My kittehs has cheezburgers

My three babies, in a picture from a month or so ago, which I captioned on the "I Can Has Cheezburger" website (if you don't know about Cheezburgers, check it out). After a stretch in the voting section, they got moved to the main page. Huzzah!

moar funny pictures

Eating Locally -- in the Dairy Case

This may not be about gardening as such, seeing as how there's no room for cows or goats or other dairy animals in my fraction-of-a-suburban-acre proto-farm. But the idea of eating locally, as chronicled in my Blog Action Day post, has me rethinking a whole lot of the products my family uses daily (right down to the stuff I knit with, as told on another blog I contribute to -- see Meet Your Fiber Source).

Between thinking about eating locally and reading about bovine growth hormones in cows, I started looking at my daily yogurt with a more critical eye. Bovine growth hormone, for those who haven't read much about it, does for cows some of the things that human growth hormone does for humans. It's present naturally in cows and their milk to some degree. However, pumping dairy cows with extra hormones makes them produce a lot more milk. Nursing moms, or those who have been there, imagine this: you know how it is when Baby hasn't been nursing for a few hours and you're feeling rather "full," right? Now imagine your doctor giving you shots filled with hormones that will make you produce four times as much milk. Ow. Ow, ow, ow.

Okay, now imagine how the cows feel.

Not only do they run around with full udders, they're also at a much higher risk for developing mastitis. Worse still, pumping cows full of milk-production hormones is kind of like pumping athletes full of steroids, on purpose. Suppose somehow it became the thing to do to take athletes in high school and routinely shoot steroids into them to turn them into super-athletes, and they continue to receive steroids all during their careers. What would happen to them? We all know the risks of steroids, including an greatly increased risk of heart disease and accelerated wear and tear on the body.

The risks are similar for cows. Hormone-injected cows are the dairy equivalent of a steroid-enhanced athlete -- all of their highly-shortened lives!

I was happy, then, when I read the yogurt carton at breakfast and found that my favorite brand, Nancy's Honey Yogurt, is totally organic (no cows were harassed by hormones to make this product) AND it's produced about an hour's drive south of where I live. Score two for Nancv's!

So what about my lunch yogurt? I could spoon some Nancy's over berries in a reusable container, sure, which would be a lot more ecological than buying little plastic cartons, and sometimes I do that if I have the time in the morning when I'm throwing things in my lunch box and trying to get out the door on time. But I'd gotten to like my Yoplait Lite, and their cartons are at least recyclable.

So how does Yoplait score? Locally produced? Um, no. Sorry. Yoplait is a national brand, and their nearest distribution center is, well, I have no idea where.

What about cow hormones? Do they have an organic product line? I checked their website and didn't find any such products. So I wrote them a letter expressing my concern about growth hormones and cows. Here's the reply I received:

BST (bovine somatotropin) is a hormone naturally found in cows. The synthetic version of this hormone (not to be confused with a steroid hormone) has been subjected to extensive testing. The Food & Drug Administration, American Medical Association, National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Agriculture along with a number of other science-based organizations have concluded that there are no food safety issues in conjunction with milk produced by BST-supplemented cows.

Because BST is naturally found in all cows' milk, there is no scientific way to test the milk to determine if the BST present is from synthetic sources or natural sources. The amount of BST present in milk will not be greater from a synthetic source than it would be occurring naturally.

For more information about Bovine Somatotropin (BST) or Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) you may wish to visit the United States Department of Agriculture' s website at www.usda.gov.

We hope you will continue to enjoy our products.

Awww, pooh. No plans for an organic product, and a weak, "Gee, there's no way we can test for the stuff, so oh, well." The statements about human safety are a little controversial, I know, but I won't comment on that because I haven't read up much on the studies and I don't know much about the evidence. But it was cow health that I was concerned about, and that wasn't even addressed.

So what were my options for a grab-and-go yogurt if I forget to fill reusable cups the night before? Nancy's makes individual yogurt cups, but my store doesn't carry them any more. I cruised to the dairy case and found Tillamook yogurt. I already buy Tillamook cheese. The Tillamook Cheese Factory is a highlight of any trip to the northern Oregon coast. What about their yogurt?

Let's see, the Tillamook factory is about two hours from here in some of the most beautiful country this side of Heaven. Score one for locally produced. What about cow hormones? Turns out that the Tillamook company is concerned about cows, too. They're working on contracting with dairies in the area that do not use growth hormones on their cows. While not all their products are hormone-free, they're working on that, and hope to have everything hormone-free in the near future. Score nearly two for Tillamook! Now if only they made a "lite" version.

Yes, yes, I could go totally local and make my own yogurt from organic milk. That is, if I could make yogurt and have it actually turn into yogurt. I've accepted the fact that I'm a yogurt dunce, and I'll continue to support Nancy's and Tillamook.

The Ugliest Corner -- Trenched, Decked Out

First, part of a fine crop of mushrooms that's been springing up in the yard this fall. I should know the name of this one. It's common enough, and I think it's the one on the cover of Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora -- but I can't find my copy right now. Still, they're lovely mushrooms, something like six inches tall or so:

And on with the garden. Doesn't look like there's much progress, but believe me, a lot of work went into it this weekend. I dug trenches under the circular paths in the middle and filled them with sand, and dug pits in the parts with the worst drainage, lined them with landscape cloth that I'd pierced with scissors, filled them with rubble, covered with cloth, and then buried under the topsoil again. All you can see of all that work is clods of clay on top of the beds. I also hauled concrete blocks that my mother had and didn't need. The teeny patio is laid, and next week I'll fetch the rest for the paths.

All that freshly-dug earth, and Halloween approaching... this suggested a certain something in the way of decor:

Including -- and it's a bit subtle because of the earth tones of the props -- a gardener who met an untimely demise, only boots and gloves sticking out, and a spade still stuck in the earth from doing the deed. I'll have to get out a candle lantern or two to illuminate the spot tomorrow night.

The Ugliest Corner -- Rock On, Baby

Monsoon season is upon us, and the skies have been pouring down rain most of the week. A few sun breaks allowed me to getou tand get a bit more done on the garden -- and to discover the quagmire in the middle. Not unexpected. After all, it's sitting on top of unimproved clay that had a couple of tons of concrete squashing it flat for years. When things dry out again and most of the water drains away, I'll pull the sandy topsoil aside in the paths and dig some drainage pits or trenches, fill them with gravel, cover with fine screen or landscaping cloth, and rebury them. That will give at least some of the water someplace to go. Now if only I could figure out a good way to save some of that water for later in the summer when drought season hits.

So here's what we have after this weekend's labors:

Rocks, rocks, and more rocks! I was able to stack a double layer in the main beds and fill the beds with topsoil and compost. Since everything is boggy in the middle, I think I'll leave it as it is for a while. If we get a dry spell it may drain enough to work with some more, but otherwise the beds are pretty much as I want them. I just need a little mulch on the paths, and I'll need to let them dry out and drain first.

Another view:


The basalt rocks look sort of raw and yellow still, but they'll mellow to a reddish rust color. The red is just on the surface where the iron compounds in the stone oxidize -- in essence, the surface of the stone rusts.

Next, I'll haul some concrete squares that my mom has and use them to make a tiny patio at the back, just big enough for a bench. The remaining squares will be stepping stones for the path around the garden. I'll also start moving strawberry plants from the patch where they are now up to the long bed in front, where they should get more sun. I may move the blueberries I have now, too, since sometime in the future I want to build a small wall along the access in the back, and I'd have to move them anyway.

Come spring, I'll plant two dwarf pears on either side of the teeny patio. By then I hope the dead tree will be gone, and I'll replace that with a small cherry tree, with a second cherry (since they need a pollinator) at the other end of the front garden.

Can't wait for spring to come. When this garden is overflowing with greenery, it'll be a sight to see.

Blog Action Day Post: Eating Locally

I'm getting in on the tail end of Blog Action Day, but that's all right. This is, after all, a gardening blog, and writing about environmental action is nothing new here! From turning a concrete pad into a garden (adding greenspace and forage for butterflies and bees) to reducing the feral cat population through TNR (trap-neuter-release) action and rescuing kittens, to gardening for birds and butterflies has turned up here.

Today, let's talk about food. Gardens are often about food, so it fits. I teach biology at the college level, and I've found over the years that very few of my students understand where their food comes from. They know better than to answer "The store." They have the vague idea that food comes from a farm somewhere. Somehow. And dirt is probably involved. Beyond that, not much of a clue. Hence I get some very interesting responses when I ask them about our place in the food chain, or what environmental effects there would be if more people became vegetarians (their visions of poor, overpopulated cattle starving because we're eating all the veggies just tug at the ol' heartstrings).

Amusing, yeah, but not so funny when we ourselves find out how little we know about our food, and with dire consequences. Who knew, for instance, that cat food contained wheat gluten, and that the wheat gluten came from China, and that some Chinese manufacturers were adulterating the wheat gluten to make it look like it had more protein? That took nearly everyone by surprise. But even innocent-looking whole fruit in the produce section can yield surprises. It came all the way from Chile? Really? Was it really cheaper to import a tomato from Chile? Do we know what pesticides are legal in Chile? And let's do the math: if it was cheap to get that tomato from Chile, what pittance what the poor Chilean farmer paid for it? Would he and his family be better off if they ate the tomato themselves?

But more than health consequences, there are environmental consequences. Shipping produce from third-world nations requires a whole lot of fossil fuel. Nature spent something like 300 million years sequestering carbon into the earth in the form of oil and coal. We humans have used up nearly half of that carbon in under 200 years. That's one huge POOF of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Every tomato that came from Chile instead of your own back yard has contributed to that POOF.

But okay, you say, growing my own would be great. I love fresh food, and the thought of what chemicals might be in or on imported food makes me shiver. But I don't live on a farm. All I've got is a little patch of suburbia -- or an apartment balcony.

I don't live on a farm, either. I've got an ordinary suburban lot, with some large trees shading more than half of it. It's enough for veggies -- and raspberries, strawberries, pie cherries, peaches, a few blueberries, currants... amazing what you can squeeze in. Still I don't yet have the space for all the blueberries I'd like to grow. So here's where I got my blueberries this year:


Just north of town there are several U-pick blueberry farms. In just a couple of mornings I picked and froze 60 pounds of blueberries. Yum! Now I've got locally-grown blueberries to go with my morning yogurt.

I was so busy this summer that I didn't get out and do a lot of fruit picking like I sometimes do. When I was a kid, we picked and canned cherries, peaches, and pears. We grew corn and froze it. We'd find abandoned apple orchards and make applesauce. We'd grow blackberries, boysenberries, and raspberries for the freezer. To this day I can't stand the taste and texture of store-bought canned peaches, which are usually canned while green so they have that stiff, plastic-like texture. Nothing like the ambrosia of home-canned peaches.

Nevertheless, I did get at least some of my produce locally:


And I wish I had a picture of the place where I get my eggs: a little house that I pass on a country road on the way to and from work, where hens run around freely and every few days there's a little cardboard sign out that says "Eggs."

Even if you can't garden, even if you don't have a balcony for container garden, you can usually find a source of local produce, be it a fruit stand, a farmer's market, or a locally-owned supermarket that buys from local farmers. Eating locally often means eating seasonally, unless you have the means for putting up produce and the space to store it. But if you can eat locally during your own growing season, give it a try. At the very least, you'll get the best in fresh, fresh produce, and if you've got kids, they'll know for sure where their food comes from.

Y'know, I wish I could require my students to grow a garden for a season before coming to my class. I'll bet they'd understand the ecological concepts a whole lot better.

The Ugliest Corner -- A New Garden Takes Shape

Progress! The transformation of the ugliest corner of my garden continues. I spent several hours yesterday and today schlepping rocks and shoveling dirt. Using bamboo to outline the beds, I smoothed out portions of the newly-spread dirt and carried rocks up, bucketful by bucketful, from the back yard where I'd piled them (the rocks came from excavations for a new subdivision a few blocks away).

First I outlined the outside walls of all four rectangular beds and the bed along the sidewalk in rocks. After filling the long bed along the sidewalk with dirt saved from making the flagstone paths earlier this summer, I finished outlining two of the beds with more rocks,and began the filling process. First, a layer of used shavings from the guinea pig pen, then a layer of the sandy topsoil. Then some half-finished compost from one of the compost bins, then some more sandy topsoil. That filled the first two beds to the level of the first layer of rocks. Here's where I left off today:

And from another angle:


I'll need to shift the pile of topsoil a bit to do the other two beds. By then the pile should be small enough to mound up in the middle, where a center circular bed will go. Once I've done one layer of rocks, I'll stack the next and fill in some more with the remaining topsoil and compost.

Hooray, hooray, I'm finally going to have what I've been wanting for a long time: a neat little potager, a French-style kitchen garden. When the dead crabapple comes out, I'll plant some semi-dwarf fruit trees near the house. The long bed is for blueberries, cordon apples, and strawberries, with flowers next to the sidewalk. The rectangular beds are for veggies, and the circular bed is for herbs and flowers to attract butterflies and other beneficial insects.

Review: Naturalist by E. O. Wilson

Naturalist by Edward O. Wilson (Island Pess, 2006).

"Most children have a bug period," Wilson writes. "I never grew out of mine."

Pulitzer Prize-winning entomologist and naturalist Edward O. Wilson tells his life story in this lively autobiography, tracing his path from the small child poking in mud puddles, to becoming one of the world's experts on ant biology, to developing a new science of sociobiology and receiving several prestigious science and literary awards awards. His choice of insects as the subject of his live study, and especially ants, came about quite by accident: as a child, Wilson was fishing on a dock one day, and as he hauled in a type of fish called a pinfish, one of the spine on its aptly-named dorsal fin pierced his eye. The eye became inflamed, leaving him blind on that side. This left him able to study things he could bring close to his face. Insects filled the bill. Knowing that ants had been studied little, giving him scant competition in the field, Wilson devoted his live to the study of ants, racking up discovery after discovery, new species after new species, in some of the most remote places on earth.

Wilson's honesty and candor bring to life the world of science, from productive partnerships to ego-filled infighting in the halls of Harvard. His frank opinions of James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, give a whole new insight into the story as Watson tells it in The Double Helix. Wilson rubs shoulders with many big names in science: George Gaylord Simpson, Ernst Mayr, Niko Tinbergen, Konrad Lorenz, and others, yet never loses his Southern small-town charm.

I had the pleasure of attending a talk that Wilson gave at the centennial celebration of Willamette University's Biology Department last month. The talk centered on biodiversity and the importance of preserving endangered habitats, and his involvement in the ambitious Encyclopedia of Life. Wilson gave a similar, though shorter, talk when he received the TED prize. See the video here. Happily, I got my copy of Naturalist autographed!

The Ugliest Corner -- the Transformation Begins

Only a gardener would get all excited about a pile of dirt:

The bark dust company delivered that this morning -- okay, several hours after they were supposed to have shown up, but it finally came. That's eight cubic yards of a light sandy topsoil, which looks like mostly mineral soil. That'll be fine, especially for the paths between the beds. I have compost cooking away that I'll mix in when I start forming the beds.

After two and a half hours, the pile looked like this:


And I went indoors for some ibuprofin, a hot bath, and a bit of a lie-down.

Back at it tomorrow...

Garden Rant has a challenge for you

The ladies over on the Garden Rant blog set up a challenge on DonorsChoose.org. Check out the Garden Rant Global Garden Blogger Challenge to raise $10,000 for garden-related projects in low-income schools. I've added my donation for Walk in the Wild, and outdoor learning garden that a school in Louisiana is hoping to construct. Who else would like to step up and contribute?

The Ugliest Corner of my Yard

Several other garden blogs, in the name of full disclosure, have revealed the ugliest bits of their gardens. Here is what mine looks like -- or rather, looked like -- a few weeks ago:


That would be a useless, cracked, mossy, stained, nasty-looking concrete pad, about 22 feet on a side, that the former owners put in for their kids to play basketball on. Right in front of the house. Our kids never played basketball on it, so there it sat. But take it out? "No, Mom," they'd say. "Don't take it out. We could have a garage sale there."

Said garage sale never materialized, and the concrete kept getting uglier and uglier, with more cracks and more moss. Well, the moss was an improvement, really. At least it was green in the winter.

The kids are out of the house and I've lived with this monstrosity for too many years now. The poor "Hobbit tree" is dead and needs to come down, so with the promise of no shade on that part of the yard, and with sunny bits at a premium, it was time. Past time really, but time to do something a bit more organic with the spot.

So last Monday the concrete guys came with a big noisy machine and took away all the concrete. Now look at it!

Errr... ummm... it's, uh, dirt. Nice... well, not even nice dirt. Sticky red clay. But NO CONCRETE! Yaaay! There wasn't even a bed of gravel under it (which was probably one reason that it didn't hold up). I tried loosening the soil up with a digging fork, but while the soil was pretty soft to begin with, since we had a good rain this week, all it did was ball up in a sticky mass on the digging fork and on the bottoms of my feet. Ah, takes me back to my youth, growing up on a Christmas tree farm on a hill made almost entirely of red clay that stuck to our rubber boots until we looked like we were wearing basketballs. I sowed the whole thing with gypsum and called it good. At least that should prevent hardpan from forming.

Next weekend the barkdust company across town is bringing in a load of topsoil. That I'll spread, pile into beds, and have me a raised bed garden. And THAT will finally be an improvement.

To dig up: potatoes, turnips, Viking treasure hoard...

From the National Geographic website: Viking Treasure Trove Discovered in Swedish Garden.

Aw, and to think that the most exciting thing I've ever dug up in my garden was a lost Koosh ball.

Now there was the time when I was in third grade, when we lived in a rental house that had been a farmhouse, and my brothers discovered a trunk buried in the garden. After much digging and soaking the hard clay soil with a hose, they finally extracted it. To their dismay and disgust, all it contained with some kind of animal skeleton, probably a large dog.

But if there are any Vikings out there wondering where to bury their treasure, I've got a lovely garden...

Anyone want to buy a native plant nursery?

Wally Hansen is retiring from the nursery business, and is selling Wallace Hansen Nursery. It's a well-established native plant nursery that many folks in the mid-Willamette Valley area have come to know, love, and rely on. It appears that Wally would like this to continue as a nursery business. If you or anyone you know has a burning desire to run a nursery, has some nursery business know-how, and would like to live in Oregon, this is a terrific opportunity. Property, house, nursery, existing stock, greenhouses and all are included in the sale. See http://www.wallyhansennurseryforsale.com/ for more information and tons of pictures.

On a more selfish note -- someone please buy this and continue it as a native plant nursery, because if it goes away, there's no other place around where I can get native plants for my garden! If I'd gotten my graduate degree in horticulture instead of science education I'd be all over this.

Erosion control

It's because the driveway in the back of our house goes like this:


that there's a bit of an erosion problem at the bottom of the drive.

Access to the back driveway is by means of a blind alley, and on the other side of the alley, the ground slopes steeply down into the neighbor's yard. Winter rains go sluicing down the drive and can tear up the slope, which the downhill neighbors keep barkdusted and free of weeds, so there's nothing to hold the slope together except some photinia bushes. The neighbor kids go running up and down the thin strip of bare dirt that technically belongs to the people on the side of us, but the neighbors don't take care of it, and then they go down the steep barkdusted slope, tearing furrows in the already threatened banks. Their experiments in using a hose full blast to carve canyons into the slope didn't help any, either. After I carefully raked the dirt back into place they kinda got the hint that maybe that wasn't a good idea.

I'd placed a row of rocks along the edge of the paving, trying to divert some of the water, but I'm not sure how effective it's been. So I took stronger measures this weekend. After picking up the rocks, I dug a trench along the edge of the pavement and the top of the slope, piled some of the dirt on the slope side of the trench, and mixed the rest with some compost and steer manure to increase the organic content of the red-clay-and-rock mix that serves as soil in this neighborhood. Then I set the rocks against the small ridge I'd raised, making in effect an very narrow "rain garden" -- or rather, a runoff garden. Here 'tis, freshly dug:


Since our monsoon season is late October through the end of June or so, I planted some native spring-blooming damp-meadow plants, specifically Sidalcea (Checker mallow) and Camas, which I picked up at the fall sale at Wallace Hansen Gardens. I know where I can collect Camas seeds in the spring, too, so I'll sow the plot with seeds later. Since the slope bakes in the summer, I ordered some native Goldenrod and some Zinnia grandiflora, both western prairie plants that do well in dry areas and tolerate clay. I just ordered a few from High Country Gardens to try out. If they can tolerate damp winters, they should flourish in the dry summers. All of these plants are butterfly plants, so if they colonize, I may start getting a healthy population of butterflies around here.

As for the bare dirt slope, I wanted to plant that with something that would hold the slope together, but wouldn't need much care, since it's an awkward place to get a hose into. I also wanted something good for birds or beneficial insects. My Red Hot Poker plants needed thinning, so as I was pulling out big, fat corms I thought, "Well, why not these?" They tolerate shade pretty well, they propagate easily, they exist on little water all summer, they're green in the winter, and the blossoms feed hummingbirds and finches. I collected a bucketfull of healthy corms, used my mattock to dig holes in the compacted soil on the slope, and planted the whole bank in Red Hot Pokers. If I'd thought of that sooner, I'd have tried ordering some fall-blooming ones. Oh, well, these were free. I gave the slope a thorough soaking with a sprinkler while I went inside and cleaned out the guinea pig cage, then lightly mulched the slope with the used shavings.

Now to go talk to the kid next door about the problems of erosion...

The Kitten Saga continues

Readers may remember that our yard was blessed again with kittens in May (see Kittens: The Sequel). The story didn't end with that post, obviously. When the kittens reached six weeks, I was ready to get them indoors. Alas, if I'd only started a few days sooner -- poor Gadget was taken by some predator and found dead one street over. The neighbor's nosy kid found the nest of survivors in our yard (grrr!) and came over to report that his mom was going to call the Humane Society and have them taken away (double grrr!). That accelerated the plan, and after getting a spay certificate from the local no-kill shelter, I got Toast, the mother, trapped and rounded up the babies. Toast went to the vet and got spayed and came back home.

Here are the babies a couple days after we caught them. I put together a "playpen" in the living room made from those wire squares that go together to make storage cubes. This kept them safe, and and the same time kept them around people.

This is Sprocket...


And here are Edison and Gizmo.

Toast still hangs around the house. She's a smart little girl and saw me take her babies in, so when she came home from the vet, she came up on the deck to peek in the windows until she found them. I feed her regularly, and she's slowly getting used to people. I think she's a little lonesome; when I go out into the garden, she often follows me around.

So the idea was that we'd foster the babies for the no-kill shelter, and then they'd be adopted out when they were past the delicate stage and had been fixed and microchipped. We were quite sure that six cats would be too many for this house.

Only...

... we're kinda used to them now. And rather attached to them. Edison, the goofy little brother of the trio, is a lovable little purr machine. Sprocket has the most winsome face and loves to cuddle. And while Gizmo is more independent, she can be a loving little thing, too. They're all doing fine with us, but are still shy of strangers.

So it looks like we're going to have to have a word with the shelter about these three:

Gizmo

Sprocket

and our darling Edison.

The Literary Gardener Calendar

It's here! For garden literature enthusiasts who need some inspiration for their own journals, here is the Literary Gardener Calendar for 2008.

This calendar features original photos from my garden, inspiring quotes from fine gardening literature, and journal prompts for each month to help when you out when the words run dry.

I'll keep a link to this calendar in the sidebar, as well as to the books quoted on each month's page -- naturally when you read the quotes, you'll want to read the books as well!

Thanks to the magic of Lulu.com, the calendar is available on demand and at a reasonable price until the end of February 2008. Delivery time is about a week after ordering, but allow more time during the holiday season, as the demand for calendars will be higher and the mail volume will increase.