Finally, beloved September!

I just love September, always have. It's back to school time for Steve and the kids, even though they are way past the usual going to school age.Yesterday was the first day of lectures, so Steve did his nearly famous introductory class to Sustainability 1000, Phoebe picked up her keys for the office that Teaching Assistants use at King's College and Lucas headed back to his study carol to get back to work on his thesis. It was also Lucas' birthday, we had a nice birthday breakfast for him.

Here's the newest member of the family, Snow. He's Lucas' cat and does he add a lot of excitement to the place! Mostly nice. We don't have carpets, so he's finding the lack of traction difficult.

I am not back into the rhythm yet. Too many outstanding issues from the summer, but the gap is closing. Just by writing this blog entry, I am nearly back to my desired schedule. I have been working on my online embroidery course all August. Mostly it's about making samples that can be worked into my future textile pieces.  The one above is a machine made fake organza ribbon that I have embroidered and later added to a different piece. The ribbon is about 4 inches long.

This is my current favourite, even though it is a beginner effort. I like the peek-a-boo-ness of the textile coming up from behind. I have plans for this lesson.

I also liked the techniques I learned on this sample. There is cutwork (the big open hole) and stitching on mirrors and adding lace or textiles behind holes
.

I worked it up a bit more and ended up with this as my sample.

I confess that I am a little confused as to what to do with this blog these days. My initial intention was to write about urban sustainability issues and tag on a few bits of studio work when they were relevant. These days, the blog is more about the studio and less about urban issues.

We are still heavy practitioners of  attempting to live simply and sustainably. The folks I interact with on a daily basis give me good feed back on the studio work. There is a pounding silence on other matters. Since I don't really know who is reading and for what reasons, I wonder what I should continue to write about?

For the time being, I will chat a bit about our dehydrator. Last summer, we dried about everything we could put our hands on. Not everything was a success. I did not like the apples with the peelings still on, nor did I like the strawberries, but Steve did. The bananas were a dismal failure. Too bad because I really liked the idea of banana chips. The blueberries were the best so we repeated that just last week.

We watched a Blue Jays Game, luckily a slow one, while we stabbed about 8 cups of wild blueberries before putting them in the dehydrator. It gave us 5 x 1cup baggies of dried blueberries, to be used in scones, muffins, and trail mix.

Cleo Belle decided to help, by keeping Steve's legs super warm, while the dehydrator was heating up the kitchen when the temperature was nearly 80. We are going to do the apples and pears again this summer, but this time peel the apples. The dried pears were very nice in trail mix, which was sucked down every time it was tucked into lunches. It was especially popular when the lunches were made for a day of sailing.

This summer's drying experiment is going to be mushrooms. I'm not sure if there is a local producer of mushrooms, we'll scout around the market this Saturday. But even if we can only get Canadian mushrooms, and dry those, it will be better than those from Brazil or Australia this winter. Less oil.

Regrettably, the list of things to do left over from the summer includes some finances, cleaning the camping gear in the basement, sorting out the boxes in the garage and attic from Lucas' move home and finding storage for it all.  Too bad the list doesn't have things like pedicure and lemonaide with friends on it this week.

Two Signficant Life Moments

Bruno, our daughter Phoebe's cat since she was 4 years old, old enough to organize the adoption of this furry ball has died. We are sad to not have him with us. He was a hairy bundle of energy, positive and negative, depending on whom he was approaching.

Phoebe trained him from kitten hood to withstand the love neck-strangle hold. He was so enamored of this position that he found it difficult to settle down at night unless someone agreed to get him in a headlock. This was fine if Phoebe was around, but once she left for University, it was a challenge to Steve and I.

Bruno could tell time. We have a clock that calls the hours with birdcalls. When the Canadian Goose honked, that meant dinner time and whoa betide the human in the house that didn't trot at a fast clip to the fridge to get his food. The 3 o'clock chickadee-dee-dee meant Phoebe would be home from school any minute and Bruno would pace between the front door and the human in the house who wasn't Phoebe, telling that person that they weren't Phoebe and could they do something about it please.

Bruno's telling time by bird call became particularly stressful to the rest of us when the windows opened in the spring and the birds began to call at dawn. There are bluejays, robins, chickadees and phoebe-birds all outdoors and they are all on this clock. The hours of 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. were very confusing for Bruno and he let us all know that something should be happening, preferably with food.

After traveling with us to Halifax as a kitten of barely a year, helping Phoebe to fit in with new friends, seeing her through the tribulations of being a girl who preferred the games of boys, eventual boyfriends instead of a gang of boys, deciding to homeschool through junior highschool and where to go for university, Bruno turned 15 and started to decline. It was a very tough send off for all of us. Bruno was groomed beautifully and was purring from the affection he was receiving at the end and then he was gone. All of us keep looking around at his stations of the food chain. He had several spots where he would perch to watch all food being distributed. It used to drive him crazy if we shut the front hall doorway because he couldn't sit in his basket on the window sill and see the kitchen counter and table. I am keeping that door open these days because I assume that that is where his spirit resides, keeping an eye out for any action at the cat food dish.


On a happier note, Steve turned 50 last week. He made it! I remember when I was a kid and trying to figure out what year it would be if I lived to see 50. 2010. It was a good number as numbers go, two zeros and a 2. plus it was past the 2000 mark which seemed kind of magic when I was a kid. I turned 50 six months sooner than Steve and we had planned to have a joint birthday party, but life and logistics haven't allowed that to happen.

Steve wouldn't have looked good in a sparkly tiara the way I do, so I made him one with black pipe cleaners and two little light bulbs, because he always has ideas going on in that massive cranium. Regrettably, I have no idea how to wire them to light up. He's the genius, he can do it for next year.

Steve and I spent the morning walking downtown, getting some great steaks and other food items from our favourite shops, picking up a blueberry almond birthday cake, getting two bottles of wine and once we came home, we had naps. I KNOW! What a crazy thing to do on a 50th birthday. Have a nap. But we are old enough now that we can nap when ever we want to and blame it on: old age, tired bodies, not sleeping well or medications. The truth is that we can disappear to our room (together or alone) and just check out of whatever is going on and .... have a nap. It is deliciously luxurious. There is something very decadent about napping in the middle of the day for no good reason beyond wanting to. Probably in 10 years I will change my attitude on this but for now, it's just cool.

50 also means that there are a lot of things we can just opt out of and not have to explain ourselves as well as a lot of things we can undertake because we want to. It's like we have this embossed “You have permission to....” card in our wallets and we can use them whenever we want.

The kids came over after dinner for the blueberry almond cake and to give Steve a gift they had been preparing for for several weeks now.

A watermelon Ukelele. Who doesn't need one of those!?

It was a very nice family birthday day. Steve, you are circled by love, you lucky man.

Livestock Winter report -2010

Every Urban Farm should have some livestock. Living in Halifax, we are not allowed, yet, to have chickens in our backyards, but I understand legislation is undergoing a change. Let's hope!

Bees are possible, but we were supposed to be going on Sabbatical this coming July and I didn't want to start a hive until we returned. However, that has been delayed by a year so the bees will be some time coming. We have also been told by Phoebe that she won't step on the property if there are bees here. Choices, choices! At the moment, Phoebe wins, but there might be bee aversion therapy in her future.

Our main livestock are the Lucky 3 worms. We received these a couple of years ago from a friend's neighbour. We have built the herd up to two bins worth of worms. I pulled out enough worm soil and worm pee to keep my garden fertilized last summer. The tomatoes loved it. The geraniums were also pleased. The geraniums are currently looking a bit flustered so I am going to give them another drink of diluted worm pee this weekend. That should give them some winter luster.

Worm pee you wonder? It isn't really pee, it is the moisture from the humidity that gathers inside the dark bins. As the worms work their way through the kitchen scraps, they generate heat. And the little buggers reproduce irrepressibly, adding heat. Imagine 10,000 worms reproducing, it staggers the imagination. And it happens in my basement every day. I'm surprised the lid doesn't blow off the bins.

Back to reality. The moisture can build up in the soil, making a soup and this is drained off about every 6 months. The worms like it mucky, so I'm not too worried. If I see a bunch of worms at the top of the bin, it means it is either too wet or I tossed something in they didn't like. One friend claims you can hear the worms munching. I think this is the water squishing about, but I can't hear anything, and I've spent minutes listening. Maybe she said it as a practical joke so she can think of me with my ear to the worm bin?

Once a year I turn the bins upside down on a tarp in the driveway and spread the soil out as thin as I can, with a heap in the middle. As the soil warms and is exposed to light, the worms scurry to the dark heap in the middle. I harvest the edges of the soil, diluting it with lots of water and it makes an excellent soil fertilizer. The middle heap goes back into the bins. Last year I had enough to make a second bin and I should have been less lazy and made a third bin last fall. We generate enough kitchen scraps that I could keep 4 bins happy, thanks to coffee grinds.

I'm rather slap dash about my Lucky 3 worms. I just toss the scraps in, shred some newsprint on top, sometimes stir it up and ignore them as much as possible. Perfect livestock, no early morning milking, no spring shearing and no vet bills.

Since I can't have chickens, I have a bird feeder. As of this Christmas, we have two.

They are from Connecticut Yankee. The green one is the newer model and because it is wider in diameter, those amazingly smart crows and their cousins the Blue Jays, can't stick their greedy beaks in and get the chickadee feed. Crows and Jays are aggressive enough they can fend for themselves. I try to feed the little guys. We have chickadees, a few types of sparrows, house finches and sometimes a yellow finch as they pass over during migration. At the eensy-weensy island-spit of land in Liverpool, we see yellow finches, along with several other cutie pie birds so it is possible the yellow finches could use our feeder more regularly, but they don't. We also have blasted starlings and idiot pigeons.

We put a suet feeder out last winter, guaranteed for small birds. The small birds ignored it and the starlings learned to jump from the ground, four feet into the air and flutter long enough to get a mouthful of suet. I tossed the bloody thing out last month. The 15 pigeons' main job are to stand around on the various roof gutters and annoy the cats. This gives the cats exercise as they sit on the rad covers and object. They would otherwise spend the day sleeping, saving up rest in case tomorrow is busy.

We have occasionally seen the Downy woodpeckers, (the ones that have the black and white feathers and the red splotch on their heads). They like the various stumps we have left around the shrubs, getting bugs even in the winter from under the bark. Our most special guest was a Yellow Shafted Common Flicker. He likes to visit every so often, peer about and then take off, while I scrunch up with excitement indoors. I don't know what he's looking for and I'd provided it if I could figure it out.

Our other livestock, the cats, are doing well. Bruno is fully recovered from his traumatic partial tail removal. All the fur has grown back in and he swishes it around as if it was an ermine stole he needs to display. He's a little touchy about any feet near his tale, and I guess I can appreciate that. Bruno misses Phoebe a lot and whenever she comes over, he is in her lap the first minute she sits down for a long drawn out purr fest.

I miss Phoebe especially at bed-time when Bruno tries to convince me that sleeping with his head on my shoulder is a good thing to do. Nope, get the to the feet of the bed, you hairy thing!

Cleo Belle continues to rule the roost. She caught a mouse last month. I don't consider the mice one of the livestock. I suppose they are more numerous than I care to think about and they do live inside the structure of the house. But that is temporary. I called the pest control people and we'll blast those buggers out of the walls before any mice lovers read this blog. Cleo continues to sit on various tops of bureaus and cupboards, looking intently at the paint. I think this is her way of pointing to the mice. Bruno watches Cleo Belle watch the mice. It is all very exciting and exhausting. (see above re: in case tomorrow is busy and sleeping)

Steve is Cleo Belle's livestock. She wrangles him into his different corrals; his office chair, the kitchen chair, the living room chair or his bed. She stands on his lap and shouts until he extends his legs out and then she settles down for a nap, or several. She doesn't do this with me too often, she mostly stands on the counter top and screams “Where are those long legs, I need a nap!”