Seed Savers

In 1975, a small organization was launched committed to the preservation of 'the world's diverse but endangered garden heritage for future generations'. In plain speak, Seed Savers Exchange seeks out, accepts, preserves, and makes available old seeds from throughout the world. You and I or anyone else can order heirloom seeds for food crops from this group.

How cool is that? To grow food from seeds that are in direct lineage from peppers from Russia, like the Georgia Flame, or tomatoes from Italy, like Cherry Roma, or cucumbers from a single plant on the George Starr farm in Michigan at the beginning of 1900, like Early Fortune.

I ordered a full garden's worth of seeds this year. As our family motto states 'Way overboard is a good place to start'. Okay, so I got excited. The beautiful catalog came, it was raining outside, and the pictures were so pretty, and the descriptions so vivid, and it was for the good of preserving a wonderful legacy, and, well, $80 later, my garden is sitting by my computer, packaged neatly and ready to go into the soil.

I'll keep you posted on the progress. Complete with pictures. Meanwhile, go to their website and check it out. www.seedsavers.org

Slogging, not blogging.

(Me, on my way to work...)

I have been neglecting to write in my blog. I am so down from the weather, my husband's illness, my hip is hurting again...

It is not conducive to writing. Well, not the stuff I think you might like to read, anyway. Eeyore was sadly endearing in Winnie the Pooh, but a middle aged not-cute Eeyore Wanna-be is not the stuff of reading pleasure, I think.

So, know that the chickens are fine, the horse is good, the weather is crappy, the mud is deep, the patients are in endless bloody supply, and my husband is back to normal. That, at least, is worth sharing...

Easter Chickens

Google images

It is spring time, kinda, though you wouldn't know it from the weather. The chickens know it, though. And the annual egg hunt begins. Not the one you think...

First of all, all animals seek to procreate. Aside from daily survival, breeding drives their urges. Chickens are no exception. It is at this time of year that the hens feel a pressing need to lay a nest full of eggs and go broody. Knowing somewhere in their primitive brain area that eggs and chicks are delicacies to many others, they look for the most secret secluded place available. They also know, I am convinced, that if the eggs are laid in an obvious place, the big blonde with the feed bucket will take them away.

Usually my husband or I will find the stash place. Occasionally, though, a hen will start to fluff out her feathers, become solitary and grumble constantly. It is then that we begin the hunt in earnest, because I don't want chicks right now, and because they would be mixed chicks, and I want to dictate the lineage. Almost always, we find the eggs, clear the nest, and the hen snaps out of her broody stupor.

And it really is a stupor. She acts as if she is under some kind of spell or some neuroses. The hen will walk slowly, haltingly, grumbling to herself, staring around as if she has never been there before, acting like a crazy bag lady. She screeches warnings at others who come near and runs away if approached. Sweet pet one day, paranoid schizophrenic the next.

I wonder if this spring ritual is the real beginning of the Easter egg hunt. Folks started letting the kids find the nests, like some sort of game. Had the kids bring the eggs back to exchange them for goodies. Saved the grownups lots of time and stooping. The kids wouldn't have missed a 'tradition' they had never heard about...

You know, I wish I had thought of that when my kids were little. Think about it; no buying eggs, coloring them (and the entire kitchen and everyone's hands), secretly hiding them, penning up the dog and the chickens so the colored eggs didn't get eaten before the hunt. Just: hey kids! Go look for hidden eggs. Bring them back and trade them for candy and toys! Labor saving, efficient, practical.

Win/win...

Letting go...

Today George went to his Man Cave. Scruffy. The weird little disreputable 60's era travel trailer he keeps in the high desert during the winter. To escape to. To watch DVDs, cook elaborate breakfasts, and to, allegedly, search for Shed Antlers. In reality, to get away, to seek the Man Cave...

He has done this since I have known him; about 38 years. But, today, knowing he was going, I was apprehensive, restless, unnerved. Because the life I have jealously guarded for the past six weeks is breaking away. I have not been away from him, except for work, except when a child of ours was there to guard him, for all the time since his cerebral bleed.

I feel like a new mommy leaving her baby at the babysitter's for the first time. My gut is in a knot, I feel vaguely guilty,and not a little negligent. But, I know we need to make the break. We cannot act as if he will die any moment, any longer. It has been exhausting.

We have discussed his passing, our finances, his wishes and dreams, our love, his memorial service, our kids... ad nauseum, in finitum. It is time to move on.

I just wish my practical brain would convince my heart and gut to comply to the party line. I doubt if I will sleep tonight. But, I know he will. He loves the stars, the silence, the smell of his little trailer.

Good night, sweet man. I will do the worrying for us all tonight. You rest, you pretend that things are returning to normal. I'll be awake if you call...

Kitty, kitty...

I am a hunter, in case you missed that somehow. I love being in the out of doors and stalking my own food. I understand that humans aren't the only hunters in the woods. And I respect the others. The bobcats, the badgers, the osprey, the cougar.

But not when they are artificially protected until the very game they hunt becomes scarce. Not when they begin to stalk me in the woods. Not when they enter into human neighborhoods fearlessly to kill and eat pets in fenced yards. Not when they follow family groups with little children in busy parks.

Like some cougars in my area. They are no longer private, wild animals that do their hunting in the woods, away from humans. They are stalking families in parks in nearby a populated area of 200,000 people.

I spoke before the legislature when a proposal was up for a vote that would ban dog tracking of cougar forg hunting purposes, warning of the threat to humans and domestic pets and livestock when the population of the predatory cats grew disproportionately. The ban was effected anyway, and now tax payers are charged for salaried state hunters to track and kill the animals. We have lost the revenue of the tags that hunters used to buy, we have lost direct control over the population, and now we have the animals in our parks and yards and pay state workers to kill them.

Do bunny hugging anti-hunting activists ever wish they had a brain?

Look alikes

Have you ever gone to the website TotallyLooksLike.com ? You should. A visit there guarantees a laugh. Anyone can send in an entry for things that look like the other. It is cute.

As much as I am entertained by the visual similarities, I admire and am intrigued by the mental processes at work behind the entries. Who looks at a map of Paris dating from 1540 and says 'Wow! That looks just like a horseshoe crab!'? Really.

One month ago

Google image

One month ago today, my husband suffered a subarachnoid bleed. It took three doctors seven days to pay attention to his blinding headaches, his leg pain, his light sensitivity, his fatigue, and to run the tests necessary to diagnose this life threatening hemorrhage.

Then, it was hurry up and transfer him by helicopter to a more advanced hospital one hundred twenty miles away. And hope he would make it.

As you know, he did. And he is through the first month, considered the most dangerous. And doing well. And mine for a while longer...