I Was Like a Fox in the Henhouse…

Today I took a day off of any duties and works and I went for a walk in the forest, with my camera. And right at the edge of the forest, I got distracted.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I had planned a long picture-taking walk, about five-six kilometers. I had drink and snacks packed, an audiobook prepared, and just in case I find some mushrooms, I had two cloth shopping bags in my backpack. I thought maybe I find enough for a dinner.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Boletes are growing in huge numbers. I did not even get to the best places and I filled both shopping bags before venturing so much as twenty-thirty meters into the forest. They weighed about five kilos each, here you can see them after I took a hefty portion off the top to give to my neighbor, who likes them, but, like my parents, is too old to go collecting herself.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

My tiny kitchen counter was covered in mushrooms. It took me about six hours to clean all these and cut them. Most were cut to slices to dry, but some were too soft and spongy (and there were some blushers in there too) and had to be cooked right away.  And even though there was a lot of waste, I still filled the whole vegetable dryer and a table with drying, and my biggest pot with cooking. There are good ten-twenty meals in the pot, so after it all cools down, they will be divided and packed into small portions and frozen.

I must apologize, I did not make any pretty pictures for you today. But I am really tired, despite my walk being only about one-fifth of the length I planned.

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

September

The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.
The gentian’s bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.
The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook.
From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes’ sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.
By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather,
And autumn’s best of cheer.
But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.
T’is a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.

Helen Hunt Jackson

Teacher’s Corner: I beg your pardon?

From the life of a teacher. I swear, I couldn’t make this up, because even my imagination is somewhat coherent. Today a colleague asked me to handle a kid who’d claimed to just have removed a louse from her head (I was itching all day, thank you, just the word will do that), could I please call her parents? I had a moment of time (well, not really. Sorry I. that you had to wrangle the whole class yourself) so I took over the kid and called her stepmum if she if she could please come and pick her up?

Well, it was a trite inconvenient for the stepmum (actually, the whole kid is a trite inconvenient for the stepmum…), could she get home by bus, and also she was very annoyed that after two weeks the kid still had lice…

I told her I needed to check with the assistant principal and would call her back. When I called her back she started ranting at me that we would need to finally do something about those damn lice and find out from which kid her kid kept picking them up! This had been going on for two weeks now and enough is enough. I politely informed her that I wasn’t a doctor and was neither qualified nor allowed to check the other kids for lice, but now that we finally knew there was a problem, of course all parents were given the “lice paper*” and that NOW of course parents were obligated to do so. “But my kid keeps getting them, you must find which other kid is giving them to my kid!!!”

Would you believe that she called a third time? Our assistant principal jokingly handed me the phone claiming it was sure Mrs. B. and look and behold, it was Mrs. B., for which I called him a juicebag and claimed he was bullying me**. Again she complained that her kid had been having lice for two weeks and she wanted to know what we had done during those two weeks she was sitting on that information (you are legally required to inform school if your kid has easily transmittable parasites or infectious deceases) to prevent the transmission of lice we didn’t know we had. Rinse and repeat the same conversation a few times. As I said, I couldn’t make that up because my brain can’t twist logic that much. There’s an old saying that teachers don’t get paid a salary, they get compensation for injuries suffered and today sure was one of those. though, do you think that woman could get a job in the Trump administration?

 

*an informative leaflet about lice, what to do about them, complete with a declaration the parents have to fill out that their child has been checked/treated and is free of lice.

**in good fun

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

The Monarch butterflies have started their migration to California and Mexico, and in the last few weeks, Jack and I have seen quite a few of them. The journey is quite an undertaking, and no individual butterfly makes the entire round trip. According to Migration Joint Venture, it requires 4 generations to complete the cycle. Whereas during the summer months, the Monarchs live for 2 to 6 weeks, when they migrate, they can live up to 9 months. Once the migration begins, the butterflies enter diapause (do not reproduce) as they head south to overwintering grounds where they have never been. They will never see this home again. I think it’s a fascinating and poignant life cycle, and I’m always well pleased when I see one of these small, beautiful creatures that traverse the continent on instinct.

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack and I went to the park this morning, and we found the place overrun with Canada Geese. There was a flotilla in the pond and another regiment lining its banks, and all through the park, they covered the grass, doing a slow nibble-walk and poop without looking up. There were more of them in the round-about crossing from one side to another in an even slower, flappy-footed, silly-walk that stopped traffic in all directions. Jack was mesmerized by them. He sat quietly at my side and watched the parade, and after the last goose had passed us by, he took a hop-step forward and let loose a small, happy woof and laughed. “That was great fun. When’s the next show?”

The Art of…

…Monet.

Water Lilies by Claude Monet. Photo courtesy of Discover Walks Blog/Matthieu

I’m supposed to be in Paris. Today. I should be there right now. It’s been the plan for 5 years to go to Paris in September of 2020. It’s the year a friend retires (she has) and the year I turn 60 (I will soon), and we were going to celebrate both milestones in Paris. We’ve read every guide book twice or thrice and have well-organized lists of what we want to see, do, and eat. We’ve talked endlessly about the trip, and the promise of it has helped us both through some difficult days. Covid doesn’t care about any of that, though, and so we had to cancel our plans.

This Water Lilies mural by Monet is one of 8 panels that grace 2 rooms at the Musee de L’Orangerie and I was very much looking forward to seeing it in person. Instead, I took a virtual tour today which only increased my desire to actually go there. The tour is nice though, and if you’re interested you can take it yourself. The link for the musuem will take you directly to it. The link for the photo has a nice walking tour if you’re looking for a bit more of Paris.

Here There Be Hares

from Avalus,

more photos from my way to and from work, this time it is all about hares. They languish in the fields in the morning and the evening.  They are also clearly uncomfortable about people stopping to take pictures from 20 m away. With their brown fur, they are pretty hard to spot if they don’t move.

Hare 1 ©Avalus, all rights reserved

Hare 2 ©Avalus, all rights reserved

And for comparisons sake a rabbit. Note the much smaller ears.

Fun fact: In German the ears of hares and rabbits are called “Löffel” which means spoons.

Rabbit ©Avalus, all rights reserved

The Art of …

The Art of Book Design is changing. I’ve become bored with just books, and there are lots of other things I’d like to explore and share with you. So, I’ve decided to turn the basic concept into a daily surprise. The title is being shortened to simply The Art of …, and I’ll post a daily something art-related. If you want to know what that something is, then you’ll have to tune us in. There will still be books, but also posters, fine art, folk art, sculpture, architecture, museums, and anything else that piques my interest. I’m starting the series with an Indigenous artist whose work I enjoy.

So today it’s The Art of… Tony Abeyta

Stormy River Bend by Tony Abeyta. Image courtesy of tonyabeyta.com

 

 

Where in the World are Voyager and Jack

Bubba takes a dip in the murky creek ©voyager, all rights reserved

Here we are, at home like most people during the pandemic, but it’s been a tough summer for Jack. He hasn’t coped well with the heat, and many days he was only up for short walks down the street very early in the morning or late at night. Usually, we spend the summer on the east coast where it is cooler and Jack can swim every day. These humid and hot Ontario summers don’t agree with him. Or me.

Also, the past few weeks have been very busy for me. I’ve been organizing my pantry (a cupboard in the basement) and my freezer (also in the basement – I’m up and down as often as a new bride’s nightie) in preparation for the second wave, which is already starting slowly. The Globe and Mail said this morning that our curve is no longer flattening and are blaming “pandemic fatigue.” Great, just as our public schools are due to open next week. They are combining on-line learning with in-class and are staggering school days. One half goes Monday, Tuesday and the other half Wednesday to Friday, then switch back and forth. Masks are mandatory at all times. It’s a plan, but none of the teachers I talk to are feeling confident, and neither is the public. So, I’m putting us in lock-down until the end of October and possibly longer than that. Mr. V has a bad heart, so we can’t afford to take chances. I have until the end of this week to double-check the plan and shop for any gaps. After that, I won’t be going out except to the mailbox and to walk Jack. Socially distant visits with friends will be outdoors only.

The good news is that it’s cooler and Jack can get out every day. Some days, he still wants only a short walk, and now that he’s 12, I don’t push him. On those days, we take 3 or 4 shorter walks just to the end of the street and back, and he seems content. Most days, though, Jack still likes a bit of adventure, and in the cooler weather, he can make it all the way around his favourite trail in the woods. That’s the Fairy Woods, which brings me to a piece of news. Jack’s Walk will now be only Jack’s Walk. Any fairy stories that find us will be posted under a new title – Tails in the Wee Woods. With that change, we’ve decided to go back to posting Monday to Friday. We’ve had a lovely break, but it’s time to get things back to normal.

This labour day, I’d like to send a good word out to Giliell, who is back to school in these uncertain times. Stay safe, my friend. That message goes out to the rest of you, too. Stay safely vigilant and don’t give in to “pandemic fatigue.” Here at Jack’s Walk, it will always be a safe place to come and take a deep breath.

Oh My Potato!

There is a lot of talk about sustainability and growing your own food etcetera. So I wish to share this year’s results of our efforts in this regard, specifically potatoes.

In the spring we bought 20 kg of potatoes for about 40 € including shipping. We planted them to a patch approximately 40-50 square meters and now my father has great fun harvesting them.

Typical potatoes, ones that go into the cellar for storage look like this.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Then there is also a lot of “beads” which are very small potatoes, and a lot of potatoes that are damaged by weeds, slugs, bugs etc. Those need to be consumed first. But this year it looks like we do get reasonable amount of big potatoes in good condition. And whilst the saying in Czech goes “Čím hloupější sedlák, tím větší brambory” (“The dafter the peasant, the bigger his potatoes”), I think that saying just reflects the enviousness in human nature. Because getting reasonably big potatoes, regularly, is not easy.

The main problem with potatoes is that they need light, humous soil, and the soil in our garden is more like heavy clay. In the vegetable patch, it is a lot better, because that soil is a result of careful cultivation over several decades of tilling the clay with compost, manure, wood ash, and fertilizer. Still, it is far from ideal and way too sticky. So this year I have tried to improve the soil further by adding a lot of organic material directly around the potatoes during planting, specifically crushed reed stalks from my sewage water treatment facility. It seems to have helped – a few plants were planted without the reed stalks and their potatoes were visibly smaller. Also, the soil with the crushed reed is easier to tilt and falls easier apart. So it seems I have a use for the reed stalks, which until now were a waste-product.

But even without those, each year when we grow potatoes, there are outliers like this ca. 500 g (>1 pound) specimen.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Pieces like these bring great joy to my father, who currently really has fun with garden fork tilling the patch and getting the potatoes out. We have a small tractor, but my mother has urged me not to use it and leave my father to do the work manually – he needs the exercise and enjoys doing it. And although he impales some potatoes on the fork, the damage is smaller than the plow would do. For example, this 950 g specimen got impaled and needs to be eaten asap, but a plow would probably just cut it in half.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Well, that one is really an outlier. It can feed the whole family for a day. It would be great if they were all like that, but that is alas unattainable.

Ok, enough bragging and back to the sustainability issue and soil care a bit.

We have planted circa 200 plants. We get at least 120 kg of potatoes from it, so on average 600 g from each plant. That means we could, theoretically, set aside 20 kg for next year and still have 100 kg to eat. So how does that help us re: self-sustainability? It is just about 600 g of potatoes per week per person in our household, so two-three servings. That is a lot, being a significant money saver. But it still does not bring us anywhere near to being self-reliant.

The first obstacle to that is of course the sheer amount of land needed for true self-reliance. I almost have the land, but the soil quality on most of it is very poor and it would take years of back-breaking work to bring it up to scratch with the vegetable patch.*

The second obstacle are nutrients. Potatoes have about the highest yield per area of all crops that I can grow here, but they also deplete the soil of nutrients really, really fast, and can destroy it. I do not need to go too far to see a real-life example of this – my neighbor does not make compost, does not take care of her vegetable patch the way we do, and she did grow potatoes always in the same spot for many years. The soil got sour, and the potatoes were getting so small it was not worth the effort anymore.

The third obstacle is pests and diseases. We solve this problem by twofold approach – we spray the potatoes against mold and beetles, and we only grow them every second year. It seems to work out well, but should we try to be self-reliant, it would double the needed land again. We alternate them with onions, pumpkins, and legumes, which also produce reasonable harvests, but nowhere near to be significant on the same amount of land. Alternating the crops also reduces the amount of pesticides we use, since onions and legumes do not need to be treated.

The fourth obstacle is the sheer amount of work needed. My father does most of it, with me only doing the most difficult parts like plowing, and it takes a lot of time and effort throughout the year. To feed all three of us that effort would be tenfold.

This makes me highly skeptical about growing your food on the windowsill or front porch. But even so, I think it is a great idea to plant some vegetables in pots on your windowsill or front porch if you can, just do not expect any wonders regarding the amount you will get.

What you can expect though, is great taste. Supermarket bought vegetables cannot hold a candle to anything you grow by yourself.


  • The poor soil quality around here is one of the main reasons why many fields were converted to pastures and meadows after the Iron Curtain has fallen.