To celebrate the Inauguration yesterday of our new President and Vice President, our citrus trees today were the lucky recipients of celebratory compost chicken manure! A new era deserves some prime sh**. Actually, the timing has mostly to do with a kind friend ordering extra bags and bringing some to me and with me wanting it on the trees before the rain anticipated for this weekend. (Thank you, kind friend!) Yesterday, I spent most of the day watching the Inauguration, so the trees had to wait. I found the Inauguration very moving with a message of unity and hope, an especially reassuring contrast after the Capitol Insurrection 2 weeks ago. I hope it is a better year for our country and my citrus.
Showing posts with label Rambling on. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rambling on. Show all posts
Thursday, January 21, 2021
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
White fly update, Compost, Citrus Fertilized, COVID19, Social Distancing, Remote work/learning
To update on the white fly I'd been battling last fall on the citrus... I continued to apply worm tea to the affected citrus, pouring some over the leaves, but mostly putting on the surrounding soil. I also rubbed the white fly off the leaves 1-3 times per week. Then came winter, if you can call it that in San Diego, and the problem has resolved (for now.) This is about what I recall happening when I had white fly on an ornamental potted plant near our front door a few years ago. I'm calling it a success.
With the COVID19 pandemic, our work, school, and sports lives have been drastically altered. Last weekend seemed like an excellent time to work in the garden, giving us exercise and fresh air. Our neighbors had the same idea, so we even had some social time, at an appropriate distance, of course.
We rotated the worm bin, harvesting the bottom layer and spreading it on the fruit trees and some potted plants. Next we harvested the compost from the regular compost bin, which we'd stopped adding to about a month ago in anticipation of this. We spread this on the fruit trees as well. This time we fully emptied the bin because we had to move its location in preparation for redoing the back retaining wall that separates our garden from the canyon. Once in its new location, we added back larger compost pieces that needed more time from the sifting and added the contents of the trash can that had been serving as a temporary compost receptacle. So we're ready for the next compost cycle.
Those worms are funny. It is hard to tell how many are in there until you really move the contents. This time we were pulling up handfuls of worms!
Both last week and this have been rainy, which will be helpful for working the compost and fertilizer down into the soil a bit. The canyon is looking green.
We also added citrus fertilizer to those trees. We're all ready for a bountiful 2020 fruit harvest!
For fun, here are some other spring garden pictures.
I haven't planted the vegetables I'd have liked to at the community garden yet. When the rain pauses, I hope to go to both harvest and plant. With trying to space out grocery trips due to "social distancing" measures (there's a new term that has now become mainstream), I'll be grateful for whatever vegetables I can produce. Food supply and the ability to access it are a concern to me. Stores have empty shelves due to the sudden demand. And going to stores with the crowds wishing to get food is risky due to how very crowded they are. My last outing was on Friday 3/13 for food and the stores were nuts. Trader Joe's freezer section was so empty that I took a picture.
I'm thinking about how to extend the food we have to minimize trips to the store. We will run low on produce, meats and dairy first. We've been eating more beans to supplement our meats in the protein arena. Thankfully, we have a lot of beans.
In the meantime, DH. is working remotely from home and the kids are doing optional class assignments from home. This large house suddenly feels smaller with all of us here full time and trying to do tasks that sometimes require a quiet atmosphere, yet each needing to talk, too (like with DH's many audio/video calls). Funny tidbits from that include one power-career colleague in his wife's craft shed taking calls from a stool and another on a sofa next to an enormous teddy bear that dwarfed her.
DD, in 5th grade, is receiving daily emails from her teacher with suggested activities. There's a google doc where students are reporting to each other and the teacher about what they're doing. They've also been encouraged to email the teacher (journal style) about their day, to keep them writing. Some of the emails to parents have suggestions for schedules and multitudes of daily tasks, but so far they feel scattered and we don't have one cohesive plan. Which of course is difficult to do when things seem to change by the hour. 3/13/20 Friday is when they announced our schools we begin a 3 week closure on Monday 3/16/20, so this is only beginning. We receive daily updates from the district. Last night's said there'd been hints from the governor that schools may be closed for the duration of the school year. I wonder if they will get true remote classrooms in place. Some students do not have devices or wifi. The devices could be checked out. But how to get wifi to everyone? I know some cities have wifi networks all around town. This shows a weakness of our not having such a network. Public libraries are, of course, closed, so there went the default public internet access option.
DS, in 9th grade, has received an avalanche of suggested activities from his English teacher and about nothing from Math, Spanish or PE. On our own, we found an app to help teach Spanish, which both kids have been playing with. There is an assessment for skill level, but it placed DS in second year Spanish at the same level as DD, who is a true beginner. So the assessment isn't what you'd wish for. The big void coming from PE itself is odd, considering that DD's 5th grade teacher is "assigning" exercise to her class. Also, his PE had recently created personal fitness plans, which would be easy for the teacher to point them to. Like... how about working on your fitness plans and modify them as needed for home use? The teacher could also easily suggest 30 minutes of exercise a day and ask the kids to email in what they did.
With the COVID19 pandemic, our work, school, and sports lives have been drastically altered. Last weekend seemed like an excellent time to work in the garden, giving us exercise and fresh air. Our neighbors had the same idea, so we even had some social time, at an appropriate distance, of course.
We rotated the worm bin, harvesting the bottom layer and spreading it on the fruit trees and some potted plants. Next we harvested the compost from the regular compost bin, which we'd stopped adding to about a month ago in anticipation of this. We spread this on the fruit trees as well. This time we fully emptied the bin because we had to move its location in preparation for redoing the back retaining wall that separates our garden from the canyon. Once in its new location, we added back larger compost pieces that needed more time from the sifting and added the contents of the trash can that had been serving as a temporary compost receptacle. So we're ready for the next compost cycle.
Those worms are funny. It is hard to tell how many are in there until you really move the contents. This time we were pulling up handfuls of worms!
Both last week and this have been rainy, which will be helpful for working the compost and fertilizer down into the soil a bit. The canyon is looking green.
We also added citrus fertilizer to those trees. We're all ready for a bountiful 2020 fruit harvest!
For fun, here are some other spring garden pictures.
I haven't planted the vegetables I'd have liked to at the community garden yet. When the rain pauses, I hope to go to both harvest and plant. With trying to space out grocery trips due to "social distancing" measures (there's a new term that has now become mainstream), I'll be grateful for whatever vegetables I can produce. Food supply and the ability to access it are a concern to me. Stores have empty shelves due to the sudden demand. And going to stores with the crowds wishing to get food is risky due to how very crowded they are. My last outing was on Friday 3/13 for food and the stores were nuts. Trader Joe's freezer section was so empty that I took a picture.
I'm thinking about how to extend the food we have to minimize trips to the store. We will run low on produce, meats and dairy first. We've been eating more beans to supplement our meats in the protein arena. Thankfully, we have a lot of beans.
In the meantime, DH. is working remotely from home and the kids are doing optional class assignments from home. This large house suddenly feels smaller with all of us here full time and trying to do tasks that sometimes require a quiet atmosphere, yet each needing to talk, too (like with DH's many audio/video calls). Funny tidbits from that include one power-career colleague in his wife's craft shed taking calls from a stool and another on a sofa next to an enormous teddy bear that dwarfed her.
DD, in 5th grade, is receiving daily emails from her teacher with suggested activities. There's a google doc where students are reporting to each other and the teacher about what they're doing. They've also been encouraged to email the teacher (journal style) about their day, to keep them writing. Some of the emails to parents have suggestions for schedules and multitudes of daily tasks, but so far they feel scattered and we don't have one cohesive plan. Which of course is difficult to do when things seem to change by the hour. 3/13/20 Friday is when they announced our schools we begin a 3 week closure on Monday 3/16/20, so this is only beginning. We receive daily updates from the district. Last night's said there'd been hints from the governor that schools may be closed for the duration of the school year. I wonder if they will get true remote classrooms in place. Some students do not have devices or wifi. The devices could be checked out. But how to get wifi to everyone? I know some cities have wifi networks all around town. This shows a weakness of our not having such a network. Public libraries are, of course, closed, so there went the default public internet access option.
DS, in 9th grade, has received an avalanche of suggested activities from his English teacher and about nothing from Math, Spanish or PE. On our own, we found an app to help teach Spanish, which both kids have been playing with. There is an assessment for skill level, but it placed DS in second year Spanish at the same level as DD, who is a true beginner. So the assessment isn't what you'd wish for. The big void coming from PE itself is odd, considering that DD's 5th grade teacher is "assigning" exercise to her class. Also, his PE had recently created personal fitness plans, which would be easy for the teacher to point them to. Like... how about working on your fitness plans and modify them as needed for home use? The teacher could also easily suggest 30 minutes of exercise a day and ask the kids to email in what they did.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Slow Down!
As a person who multitasks yet constantly feels like I'm being spit off the back of the treadmill of life, I found this article really interesting. I try to simplify, yet I also find myself doing things that complicate. Blogging, for example. Web surfing. Various garden projects. Isn't it just easier to buy stuff at the store? Faster. Wait - that's the point. A lot of my projects (which can be overwhelming in their number and scope, especially for my life phase, as I mother little ones) are simplification projects. Growing food is a slow process, a labor of love, a developing oneness with the food. And yet it is also watering, weeding, planting, composting -- translation -- time. It is slow. Yet it is also a time sink. One in the same, I suppose. There is this tension between wanting to get things done so you have time to move on to the things you want to do vs. just slowing everything down and enjoying the process. Being mindful.
Where do I waste time? Web-surfing, email, reading news. But is it such a waste?
We don't really watch TV, so the time isn't being sunk there.
This article points to agreement about increased speed of life now. We get places faster (cars, airplanes) and get information faster (internet, phones), so why aren't we overwhelmed with leisure time? Doesn't that sound nice? Being overwhelmed with leisure time. Yet I don't know anyone who feels that way. Why not? Longer hours at work? Greater expectations for ourselves and our families? More scheduled activities for kids? Multi-generational care across suburban (and global) sprawl?
Some of the ways we try to simplify in our home are:
- almost no TV
- minimal cell phone use (so we aren't getting calls everywhere we go)
- growing some of our food
- preserving some of our food (but again, is this just complicating things? It would be faster to buy a jar of applesauce than make it. But I guess that's the point - SLOW DOWN!)
- I don't like to run errands all the time, so I postpone trips like going to the grocery store (in the article he discusses the merits of skipping a bookstore trip that he doesn't really have time for anyway). But this ends up with less frequent trips. The ones I do make are time-consuming and feel like a marathon!
- intentional reduction in consumption. Freecycle and Craig's List are not only cheaper, but also greener - by reusing stuff. They are more of a process - than the quick accomplishment of just buying something new. So does searching for a pressure canner for a year on Freecycle, Craig's List, garage & estate sales, and thrift shops count as "slowing down"? Or is it just a complication and I should have just bought a new one and got it over with?
I'm afraid that I'm a long way off from having the answers. I'm open to suggestions. How do you simplify your life?
Where do I waste time? Web-surfing, email, reading news. But is it such a waste?
We don't really watch TV, so the time isn't being sunk there.
This article points to agreement about increased speed of life now. We get places faster (cars, airplanes) and get information faster (internet, phones), so why aren't we overwhelmed with leisure time? Doesn't that sound nice? Being overwhelmed with leisure time. Yet I don't know anyone who feels that way. Why not? Longer hours at work? Greater expectations for ourselves and our families? More scheduled activities for kids? Multi-generational care across suburban (and global) sprawl?
Some of the ways we try to simplify in our home are:
- almost no TV
- minimal cell phone use (so we aren't getting calls everywhere we go)
- growing some of our food
- preserving some of our food (but again, is this just complicating things? It would be faster to buy a jar of applesauce than make it. But I guess that's the point - SLOW DOWN!)
- I don't like to run errands all the time, so I postpone trips like going to the grocery store (in the article he discusses the merits of skipping a bookstore trip that he doesn't really have time for anyway). But this ends up with less frequent trips. The ones I do make are time-consuming and feel like a marathon!
- intentional reduction in consumption. Freecycle and Craig's List are not only cheaper, but also greener - by reusing stuff. They are more of a process - than the quick accomplishment of just buying something new. So does searching for a pressure canner for a year on Freecycle, Craig's List, garage & estate sales, and thrift shops count as "slowing down"? Or is it just a complication and I should have just bought a new one and got it over with?
I'm afraid that I'm a long way off from having the answers. I'm open to suggestions. How do you simplify your life?
Thursday, May 6, 2010
McNeil Children's Medications Recalled
I am so ticked about the cluelessness of my local pharmacy staff that I gotta rant. Have you heard about the recent McNeil recall of children's medicaitons? Well, my local pharmacist hasn't. I went through my medicine cabinet and of my 6 products in varing degrees of used/new-ness, 5 of them were involved in the recall. The 6th was a store brand of ibuprofen. So I called that store just to make sure it wasn't included. The tech and pharmacist assured me it wasn't and, by-the-way, there was no recall on either the Motrin or the Benadryl anyway. WRONG! After looking this information up on the pharmacy chain's website I called back the pharmacist to tell her she'd better read the internal communications to give accurate advice to other families. She said, oops, she'd just checked the shelves and it did look like some of the Motrin and Benadryl was recalled. She actually told me, and I'll paraphrase, that she didn't get the memo. When asked, she still said, no the store brand wasn't affected. I'm not sure I believe her. Her actions don't inspire a lot of faith in her advice or in her knowledge of her own limits.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Political Satire
Friday, February 19, 2010
King Corn
DH and I watched the documentary King Corn yesterday. I highly recommend it. The movie was entertaining and very educational about how we developed such a glut of corn and how it is in almost everything we eat (beef, bread, crackers, etc). They connect the dots of the redone Farm Bill in 1973 to the rise of high fructose corn syrup, obesity, diabetes, and declining life expectancy. It makes me wonder how far we could go in stemming the explosion of health care costs if we just stopped subsidizing corn so that empty calories weren't the cheapest. And here's a far out idea - if we want to support farmers, we could subsidize local, organic farming such that healthy foods became cheaper. What would happen to our nation's weight if a fresh salad from the local market were cheaper than a fast food burger and soda?
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
What to say when we awaken in jail?
This is so random, but I got such a huge kick out of this thread on Facebook, that I wanted to post it in my blog. Here is the scenario: "If you & I woke up in jail together...using only FOUR words...what would you say to me?"
Here are some of my favorite responses, in no particular order:
Here are some of my favorite responses, in no particular order:
No kids! No kids!
My name is JULIO. (That was an "in" joke.)
I don't believe it.
Next time, pants on.
What will Matt think?
We are so screwed.
Dang! We had Fun!
We got some sleep!!
Your lawyer, or mine?
I told you so!
Bring anything to read?
This is your fault.
Awww man, not again.
Thanks for the help.
Fancy meeting you here.
Is that my blood?
What did you do?
Don't tell my husband!
Let's do it again!
You come here often?
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Robeez shoes MIA
Several months ago one of my slippers went missing. I eventually found it stuffed between my 4 yo son's trundle bed and his mattress. I had also lost a single Robeez shoe of DD's. I am saddened to report that I STILL haven't found it. AND just last week, we lost another single Robeez shoe. The first was lost somewhere between the changing table and the car. The second was lost somewhere between the baby's room and my bedroom (not very far at all!). DS denies involvement and a cursory search of his usual hiding spots has turned up nothing. Good thing I keep buying Robeez for $2-3 a pair at garage sales! Uuugggh kids! The chaos!
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Garden update and Halloween
Of last week's snap peas and snow peas ONE has sprouted so far. Not an overwhelming yield yet. Today I managed to plant six cloves of elephant garlic near the peas. Also I put in the ground a basil plant and a cilantro plant that I bought about a month ago. They'll probably be happier in the ground. A couple months ago I acquired a table that a neighbor was sending to the landfill. Today I moved it into a sunny spot and chose some pots to put on it. A friend (hi Sara!) had told me about reading that one could container garden in cardboard boxes. So, what the heck, I selected a Amazon box to try planting in as well. DD woke up from her nap before I was able to assess our potting soil supply and decide what I wanted to plant. One thing I've got to put in is some lettuces. The lettuce I planted in September hasn't come up at all. I think the spot is too shady in fall/winter.
I cooked a meatloaf in a halved pumpkin for Halloween dinner. It turned out pretty well, but next time I'll season it differently. I was pleasantly surprised how nicely the pumpkin cooked up, though. Tonight we did the trick or treating thing with DS as a pirate and DD as a ladybug. DS loved talking with the neighbors and got the hang of knocking, saying "trick or treat", choosing candy/toy, "thank you," "happy Halloween," and "have a nice night." Since he can be reserved when meeting new people, the process of trick or treating is actually a great learning experience for him. And this year we filled our bowl with a bit of candy and mostly Halloween gizmos (pumpkin erasers, pencils, kazoos, pumpkin straws). We left the bowl out when we were trick or treating and came back to a well-depleted bowl and no vandalism, so it seems to have gone over pretty well. I prefer the little toys to candy. At least it isn't junk food. But it is mostly made-in-China, destined-for-the-landfill sorts of stuff. Does anyone else do something better? Happy Halloween!
I cooked a meatloaf in a halved pumpkin for Halloween dinner. It turned out pretty well, but next time I'll season it differently. I was pleasantly surprised how nicely the pumpkin cooked up, though. Tonight we did the trick or treating thing with DS as a pirate and DD as a ladybug. DS loved talking with the neighbors and got the hang of knocking, saying "trick or treat", choosing candy/toy, "thank you," "happy Halloween," and "have a nice night." Since he can be reserved when meeting new people, the process of trick or treating is actually a great learning experience for him. And this year we filled our bowl with a bit of candy and mostly Halloween gizmos (pumpkin erasers, pencils, kazoos, pumpkin straws). We left the bowl out when we were trick or treating and came back to a well-depleted bowl and no vandalism, so it seems to have gone over pretty well. I prefer the little toys to candy. At least it isn't junk food. But it is mostly made-in-China, destined-for-the-landfill sorts of stuff. Does anyone else do something better? Happy Halloween!
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Quote on Food
I was reading the book, Sprouts: The Miracle Food and ran across this quote attributed to "Norman Walker at 108 years of age."
"The great Law of Life is Replenishment. If we do not eat, we die. Just as surely, if we do not eat the kind of food which will nourish the body constructively, we not only die prematurely, but we suffer along the way."
So applicable to Celiac Disease and many ailments that plague modern societies.
"The great Law of Life is Replenishment. If we do not eat, we die. Just as surely, if we do not eat the kind of food which will nourish the body constructively, we not only die prematurely, but we suffer along the way."
So applicable to Celiac Disease and many ailments that plague modern societies.
Friday, September 11, 2009
National Day of Service
I tend to feel a bit meloncholy on 9/11. I really like Obamo's declaration of 9/11 as a National Day of Service. It seems like helping others could not only do the obvious, of creating a better society, but also be a healthy part of the continued healing process from 9/11. Last night I tried to figure out what I could do today for service. Go to a thrift shop and help out? Would they see me come in with 4 yo DS and 11 mo DD and request that I'd be of greatest service to them if I left the shop? Perhaps. Could I go to the preschool and help the teachers prep for projects? Again, they might see us as a hazard. I decided on a simple, close-to-home service. We'd walk the neighborhood in search of trash to pick up. Late this afternoon we did go on a brief walk. Happily (and yet, sadly too) we found no trash dispose of. Did someone do this before we did today? Hummm... We did find an elderly neighbor's water valve box leaking. We knocked on the door, had a neighborly chat, showed her the leak, and told her how to have the city fix it for free. Karmicly, I wonder if that counts as service. Did you do some service today?
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