a recommendation

If you think you might enjoy

sharing the world of a vibrant and evolving sculpture,

a creative force with the power to impress and amaze daily,

I strongly recommend planting Winter Squash.

~~~~~

the blues in two keys

When I was first passing through Colorado and stayed 7 years or so,

people back in New England often asked,

"So, what's it like out there?"

I'm not sure what they were asking, really.

But I thought they were asking, "How is it different from here?"

So I would mention the landscape colors.

Not that all the colors are different, of course,

but the overall landscape palette is distinctly different.

At least to my eye.

I thought of this yesterday, when Piper and I went for a walk by the pond.

Because after a night of thunderstorms,

the sky was crystalline

and drifting clouds set off

the very different blues I associate with

Colorado and Massachusetts.

Both.

In one sky.

It's easiest to see in the big picture,

so here it is again:

The lighter, brighter blue near the horizon?

Colorado.

The deeper blue above the cloud?

Massachusetts.

Each different. Both perfect.

What color is the sky where you live?

~~~~~

another surprise

By the way, this is the type of melon I recovered
after an unidentified critter had chewed through the stem.
The seed is from Seed Savers Exchange.
Their catalog is like...pie.

I planted many things for the first time this year, and sweetcorn is one example. It takes a lot of room (or so I thought before growing winter squash - hahahahahaha!) and it is a draw for wildlife I don't wish to encourage close to the house, including bear and raccoon. But this year, with my garden area enlarged a bit from last year, it seemed one block of corn would fit in the terrace garden with the 6' perimeter fence (as a slight discouragement to the wildlife), especially if I used the legendary "three sisters" method: planting pole beans, corn, and squash together, so the beans can grow up the corn stalks and the squash limits competition from other plants, sometimes known as "weeds."

Well, first of all, I won't do that planting again. Sisters they may well be, but if so, they seem very selfish and unkind sisters, taking every opportunity to elbow each other away from the buffet, and drag each other away from the window instead of simply sharing the view. Nope. From now on, the sisters will have their own rooms. I have enough drama with LeShodu, I don't need it from the vegetables.

The sweetcorn got a slow start (very cold wet weather), then grew quickly ("Why, you can watch the corn grow!"), then slowed right down (very hot dry weather) and finally produced small ears that didn't seem to fill out at all. I wondered if it was a lack of pollination due to the strange weather conditions, or if they hadn't received enough light. Or possibly they were exhausted from struggling to rise despite being throttled and pinned down by the beans. Oh well, it was an experiment and I was learning something. (Or re-learning something I should have known: vegetables are plants. Not "sisters." Plants. They compete to survive.)

This morning when I was doing my "Twister" routine (contorting my body as in the floor game, not emulating a tornado) in order to get through the winter squash rows, area, nation, I thought I might as well pick a tiny ear of corn and see if it would provide a clue to what had gone awry. Maybe insects had infiltrated and I would find an empty cob and a gaggle of disgusting worms? Ew.

Well, I'll be darned. Look at this:

Is that not the cutest and most perfect ear of corn you've ever seen?

It kind of reminded me of something...

I picked a few more ears.

Here's one for the knitters:

corn that makes its own short-row shaping!

I was so delighted by my surprising first corn harvest, I took lots of pictures.

This one is on the screenporch:

Then I carried the bowl outside to try different light,

because one does not wish

to do less than one's photographic best for one's sweetcorn.

Does one?

Five hens followed me hopefully, and every time I tried to set the bowl down - on a stone, on a stump, on the pedestal for the birdbath - they formed a tight circle around me and prepared to leap. I finally had to rest the bowl on an upright pallet, and snap quickly before they organized themselves to form a poultry pyramid, with the brilliant Jersey Black Giant mastermind on top.

I hope your day contains a lovely surprise.

And maybe a tasty one, as well.

~~~~~

surprises

 Sometimes, you get a surprise that is not quite what you were hoping for.

Last night, the First Ever Melon was hanging stoutly on it's vine.

I check it daily, every time I walk by the terrace garden.

Exciting stuff!

This morning, it was gone.

I poked around through the tall vegetation outside the fence,

where that massive thistle used to be,

and found several wilted melon leaves.

As if someone had been tearing leaves off the plant, but not eating them.

Then I poked around the garden vegetation inside the fence, and found it.

Intact!

But detached.

The size is fine for this type of melon, but is it ripe?

Or will it ripen off the vine?

I don't know how to tell whether a melon is ripe,

and judging from the behavior of melon-shoppers at the market,

neither does anyone else.

(And by the way, it took me three tries to figure out how to spell "whether,"

because usually I'm writing about the wethers, Acer and Betula.)

~~~

Speaking of the wethers - and also the weather, ha! -

a thunderstorm came up suddenly on Tuesday, and I had to hustle
 to move the wethers up from browsing the Lower West Side
to their shelter on the Upper West Side.

All the other goats were in three paddocks,
with the connecting gates open between
and four available shelters of various sizes.

By the time Acer and Bet were all snug and comfy,
munching hay and jawing about the time they Almost Got Rained On,
I was soaking wet.

I am always the wettest of the group after these operations.

In fact, sometimes I am the only one who gets wet.

Go figure.

Back in the house and dry clothing, I checked the goatcam.

And found...

to my surprise...

for the first time in the history of Cloud Harvest Cashmere...

NINE goats

QUIETLY resting

in ONE SHELTER:

I hope you aren't disoriented by overlapping, distorted, wide-angle goatcam snaps.
It's an overhead view of the 10x10' east stall in the new barn. It's square, honestly.

For a person like me,

who values a Peaceable Kingdom above many things,

a moment like this is pure magic.

I hope you enjoyed it, too!

~~~~~ 

flowers and food

Blooming!

Just one clump of flowers survived the bank-clearing operation.

I pointed out the young leaves to the man with the brushcutter, and asked him to cut around them. He nodded. Then as he got closer to them, I pointed out the leaves again. He looked at them closely. I agreed that yes, it would be very easy to confuse these plants with the wretched bittersweet growing right next to and all around it, but that it was very important to try. He did a good job, and the buds are becoming blossoms. I am so happy to see them!

And I'm not the only one.

I don't know the name of this flower, but it was growing here when I bought the place.

It has thrived and spread and made me happy every year since.

I was thrilled to see a few stems bravely poking up this Spring!

It would have been very sad if it had been completely lost to the snowplow.

Soon the survivors should be moved a bit farther from the driveway.

Maybe sometime this Autumn? 

If anyone knows what the plant is, and if digging it up is a good idea,

please speak up in the comments!

I'd appreciate it very much.

~~~

Coconut custard pie, hot from the oven...
this is what happens when I think about not eating sugar.

Earlier this evening I started writing a wandering ponder about food and health issues, and a couple of dietary programs I've been reading about. And I was hoping for your input, because I'm not sure I should (or could) do a strict elimination diet. But in the process of all that meandering, at one point I suddenly lost the entire page (hello again, new laptop!) and only later discovered that I has accidentally published it. So if anyone saw the page of fragmented goobledy-gook, I apologize for that frightening glimpse into the way my mind works. 

And now I'm starting over, with less meandering.

Briefly: I'm considering doing the "Whole30" program, which is a 30-day elimination and "whole food" diet, to see if changing the way I eat may help with some chronic pain issues. It's kind of a tough program, in the sense that I already have a simple diet, yet Whole30 eliminates a great deal of what I eat. Which I suppose is the point.

Whole30 was created by the authors of the book It Starts With Food, but there is no pressure to buy their book; the Whole30 program and online resources are free. It is set up to guide people along the 30-day process, and there is a forum where people post recipes and so on.

I can already see that following the diet would mean spending a LOT more time thinking about food, every day. Also, making at least a couple of trips to the "real" grocery store, an hour away. And getting in the kitchen and cooking daily instead of when I feel like cooking. And so on.

For the first time in my life, I can really understand the lure of healthfood/spa-type places, where people go to deliberately relinquish control of their own decisions. Because if all I had to do was wait for some lovely person to bring me platters of "compliant" food, I'd eat it and be (probably) pretty happy. Confession (although no surprise to those of you who have read some of my "recipe" posts): I am so lazy when it comes to food. I like to cook when I feel like cooking. I like to eat when I'm hungry. And I eat mostly good things, and mostly organic: vegetables, homemade kefir, juices, homegrown eggs, etc. I don't eat a lot of sweets or "junk" food...unless I start thinking about it. For example, a few weeks ago I had an encouraging conversation with some friends on ravelry who have had great success lowering their arthritis pain levels by totally eliminating sugar from their diets. And at that time I said, "I don't use much sugar, but maybe I should try eliminating it completely."

And whammo. I have been craving sweets ever since.

So...I'm a bit anxious about what might happen if I suddenly eliminate, among other things, all sugars, all shelled legumes, all grains, and - gulp - all dairy.

On the other hand, I feel like an awfully whiny and entitled wimp to even think how "hard" it would be to eat "only" the things on the very extensive and healthy-sounding list of acceptable foods.

But...one of the most rigorous eat-for-health people I know (also one of the fittest and happiest for all the years I've known her) told me she had done a strict elimination diet years ago. "It was really hard," she said. Then she frowned and shook her head. "It was really, really hard. Whew."

So...I feel that I'd be foolish not to explore this avenue, but I also feel some trepidation about it. If any of my lovely readers has experience, pro or con, with an elimination diet, I would love to hear about it!

~~~~~