Nothing like a baby to change your life. We're on hatch watch here at the bird sanctuary. The first baby robins made their appearance this morning, and apparently I don't really mind that their mother's nesting killed my flowers. It seems I'm over that.
Three chicks have hatched, one to go.
The nest location may be less than ideal from a human perspective--an arm's length from our front door, only five feet from the ground--but that makes it a perfect spot for observation, no ladder required. We spent the day checking in, even dragged visitors to the porch to see. As we've done in previous years of too-close nests (although this one takes the extreme proximity prize), we have roped off the entrance to minimize traffic around the newborns.
The door is barred, the dog puzzled.
The adult robins tend their young, seemingly unperturbed by our presence. According to this Wikipedia (fount of all facts) entry, robins raise two or three broods each season, with each "clutch" consisting of 3-5 eggs (henceforth I shall refer to my kids collectively as a clutch). I wonder now if these are the same birds that nested in our garage earlier this year. Could it be that this latest nest was built even closer to human habitation on purpose, to ward off predators? Mothers are shrewd that way.
There's nothing more common than a robin; a nest filled with blue eggs hardly counts as an earth-shattering discovery in our parts. Still, just as people bored by babies in general may one day discover a source of endless fascination in their own particular babies, so it is with our robins.
The storms are missing. Every day this week, severe weather events have failed to arrive as predicted, confirming my bias against meteorology and its practitioners. Might as well shoot craps, I say. Meanwhile, we sweat, we swear. We swear especially at the Humidex number, repeated endlessly as if it were useful information. The misery measurement: all it does is torque the psychological impact of July.
After my class early this morning, I cycled home in the oppressive heat, the long ride I wrote about a couple months ago. Family logistics made this a necessity. My daughter needed the car, and my son needed a ride to canoe camp, so she dropped me off with the trusty clunker bike. I looked at the sky and figured, yah, storms, although it's hard to believe the boy who cries wolf. Dark clouds shadowed me the whole way, and I beat them. I sweated but didn't swear. The trails in Peterborough are brilliant, winding through wooded shade and along the river. It was hot, though. And long, did I say long? I was a red-faced mess at the end.
My son has spent the coolest week on and in the river, taking part in a camp program offered by The Canadian Canoe Museum, a coolio (and air-conditioned) Peterborough place to visit. He comes home every day with wet hair, the only chilly person in this overheated household.
Here's an underwater clip to cool you vicariously, dear reader. This was taken by my daughter at the Lakefield beach a couple weeks ago. Normally electronics and water don't mix--she has lost a phone, camera and i-Pod in various lakes--but this camera was purchased specifically for its ability to swim.
Check out fish-kid. How does he smile without getting a lungful of water?
No, this post isn't about the willfully blind gutting of the long-form Census by the current Canadian Government (please note: the "H-word", "H-word Administration", or any variation thereof shall not appear in this blog). Nor is this about the Snowden revelations: the outrageous wholesale appropriation of private communications by the NSA and their agents, the informatics industry. Those are rants for another day.
So I apologize for a possibly misleading title: Preserving
Data. I love double meanings, in writing and in life. Here are two examples randomly drawn from my clogged memory for your
reading pleasure: one a novel--Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan (I almost admire that double-edged title more than the book, which is good but not his best), and the other a song--God's Comic, by Elvis Costello.
In fact, let's invite younger Elvis Costello into
the blogspace. Enjoy. (Technical difficulties with the embedded video? Click here for the YouTube link.)
Wow, that was a serious digression.
What I intended to detail is my nascent efforts to preserve local food as we enter the height of summer. The Unprocessed Project bug infects me still in spite of a weak will, time-pressed schedule, and weather too hot for baking.
Last year, I stocked the freezer sporadically with produce from our garden--mostly tomatoes, pesto and zucchini--but the garden is hit or miss, not big enough (or laboured-over enough!) to feed six people. The kids and I picked 35 lbs. of strawberries at a local farm, which took almost no time with all of us picking. For a few days we were rich in strawberries: we ate lots fresh and froze several bags; I also made jam for the first time. The jam was a huge hit. (It contains an appalling amount of sugar, but at least we know what is in it--just sugar and fruit.) I gave away several jars, and the remainder didn't last the year. Neither did the pesto or tomatoes. At the moment, all that is left from last summer is one bag of shredded zucchini that will soon be turned into bread or soup.
Unloved zucchini aside, I realized that if we were serious about this venture, we had to ramp up production. Here's what has been achieved so far this year.
Preserving, data on: Rhubarb--2 2-cup bags (from the farmer's market--our rhubarb patch is new; we're trying again to grow what everyone else seems to take for granted as an unkillable country plant)
Strawberries--two expeditions (with children) to the wonderful, laid back McLean Berry Farm, where we picked 45 lbs. the first time, and then 5 lbs., resulting in:
--7 6-cup bags in the freezer (slightly depleted already for smoothies and baking)
--14 250 ml jars of jam (2 given away, 1 opened)
Raspberries--4 lbs, and later 5+ lbs. (picked by my lovely eldest daughter, who drove up to the farm on her own while I was away last weekend), resulting in:
--copious fresh berries in yogurt and muffins
--7 250 ml jars of jam; and
--3 2-cup bags in the freezer (minus 1 that I had to use to complete the batch of jam)
Beautiful, eh?
I'm hoping these quantities, plus freezing/canning Ontario blueberries, peaches, plums, etc. as they come into season, will fill the larder until next year. I suppose a purist would eat fresh fruit and vegetables only in season and then wait out the winter, drawing on the blah squash, pumpkins and potatoes that can be stored in a cold cellar, rather than "processing" everything in the name of an Unprocessed Project--oh, the irony. Home preserving, however, involves minimal processing. No wonder canning is enjoying a renaissance: recycled containers; local, natural food; control over ingredients (preserves, not preservatives). It's extremely satisfying.
Next will be tomatoes. I've never canned them, although I watched my paternal grandmother "put up" tomatoes many times. We're going to try salsa, crushed tomatoes, and sauce. I use a lot of tomatoes in my cooking and would be thrilled to a) support local farmers by purchasing a bushel or two or their harvest; b) steer clear of produce trucked from afar and grown under the worst possible labour conditions (detailed in Barry Estabrook's Tomatoland, reviewed by the NYT here); and c) avoid consuming bisphenol-A (BPA) that is reported to leach from the white plastic lining of commercially canned goods.
That white lining no doubt represented an advance in its time, aimed at solving the problem of botulism, and now we're going back to simpler ways. How the world turns.
Another day, another nest. The avian real estate boom continues.
This nest is located on the porch about a meter from our main entrance--the busiest spot a birdbrain could have picked. Every time someone arrives, the robin mom-to-be swoops past at head height. It's a horror movie.
I like nature as much as the next person, but enough with the gushing over baby birds: I was peeved to find this nest emerging from the top tier of my planter, into which I had JUST, FINALLY, stuck some petunias. You can barely see a squished sprig of green struggling to grow out from under the muddy twigs. The power of plant life is nothing short of awesome (see my earlier post on weed survival), but smart money is on the birds here.
Kate comes bearing art to a reading/celebration in her honour.
My friend of old radiated joy and wonder that day, as she does, over and over, through her poetry. Experience the force field yourself by viewing this video: Kate Marshall Flaherty reciting her poem "Far Away" (music by Mark Korven).
Attempting to grow food, I should say. There are always surprises--thwarted plans, the odd disaster wrought by weather or animals.
This year, self-made disaster looms. In the spring we decided to try something called soil solarization to address the blighted tomatoes of recent years. Tomatoes planted in certain areas of the garden would thrive at first and later wilt. They looked as though they needed more water, but water didn't help. We formed a loose theory (thanks, Google!) that bacteria in the soil were responsible for the blight. Solarization--sealing the earth with clear plastic tarp, allowing bacteria-killing heat to build--would solve the problem, only we must have done it badly. We started late, so the plastic wasn't left in place long enough. Weeds (which we were supposed to remove first, but who knew? I thought they'd suffocate) yellowed deceptively while adapting to their outdoor terrarium, muscling their way toward gaps in the sheeting. It was a big overgrown mess when we finally pulled the plastic away.
Tim wanted to roto-till the weeds into oblivion, but I had just read an article on the excellent Nourish Project site that claimed roto-tilling harms the soil--instead, "lasagna gardening" is the way to go. No problem: all we had to do was cover the dirt with layers of newspaper, compost, straw, and cardboard, which sounded straightforward and eco-friendly. Layers, no digging, materials at hand put to good use. And it goes without saying that I make a mean lasagna, so problem solved, right?
Well, the cardboard and newspapers blew around the yard despite our watering them. The patchwork of flattened boxes, now anchored with fence posts and logs, many decorated with colourful corporate logos, lent a warehouse aesthetic to our patch of paradise. It was, in my mother-in-law's oft-used phrase, a dog's breakfast. Apparently I missed the Part 2 Lasagna Garden post, which contained troubleshooting instructions that would have been handy to have.
Ultimately, Tim dumped piles of grass clippings over the plot, opting for camouflage. He refrained from outright blaming me, while clearly wishing for a quick gas-powered solution. One of us likes to plant seeds in straight lines using string and sticks and neat labels; one of us can't manage anything more than scattering--guess who is who? After much digging, I was able to clear small strips and plant tomatoes and basil, but most of the garden will lie fallow this year. There will be no squash, corn, sunflowers, or peppers, and the whole is such a mess that I can't bear to post a picture. Maybe later.
What we have is still going to be great: two small raised beds planted by the kids, 16 tomatoes in the ground, and several more in containers. If no blight strikes, my crap methods will be vindicated.
I meant to post these pictures, taken toward the end of May, before now.
Then:
new pear tree, birthday gift for Tim
garlic awakening
child planters--carrots, mesclun, two kinds of beans
beginnings (and resurgence of small strawberry patch on right)
rhubarb I haven't killed yet--yes, you can kill it
future strawberries
various (unlabelled, naturally) tomatoes grown from seed
