Looking Ahead at 2023

Happy New Year! At Poppy Corners, we are having an end-of-year blessing: RAIN. As always, we desperately need it, but unfortunately, as is so common these days, it comes all at once rather than in manageable amounts. Our street is a river, our patio a pond. But the areas where I added another inch of wood chips this past summer are completely fine. That’s the power of organic matter!

Anyway, I figure this rain is an opportunity to spend some quality time indoors. I made cinnamon rolls to have as a special NYE treat; Rin and Tom are making a butterscotch pie for our New Year’s dinner tomorrow. I also tallied up my mileage for the year - my personal goal was to walk/run/hike 1500 miles - and not only did I meet that goal, I exceeded it, with a total of 1,664 miles! That feels like an accomplishment, for sure.

For both Tom and me, our overarching goal for 2022 was to cultivate active hope, as well as an attitude of ‘noticing,’ or in other words, being mindful. I think we did ok on both those goals, but maybe not as well as we’d hoped. Both Tom and I had some unforeseen challenges that threw us off our game a bit. Tom had a big job shift, making a lateral move at the college. At first he was very unsure about this, but it has turned out to be an enormous win in the long run - his stress level and work load are much more manageable now, even allowing him to leave work at a reasonable time each day (something that hasn’t happened for years). As for me, my year ended up being crazy busy, with a new teaching gig, a new farm to develop, and an entire program to get up and running; all of that was exciting and also slightly stressful. I’d say that we scored 8/10 in the active hope department (mostly due to watching our kids crush it in college), and maybe 6/10 in the mindfulness department (mostly due to our long weekend hikes). Not awful, but not great, either.

So we want to continue working on those 2022 goals (as well as our 2021 goal, which was resilience, still very much top-of-mind). But we have also determined a new goal for 2023. I just read an article in the Washington Post titled “Pick a new year’s word instead of a resolution,” and I like that idea (I would never use the word resolution anyway!). So here’s our word: Connection.

Here’s the thinking behind that:

Tom and I have enjoyed our new status as ‘empty nesters.’ It’s fun to only concern ourselves with ourselves. Cooking for just us is really easy and simple, basically just some protein and veg and we’re happy. We’ve gotten into a routine of going to church again, which has been really nice. We can go on long hikes if we want to. We’ve been trying out new date-night destinations, like seeing concerts with musicians we don’t know, at local venues we’ve never frequented. We’ve gotten into a nice routine, learning to live again with only one car (and an electric one at that), taking public transit to work or walking to do our errands. We’ve rented kayaks, visited new-to-us state and regional parks, and found new favorite hikes.

And now that we have gotten to know each other again, as people rather than just as co-parents, we are absolutely convinced that the next step is to find a new community of like-minded folks. When you have young children, you meet all kinds of people in the same phase of life, and your kids’ friends’ parents basically become your own friends, and that’s lovely. But now here we are at a place in our lives when we’re not really meeting anyone new. And someday, not too far in the future, we plan on retiring and moving to a new state. We’ll need some skills to meet people then, for sure. Why not develop those skills now?

Connecting with like-minded folks is a very open-ended goal. First we had to determine what we intended by ‘connecting.’ We don’t have a lot of free time. We both work 40 hour weeks, we both exercise a lot, we have a house and garden to maintain, etc etc etc. Friday night we’re tired from the week, Sunday night we’re nesting before going back to work, weeknights are hard too because of work - yada yada, I’m sure all of you reading this can relate. We’ve been trying to reserve Saturday evenings for church and date night, and weekend mornings for hikes. We don’t want to give any of that up, so how can we fit in connection? It’s a challenge.

Then we had to define what ‘like-minded folks’ meant. We’re outdoorsy people, so doing something outdoors with some kind of club seems promising. A hiking club? Possible, though hikes with a large group of people tend to go slower, and take more time, than we’d like - though maybe a sacrifice is warranted. Could we combine our love for the outdoors with some sort of volunteer act, like trail maintenance? This was a good idea, and also prompted a whole discussion on volunteering in general, something we both used to do a lot, but haven’t lately. Where are our skills most needed? What community needs are we most passionate about? What does our community most need from us? We are not sure of the answers to any of these questions, yet, but we are deep in conversation about them.

The thing is, we are both very aware of the fact that we’ve become insular. I think this is true for a lot of us - we learned how to be that way during the pandemic, and for good reason. Now that we’re as protected as we can possibly be, and ready to emerge and mingle, we find that our social skills are a bit rusty. It feels rather ‘raw’ to be out there in public, and vulnerable. Like we’ve grown tender new skin. We’re a bit protective of that, touchy, unused to interaction.

Tom and I are convinced that this must change.

Our world is changing rapidly, and it’s only together that we can make things better. If there’s anything that I have learned by taking my classes on field trips, to urban organizations whose goal is to make their communities stronger, is that a group of like-minded people, making small changes together, can make things a thousand times better. Working to make things better alone is good and important, but inefficient. We need a group of like-minded folks in order to do big things.

But seeking like-minded folks is true for social situations, too. Tom and I like hanging out with interesting people. We like to learn stuff. We like to hear stories. We like to get to know people who are different than we are. We like to laugh and have a good time. We miss PEOPLE. We have gotten too good at being alone, at not answering the phone, at avoiding email. We want to change that.

So, that’s the goal. Connection. We still have some work to do, to figure out exactly HOW this will work, but we are committed to it, and will begin to work towards that goal tomorrow. First - cinnamon rolls!

Happy New Year, to all of you, my faithful readers (also very much like-minded folks). I appreciate that you stick with me in times of plenty, when blog posts are coming thick and fast, and times of lean, which has been all-too-often lately. I wish you all a very fruitful 2023. I would love to hear about YOUR goals, too.

The Orchard Project, Part Two

Step Two can be summed up in one word: Digging.

In order to add new fence posts, we have to dig holes at least two feet deep. Posts come in 8-foot lengths; we need 6 feet of height to our fence in order to deter the chickens from hopping over, so we’ll put two feet in the ground, which will give us the required fence height. Digging holes two feet deep is no joke with our heavy, 100% clay soil.

Side note: Did I ever tell you about the time I did a soil texture test for our property? It’s a simple procedure, and if you’re interested, Clemson has a great tutorial. The goal is to get a rough idea of the percentage of sand, silt, and clay in your soil, by separating out the particles. My sample never separated out. It remained a thick, oily, dark sludge. 100% clay, baby.

Anyway. Digging the post holes takes many tools, lots of time, and mental fortitude. I tend to dig until my hands are about to fall off of my wrists, and then I go do something else for a while. Tom and I have been taking turns and we are making progress, though it’s slow going.

The second kind of digging is not strictly necessary, and in fact I would normally not do it at all. I think you know that I support no-till practices; I don’t normally dig at all in my garden unless I need to plant something or harvest something. I believe that letting the soil maintain itself is the best way to encourage lots of biological diversity, and I would never willingly disturb it.

HOWEVER. These raised beds have been in place for almost ten years, and all my crops have been failing in them lately. I felt it was time for a deeper look. So I took my trusty garden fork and dug them over. And what I found, completely infiltrating every bed, was this:

Roots. Thick roots, thin roots, single long roots going from bed to bed, clumps of short roots, every size and shape of root you can imagine. Basically these beds are acting as a beautiful source of nutrients and water for a nearby tree. Which tree, I’m not sure. It could be the pine in my header picture (Pinus thunbergii, or Japanese Black Pine), which is just on the other side of our fence in our neighbor’s yard. I don’t think that tree gets any supplemental water, and so it would make sense for it to come into our yard seeking some. But the tree doesn’t look as good as it should with getting plenty of water. So it could be our valley oak (Quercus lobata), which was planted by a squirrel twenty years ago and is now a thriving, enormous, and healthy tree that we have to have pruned every other year. However, that tree IS getting regular water, as I have a lot of perennials planted underneath it. So who knows? Both types of trees grow deep tap roots for their water supply, so this shallow, vast root system is a bit of a mystery.

What I AM sure of is that this issue has definitely contributed to the crop failure that I’ve had in these beds the last three years. The soil seems dry, even with daily water; seeds have trouble germinating; and the plants that do manage to make it here are stunted and do not produce. So not only is it getting hotter and drier on this side of the garden, the compost and water were going mainly towards supporting the established root system of an enormous tree. No wonder nothing grew!

This discovery only cements my choice to change this area over to perennial fruit and nut trees. They will have a large enough root system that they can compete with the big trees, and in fact might work well in symbiosis with the big trees as part of a network.

Speaking of networks, while digging over the beds, I found a ton of mycelium and fungal hyphae; this is good news and makes me very happy. I was sorry to disturb it, but it’ll grow again. I also found lots of fat, happy worms, which means the soil biology here is healthy.

Step three will be building the actual new fence. More soon!

The Orchard Project, Part One

This is a picture of our North Garden in summertime. We call it that because it’s on the north side of our property (go figure). This is where the chicken coop resides, and many of our fruit trees are here, too, and the asparagus bed in a shady corner.

Even though it’s on the north side of the house, this is the hottest part of our property in the summertime. We reserve it for tomatoes and peppers, and that worked fine for years. However, the last few years we had to cover this whole area with shade cloth because the plants were getting TOO much direct sun and literally burning up. The shade cloth didn’t seem to help much, and neither did more water. After three summers of failed crops, I got very frustrated. I started to feel like a big change was needed.

Back in September, at the same time we were experiencing temperatures of 115 degrees, I had one of my fall classes over to visit. It was humbling, because there was a lot of plant failure that week, and it was embarrassing to have fellow gardeners over to see the fallout. But I also figured, well, this is how we learn things. It’s important to see failure as well as success, and since I too will never stop learning and growing as a gardener, it was a good exercise for all of us and fostered some good discussion.

I was honest with my students. I told them that the North Garden had once been the jewel in our garden crown, but that it had been a disappointment three summers running. I told them that, with climate change, if I kept doing what I’d always done, I’d keep having failures, and that seemed futile. I shared an idea with them and asked them, as part of their homework, to give me feedback: Did they think it was a good idea, and if so, how would they implement it? And if not, what would they do instead?

My idea was this: To stop growing annual crops on this side of the garden, take out the raised beds, and plant an orchard instead. This would stack several functions:

1) It would still provide food for the family, to eat fresh and to preserve. One thing we’ve discovered is that when the kids are away at college, we really don’t need as much produce as we used to. We need things that freeze, can, and dehydrate well, for use in the off-season. Plus, Tom and I have been eating fruit as our dessert every night, so it would be good to have more of that available.

2) The garden on this hot sunny side would be fully perennial rather than annual, and after they are established, perennial plants need less water. Less water is good now and will be even better in the future.

3) The shade provided by the trees would help the chickens out. They also get very overheated in the summer, and tend to shelter under the quince and fig trees at the back of the run. If we gave them more shade, that would be good. More shade would also be good for the property at large, providing a more comfortable place for the humans to hang out, as well as wildlife. The soil biology would also enjoy a forest canopy and root system.

4) Reconfiguring the North Garden would allow us to build a better run for the chickens, more stable and more attractive, as well as better-proportioned for the humans trying to move around in it. The compost pile resides in the chicken run, and the way it is configured now, it is impossible to get a wheelbarrow in there. I’ve also torn many items of clothing on the makeshift fence we put up. It’s time to make a better enclosure.

My students were enthusiastic about the idea and had lots of ideas for which trees to plant. In October, I pre-ordered my trees from Peaceful Valley Organic Farm Supply. After a good deal of research, I decided to buy one each of All-in-One almond, French-improved prune, Burgundy plum, Jiro Fuyu persimmon, Comice pear, Bosc pear, Arctic Glo white nectarine, Freckle Face nectarine, Montmorency cherry, and Cox Orange Pippin apple. They will arrive in early February, except for the almond which has already arrived.

Tom and I have some time off now that our respective semesters are over, so in the next two weeks we will completely redo the North Garden. This is how it looked Monday morning.

You can see the cover crop I planted after the tomatoes failed, and then the smaller beds held basil and squash, which I tried this year instead of the usual peppers in this spot. Indeed, the peppers did better in the South Garden so that was good. However, the squash and basil didn’t do so well, confirming our feelings that this area is just too darn hot for annuals.

Monday, Tom removed the raised beds. Tuesday, he dug out the irrigation hoses so we’d know where they are. Today, I moved the compost pile from one section of the chicken run to another. The chickens loved that, and immediately started hunting in the area where the pile USED to be. They found all kinds of worms and roly-polies!

Tomorrow, I’m hoping to start work on the fence. Even though my semester has ended, I still have a lot of work to do at the school garden, so I’m trying to divide my time between the two places. But the fence is a crucial next step, as we can’t plan the spots for the new trees until it’s is built. Tom is drawing a plan, and we will be digging deep holes and mixing a bit of cement and putting in posts. After that, we’ll attach the wire fencing and move the gate to a better place. The chickens will have a bit more room, and we’ll be able to maneuver around in there better.

Part Two to come soon!

A New Way to Ripen Late-Season Tomatoes

You will not be surprised to hear that I learn as much from my students as they do from me.

Two weeks ago, my Edible Landscaping class had to take out all the summer crops from the veg beds at school, and plant up our fall and winter crops. The tomato plants were still pumping out fruit, despite their blighted leaves, and so a conversation ensued about what to do with them. I mentioned my old trick of picking them green, putting them under a tea towel, and letting them ripen. Several students talked about good recipes for green tomatoes. Then, another student mentioned that she always cuts the vine at the base, then hangs the tomato plants (vine and all) upside down outside, and the tomatoes ripen beautifully.

The class went for that idea, and when I suggested that they be hung indoors, I was promptly overruled. The vines got hung up on the fence that surrounds our garden.

At first, not much happened. The vines started to die and looked awful, while the green fruit just hung there. But as you can see, slowly, the tomatoes started to ripen. And then suddenly all at once, the rest of them changed color. And now we’ve got a bumper crop of tomatoes, that somehow the birds have ignored.

Today, for the first time this fall semester, there were finally enough greens to harvest for a salad. The students made a big bowlful of greens, radishes, borage, and yep - tomatoes - all dressed with a parsley vinaigrette. It felt good to see that process happening all over again; the garden providing a weekly lunch to my students this semester just as it did in spring semester.

So, a good idea. Cut the tomato plants at the base and hang them, vines and all, upside down in the garden to ripen. I’ll be doing that every year, from now on.

Tarantula Season

Look at this handsome fellow. About the size of my palm, I spotted him crossing the trail about two miles from my house, on the west side of the Diablo foothills. I was gobsmacked; I had never seen a tarantula in the wild before. Aphonopelma iodius are a fairly well-known entity around these parts - many people flock to Mount Diablo in the fall to see the annual tarantula ‘migration.’ This is a misnomer. The spiders do not migrate; the males leave their burrows in order to find a mate. Tom and I (and the kids, and my parents) have been on several tarantula ‘hikes’ which are held every year on the east side of the mountain. We’d seen burrows, we’d seen webs, but never an actual spider.

And then, today - Tom and I saw two (!) on another trail on the west side of the mountain, this time in a canyon before we started heading up a steep section. These two were also males (naturally, because it’s only the males that travel to find mates), but they were younger and smaller than the one I saw a week ago. Tom was just as giddy as I had been when I saw the first one. We really didn’t know that we’d be able to see them in broad daylight, on well-traveled trails.

This annual ‘migration’ used to happen later in October, coinciding nicely with Halloween and giving everyone some seriously spooky vibes. But due to climate change, it’s now happening earlier and earlier each fall, and in fact, now in late summer. I don’t know if our recent heat wave had anything to do with our seeing them so frequently (acting as some sort of trigger, maybe?), or if this is a typical occurrence on these particular trails, and we just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

I wrote my final college paper on our local tarantula population. It was a study design; my imagined study would make a definitive count of the number of female spiders in one particular section of the park. I thought you might be interested to read it, or at least the first third of it, which explains more about the biology and behavior of Aphonopelma iodius, and the conclusion, which discusses the phenomena of earlier mating seasons.