spring busy-ness

i attended the introductory beekeeping class yesterday and today I am scouting a good site for my hive. We have a huge ceanothus, aka California lilac, in full bloom now and it is covered with happy bumblebees. Presumably these are the same girls who live in our birdhouse. They are constantly in motion and it took me a while to get a decent shot. Bees are incredible animals.

thrift thursday: WIPs

I think growing your own food (to a point) is thrifty. so I am a big believer in backyard fruit production: we have blueberries, raspberries, apples, pears, elderberries, crab apples, pomegranate, a lame cherry, guavas, currants, gooseberries and hawthorn. My bareroot order from One Green World just arrived, alas, minus my persimmon, since the website neglected to mention they cannot be shipped to California. Too bad, I was hoping to get a really exotic cultivar not found anywhere here locally (I know, because I called every nursery I could think of). But my medlar and quince did arrive. I have wanted to grow my own quince ever since high school when we studied John Keats poem, The Eve of Saint Agnes:

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,
In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender’d,
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrups, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
From silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon.

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so here my sticks from oregon, the one on the left is the quince, the right is the medlar, which has already taken its place in the hedgerow with a currant, hawthorn and crabapple. I love hedgerows, so Beatrice Potterish and vital to beneficial insect forage and cover.


here is another wip, the persimmon tree I picked up at a local nursery. talking of thrift, the bareroot season is almost over, so this jiro was half off. Another long stick.



it is hard to believe these trees will ever amount to anything. But look at this:


the first fruit tree we planted fall of 1997, a cox orange pippin, and here it is the first spring with us. Steve has been pruning it and it has become a beauty. He follows open vase method over central leader.



this what she looks like today. Delicious apples and it also serves as a living trellis for clematis texensis "Pagoda".

It reminds me of Ben's homework last night...a family tree, also a wip.


I rarely go to Sebastopol, which is where the bareroot persimmon was, so I try to make a day of it and visit other west county attractions.I finally made it to the Legacy craft thrift shop. Amazing! I could have spent hours there, but had 30 minutes. I left with a brown grocery sack of cloth...all for $12. They sell fabric for $2 a pound. I picked up some really sweet, already made quilt blocks I am assembling for the newest member of our family tree: sweet little MacKenzie Clark. Good work Mike and Sherrie! here it is, definitely a wip.

Honey, I'm home!

See this wonderful oven mitt made for me by redheaded snipit? see the cute honeybee perched on its thumb? See the brunette honey bear with local honey? ok you got three hints...what am I thinking?

yes, I am contemplating the next step in the eat local food lifestyle: keeping bees. I attended the most amazing, informative symposium this past weekend. Wow, eye opening. I was aware of the bizarre phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder and just this past week KQED did a show on forum, describing it as a whodunit with no smoking gun, no bodies even. Spooky, all these bees just disappearing. No common denominator, except perhaps unusually hot dry weather last fall and pollen with little to no nutritional value. So malnutrition perhaps. But is more? GMO pollen, high fructose corn syrup made from GMO corn, some new fungus, virus, bug. aliens form space? Anyway, it makes a person a trifle respectful of insects and how under appreciated they are. Did you know that about of third of what we eat is tied to bees (both native and honey bees) for fertilization?

I came away with a conviction to keep bees. My neighbor Denise already does, and she lost both her colonies this winter to CCD. Fortunately we have beekind here in Sonoma county and they are the source of all things melliferous, including queens all ready to get their groove on.

The symposium was really for hobby beekeepers looking for better answers to the dreaded varroa mite than miticides and other more ecological methods for making bees happy. We saw traditional skeps from Germany and more humane hives. We saw a wonderful slideshow on all the beautiful native bees (we have over 250 native bee species in California alone, mostly solitary as opposed to colony forming. I also learned just about everything I care to about tracheal mites and varroa mites Did you know one method to control varroa is to shake powdered sugar over your colonies every week during prime drone brood season? There, now you can sleep better tonight knowing that. I know I will.

Sunday evening Steve and Ben where making the rounds of the birdhouses, making sure they were clean and ready for their new tenants and wouldn't you know, one had become home to a colony of bumble bees! Steve bravely rehung (with nary a sting) the birdhouse in its same spot as the sweet little ladies were rather confused as to where their villa had disappeared too. I feel honored they have chosen to take up residence here. I think it is a good omen.

Busytown Bakery

What I thought would be a ho hum field trip was two hours of pure, fermented fun! The Franco American Bakery in Railroad Square Santa Rosa has been continuous operation since 1903. It has been owned by the Bastione family since 1928. Frank, recently handed over the business to his son, the third generation to run things. But Frank loves to give tours to schoolkids and he was such a gracious, delightful and informative host. He clearly loves bread. Their sourdough starter is older than him he proudly boasts. The kids LOVED every minute and got to see the whole process, plus knead and shape their own loaves that came home with them) plus a real loaf). Talk about building product loyalty. You can see more pictures here.

The best part to the day for me was discovering that Frank was best friends with our neighbor (now deceased). They met in grade school and were lifelong friends. And the family we bought our house from was also a friend, having sold Frank all his paper goods for 40 years. In many ways Santa Rosa is still the small town Alfred Hitchcock chronicled in Shadow of a Doubt in 1943. I love that about Santa Rosa.

I know has a teenager I couldn't wait to leave my home town of Omaha. And now it is has changed so much and grown so large it has lost that small town feel I remember. But SaRo still has it, if know where to look: the cobbler on Mendocino who took over for his dad, the burger joint that hasn't changed in 30 years, the neighborhood cemetery with family names you recognize. I know change is really all you can expect, but bread in some form (tortillas, buns, loafs) will probably be around all long time.

of bread and mushrooms and salad greens

my salad garden...


here it is a week later, and this photo is a week old already.

and the cup fungi are blowing my mind...they are everywhere in my yard

can you believe alot of these mushroom types are edible?! But most sources say, don't bother. This must be what comes in those mysterious cellophane packages at asian markets labeled "Fungus". I actually like that stuff in hot and sour soup.


But the real gem, although i am still awaiting the neighborhood mycophile, Sam, to give his blessings before we eat it, are morels found growing in our very backyard. We also found a few chanterelles on the hill behind us, not enough to actually cook something though.

where does the bread come in? Tomorrow I have the extreme pleasure of chaperoning 20 second graders to the Franco-American Bakery. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for Able Baker Charlie.

the latest in wool

I feel pretty scattered these days: work, home life and the crunch of getting my schedule C up to speed so I can meet with the tax guy. I gotta say, one of the bennies of being self employed is going to the tax guy is a legitimate business expense. So even though you have be on top of all your paperwork, he takes the pile and turns it into a lovely grey foldered, tax return for a very reasonable price. I see him once a year and admire the picture of his kids (who of course are now one year older) and we chitchat for a few minutes, go over his checklist and I leave feeling about 50 pounds lighter. In a few weeks I get a phone call from the secretary and exchange a check for that nice,neat grey file...he even electronically files for us. I love my tax guy.

Oh yes, I did finish this blue blankie...already in the mail for its new owner.

Auction raises $1200

Wow, that was fun! The treasurer of my son's school 501c3 for arts education wants to do a similar auction within our school community and I also offered to organize on for Jane's Imagine bus project sometime thi summer, but again, a more local effort. Ebay and paypal make things incredible easy (for a small fee that is) and the Internet makes communication nearly effortless, especially if you have good typing skills. (But people who receive my emails know I need some help there.)

Huge thanks for all the wonderful aritsts who made things!

Sunday: Auction musings

it has been an interesting week...getting my name in two local papers three times this week (something I am shy about really) has caused lots of people to call or stop me and say "Hi!, great idea, so fun to go look a the website!" I even got called by an old Scottish dance friend I have not see in 6 years. SO I know people here in Sonoma County are hearing about the auction, but still a few lovely things have no bids (but i can see several people are watching the auction, so that bodes well.) If the auction ended this minute, the auction will have raised $1000 dollars...which is way more fantastic then the little $50 check I would have written to the memorial fund myself. The actions of many working together is always more powerful than the single voice.

Thanks to all the wonderful women who contributed their time and energy to make beautiful things!