Intermission

I appear to be on hiatus. I am having a wonderful spring (as I hope you all are), but I don't seem to have a thing to say. Look for me in your comment boxes! xx

Yay

I actually voted for an American Idol contestant this week. It was Carly Smithson. I thought her version of "Here You Come Again" was one of the best performances I'd heard on the show, so I was predictably enraged by Simon's damning-with-faint-praise review.

She wasn't even in the bottom three. Ha! I did my job.

Carly sometimes doesn't come off cute or friendly on TV. She's a little too earnest and has a tendency to overshare at awkward moments. And she can be a little prickly, too. I think that's why I identify with her so strongly; I see myself in her. I joked with the s.o. that my vote was on behalf of all of the people like me and Carly out there--we need to hang together! We are lovely, kindhearted people who lack schnuggly wuggly squeezability. :-)

Speaking of schnuggly wuggly squeezability, David Archuleta and his entire family can take a long walk off a short pier. I was utterly repulsed when I saw him on one of the TV Guide channel's AI-related programs. They asked all the contestants what they did with their first paycheck. His answer? His family took his winnings from a kiddie pageant and gave it to his grandmother so she could make her rent. Of course that's a wonderful thing to do, but couldn't the family have helped grandma out without putting all that weight and responsibility directly on their kid's shoulders? (Maybe they could have used some of the money they spent hauling their son around to precocious-kid competitions!) With his psycho stage family, he's going to turn out to be Michael Jackson. Lindsay Lohan if he's lucky.

My feelings about the contestants overall haven't evolved much since the beginning. I do think that Jason Castro has failed to live up to his potential. Conversely, Michael Johns seems to learn and evolve each week--he just gets better and better. And David Cook exceeds all expectations. I wouldn't mind seeing him win the whole thing.

The gleaners

For some reason I find this incredibly cute:

The s.o. is tilling one of the chicken runs for replanting. At first, all the chickens ran for cover--the tiller is a loud beast. But gradually they re-emerged, and now there is a little flock of brave chickens following the tiller and scratching out all the bugs and grubs that it exposes.

Hee.

Late bunny

I have been meaning to post this photo for exactly as many days as you might infer. I was thrilled with my easter-egg stylings this year (I almost wrote "this ear," which is fitting for a lagocentric holiday). Note the use of the eggs' natural colors: the light blue is overdyed with half dark blue, and the pinky-brown is overdyed with half red. The solid color ones are mostly bantam eggs, which are the only white eggs we have.



Larjmarj at Knizzle fo Shizzle posted about the most amazing egg-dyeing process, which I think I'll try next year. Can you believe the gorgeous patterns? The only downside is that the dyes are emphatically not edible. But then again, the s.o. won't eat the ones I dyed using trusty Badia food dyes, claiming that he can taste the difference. So no great loss, then.

I haven't made any hot cross buns yet. With the holiday coming so early this year, it doesn't seem timely. I'll do it in a week or two, maybe.

This dose of spring has been brought to you by 10 Signs Like This, putting the Eostre back in Easter since 2004.

Alarming

I can't say I didn't know that the south was part of Tornado Alley. After all, east Nashville was stomped by the giant boot of Mother Nature just a couple of years before I moved there. Last year, too, when I was driving back from the Georgia Organics conference, I saw the splinter-embedded remains of a neighborhood that had been hit.

But I have to admit that I am sobered by yesterday's weather. I'm a little fearful, too, because even though last night's storms brought our town nothing but thunder and lightning and rain, there's another day to go before the system clears. Strong possibility of...well, a whole laundry list of things, according to the National Weather Service. Maybe even oobleck.

I'm pretty sure that nature doesn't take requests, but just in case I'm wrong, here are two:

(1) No more tornadoes please, and secondarily,
(2) No hail on my rental car please!

Kthxbai.

Ephemeral

Every spring I forget to take pictures of the amazing Bradford pear trees in our town, so this year I decided to remedy the situation. Now I know there's nothing great about a monoculture, and yes, I'm sure it would have been better if our mayor had chosen to plant native species along the right-of-way instead. But have you ever seen a mile of Bradford pears in full bloom? A full mile. I saw my friend Tara on her morning walk while I was taking these photos, and she didn't think I was crazy for doing it. She just said "It's beautiful. It looks like it snowed."





For the record, this is all across the street from our house. It's yet another reason why I love where we live.

We had a really awful day yesterday. My favorite goose, the small female, died. She had been sick for a little more than a day and then died in her sleep. She had been making a horrible crunching sound inside her throat, and she wouldn't eat, although we were able to get her to take some water. It sounded as though she might have damaged her trachea in some way. We're pretty sure (and very hopeful) that it wasn't something communicable.

I will miss her terribly--she was the only one who would let us pet her. What a sad turn of events. I hope she knew that we tried to do what we could for her.

To top off a perfectly rotten day, my car broke down when I was in town on errands. By "broke down" I mean "stalled out in traffic and nearly got me killed." It's something electrical that's going to cost us $500, plus the fees for the rental car I had to borrow until Monday. One nice thing I can say, though, is that the people at the Toyota dealership in Athens are really helpful and dog-friendly. I had Silver with me, and they never gave me a moment's guff about having her in the waiting room, in the rental area, in the rental car. In fact, a salesman came and played with her for a while, and they made sure I knew where to get her some water and where to take her for a walk. They even apologized for being out of dog biscuits. She repaid them for their niceness by being very polite and doing tricks for the mechanic.

Here's what I think...

about American Idol tonight.

• I think that Michael Johns and Amanda Overmyer gave even better performances than the judges gave them credit for. Really really good. Michael's performance of "Across the Universe" was electric. I could feel how much he felt it. And while I don't think Amanda is particularly versatile, I thought she nailed "You Can't Do That."

• I also liked Carly Smithson, Jason Castro, and David Cook a lot. David Cook actually made me like a Lionel Richie song last week--what else is he capable of???

• Chikezie was way cool...although whenever he is not singing, his personality kind of annoys me.

• Brooke White was wonderful too, although she didn't stand out as much as she has some weeks.

• I was a teensy bit embarrassed for Kristy Lee Cook.

• David Archuleta mailed it in. It was terrible. FAIL.

• David Hernandez was spectacularly lame and deserves to go home. What is especially unforgivable to me is that he doesn't know how much he sucked. He lacks a "cheese" filter.

So. Your thoughts?

The hens can tell spring is in the air

Our chickens laid 32 eggs today, which is a LOT. We have somewhere between 35 and 40 hens; I lost count a long time ago.

I think I can do the math on this. There are two chocolate-brown Welsummer eggs, but there are three Welsummer hens. And we have two white bantam eggs, which means only two of our five Japanese banty girls laid today, and our Mille Fleur girl (who lays tiny tan eggs) did not.

So, er, that either means we have at least 37 hens, or someone laid more than one egg, which is possible.

This reminds me of those word problems we used to do in math class.

Headless person in sweater

Behold! I finished my very first sweater: Teva Durham's Lace Leaf Pullover from Loop-d-Loop. I made it roomy, but not huge. It's perfect for those occasional days when I can't seem to get warm.

I'm head over heels for it. I'm very pleased with myself!



Not long after we finished shooting these photos, the s.o. and I had to grab the dogs and run into the bathroom. Our town's brand-new tornado siren (conveniently located three houses away) was wailing. We had a real honest-to-goodness tornado warning. Good thing nothing happened, because nobody around here has a basement.

One nice thing about not having a basement is that we do not currently have a flooded basement.

All-time record?

We sold 15 dozen eggs yesterday. We were congratulating ourselves on having moved 7 dozen early in the day. Then at dinnertime a pickup truck full of Mexican construction workers showed up and ordered 8 more!

All I can say is, muchas, muchas gracias, guys. When your hens are laying more than 2 dozen a day, it's easy to get a little snowed under.

They said they'll be back in two weeks, which should mean we'll have enough to go around again.

Brrrrr!

In drought-remediation terms, we're still dry as a bone. But on a day-to-day experiential level, this winter/spring feels exactly as it should: muddy and green and full of life. We are getting rain, and it is wonderful.

After the last storm system moved through, the temperature turned frigid. Then the wind began howling and whistling, as it often does here. How bad is it? Our ill-fitting back door (which we tried to have replaced this winter, but never did thanks to the complete incompetence of a certain expediter at our local Home Depot...we eventually gave up and got our money back) not only let the gusts burst through into our kitchen, but even popped open three times last night. We locked it before bed.

Luckily, I have these:

They're a pair of fingerless mitts made from the hugely popular Fetching pattern by Cheryl Niamath. I lost a lot of stitch definition by making them out of farmspun alpaca* instead of Cashmerino. But they're fantastically springy and snuggly and fuzzy. I also added some bling by trimming them with cuffs of Bellagio copper metallic yarn.

The only thing I would change about them is the picot edging at the finger opening. I can tell it's going to curl and annoy me a little. But after I had the first one done, it was bound off too irrevocably to contemplate undoing it. So I'll live.

Magically, the mitts took less than 100 yards of yarn to make. So I still have more than 200 yards left. I'm thinking skinny scarf, also trimmed with Bellagio.

By the time I get it done, of course, it'll be 90 degrees outside. It's hell being a slow knitter. Good thing I enjoy the process.

* Thanks, mom!

Total eclipse

Did you all watch the lunar eclipse last night? We had one of those perfect cold, clear nights where you can see twice as many stars as usual--like a million party lights spinning across the sky. I walked outside at 10:01 pm (right after Idol, of course; see below), and the moon was already starting to turn doomsday red-orange at its left edge.

I found it so compelling that I bundled myself up and stuck a lawn chair in the middle of the yard. I turned off the back porch and kitchen light, and I got half a glass of red wine in a takeout cup. I sat and watched, with breaks to warm myself up, until the moon disappeared into a tiny silver sliver.

The s.o. agreed that the eclipse was cool, but he wasn't willing to sit outside for as long. He visited a couple of times and watched the sky with me. It was eerie and beautiful. Unfortunately, he was indoors during one of the strangest moments of the evening.

For a little while around 10:30 or 10:45, the entire world went quiet and the only sound I could hear was the blood whooshing inside my head. Then a couple of dogs a few houses down started baying and barking. Suddenly I heard an alien sound from the woods: like the whinny of a horse, only flutelike, with the top of the octave held long and clear. It repeated eight or ten times, and then it was gone.

Afterward I ransacked the internet until I was pretty sure I had found the sound. I think it was this.

And now for something completely different: my opinions of the American Idol top 24's performances.

Favorite guy: Jason Castro. He's one of the guys who has had practically no camera time prior to this week, so he was a complete unknown. We were also biased against him from the start because he has silly white-guy dreadlocks. But I loved every second of his "Daydream." He was vulnerable and tender and showed fantastic control. He seems as sweet as can be, too, and appealingly geeky. I hope everyone else is as taken with him as I am!

Runner-up: David Archuleta, who I think is well on his way to becoming America's sweetheart. The kid is incredible.

Overrated: Michael Johns. It pains me to say it, because he is capable of great things, and he seems like a really nice guy. But I really didn't need to hear an imitation of Eddie Vedder singing "Light My Fire." I'm baffled that the judges seemed to like it. I can only assume it sounded better in the room than it did on TV.

Favorite girl: Brooke White. By a mile, actually. She doesn't have the most amazing pipes of the group (that honor would probably go to Carly Smithson). But she has IT. She has Carly Simon-ness, Carole King-ness. Her folksy, mandolin-tinged version of "So Happy Together" is the one performance of the night that has stuck with me note for note. I'm a little tired of the "good girl" sideshow that Simon's comments seem to have ignited, but if it makes viewers notice her, I'm all for it.

Runner-up: Asia'h Epperson. Do you know how hard it is to sing Janis Joplin and have it sound fresh? And, might I add, more soulful and funky than the original?

Overrated: Syesha Mercado, who has one of the best voices of the group, yet managed to squander it completely on a song that didn't show off any of her capabilities. I am beginning to think I may despise the song "Tobacco Road." No, wait--I know I do.

This means spring is coming, right?

There's a brand-spanking-new American Idol Top 24, and I'm really excited about it. I think they're doing a much, much, much better job of picking 'em and presenting 'em than they did last year. They've assembled quite a pool of talent and personality.

Anyone have early bets? We suspect David (the young one, although actually, all three of them have massive potential), Asia'h, and Michael will be there near the end.

If anyone needs me on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening from now until the finale, sorry! I'm not available!

Just in case the title of this post misled you into thinking I was going to write about gardening, I should note that the radishes and peas are up. The s.o. has tilled the rest of the garden, and then some. I think he is addicted to tilling. The main garden is about 3500 square feet, and he seems to have set his mind on the idea of doubling it. Wow. Just think of all the gorgeous flowers and yummy tomatoes.

The most definite sign of spring's impending arrival, however, is this: Cairo came in with a wood tick on his head the day before yesterday. Eek. But really, I don't mind picking off the occasional parasite, as long as it's not on me.

I'm proud of this

Our town has a minimum monthly water charge of $15. If you use an amount below a certain threshold, you are billed this minimum amount. Beyond that, it starts to go up per gallon of usage.

For the month of January 2008, we used only 720 gallons and were charged the minimum! That hasn't happened to us since before we started gardening and raising poultry.

WE ROCK!

We might be getting some rain, fellow southerners, but the drought isn't over. Let's all keep conserving as much as possible...

One goose a-laying

Today I'll be taking three of our roosters on an adventure. One is the Langshan we originally gave to L2's dad. He, er, didn't work out in that situation. He got along with everyone peacefully enough for two months, then got his confidence up and gave their other rooster a bloody thrashing. So he was returned to sender.*

He and two of our four Mille Fleur d'Uccle bantam roosters will be given to a Freecycle guy who has 66 acres. Supposedly they'll be pets, and he and his son will dote on them. I hope that's true, although you never know! These three rooster fellows are too handsome to eat...not to mention awfully old and tough for the American palate.

The Langshan rooster is already in his transport cage. I was sequestering him in the duck house--the better to catch him later--but one of our geese started obsessively trying to get in because she has a nest in there. I was afraid she'd sand her beak all the way off, so I freed up the space. Now she's nesting happily. She looks absolutely adorable sitting in her carefully constructed whorl of straw. I could swear there's a beatific expression on her face.

The goose nest has been in the duck house for about a week. And yes, we have had a goose egg:



Isn't it impressive? And beautiful?

We ate the enormous egg scrambled with spinach and red peppers and mushrooms. It is my sad duty to report that goose eggs are not as delicious as chicken, turkey, duck, and quail eggs. They are a bit watery and insipid...or at least this one was. But it wasn't bad by any means. Just nothing special.

In other news, the chickens are adjusting well to their new situation. All the disagreements seem to have been worked out, and everyone plays nicely together.





They enjoy the long chicken run, too! The only thing that's lacking is fresh vegetation. But the s.o. seeded the second run a few weeks ago, and it is greening up nicely. We should be able to release them into it later this month.

Here's a shot of the February garden:



It doesn't look like much yet, but so far we've planted some peas, fava beans, carrots, and radishes. We plan to do some very extensive tilling in the near future, because we have to get our greens and turnips in as soon as possible.

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* On the other hand, the turkey we gave to L2's dad is living the life of Riley. They actually purchased two turkey hens for him, and now he is in "full puff mode" at all times. Most excellent.

Big doings

Under cover of darkness, we have just combined our two chicken houses. The birds will have all night to get used to each other's presence before they are actually able to see each other. And when the sun rises, I'll be there to make sure no one gets injured in the pecking-order-sorting-out process.

All of the roosters tried to "spur" me, but the only injury I sustained was when I whacked my head on a shelf in one of the houses. (For the record: Ow.) Some of the birds screamed their little lungs out while we were moving them. It sounded as though we were torturing someone. I halfway expected a police cruiser to pull up in the driveway!

So why all the animal-shuffling? Well, Chicken House #2 is plenty large enough to accommodate all our chickens, and it has two big outdoor yards that they can run in. We don't want to grow our chicken operation any more; I like knowing all the chix individually. So we are converting Chicken House #1 to a garden shed, and we're plowing the outdoor yards of Chicken House #1 and making them part of the garden.

Speaking of the garden, the s.o. and I spent a while today preparing some beds. Peas and fava beans will go in this week!

Warm fuzzy feeling

One of the coolest things about having gotten married at arguably the most famous wedding chapel on earth is that you can be watching a CSI rerun on a Sunday night and suddenly get to see the site of your wedding. That's what just happened to me, and it brought a big smile to my face.

I've seen it on HGTV before, too!

January is not completely lame

Around here, there's one thing that keeps January from being completely devoid of outdoorsy fun, and that's the fact that it's tree-planting season. Yesterday we received our annual order from Trees of Antiquity, and we wasted no time getting the saplings into the ground. Here's what we got:

• 2 Dorsett Golden apples (a breed from the Bahamas, with practically no chill requirement)

• 1 Suntan apple (a gorgeous cross of Cox's Orange Pippin)

• 2 Siberian crabapples

• 1 Seckel pear (to replace one that died in the drought)

We've also got three Mirabelle plum trees on order, but since they're coming from New York state, they won't be shipped until March 1. That's pushing it for us, but we had no choice...and we really wanted those plums.

For those who haven't been keeping track, we already have:

• 2 Montmorency cherries

• 2 Smyrna quinces

• 1 Bramley apple

• 1 Calville Blanc apple

• 1 White Pearmain apple

• 1 Winesap apple

• 1 Arkansas Black apple

• 1 Monark apple

• 1 Whitney crabapple

• 1 Seckel pear

• 1 Greengage plum

• 1 Damson plum

We may add even more fruit trees over the next month or so. The oldest trees in our orchard are only three years old at this point, and because of the horrible late frost last year, we've only ever gotten two pieces of fruit: one quince, and one Arkansas Black apple. But that was enough to get our juices flowing. One day we hope the orchard will reward us with plenty.

Does anyone have experience with peaches? We've avoided growing them so far, because we've been told they're difficult to grow without pesticides and fungicides. But maybe there are resistant varieties that could be grown more or less organically...?

Jenny was here

Our beloved Stew visited us over the holiday weekend. What a blast--it's just a ton of fun to have our friend come to see us. Not to mention that our dogs are over the moon when their "Aunt Jenny" comes to see them.

We kept a low profile overall--no visits to Athens, and in fact no excursions whatsoever except to the grocery store. We had a grand dinner with L2 and her houseguests (two delicious vegetable dishes made by one of the aforementioned houseguests, plus leg of lamb, pitas and tzatsiki, sangria, and crabapple pie) and laughed and talked.

Jenny taught me some crocheting and I taught her some knitting. And astonishingly, she crocheted this gorgeous, cozy scarf for me in a mere hour and a half...



...which makes me wonder if there might not be something to this hookifying business after all. ;-) Seriously, crochet seems a lot more versatile than I had previously understood. It's not as intuitive for me as knitting is, but I can definitely see myself working up the occasional crocheted piece.

Jenny birdwatched a bit, although the weather was less than cooperative, so most of it was done through the kitchen window. This is truly a paradise of chipping sparrows.

After Jenny had to leave (snif!), the s.o. and I watched American Idol (hooray! new season!) and I finished knitting a blaze orange hat I've been making for him.



Even when it's not hunting season around here, it's never 100 percent safe to walk in the woods without a touch o' the orange, so I've taken it upon myself to provide day-glo garments for all of us, human and canine. The s.o.'s hat is a huge success; it fits him perfectly and is already much loved. Next comes a dog sweater.

A finished object!

I've been knitting a lot. A lot a lot. But unfortunately, one of my projects appears to be cursed. I bought some periwinkle-colored Cascade Sierra--a smooth cotton-wool blend with a beautiful sheen--and knitted a double-stranded ballet t-shirt out of it. The bulky texture made it incredibly unflattering, although it had charming cap sleeves. So I unraveled the whole thing and tried knitting a little cropped cardigan with the same cap sleeves. My first version, with the yarn held double as per the pattern, was so thick it resembled a Kevlar vest. So I unraveled it and tried it with the yarn held single. I got most of the way through it before realizing it was too flabby to hold its shape.

So that glob of so-called fabric has been set aside until I have time to redesign the original t-shirt to my specifications. Which will be, according to my calculations and my *cough* rather long project queue, in approximately the year 2015.

Luckily, I have been working on some other things, too. And I finished one of them, to my immense pleasure and satisfaction.

The pattern is Elisa's Nest Tote, and I made mine out of what I am pretty sure is hemp yarn (Jacquilynne, this was once yours--does my memory serve me?). Here it is full of crabapples:



And here it is laid flat:



It was my first time doing an applied I-cord border. It was a little tedious, but not at all difficult. And it was my first time doing any kind of crocheting whatsoever; while the majority of the bag was knitted, the sides of the bags are crocheted together. At first it was difficult and I had to rip it out and start over. But after that, it was intuitive and I didn't have any trouble.

Now I can bring my own mesh bag to the farmers' market, and maybe inspire others to do the same!