Cria season is starting at Blue Moon Ranch! Check the barn cam for daily updates–most due dates are in late June and then again in August, but there are a few that have arrived already.
Experiments In Feeding Myself
I think my experiments can be summed up in a phrase: It’s a good thing I live two blocks from Smith’s.
While I didn’t expect my garden to fill all my produce needs for the summer, I did expect it to add some nice salads by now. Out of two rows of lettuce I planted, I have grown two lettuce plants, one of which bolted yesterday while I was at work. (Well, quickly.) I don’t know if my seeds were bad, if the last month of cold had something to do with it, or if the snails ate both rows as soon as they came up out of the ground.
I’m thinking it was the snails, because after they ate my lettuces, they discovered my beans. The beans had come up easily, almost with a cartoon-y “SPROING!!”, and they were doing really well…for a day.
Obviously, poisoning the snails wasn’t an option, so I looked into natural deterrents. I tried some copper tape around the rows–the snails laughed*. I tried some coffee grounds around the beans–the snails laughed and ate some more.
Last weekend my mother offered me iron phosphate snail bait (named, fabulously, Escar-Go!). Iron phosphate is non-toxic and naturally occurring; snails eat it and then their hunger mechanism shuts down and they starve to death. Don’t laugh, but the thought of snails starving over three to six days seemed too sad for me, so I tried a beer trap as a last resort:
The snails got drunk, had a party, ate some beans, and laughed.
All my snail compassion disappeared. Monday night I re-planted the lettuce rows with beans and filled in the holes in the existing bean rows, and I Escar-Go!’d my garden within an inch of its life.
So I think I’ve won the snail battle but my beans will be three weeks behind schedule. At least radishes grow safely underground, far away from snails:
*I think the issue with copper tape on the beans was I couldn’t make good border around the whole row. I have copper rings around the base of the tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplants and they’re happy and un-eaten.
Tuesday Project Roundup: Where’s My AARP Discount? Edition
Projects are still continuing here at Chez Crafty; they’re just going a little more slowly now that I want to be outside, have to control the snail plague in my garden (more on that tomorrow), and need to learn how to ride a bike again (yeah).
I’m working on a denim dress that should be finished soon, but I’m much more excited about the next project in line: finding a use for some truly awesome vintage fabric my grandmother in Nebraska gave me.
Here’s the fabric:
(Approximate time from laying down of fabric to arrival of cat: 2.2 seconds)
And here’s what I’m considering making with it:
It’s a robe/housedress from what looks like the very early 70’s, to put on in the morning and putter around the house in. I could even make a matching headscarf! (Hey, I already wear muumuus; I might as well embrace my inner 80-year-old.)
My only reservation is that a robe wouldn’t get as much public wear time as a dress, and that’s a shame because the fabric is SO fabulous. So I’m still considering.
Cute Kitten Picture Monday: Wait, That’s My Kitten!
When I adopted Toby, I found him through CAWS. I was really impressed with their follow-through during the process of looking, and I even got an email about two weeks after he’d been home making sure we were all happy. Over the weekend, I got another email that his foster mom had wanted me to have, which had his baby pictures in it. Baby Toby!
Friday Unrelated Information
1. All the schedules for free concerts and movie screenings for the summer are up, and guess who’s coming to the Gallivan Twilight Concert series this year? Neko Case, The Awesomest Woman To Sing Since Patsy Cline. She’s playing August 28th. For free. (Also free: An outdoor screening of The Muppet Movie at Lindsay Gardens in the Avenues July 25th.)
2. Speaking of thrifty entertainment, here’s a collection of thrifty tips (not mine) that we can learn from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
3. Toby likes the sun. He takes after me.
Non-Confusing Post About Bikes
I’ve decided to buy a bike. But after realizing I really, really disliked mountain biking, I haven’t been on a bike in ten years. While this may make my decision sound like a recipe for disaster, I’m remembering how much I liked just riding around (on pavement) in my teens. I’m also remembering how expensive gas is and how many hours every day I do nothing but sit. Plus, I live about a mile and a half from work and my car is not getting any younger.*
Another thing that helped convince me that I will LOVE riding a bike: the Internet. Did you know there are whole blogs dedicated to cycling stylishly? Blogs that advocate wearing dresses to keep cool and vintage capes to keep warm? Here are a few that helped me decide:
Copenhagen Cycle Chic
London Cycle Chic
Riding Pretty
I’ll start looking at bikes (pretty!) next week. I’m undecided about wearing a helmet, but the Internet has told me that there are even pretty-ish options for those, too–they look a little like a riding helmet, turning my bike into my pony…
I think I’ll like cycling.
*I do plan to actually ride a bike or two before I buy one myself, just to make sure I won’t hate it. It’s one thing to “cycle pretty” and another thing to spend $400 on an accessory you won’t use.
Things One Learns That One Is Really Embarrassed To Admit
I always though Ray Eames, of the design team Charles and Ray Eames, was Charles’s brother. No, Ray was his WIFE. The things you learn.
(I found this out at the US Postal Service site, because stamps with Eames designs are coming out.)
(Also, if people would use the proper convention for couples’ names and keep the husband’s name closest to his last name [because his name never changed, while the wife’s did], I would not have made this egregious error. I’m just saying.)
Tuesday Project Roundup: Remember When I Used To Knit?
Yeah, I remember when I did, too.
(I still have a sweater going, but it’s stalled on the sleeves. And I brought a market bag with me for travel knitting but it’s turning out way too small for anything that could be bought at the market, except maybe two tomatoes.)
Agricultural Monday
Continuing the “Where Does Your Food Come From/Are We Doomed?” theme of the past few weeks, here’s an an article by Michael Pollan for the New York Times online titled, “Why Bother?“–which was part of the angst of that trip to the Midwest:
The realization that all my efforts aren’t doing anything–that no matter how much I try to eat eggs from happy chickens, or buy organic parsley, that there will be thousands more people buying the cheapest eggs and parsley, with no thought as to where they come from–was really discouraging.
So imagine how happy I was to find an article telling me why I should still bother. Read it and see why you should bother, and we’ll resurrect the 1970’s back-to-the-land movement!
Friday Unrelated Information
1. Yves Saint Laurent died Sunday. Someone who popularized the trapeze dress is all right with me.
2. Photographs of beds deer made in long grass for the night–a whole series. I like that.
3. Words of wisdom from a writerly blog by a former Utahn: “When you are the person who says, ‘I want to go to the demoliton derby,’ or, ‘I know…let’s spend our summer vacation with war reenactors,’ and you find the person who’s like, ‘Yeah, and let’s also hit the La Brea tar pits;’ hold onto that like a rear-mount choke hold, people. Because that is LOVE.”
(And speaking of derbies, mark your calendar for Tooele–where they serve beer and it is awesome–on August 2 and for August 9 for the Weber County Fair. Perhaps it will be warm and sunny then.)