Sunday, July 29, 2012

Zucchini und rettich








The gladiolas from last year came back bright purple again, and in a day I will plant found dried bulbs from the tool room and a few tulip bulbs to try for a summer bloom. The rest I will probably plant at the end of November for a spring crop.

The summer garden is still happy and shooting off some little green blobs that will eventually look and taste like tomatoes. The seeds for this heirloom variety came from a friend, Zach. (You can look at his flickr here). 



Thanks to some advice from the Master Gardeners, and now weekly fertilization, my zucchini are doing much better, producing fruit that grows instead of shriveling. I have been using Buddha Grow leftover from another gardening project last year. It contains Bat Guano, Worm Castings, Soy Protein Hydrolysate, Kelp Extract, Molasses, and Yucca Extract and packs a phosphate/nitrate punch! Below are the radishes that roommate Crystal planted from seed, sandwiched between a few onion and tomato sprouts (from seed). The onion stalks grow extremely quickly. 

So, other than watching things grow there has been a lot  of summer happenings, including celebrating Echo's birthday last night by dressing up at home and packing 6-to-a-mini-cooper across the Bay to the Castro Theater to watch Sharon Needles perform Silence of the Trans live on stage! You can read Echo's blog about summer camp in Hidden Villa here. Hidden Villa is an education farm and garden in Los Altos Hills, CA. During the spring it is flocked by baby animals thanks to the husbandry team, during summer it is swarming with children making nature crafts. Sunset magazine just did a typical bourgeois article on how farming vacation are trendy, and wrote about Hidden Villa. You can read the article here




Renzo recently made salve in the kitchen. I have a lot of glycerin soap block that I got from the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse  and am thinking of making lavender soap with the bursting bush downstairs. Sometimes lavender makes me skin break out so I might just save the soap for gifts or to use in our house. Echo also posted a recipe for making magic potion salve in the blog linked above. 

The sun breaks through the bamboo cover on the porch all day, drying out the soil and our skin. Sam and her dance company, Blind Tiger Society, in part, bathing in the rays on a midsummers midmorning. They are performing in a piece mid-August called Sunk in Sleep which resembles Alice in Wonderland. Our lovely Sam being the madhatter, herself. 

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Bharatanatyam


Summer Camp is in full swing with cultural information, whale crafts, Salam / Bonjour / Hola / Aloha greetings abounding, cookies and jello, and in the midst of it all this traditional Indian dance to punctuate the kids total fascination with otherness. It is amazing and wonderful to tell a group of kids about cultures so unlike their own, yet very similar in many other ways. This year is kicking last year's ass in awesomeness. 

Garden update: radish sprouted 1 inch high, beets radically rooted, air plant transplants in the middle bathroom just this morning, succulents sufficiently transplanted, and squash still blossoming with the help of force pollinating. I read an article in Organic Gardening about this: take pollen from male blossom (with brush / finger) and lightly rub onto budding female ends. Voila! Zucchini never tasted so unconsenting. 

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Clap Your Hands

More photos from my spring trip to the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco.





As time alone stands still for some
                                           Stuffed sailor up with eyeball sun
And if by castle ship should stray
It has like you no chosen fate for 
It's tongue-tied caboose that leads
This ragged lad, this finger-flipping
Mom and dad (for what is worth some aimless steer?)
And should mouth confuse my foggy mirror and reveal what is not there 
I shall take this unbound train away