Marching on Through

Spring is always a busy time here in the Stringham household, and this year, spring seemed to start early before it went back into hiding. It's been a busy March, so I'll give the highlights to bring everyone up to speed before Planting Season begins tomorrow.

M's mom and step-dad visited us for most of two weeks. They acted as stand-in Santa Clauses for other members of the distant family, however, transporting goods illegal to send across state lines via any package carrier. Although they were here for 13 days, I somehow managed to snap not a SINGLE picture of them, but I got a picture of the wrapped presents.

I also managed to get a pic of our newest lawn ornament (a gift from the in-laws) next to our old buddy Gnorm.


While the in-laws were here, they wanted to help us with some home repair, so we decided to tackle repainting the 3/4 bath. We managed to get all the supplies purchased and prepare the room for painting before they left, but M and I are still working on finishing the painting, so no pics for now. It's not a very big room at all, but it takes a long time to paint because of all the painting AROUND and above things. It has a high ceiling, and the shower walls don't reach the ceiling; it also has two doors, the vanity, the medicine cabinet, the light fixtures, and the toilet, all in tight little blocks. (For those of you who haven't seen this bathroom, it looks something like one of the Tetris L's, only with one of the squares lopped off the long side of the L.)

Anyway, M and I have ordered all of our seeds and plants for the orchard and garden this year, and we got a buttload (pardon the expression, but what else would you call an Explorer-full?) of canning jars from the neighbor of a friend, so I'm now taking it as my personal challenge to fill those jars this year with pickles, tomato products, and whatever else I can. In those free canning jars were four wire-rim jars and a blue jar! (For those of you not familiar, that means they're really old, and very cool...to me. No one else seemed to be as excited by them as I was...)

So, on we move. As I said, spring hit, then decided to tuck its tail and run, so I got a few pictures of buds on the lilac, some brave snow crocuses, and some buds on the unidentified bush in the front yard. Nothing earth-shattering. Our line of arborvitae, now protected, however minimally, by the orange fencing, have taken off, though. They and the boxwoods seem to have grown during the winter. These beauties are in the front yard, but some of the arborvitae in the backyard are to M's waist.

Over in the orchard and berry patch, things were looking nice. Some overachieving strawberries had already begun clawing their way through the "natural mulch" of dead grass and fallen leaves. Seriously, I keep saying we need to weed the strawberries, but I mean for my benefit so I can see the darn things--they certainly know how to fend for themselves.


Here's a shot of the overachieving 5-on-1 dwarf pear tree that is the tallest non-mature tree we have. That's M, walking around the rest of the orchard. The second picture is of the rest of the orchard--that part you can't see so well through the green posts and fencing that surrounds the pear and apple trees.


A few days after this, we got hit with a thunderstorm that pelted us with some hail. I'd heard of golf-ball-sized hail before, but I'd never seen it before. Mostly, the stuff was soft enough that it hit the roof, siding, or windows and just splattered like a mostly melted snowball, but not without making some very loud dings and thuds. The few larger pieces that landed on the cusion of grass were harder to find, but here's a nice one. The pic's blurry because it's through a plastic-covered, rain-spattered window, and it's hard to get a feeling of scale, but I didn't feel like braving the hail on my delicate skin just to take a picture. See the bigger white blob? See those smaller pellets just below and to the right of it? Those are anywhere from the size of dimes to those little chocolate Easter eggs you can get this time of year in stores.


Finally, our epic journey through March comes to a close, first with a battle, then with a celebratory feast. One evening, as the chill descended outside, the cats apparently decided to duke it out to see who got the rights to the warmth and cushion of the big comfy chair. I called at them from another room to stop, and when I came in a few minutes later to have a seat, I saw that George was clearly the victor. (None of that fluff on the chair is George's...)


Two mornings later, M was snacking on bacon. As we all know, dead pig is George's favorite repast, the thing he most hunts, and he quickly showed his interest and was rewarded for his bravery in surviving a month full of house guests, house "construction," and cold weather.



* Stringham high: Spring is officially here.
* Stringham low: Spring hasn't quite gotten the memo to come back from vacation.
* Stringham super-high: Planting Season begins tomorrow. The orchard is going to nearly double in size!

Greeting the Day

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a sunrise. I’m still not really watching the sunrise, but I’m up for it. I’ve been up working all night. All week, I’ve almost made it but then had to go to sleep. Tonight/this morning, I’ve had, just had, to finish this book I’m working on, so when Mike left for work at a little after 5, I went ahead and opened the front door, opened the window on the screen door, and opened the curtains on the living room window facing east. The birds have been fantastic to listen to. They are absolutely raucous. I’ve heard so many that I couldn’t even pick out many of the individual songs. I hear crows and owls, and some chirping, some singing. Early, before it started to really get light, I heard one song that just made me think of the shooting sounds in an early ’80s video game.

And the smell! Nothing beats the smell of an Indiana summer sunrise. The humid, cold air are crisp but almost cloying, but there’s a heavy scent, almost of iron, to go with the smell of lawn clippings and damp asphalt and damp earth. Soon, the corn will be tall enough to offer its own musk to the blend—one of my favorite smells in the world, corn in the middle of an Indiana summer, though its smell is usually strongest and best in the evening, just around sunset.

I just wish I were more awake and didn’t have to work right now, so I could REALLY enjoy the morning with a nice walk. I guess I’ll have to be content with my cup of hot, strong, very sweet English breakfast tea while the birds sing to me as I edit, stealing glances out the window to see one narrow strip of sky slowly change from purple to pink to powder blue to baby blue…

And I guess I’m going to have to eat some more strawberries for breakfast.

* Stringham high: Sunrise
* Stringham low: Sleepiness
* Stringham super-high: Caffeine and sugar
(It's the simple things today...)

Seeing Red

I know, I know, you're all tired of hearing about strawberries. But seriously, how can I not share this crazy abundance? After today's haul, we're out of large bowls. We're going to have to resort to using plastic tubs unless I get some of these strawberries frozen or canned. I guess freezer jam is in my future tonight. (That's just one bowl of berries...for scale, ook at the full-size mouse in the lower left corner and the 32-oz mug in the upper left corner of the first picture...)
And Becca's entire household will be sick of eating strawberries by the time I leave, I think...unless I accidentally make too much freezer jam. I'd live to make perserves and conserves and other such tasty canned morsels, but I just don't have the time. Still, jam works. We can make lots of tasty things with jam :)


* Stringham high: Our garden is growing carrots this year!
* Stringham low: Transplanted tomatoes are struggling so far :(
* Stringham super-high: Salad greens and turnips and radishes growing insanely!

Strawberry Supernova

I eat them for breakfast, I eat them for lunch, I eat them for dinner, and I eat them for dessert.
I'd even eat them for elevenses and tea and supper if I were a hobbit.

No, this isn't a repeat from a few days ago. This is what we hauled in in a little more than an hour this evening...this white bowl is much larger than the other, and it was filled by ONE of the five rows of strawberries.

The mustard container? Strictly mustard, vinegar, and salt.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Strawberry Overlords

...Into mah bell-ay! Before M had to leave for work today, we decided to gather the strawberries, as neither of us has felt up to it for a couple of days. Teamwork would make the task go faster, we figured, especially as well as those little buggers hide! (You'd think, being bright red, they would be easy to see amidst the dark green of the leaves and grass surrounding them, but you'd be wrong.)

We. Hit. The. Mother. Lode.
The first row we encountered gave us a full pint on its own. The next three rows gave us a combined 2 pints. The fifth and final row...well...see for yourself.

All told, we gathered 4 pints:Plus however many are in this bowl (we ran out of half-pint containers):
* Stringham high: Strawberry Supernova!
* Stringham low: M's sick (still/again)
* Stringham super-high: M's new job starts Tuesday, and he works four 12s, followed by two days off, then four 12s, two days off, etc. This equals 8 to 20 hours of automatic OT a week...at his new level of pay. My husband rocks!

Pots of Gold

It's a bit of an inside joke, but one of my friends keeps wishing me luck finding a pot of gold, or to keep looking for a pot of gold, or a leprechaun, or always something along those lines.

In an email today, she wished me the same, and I realized that this week has been full of little pots of gold everywhere. One was in touching base again with a very dear friend that I had, regrettably, fallen into only sporadic contact with, and rediscovering a heart of gold and the priceless treasure that had drawn me to be her friend in the first place. Another was in a rather substantial gift from a new friend, just for doing my job--I guess you could call it a "bonus" of sorts.

Other little pots of gold, though slightly less emotional, are no less dramatic or awe-inspiring: a handful of strawberries a day from our berry patch, an explosion of iris blooms after last night's rain where last year there was only one plant, an interview today that may lead to a better job for my husband, another new friend offering to help with no benefit to herself.

Sure, the world can be full of sadness and disappointment, but, oh, what beauteous joys it holds for those who pay attention!

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it." —Helen Keller

“We humans are social beings. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.” —The Dalai Lama

Rain, Rain, Go Away, Come Again in...5 Days

Two weeks without rain. For days and days, they promised us rain. We watched the skies, hoping for it from the dark clouds that hovered over us, the gray clouds that skidded over us, the blue-gray clouds that skated around us. It never rained. Our strawberry plants started to wilt, our fruit bushes started to crinkle. The plants all started looking the worse for the wear.

I consulted the weather: possibility of thunderstorms on July 4, 20-40% chance of rain (depending on the day I looked). This would never do. And we're going out of town this weekend for a week. So the plants will have to be watered. Two days ago, we started. M watered the garden with the hose. I filled a 5-gallon bucket and the 2-gallon watering can and put them in our small gorilla cart and pulled it behind me all the way over to the orchard/berry patch, sloshing water out of the bucket and into the cart and over the sides of the cart. Over four trips, I lovingly watered every strawberry plant--all 133 original plus the new plants started from runners.

Last night, M fertilized some of the garden plants that seemed to be nutrient deficient. I watered the fruit bushes and trees, the boxwoods, the magnolia trees, the maple saplings--again, 3 or 4 trips with the 5-gallon bucket and the cart. (M was using the watering can, so I had to carefully pour the water from the bucket around every bush and tree.)

Today, July 4, I consult the weather when I get up: Thunderstorms, 90% chance of rain. No thunder. No storms. Rain the whole ever-loving day. So far, 10 hours of it--nice and gentle. Perfect for plants. I have discovered the Crawfordsville rain dance--water your own damn plants. When Mother Nature lies down on the job, take matters into your own hands. Then M.N. wakes up and makes good on her shirked duties. I love her, but sometimes she's a real bitch.

* Stringham high: Rain
* Stringham low: Rain, so no good fireworks displays tonight.
* Stringham super-high: From our yard, we have an excellent view of ANY fireworks that might be set off up to 25 miles southeast to south to southwest to west of us. Only the immediate east and the north are limited, because of the trees.

****Disclaimer: The title of this blog links to a page that I found accidentally. I agree with most of what it says, but I have to add that the bits about Native Americans unfortunately lump all NA's together, completely disregarding the fact that the NA ways of life were varied, including hunting-fishing, hunting-gathering, farming (plants), farming (livestock), farming (plants and livestock), and others besides. (And yes, of course, some NA societies/groups lived as the author of the linked page states.)

Fleshy-headed mutant, are you friendly?

We met our new neighbors today—well, “the mom,” at least. Really, we learned about them. JJ & J are dad and mom, and they have three kids. J is really nice and really talkative. We learned a lot J. It turns out they’ve been trying to buy the house for a year. They’re still in the midst of painting and updating (it’s been unlived-in for 4 years now, but it’s “stuck in the ’70s,” as J says).

We’ve already been invited to come over any time to visit, and J already acts like it’s a foregone conclusion that we will be there and get to know the house pretty well. So that’s awesome. I mean, come on, they bought the house and its 23 acres so they can dirtbike. Yes, that’s right, a family of dirtbikers. Considerate dirtbikers…there are whole sections of their property they won’t bike on because it might disturb the neighbors.

And from J we learned that our neighbors down the road did move in about 6 months ago, so they aren’t the family that owned the property to begin with. Yeah, we need to make friends with them, too.

And J has noticed us peeking out and watching them. So, hopefully that comes across as neighborly concern and not wackiness/craziness. But, hey, the basket of goodies we left them seemed to score some points. J

Now, we just need to walk the thin line between whacko/crazy/considerate/nosy. Hmm…a very narrow line, apparently, since the only good term in that list of adjectives is “considerate…” :D

* Stringham high: Raspberries blooming! Potato plants blooming! 1/2 - 1 pint of strawberries every day! Radishes, beets, and spinach, oh my!
* Stringham low: The highs (temps,---it's miserable out there :( )
* Stringham super-high: Promise of awesome neighbors. (Oh, and I saw Wicked yesterday. Fabulous! I laughed, I cried, it was better than...some other musical that shall remain nameless.)
* Stringham laugh of the moment: George chasing his tail. I think he's rediscovered it again. There are few things so funny as watching a 15-year-old cat chase his tail like he's a kitten again.

More Change than President Obama

* Stringham high: We have neighbors! Both houses across the road from us are now occupied. Our new neighbors just started moving in Wednesday evening. Now we just need to meet them. Waiting for the right time, since they seem to have movers and contractors and other helpers there constantly. We're planning for today...we just have to get our social sides kicked in the butt to take our new neighbors the welcome basket we made them (well, and M has to make some of his tasty bread to go with the basket).
* Stringham low: What's there to be low about? I've been working my tushy off freelancing, and it's been fun!
* Stringham super-high: We had a red strawberry yesterday! It was smile, and it wasn't fully ripe yet, but M snipped it off because he didn't want the birds getting to it first. (Oh, and we picked up a WiiFit when we went grocery shopping last night--first time we'd SEEN one, and there were bunches and bunches...stayed up until 3 AM playing and working.)

We've Got Wood

This weekend, my parents came up and brought with them my cousin BJ and his wife, C, to cut down the 2 mature trees we have that were rotting. We knew when we bought the place last year that 3 of the 4 trees were rotting and would have to come down, and of course, last year, half of one tree fell on and near our house, necessitating its cutting then. But the other 2 were left for when we had the money to get them cut.

But my parents decided to spend their holiday weekend helping us. So they persuaded BJ and C to come up. BJ brought his tree-felling equipment, and within an hour of their arrival on Saturday, had the first tree (one along our driveway) down. While Dad and BJ used the chainsaws to cut the branches and limbs into manageable pieces, Mom, M, C, and I drug the limbs away to a pile and stacked up the wood in an out-of-the-way place. Three or 4 hours later, only the main part of the trunk remained on the ground (and it lies there yet today, waiting for M to split the pieces into manageable, moveable sizes). Luckily, the skies had gotten cloudy and a breeze had picked up just as my parents and BJ and C arrived, so we weren't miserable the whole evening.

After dinner, we all fell, exhausted, into bed, and woke up early yesterday morning to make a "quick" trip to Home Depot for more supplies. The day was a little sticky, but still cool. Until we started on the tree. This time, we were felling the tree that's on the west side of the house, amid all the ruts left when the heatpump line was dug and laid, where we have no shade, but sun exposure all day after 9 or 10 AM in the summer. The humidity really vamped up, and it got up to the mid-80s, at least. The tree fell easier than the first one had, but it was almost unbearably difficult to cut up and move...the thing was full of water, so it was dense, and hard to cut and move. Add to that the fact that we were still worn out from Saturday night and were so hot and that we had to watch every step for fear of twisting our ankles in ruts, and you had a crew of extremely sweaty, thirsty, filthy (did I mention that the sawdust from this tree was super-fine?) people. At almost no point were all 6 of us working like we had on Saturday. Instead, 2 or 3 of us worked as long as we could, until we thought we'd fall flat on our faces, then take a seat and drink water, beer, or soda, and then we'd rotate, going back to work while others rested, or we'd all collapse for a while until someone could muster up enough gumption to haul just one more wagonload of wood to the pile. (Across grass the whole way, so the pulling of the cart or the dragging of the branches was far more difficult than it had been Saturday, when most of the trip had been on the smooth driveway, and shorter.)

Again, several very big pieces of trunk are lying in our yard, but the limbs that landed in the neighbor's field were all dragged away, and all the pieces that were small enough were carted to our woodpile, though they were simply dumped unceremoniously into a large pile instead of neatly stacked. We were just too damned tired to do much after about 3 hours of cutting, dragging, and hauling.

That's it on the tree front. We now have just 1 shade tree left, and it's pretty young and on the northeast side of the house, so it doesn't help much...

Meanwhile, the reflective ribbons M put on the fruit trees, along with the blood meal spread around them, seem to have kept the deer from further nibbling, so our "appetizer" trees have really bounced back.

Several of the greens in our garden are popping up; all of our corn mounds have sprouted and have plants at least 3 inches tall; our tomato plants are thriving in our water-bottle "thermal protection" pods.(TM) :) (Pictures shown here are from Mother's Day weekend, when we planted the corn and transplanted the tomatoes, not of the sprouts)

Our potatoes are thriving. (And BJ has offered to give us as many old truck tires as we want to use for planting the potatoes next year. Three cheers for [free] recycling!) Our beans seem to be suffering from SOME exfoliation, but according to our companion planting guide, the potatoes should be attracting some other insects that will feed on our bean-stripping friends.

Our Ozark strawberry plants have teensy little strawberries everywhere. All but one blackberry bush is showing foliage; same with the blueberry bushes. Sunflowers are starting to sprout, and our Jerusalem artichokes are really shooting up.

And tomorrow, I begin my stint as a full-time freelancer. I think I'll start by taking half a day off. (Well, it's to donate blood, not to play hookie.) Cheers!

Oh, and we had another traffic pull-over while we were working outside yesterday. Instead of pulling into our driveway, this genius just pulled off the side of the road at our mailbox. (The picture isn't that great because I didn't want to be obvious about taking pictures of two cops pulling a minivan over.)

* Stringham high: Rotten trees: 0 Seifert/Stringham family: 2
* Stringham low: Supreme exhaustion
* Stringham super-high: Go, go gardening!

Oh Deer, the Carnage Has Begun!

It's official--I am now a full-time freelance editor! *gulp* Yesterday, the final day of my contract, was bittersweet, as I left behind some good coworkers and friends and some...not-so-great coworkers (I found a great piece of advice a few weeks ago: If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.), knowing that they'll be a little (well, a lot, for a while) worse off without me.

As I helped water the garden last night, I discovered that quite a bit of our corn has sprouted, and our tomato plants are getting bigger and healthier. As we did our walk-around last night, M and I were also extremely excited by the green strawberries he had found yesterday (that's his finger behind one of the berries, for scale, and his cell phone takes blurry pics) and the blossoming of nearly every fruit bush we have. Despite the unseasonably cool weather we've had the past couple of weeks, our plants seem to be doing exceptionally well. We may even have some salad greens sprouted from some planting we did 10 days ago.

Oh, and the deer have been nibbling the sugar maples and the Bartlett pear as they've walked through our yard. We got some blood meal today to put around the trees, and if we need more help, we might get some hair clippings from our hair dresser. I've read that the combination of blood meal and human hair is very effective.... Of course, I've also read that stopping deer from eating plants is difficult and requires a 3-pronged approach and that it varies from location to location, depending on the type of deer and the type of plant. So why should our deer "problem" be any different than our other issues? ;) We don't want to harm the deer, and we don't mind sharing--we just want to give the trees a chance to get large enough so that some nibbling doesn't do them too much harm. We'll keep you posted as we experiment.

* Stringham high: Full-time freelancing!
* Stringham low: Building raised beds and storage bins for our root crops is more expensive than we'd like.
* Stringham super-high: Corn growing much better than last year!

Livin' on a Prairie

I had a migraine that kept me from going to work this morning, but as it turned out, that was fortuitous. The headache was well under control and down to a dull roar by 11, then throwing a nasty hissy-fit around 11:30, just before we got a large delivery of trees and plants. This time, it was the rest of our seed potatoes, 25 strawberry plants, 2 magnolia trees, 24 evergreens for a windbreak, and [most of] our super fruit tree (8 of 9) collection.

Well, M wanted to get started right away, but we couldn't realistically plant all of them, especially with my head roaring at me. So we did our research (ah, don't we always?) and got my headache under control with the meds, the sunglasses, and some lunch, and away we went to get mulch and weed-blocker cloth and all the other planting things we needed. [Including a gorilla wagon, which is awesome. It has four wheels and has a dumping basket. We can carry up to 600 pounds in it and dump up to 300. It took an hour and a half to put together, but after 5 minutes of not having to lug around a bag of wet peat moss, it was totally worth it.]

M tilled a big stretch of 100 feet for the strawberries after we agreed where to plant everything. At 6:30, we started mixing peat moss into the soil, and at 8:30 we were done. Tomorrow, the trees...

* Stringham high: Trees, trees, trees! Straaaaaaaaaaaawwberries!
* Stringham low: What's there to be sad about on a day that was sunny and in the 50s?
* Stringham super-high: We took a break after working the soil and laying the weed-blocking cloth and laid down on the grass, staring at the sky. In that moment, ah, the contentment! I spent my morning and early afternoon freelancing (in the semi-darkness) and the afternoon working to plant our food. I spent the whole day with my husband, working on our little "mini-farm/soon-to-be orchard," and lying next to him in the sun. Only a couple of kids and a dog running around could have made me feel more delighted. [The title links to an article about mini farms. What we are doing is not absent of power tools, nor is it focused on making ure to be pesticide free, but it is very close to this.]