My Wandering Attention

Green living, gardening, astronomy, chicken rearing, knitting, Celtic history, hydrogen energy, baking, the Tudors. Well, it just seems obvious that this list would lead to my latest point of attention, which is . . . Steampunk, naturally. I've poked around it for some time, but I confess to a recent explosion of fascination with it. It combines my love of the Dickensian era, the brutal elegance of machines and old industry, ornate design, and science fiction and fantasy in a quite wonderful, almost irresistible way. It's fascinating to posit an alternate timeline that could exist if this invention had had more attention, or that one had come along at a different time. Thinking about it makes one realize how interconnected and accidental our own timeline really is.

Also, the style and artwork from this particular subculture is just delicious. Think "Golden Compass" combined with "Myst" and "The Prestige" peppered with the more curious curiosities of "Antiques Roadshow" topped with Johnny Depp's bowler from the very dark and drear "From Hell." Now add a fanciful flight jacket from an imagined AeroCorps of steam-and-sail zeppelins, a mysterious gasworks, a giant Tesla Coil and gorgeous nineteenth-century penmanship on a copper-infused calling card. Well, anyone who knows me knows I'm in alt-history heaven right there! If you see anything out there in the interwebs or art world that sounds like this, please do send it on. In the meantime, the ladies can have interactive fun with this little Steampunk costuming link: Clockwork Couture

I suppose the men can have fun there, too. Naughty!

And if anyone is at all inclined, I would very, very much like to have one of these Steampunked laptops. My goodness, who wouldn't?

I promise I'll get back to posting about our garden and our new chicken coop soon, but this is so much more interesting than cabbages at the moment!

Recipe Basics Sheet

One of my goals for 2009 was the creation of a "Recipe Basics Sheet," the model for which came from the Angry Chicken blog (link to the left over there). This is a single cheat-sheet with 11 recipes that I make fairly often. I know generally how to make them, but the exact ingredients or oven temps and times may get jumbled in my tiny brain. I'm sure it will undergo many changes over time, but it's nice to have a start on being more efficient in the kitchen.

I'll be posting some pictures of the garden as soon as it turns sunny again. This weekend's crazy wind was a killer, but most everything survived intact. The pea plants and zucchini are flowering, there must be 5 dozen different tomatoes working, and we have our first cucumber babies! This is my third or forth time planting cukes but the first time to ever get an actual cucumber on the vine. Very exciting here in Florida's prime growing months.

Happy spring! As always, click on the pic if you want to see a larger version.

Freedom Gardeners Site

Freedom Gardeners is an online community group of people trying to do more with growing their own food and being more self-sufficient. It's a nice way to get in touch with others and get advice. You can see our profile as a way to enter the site--just click on the title of this post.

Netting is Annoying!

And did I mention how annoying the netting is? In addition to getting caught on anything and everything, it also catches things, too. In December we discovered a gigantic black racer that had wriggled through the netting until it had gotten itself completely caught. We thought it was dead until Jeff touched it. NOT DEAD. Nevertheless, Jeff very carefully cut the snake out of the netting using a tiny pair of scissors while the snake at first wrapped around his wrist and then tried to bite him multiple times. Well, there's the wonder of nature for you! With the last snip the snake shot off under the fence to our neighbor's yard, so all was well that ended well.

But that netting is damned annoying. Any ideas out there?

Click to see Jeff in all of his Marlin Perkins glory (no, not dating myself at all there with that reference!).

The Green of Change

I don't think I've ever before appreciated how cool gardening is. Sure, it's nice to put things in the ground and get useful or beautiful plants as a result, but being witness to the process of growth is really amazing. It's hard to fathom day to day how much a seemingly simple little plant can change. From barren dirt to two little seed leaves and a stem poking out of the ground, new branches on a tomato plant coming from seemingly nowhere, leaves on the lettuce plants puffing out where I had just picked off older leaves 48 hours beforehand. And they do all of this, endlessly, with no more than the four elements. Clearly, our ancestors were on to something when they called out Earth, Air, Water and Fire as the most essential building blocks of life. Plants bear out their testimony in the most remarkable ways. It's really quite a privilege to see it, especially in a society where we are increasingly divorced from the natural world.

Today, we harvested our first edible head of broccoli. This is our second attempt at broccoli after our crazy chickens wiped out the first batch in a single day at their own personal broccoli buffet. The cucumbers are just sprouting (my first experiment growing directly from seed), the lettuce is going crazy in our beautiful weather, we have nine or ten types of tomatoes in the ground (c'mon bees, show up this time!) and yesterday I noticed that all eight blueberry bushes have tiny berry buds nestled in their leaves, which are still flashing their autumn/winter shades of rusty red. The blueberry bushes are still very small, but they've all survived and look determined to fruit at least a little bit. I'm hoping to nurse them along to full size this spring.

The girls are still happy little hens, it seems, and are back on a pretty regular laying schedule now that they're done molting and the days are getting longer. I expect we'll see an even greater output with the increasing sunshine. They're still noisy, but no neighbor complaints so far. It's amazing how much goodwill a handful of beautiful, sage-colored eggs can buy you. The chickens would be quieter if we let them have at the garden to stuff themselves, but we've draped everything in a fine bird netting that keeps them out. They are not shy about voicing their displeasure. Every. Single. Morning. The netting is terribly annoying stuff but will do until we figure out how to enclose the whole area in something more workable. One project at a time!

Next on the list--planting our last box with delicious tidbits, pulling out some old plants and replanting with spring veggies and hooking up the rain barrel. Oh, for two weeks off!

As always, click the photos for larger versions!