a universal language.  I know that I have friends in any given venue before I even walk in, it doesn't even matter what country.  I want Tristan to have the same passion and the same experiences I've had.  And he won't even have to endure being groped!  But he IS only 8, and maybe wants to pace himself.  Maybe he'll ask to see another show in another three years.  Stay tuned.

random things

Sometimes its hard to swallow the inherent narcissism behind actually bothering to write anything here.  I am swayed toward doing it mostly because of my beautiful friend Elizabeth who writes so thoughtfully and honestly about her family and her faith.  My first reaction to reading her blog was thinking that she was incredibly brave.  And I want to be brave.  Not cynical. 

Besides my friends and some random extended family I have no idea who reads this, although people do.  I can see the number of viewers and the countries they're viewing from and it never fails to perplex.  I can't help but wonder about who is reading this stuff and why.  More specifically I wonder WHO IN POLAND IS READING THIS?!?!  [edit: no one in Poland is reading this, thanks nerds for educating me on Eastern European spambots]  Not that it matters.  I can appreciate all things random and foreign as much as the next person.  Do people in Poland go out in the dark to shovel snow when it is still snowing?  I'm just curious.  Because my neighbors here in Iowa do, and I can't explain it.  They're going to have shovel again in the morning, right?  I'm feeling a little self-conscious about my snow-covered sidewalk, but I'm not about to shovel it TWICE in twenty four hours, especially on a weekend.  The mail carrier isn't even coming tomorrow!  Hey, maybe the neighbors are just really excited about the first snow of the season and being able to use their new shovel!  I'm going to keep telling myself that and try to feel better. 

Random enough?

If not, here's some more random stuff..

Tristan with a GIANT PUFFBALL MUSHROOM!!

One year we found a giant puffball mushroom whilst hiking through Moorehead Park.  The giant puffball, Calvatia gigantea, is an edible mushroom before its spores have formed and its interior is still firm and white.  Unfortunately this one was just slightly too mature to consume, but that didn't stop us from feeling amazed and enamored of it and nature in general!  If it had been just days earlier we could have sliced this baby up and grilled it and really been in mycophile heaven.

At our house we are cheap and we recycle.  You can't see it in the above photos, but just out of view is a set of metal drawers that serve as Tristan's "craft bins".  In them is all manner of crap that I'd really prefer to compost or throw away, but since I've tried hard (and succeeded) to instill in him a concern for the Earth and an appreciation of found things, I can't possibly do something as heinous as composting an egg carton or throwing away ribbon or stickers or stamps.  Or actually allow the county to recycle boxes for me.  No, Tristan laid claim to this box and made it his "boat".  I don't remember what year this was, but his bedroom hasn't looked that way for ages (and by "that way" I mean clean), and I was only recently allowed to finally properly recycle his "boat".  Complete with crossing shoulder straps it was really something to behold.  And trip over.  The above photos document only the premier incarnation of the "boat", there were many renovations to follow.  But here it is in all its initial glory, in Tristan's adorable and cheaply decorated room.  (Ignore the Pottery Barn luggage, it is an ANOMALY.)

We do a little stargazing.  We pay attention to the phases of the moon and dabble in biodynamic gardening.  This November's Beaver Moon(!) was particularly beautiful here.  There is a cemetery on a hill east of our little town that we like to view the moon from, but I have yet to get a good picture of the moon, or anything else for that matter, at night.  I just don't have the equipment or skill to take photos of anything in the dark, but that doesn't stop me from trying.  I like the above shots for what they are (besides amateurish and out of focus) but curse the fact that they do no justice to how beautiful the evening really was.  The memories I have of standing on that hill with my son are some of the most precious to me, and I will miss this tradition tremendously.

Speaking of beavers, check out this awesome documentary about beavers and their amazing work creating healthy ecosystems!

And speaking of taking pictures in the dark, I found a couple of our vegetable garden taken in the twilight of probably late May 2013.  The composite edging (which was fun and easy to install with Tristan a couple years before) has since been replaced with concrete edgers and pavers, though they'll soon be excavated and sold.  This space has been so much fun for us to play in and grow all manner of flowers and veggies in, despite the slope and unrelenting full sun..

 

I coached soccer for two years (yes, I really did, in 2012 and 2013).  Most of these kids were on my team both years...

I don't miss the soccer (I hate competitive sports in general), but I miss the kids.  I still see most of them semi-regularly, but eventually I won't, and neither will Tristan.

And because now I'm in a contemplative mood...

The Colorado River and Tristan's reflection

2011: A Potted Plant Odyssey

kale, creeping jenny, pansies

I like potted plants.  Outside, not inside.  Inside I can't seem to keep them alive.  My poor asthmatic and pneumonia-scarred lungs breathe better in dry air so I never use a humidifier or other means to keep my plants as moist as they'd like to be.  So they die.  But outside, at least in some years, I do alright.

 

I like geraniums.  These annual geraniums are pelargoniums, actually.  I like the fancy leaved and scented pelargoniums specifically.  I did eventually procure a larger collection than this and learn to overwinter them by pruning them and removing them from their pots and shaking the soil from their roots so that they may spend the winter in five gallon buckets in the basement.  And sometimes, bareroot and totally unwatered, THEY BLOOM.  In the basement!!  They are amazing little creatures.  The scented varieties have leaves that can be bruised and soaked in sugar syrup overnight, thus making the most amazing homemade sodas and lemonades.  I've even minced some leaves of the lemon crispum and lime varieties into cucumber salsas.  It's heavenly.  Please try it.

My porch wraps around the northeast corner of my house.  I have windowboxes on four north-facing windows.  It's been an interesting and frustrating journey trying to find plants that are happy there.  I wish I could remember what exactly I had tucked into them in 2011, but I can't.  Which is probably fine because they don't look real pleased to be there anyway.  The coleus in these photos however...

The coleus are thrilled.  I should have pinched back the Redhead coleus, but I loved it so much I dared not touch it for fear of killing it.  I know better now, and would have better pictures to show off the mighty Redhead in subsequent years if I weren't so lazy.  It and the trailing, variegated coleus featured in the lowermost photo above are the only two that I think I'll never be able to live without.

One other thing that I'd like to point out in the above set is the trailing green plant tucked in the pot with the caladium.  It's pennyroyal!!  Started from seed by little old me.  It makes a fantastic trailing plant for windowboxes and hanging baskets and is super easy and cheap.  As an herb it makes a nice tea and flea-repellant.  Also, it was historically used as an abortifacient, so don't go crazy.

Me too, Pete.

bloodroot

I don't take my son to church but I do take him to the woods.  I don't believe in God but I do believe in the soul and the spirit and the divinity of all life.  The woods nourish and minister to his soul and his spirit and remind him that he is alive and a tiny, precious part of something bigger and older and more mysterious than he can probably imagine.  Sometimes we take our friend Journey to the woods with us, and sometimes I bring a camera.


In April 2014..

  

Late spring 2014...

BABY SNAILS!!!!!!

why not?

 

Some actual goings-on in my garden last season!

Aquilegia chrysantha 'Yellow Queen' columbine

As promised, here are some photos from this past spring in my decidedly non-photogenic garden.  And as with so many things here, I wish I'd photographed the perennial and herb gardens in previous years because this last winter (2013-2014) devastated those beds.  Two years of drought and an especially cold, long winter killed so many otherwise hardy plants... Once upon a time I had an impressive collection of culinary and creeping thymes, antique dianthus and angustifolia lavenders, but no more.  I am relieved now that I didn't burden myself with trying to replace them right away.  But I worry that the soils in our new home state won't be like the well-drained loess that I'm blessed with here and that the lavenders and dianthus especially won't thrive.  One of the few dianthus that did survive was the ubiquitous 'Firewitch'.  It's everywhere for a reason; it's tough and it's pretty and it's easy (it also smells yummy and the petals are edible!).

Dianthus gratianopolitanus 'Firewitch'

Speaking of scented and edible flowers, I do happen to grow a lot of them.  Some of them are obvious, like these pretty Sorbet series violas...

Sorbet violas

...and some are less obvious, because they're the flowers of biennial vegetables.  Salsify sends up gorgeous, tall flowering stalks in its second year.  Both the white (Tragopogon porrifolius) and the black (Scorzonera hispanica) have edible roots and shoots and scented flowers.  The scent of the black, surprisingly, is reminiscent of chocolate.  Chocolate-scented flowers aren't so unusual, there are a few others in my garden like Centaurea moschata suaveolens and Berlandiera lyrata (which has the most true chocolate smell of any of them, especially in the early morning, and the flowers leave behind beautiful seedheads).  Salsify flowers are also heliotropic, which means that their open flower heads follow the course of the sun.  In my experience, salsify flowers open in the morning, track the sun through midday and close by afternoon.

Scorzonera hispanica

Another one of my favorite scents in the garden is this little apple-scented Biokovo hardy geranium.  All parts have this wonderful, crisp green apple fragrance.  I planted it years ago in my herb garden, so it never gets as much water as it likes but it's still trucking along, spreading a tiny bit each year...

Geranium x cantabrigiense 'Biokovo'

I bought several irises from Old House Gardens over the past couple years, including the Blue Rhythm and Plumeri pictured below.  Old House Gardens is probably the best mail-order heirloom bulb company in the world.  They are so passionate about what they're doing and everything arrives so fresh and healthy...  It's hard to stop myself ordering more for next spring, and hard to imagine having to dig these new plantings up again so soon..

Blue Rhythm Iris

Plumeri Iris

Madame Chereau Iris

Yet another thing that I will miss about my garden (and throughout my property, actually) is the magical appearance of wild columbine.  It's exquisite foliage unfurls out of the ground in herald of spring and it's delicate flowers on tall stalks give color in the time between spring-flowering bulbs and spring-flowering perennials.  The crushed seeds yield a pretty perfume (although they are fucking hard to crush).  If columbine doesn't grow wild in New York I may have to rethink this whole endeavor.

Aquilegia canadensis

Amongst the other more common native plants that pop up in my yard (violets, plantain, milkweed, etc.), there is this very rare wild larkspur that appeared from out of nowhere a few years ago in an area that overflow from one of my rain barrels washed out..

Delphinium carolinianum

When I first began gardening on this property, Solomon's seal was the bane of my existence.  It was everywhere.  Everywhere I dug, it's underground rhizomes infested.  Those were wetter years, and the infestation has since come under control, thanks to drought and my eventually understanding that I should carefully dig up and remove the rhizomes rather than spading them under (oops).  Anyway, I've begun to appreciate the plant, and the year before last I bought a variegated cultivar.  It's edges seem to have been touched with a painter's brush; the variegation is so subtle and brilliant, and the stems are burgundy!  Here it is, tucked in amongst the wild columbine and fiddlehead ferns (yummy chickweed and lambsquarters beneath)...

Polygonatum odoratum var. thunbergii variegatum

My passion for herb gardening knows no bounds.  I want to grow and taste everything.  Anything fragrant and edible that might survive on a hot, dry slope gets tucked in.  By August it's overflowing, blooming and swarming with interesting insects.  This year was different in that there was more bare space than there had ever been..

variegated Salvia officinalis

Behind and beside the sage pictured above (and the little scotch rose in the back) there used to be about a dozen different varieties of thyme.  All of them (with the exception of a caraway thyme that you can't see from this angle) were lost over the long winter.  Elsewhere in the herb garden other thymes did survive, like my beloved rose-scented thyme...

thymes, hyssop, wild lettuce

Other plants that made it through the winter include these Transylvanian and native white sages and the little wild onions peeking through in the lower left corner...

Salvia transylvanica, Artemisia ludoviciana

... and the Egyptian walking onions continue walking all over everything else...

Allium cepa var. proliferum

That groundcover in the lower right above isn't an herb but rather an awesome little Veronica (speedwell) called Waterperry Blue.  It appeared to have a lot of winterkill but it recovered more than I expected, thankfully.  It has the prettiest blooms; in May and June it's covered with these little blue flowers...

Veronica 'Waterperry Blue'

This year I grew and fell hard for Fairy Bouquet Linaria, also known as Moroccan toadflax or baby snapdragon.  I bought one little pot of from Boyer River Gardens in Storm Lake and whenever I next have a garden I'm sprinkling these babies everywhere!

Linaria maroccana

I love them, but jesus christ they're difficult to photograph without a macro lens..

Can you see the linaria?  Hey, there's the patio!

It's a little obscured in the above shot, but beyond the linaria is an edible flower garden, with an understory of Mara des Bois strawberries.  Before the strawberries went in, I had some variety of silene in there.  Silene self-sows pretty infamously, but I hadn't seen any for the past two, dry years.  Then this spring, just next to a winterkilled Judy Fischer miniature rose..

unknown silene

I think it's time to sit quietly and carefully consider this juxtaposition of death and rebirth.  And strawberries.  Because isn't that what life is about?