I received the sad news today that a beloved member of the Fayetteville community, Nancy M, died today after a courageous battle with cancer. Nancy was a singer, musician, composer and chorus director of the Everyone Can Sing Chorus. I met her only a handful of times, but she was one of those people who just glowed with love. I never met a person who didn’t have something wonderful to say about Nancy.
Last summer I had the delight of visiting her garden as part of the Omni Center’s Peace garden tour. Nancy was holding court and showing visitors her lovely hillside garden abloom with flowers, edibles, art as well as bees and songbirds too. The joy and artistry of the garden she and her husband Marshall created was very evident. I meant to post these photos long before now. (If you are reading via email, click on the title of this post to go to the blog so you can see the photo slideshow… ) I’ll keep that summer memory as a fond one. My heart and thoughts go out to her loving husband and family and many, many close friends.
Nancy, thank you
for all the song,
joy and shining light
you brought to our community.
We would all be lucky
to be remembered as often and as fondly
and with as many smiles
(and with as much love)
as you will be remembered.
Blessed be.
It’s that time of the year when garden bloggers, going crazy from winter…or in my case ice, snow, rain and drear, post pictures of the brand new seed packets, still fresh from the mailbox, they are secretly fondling by the woodstove while dreaming of spring… Sigh. Yep, me too. Above are selections from Baker Creek Seeds in Missouri, a seed company I really like that specializes in unusual, heirloom and open-pollinated seeds. (Open-pollinated being the kind you can then save your own seeds from your crop. Hybrids—which I also grow sometime—are often designated by “F1″ in the catalogs, may have special qualities or higher yield, but if you save seeds the offspring won’t be true to type. Neither of these types are GMOs, don’t worry!)
Baker Creek has nice big portions unlike those skimpy, skimpy amounts sent by Seeds of Change (which I otherwise love, but rarely order from for this reason). When it comes to seed packets, I feel ripped off if I can look in the packet and do an instant head-count of my newly purchased seeds. Anyway, Baker Creek is generous with great prices too. I’ve had good luck with the quality of seeds I’ve purchased from them. Plus they are just one state up from me and hopefully things that do well for them will do well for me! Baker Creek is doing good work in the world with promoting heirlooms, fighting GMO and doing programs like “Seeds for Peace” and I want to support that. I also want to stay on the mailing list for their huge and amazing catalog which I spend many happy hours with every winter.
This year’s order pictured above includes Monstreaux de Viroflay spinach which lives up to the name with monster-huge and vigorous spinach leaves. I’ve found spinach to be kind of wimpy, so this variety is a real favorite now. Candy Roaster squash, a huge, enormous sweet winter squash. And Giant of Italy parsley. Am I revealing a prejudice towards Super Sized items in this post?<LOL> Let’s just say that timid, tiny things just don’t survive well in my Darwinian Ozark garden spot!
Territorial Seeds is another company I enjoy. Generous seed packs, fair prices and wonderfully specific and educational “how to grow” information in their catalogs.
Peaceful Valley Farm Supply is another favorite. I bought my much loved T-tape irrigation system from them too. The big bags are bean and clover innoculant, which really works. The yellow submarine thing is a favorite gadget: it’s a handle to put on a five-gallon bucket to provide a good grip. Love it!
But even after all those postal arrivals, I couldn’t help it. I went to my local favorite “Chicken Holler” to buy a few more! Our household favorite, blue lake bush beans plus sugar snap peas and more. Just can’t get enough of those little packets of summer potential! Thanks for stopping by Larrapin Garden today!
We’ve had a lovely snow seven inches deep at Larrapin Garden that I have thoroughly enjoyed. But when the storm began, there were many anxiety-stricken hours as ice began to coat the trees in a terrible deja vu of this time a year ago when we had a devastating ice storm here. As the ice began to stick, I noticed some birds were even momentarily sticking to the branches where they lit! That was horrifying, but after much flapping struggle, they’d fly off. Thankfully, the ice stopped at a quarter-inch and then the snow began to fall in huge white flakes. I breathed a sigh of relief.
During this time, we had some amazing visitors out around the front patio, like the bluebird hanging out in the river birches as pictured above. Then I saw what they (and other birds) were going for – frozen earthworms. It had rained a lot before the temps dropped and many unlucky earthworms had climbed up on the patio and then never made it back home as things got colder. So we had bunches of birds visiting the patio to pick up the goodies as if on a big concrete platter! This cute little guy ( a yellow-rumped warbler as best I could tell from the bird book?) really enjoyed the feast. I took this out the glass front door as he quite boldly hopped around near the welcome-mat cheerfully picking off stranded worms.
The bluebirds went for the worms too. But to my great surprise, I watched them eating the berries off the holly bushes I planted in pots on the patio just to feed the birds! I’d seen sparrows and mockingbirds eat the berries, but the bluebirds surprised me and I didn’t believe my eyes till I saw them wolfing down big red berries!! These are china-girl (or china boy? hmmm…need to see if I wrote that down because they are clearly the taste-test winner) hollies.
Is this fluffed up little guy a cutie or what? I took dozens and dozens of shots out the front window to get a few good ones.
The pic below as my favorite scene to watch, though the photo doesn’t do it justice. A full-out bluebird feast with three (there were four at times) bluebirds at the buffet!
More snow pictures to come. It’s an amazing thing, for someone not used to much snow, to tromp around in seven inches of white powder. Wow. Snowed in with good food, good company, so much beauty out the window, and the power stayed on this time. Life is good at Larrapin! Hope you are all warm and cozy this weekend. Please leave a comment by clicking the comment link at the end of this post!
Northwest Arkansas is preparing for another ice storm nearly to the day of the anniversary of the catastrophic ice storm we had in 2009. It’s predicted to be much less severe though, and that’s an anxiety-ridden comfort. Such is our fate I guess now that the rain/ice/snow boundaries of the country have shifted a bit north. I recall with irony my first drive through southern Missouri a few years back thinking, “what on earth happened to so many of their forests with the tops snapped off the trees? Gosh, sure am glad our trees don’t look like that….” Now my backyard and much of the region has looked like that for the last year…
On the comedic side of things, I went to Wal-Mart last evening to add to our stash of emergency candles, like about two billion other locals decided to do at the same time. Nothing like the reaction to a predicted snow/ice event in the South. I love it, being a Southerner. It has kind of a crazy emergency-holiday feel to it. When I lived in places where snow/ice was “normal” I found it such a downer that no one was dashing out to strip the shelves of bread and milk…and emergency candles. (And, um, Beer!) But they were yesterday!!
As I walked toward the store, people pushing huge baskets motioned to the storefront and said things like, “Hope you are ready for that!” and “You’re gonna wish you brought your waitin’ boots!” Clever wordsmith. Somehow, this all puts me in a festive mood. Like the school aged Southern thrill when YOUR school is named on the closures list on the radio just because some road dozens of miles from you has an icy patch. It’s all still a thrill to me. Go figure.
I had a great time though they were already sold out of emergency candles. The retail maestros had emergency supplies lined up along the center row: deicer, snow shovels, propane, generators…sleds… You would have thought an ice-Katrina was headed our way and life as we knew it could end shortly. Which I guess is always true… But I did pick up a few little camping propane bottles for the cookstove, just in case. Nothing like being without power for seven days this time last year to put a little wintry-mix PTSD in your day, festive mood or not!
But I digress, I’m here to share some of my favorite dirty movies of late: “Fresh,” “Food, Inc.” and “Dirt.” (Yes, Dirt is already a favorite even though I haven’t seen it yet!) Enjoy the links below!
Fresh, The Movie (freshthemovie.com)
I got to see this night before last. It’s both thought provoking and uplifting too as it features interviews with farmers ranging from industrial to conventional to ecological. Calvin Bey moderated our local screening and suggested that we notice the affect (aka the “vibe”) from the various people interviewed. That was a pretty remarkable exercise and sure affirmed the “do what you love” principle of life. A good intro to food issues with a nice balance of hope and portraits of uplifting trends in the midst of our industrialized food system. Don’t miss this film!
Dirt: The Movie
This is the one I haven’t seen yet. But it’s got a lot of my favorite farmers in it AND it celebrates my favorite thing on the farm: soil. (I couldn’t resist the jazzy title of this post, but I have been corrected by teacher-farmers in the past to never confuse the two and never treat your soil ‘like dirt.’ Wise words!)
This one is tough. It shows you what’s really at stake when we make food choices. But strong medicine has indeed helped me make better food buying choices because the pain in my wallet to buy what I call “ethical meat” does not compare to the suffering of the animals in the industrial food system. And I want to lessen my contribution to that system, and that suffering.
So check out some food and sustainable-agriculture films, get educated and get gardening! Nothing like dirty movies the whole family can sit down and watch! Here’s to envisioning a lovely snow instead of ice for NWA. Stay warm! Please leave a comment via the link below and let me know what you think of the movies.
Welcome to the first podcast at A Larrapin Garden. Wow, this stuff is fun. If you scroll down to the bottom of this post you’ll see an audio player. Click the arrow and you can listen now, or click the download link to download the file and listen whenever you want. (If you are reading this via an email subscription, I think you’ll have to go to the Larrapin Blog Site to listen.)
My first Fayetteville gardening teacher, Dr. Calvin Bey of Harmony Gardens, agreed to a chat on getting ready to start gardening this spring. Calvin is an amazing organic and ecological gardener who approaches the process in a systematic, experimental process that befits his background as a scientist. Calvin’s garden is about 2000 square feet, he tells me, and he regularly gets 2000 pounds of produce a year from our NWA growing season that runs from mid-April to late October.
But that 2000 pounds is not “ordinary” organic produce. Calvin’s focus is “nutrient-dense” produce, grown in re-mineralized soil so that the produce will contain the maximum nutrition.
Turns out you can measure the nutritional quality of a vegetable with a special gadget, and of course Calvin has one! But the results can be startling. Even the loveliest-looking, organically grown vegetable can be lacking in the nutrition we all believe is in there. It all depends on the soil. And don’t get me started on the nutrient content of typical store-bought conventional produce. (Ok, can’t help it: One study I read suggested we’d have to eat about 3-5 times the portions of modern vegetables to really get the vitamins and minerals supposedly contained in one portion. The quality of most commercial-farm soils—which is where the veggies get the nutrition to pass on to us— has diminished to that point.)
Besides human health, other side effects of nutrient-dense produce include increased productivity from the plants as well as increased shelf-life and disease/bug resistance. When you ask Calvin how he handles many common diseases and insect attacks in his garden, he will often shrug and smile. He doesn’t have them!
It all goes back to the soil. Well, doesn’t everything. Literally.
If you are into veggie gardening and willing to expand your mind (and understanding of soil) exponentially, I would heartily encourage you to take one of Calvin’s Saturday classes. He’s offering several of the one-day courses this Spring. (See http://harmonygardens.blogspot.com/ for info and signup.) You’ll learn enough in one class to keep you exploring for the next several years, or lifetimes. Plus, best of all, you get to see Calvin’s lovely garden and smart home. But you’ll see the real treasure when you push back a little mulch and take a look at that soil. (Guests are asked to refrain from the temptation of bringing shovels and buckets!)
Click the player below to listen to a 23 minute interview with Calvin, or download to listen at your convenience. (10mb mp3 file)
Thanks for stopping by Larrapin! Let me know what you think of the new audio feature!
"Larrapin" is an old expression that means delicious or wonderful. Larrapin is my goal for this landscape: making it delicious and wonderful for the birds, pollinators, wildlife—and the gardeners! We're in the Ozark bioregion near Fayetteville, Arkansas, on the shifting border between Zones 6 & 7...
