Wanna smell fabulous? Bundle herbs for hen health. =)

Isn't this what everyone does on a Saturday?

Making bug-repelling herb sachets, and herb leaf mixes,

to festoon my chickens' abode.

Sage, mint, lavender, rosemary, & garlic cloves

are allegedly useful in this regard.

Sachets are posted at the nest boxes and doors,

and sundry herb leaves and cloves

are scattered in the next boxes & on the floor.

This year I bought & planted lavender, rosemary, oregano, and dill.

Goal = a steady supply of herbs for us and the chickens.

'Course, now I'm getting greedy & want more, more, MORE!
And someone down the street has 2 huge bay trees abutting the road,
so REALLY want to pluck a few leaves from there...

Will keep you posted.

And chickens & myself scented beautifully.

xobb

totally normal, right?

The hens' breakfast today:

For the record.

xobb

Furtive Fauna Foto deadline, plus quickie harvest shots and low carbon ideas

  
Furtive Fauna Foto Free-For-All
So, we now have a collective Furtive Fauna Foto (or Crypto Photo? Camoflaged Critters?) post coming up, and the due date for submittals is October 8th. Send your links or photos to biobabbler at g mail dot com by then and you will be a player! =)

For those of you who don't know/recall this theme, to which YOU can contribute, it is explained and illustrated here.

It always shocks me when it happens. How did I not see it? It's SO OBvious. In some cases I was close enough to lick the animal, but was totally oblivious.

Anyhow, we have a FEW contributors (Yay!!) and I think I've got at least 3 shots, but the more the merrier, and of COURSE I will give you full credit in whatever G-rated fashion you desire.  =)

Garden update
Random (non-glamorous) shot of SOME of the recent squash pickings (pepo):

I think I may yank the sunburst squash plants pretty soon. Wanting more fall/winter garden real-estate, and the plant is looking pretty tired, but we'll see. I have great difficulty yanking living plants. I swear I can hear them pleading "I just wanna live!" I am also the world's worst plant thinner. Yeesh. Same reason.

Nightshade family goodies: tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, and sweet peppers. The jalapenos are ALL flawless, so I'm guessing they have some major protective qualities (mechanical/chemical warfare) protecting them from buggy attack. It's NOT because I've raised them in perfect conditions (note cracked tomatoes...).

Oh, one cool thing; check out the closest, lower left tomato. It stitched up it's potentially cracked skin. It's amazing. Looks like tiny, neat sutures, perfectly perpendicular to the direction of the cut. TOO cool.

These are seeds from my white cosmos. I've been resisting the very strong urge to deadhead the flowers (to get more fresh blooms) so I can get these babies. Seeds for next year! Makes my cheapie and carbon-frugal heart sing. =) I have loads more ripening, so I must continue to resist snapping them off--it's difficult!!

As I've said before, baby steps toward sustainable living. And this is one. =)

OH, and before I forget, ANOTHER carbon-reducer: I heard on an organic gardening show yesterday (You Bet Your Garden) that I can dig up my jalapeno plants, put each in a big pot, and keep them in some sunny, non-freezing place, and the plants can live for years and years. AND, he said they can keep producing up until November!

They just can't take the freezing temps we get here, so if I can possibly figure out a way to protect some southern-exposure window real estate from plant-killing-kitties, I could save my super productive little plants, then, after spring frosts are over, I can chunk them back in the ground, and away they go.

That'd be sweet.

Just to be on the safe side, though, I'll harvest some jalapeno seeds, too. =)

xoxo biobabbler

don't know your first frost date?

Just type in your zip code here. Just used it and it even showed me the data upon which it was based, which is great. I think this only works for the U.S.

THEN, go to Skippy's Vegetable Garden's fall planting calendar (top of page in parens on right) and type in your 1st freeze date.

Ooh, also, you can (per Skippy's VG) also go to a Burpee site for the date of first frost, so I typed in my zip code and got this: http://www.burpee.com/gygg/content.jsp?contentId=Zone8#null. I'm in zone 8.

Excerpt from the Burpee page:

Discover what you should be doing right now.  Our experts share gardening advice, techniques, news, and ideas to make your garden the best ever.  

Here's what's happening in your gardening region:

• Direct Sow Second Season Vegetables
• Transplant Indoor Started Vegetables
• Prepare Your Garden for Garlic and Shallots
• Start a Fruit Garden
• Plan Your Spring Blooming Flower Bulbs
• Plan for Fall Perennial Planting

So, which among those things am I doing now? Uh, none? Oh, well, I did put the dirt back into an area where I plan to put my irises (those which I've not managed to kill by keeping in a pot outside for 2 years).

I practically tripped on a huge zucchini while watering yesterday, then discovered several large cohorts--yikes! This is only PART of what I harvested yesterday (total was 10.25 lbs!), and a loving portrait of my favorite chef's knife and the beautiful cutting board a friend MADE for us when we got married. It's from urban wood (the trees they cut down in the city) so it's SUPER "green." ANYhow... =)

I am getting psyched to plant some fall veggies and just ordered purple broccoli to over-winter. If I get this done and am successful in raising veggies via post-August work, it will be a first.

Baby steps toward year-round sustainable living. BABY steps. 

Winter, she is coming (for us north hemisphere folks)... This was my view out the window in winter at Mount Rainier NP. I'd NEVER lived in a place where the snow bank would climb up your window.

Anyhow, check those sites out if you don't already have a plan for your fall garden, then you should have enough to do to keep you OUT of trouble and INTO vegetables.

=)

biobabbler (ps working on a post with more Merced NWR pics)

biology x food = freak out (WARNING to squeamish re: animals as food--skip this!)

 
Some images capture starkly the connection between biology and food (two things I love, which are inextricably connected) in ways that are disturbing. To me.

(IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE A PHOTOGRAPH of ANIMAL-AS-FOOD, skip this post.)

Such is the case for the image (far, far) below, found at http://blog.alimentationgenerale.fr. It's far, far below to protect those who wish to avoid seeing a pretty frank animal-as-food photograph.

This image also connects with other parts of my brain, including man-as-omnivore, sustainable living (witness NOT wasting animal parts), photography (clean, minimalist black and white 50's-style I am drawn to, crazy about, tho' subject puts me on instant diet), and my latent leanings toward vegetarianism.

And the part of me that lead to becoming a biologist--I feel a great empathy toward non-human animals.


And plants.

Trust me, I am the WORST plant thinner ever. I find it very difficult to, for example, pluck out baby beet plants who (oops) just look so psyched to LIVE. Who am I to kill them just because I want 20 big beets versus 1000 tiny scrunched up red string-roots?

But I also have a great regard for the very basic living involved in an independent, sustainable human lifestyle, which includes many who are not vegetarians, and either raise and slaughter their own meat or know the people who do.


Anyhow, this came up 'cause a friend is in Paris and he posted today that he finally ate "tete de veau" and was very grateful for the abundance of wine. Of course I had to look it up.

For some strange reason, no French was in my brain that moment (maybe the lack of circumflex in tete de veau?) and the way I pronounced it (in my head) was "teh-teh" de veau. Odd.

Which left me totally unprepared for:
 

!

To make it all the more bizarre, I've been on this Julia Childs "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" kick, 3 recipes in the last 3 weeks or so. LOVE Julia. Watched her (repeat) cooking shows when I was a kid. I was a total non-cook but I just loved her.

However, watching the movie Julie and Julia, I also knew that I would NEVER make the lobster dish. So not boiling a live creature. Won't even consider it. (No judgment on anyone else.)

But I can see Julia making tete de veau, and she probably has. Multiple times. With gusto.

Anyhow, this photograph just captured so well the uncomfortable intersection of different parts of my knowledge/experience/education/emotions/aesthetic that are obviously not super resolved.

Otherwise, I'd have a clear feeling about this image (amazing, fascinating, horrifying) vs. an inarticulate "oh....my" response.

I guess that means the emotional box I'd check to describe my feelings (amazed? fascinated? horrified?) about this image is:  all of the above.


biobabbler

P.S. Will be in non-computer-mode for next 3-ish days so won't post during that time. Passez un bon week-end!