Free Learner

The Witch of Hebron

I've now finished Jim Kunstler's latest, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I'll just mention a few disconnected things that I liked.

The world that he's imagined looks a bit like the 19th century, but with the occasional nylon rope or carbon fiber fishing rod thrown in, salvaged from the "old times," i.e. today.  The high-tech items are irreplaceable in the new times, and are very much treasured.  In contrast, much of the old times clothing which is still being worn seems absolutely ridiculous.  In the middle of a scene in which three men are reviving a woman who's almost been killed, one of them runs to find her some more clothing.  He comes back with, among other things, a shirt featuring the Bugs Bunny Road Runner, with a speech bubble reading "beep beep."  In contrast to the rather dark drama which is unfolding, the shirt seems incredibly stupid.  And there among the descriptions of gorgeous landscapes and life-and-death struggles you have the guy in the Ben & Jerry's T-shirt with cows on it.  The inanity seems almost offensive.

The central importance of food comes through just because of the number of times it's described, which is constantly.  That's not a complaint-- it's interesting.  Roasted dandelion root "coffee" and peppermint tea; chili pepper jelly (since there's no pepper); salads of lettuce and rocket (arugula) dressed in buttermilk, honey, and cider vinegar dressing (oil is very scarce); applejack, plum brandy, and corn whiskey; wheels of hard cheese; ramekins of butter; and crocks of sauerkraut and pickles.  Again, there are the intrusions from the 20th century; one man uses his old refrigerator as a meat smoker, since the electric has been off entirely for months.  Everyone has a kitchen garden and chickens, many families have a goat, and -- if they're really lucky -- a cow.  It's October in the book, and people are relishing the last of the fresh salads, very much aware that they won't have them again till early spring when the dandelions emerge.  Where food is an afterthought today-- just a matter of which drive-through to visit, oftentimes-- the procurement of food is a constant task in the book, but it's also one of the main sources of pleasure.  Coffee, black tea, pepper, and cinnamon are very much missed.  (There's also a reminiscence about ordering a Bloomin' Onion and a rack of ribs at the Outback, back in the old times.  This was pretty funny, since it's hard to imagine Kunstler having eaten these before.)

Children in the book seem to get older faster, which is something I would expect, since I've read John Taylor Gatto on the subject of "extending childhood" via public schooling (a scheme dating back to the early 20th century).  During harvest season the one-room school is held only half a day, since the children are needed at home.

Holidays are much more important, even Halloween.  The passage of time is meaningful to everyday life in a way that it isn't today, so this only makes sense.

The plot and characters are entertaining as well, as are the linguistic changes (there's been a return of "dalgurned," "ding-danged," "this here" and "sumbitch," but only among the religious sect).  But I really just loved being immersed in an imagined future which is both better and worse than ours today.  And I think it's useful, too, because it's merely an exaggerated version of what a country staring down peak oil and hyperinflation is actually looking at: massive re-localization and simplification.  Let's hope it happens as slowly as possible so we have more time to adapt than the people in Kunstler's last two novels.

Reading Kunstler

I'm now reading The Witch of Hebron by Jim Kunstler and quite enjoying it.  If you like post-apocalyptic fiction, you might want to try World Made By Hand first.

 

Update on making preparations...

Since I posted that site with all the survivalism / sustainable living stuff, I thought I'd explain where my own family is on this.

One change is that, as it turns out, I am very bad at rotating food.  You're supposed to store what you eat and eat what you store.  Well, we weren't doing that.  So, some food has been donated to the food gatherers, some has been eaten, some is still okay, and some I'll have to throw out.  (I'm not counting the buckets of wheat, salt, sugar, etc which keep practically forever and which constitute most of our food; it's the canned food I'm talking about.)  I'm now leaning toward keeping cash and a list of items to purchase rather than the actual items themselves.  Some preppers would say this is a terrible idea because a currency collapse / bank holiday can happen overnight, "like lightning," without warning, etc.  Maybe it's hubris on my part but I sort of think that by reading about economics every single day, including at sites specifically anticipating a dollar collapse, I will probably have some kind of a heads up.  The moment I get a possible indication of a crisis, I'll be spending my time ferrying goods back to the house and visiting Costco.  Until then, I am focusing on non-food preparations.

People talk about building in redundancies, of finding multiple sources of necessary things like water, food, heat, and light.  So, for water you might get a rain barrel and a water filter, and look at obtaining water from your hot water heater.  (The faucet on our heater was like an inch off the floor, so we needed a short piece of hose to get the water into any reasonable receptacle.)  You might get one of these indicators to tell you when the water is safe (i.e. when you've had it at a given temperature for so many minutes), and shove a small bottle of bleach into a closet somewhere.  That way you have more options if a water main breaks.  We're on a well, so we're looking to buy a hand pump for power failures.

For light, I am very fond of oil lamps -- provided you also own a fire extinguisher.  We had 2 days without power recently and we all sat around the dining room table with my grandmother's oil lamp in the evenings.  You can also buy a small generator or an inverter.  Today I bought an inverter which is 1500W and can handle surges to 3000W (because things use roughly twice as much electricity when turning on).  This is enough for the chest freezer, coffee grinder, lights, a fan, etc.  (During the recent black-out I ground our coffee by hand, which was fun but time-consuming.  I did it while sitting in the back of the minivan with my husband's iPhone plugged in to the cigarette lighter power outlet, listening to YouTube interviews.)  You hook an inverter to the car battery, and your car has to be running on idle, but judging by the noise and smell of our neighbor's little generator I am not sure this is all that much less fuel efficient.  I have seen 5000W generators on Craigslist for a few hundred dollars, which is more wattage per dollar than an inverter (which was $200 for 1500W).  The inverter can also be taken on camping trips, though, and requires a LOT less space.

We don't yet have any firewood stored.  Our neighbor has a ton of wood and I suppose if it came to that, we'd go buy some from them.  But I do want to get some pallets or something and find a place to keep at least a little wood.

The food growing isn't going so well (as in other years... sigh).  Things I learned this year: 1) the basement is too cold to grow seedlings, even with warming mats underneath.  2) Yes, you need seed starter.  3) Rain = weeds, therefore rain requires prompt weeding.  4) Don't plant anything without first finding out if it's invasive, and just because it isn't invasive in the shade doesn't mean it won't be invasive in the sun.

I don't think of this as preparing for "The Collapse," like it's a discrete event.  I try to imagine that maybe my family are "early adapters" who are trying to shift our lifestyle and expectations to match a declining standard of living which I imagine will continue for some time.  I used to think we'd have 3 bad years or maybe 5.  Now I'm thinking more along James Howard Kunstler or Michael Ruppert lines, the "long emergency," the gradual collapse, taking perhaps 20 years.  It's not all bad, but it will be different.

Preparing for bad times -- podcast treasure trove

What I'm calling "preparing for bad times" seems to be known by a host of different names depending on the subculture you come from.  If you're an environmentalist you might call it sustainable living, whereas if you're right-wing you may just call it survivalism.  If you visit the lefty blogosphere a lot you probably wouldn't refer to yourself as a "prepper" as this is pejorative in those circles, but if you adore Sharon Astyk and talk about homesteading and relocalization, you're golden.  But all these groups are seeing a lot of the same things on the horizon.

Anyway, this very useful site compiles mp3 files on the topic of preparing... highly recommended!

On being prepared... mentally

The one thing that seems to get left out of "survivalist" or preparedness plans, on the blogs and sites I come across, is the mental health component.  I think, perhaps, that even the worst doom and gloomer suffers from a bit of romanticism.

"Suppose the power goes out," says the Doom and Gloomer.  "Wouldn't that be fantastic?  We could haul in some wood and snuggle in front of the fireplace.  No TV, no video games, no Internet-- it'd be just like camping!  We could cook all that wholesome oatmeal in the dutch oven and read to one another all evening.  Even use our fireplace popcorn popper!  Good times!!"

Yeah, I suffer from that too.  You try to be balanced, you know?  You say "Well, okay, jobs are disappearing like beers at a frat party, but we'll all be closer to our families."  Or: "Well, I may never eat clementines again, but I'll be developing a relationship with my local farmers."  Or: "If there's no TV for a week it will bring my family together."

It's mostly true, too.  But then again, last night my family was brought together -- all of us having a grand old time and laughing our butts off for 2 hours -- by The Simpsons Hit and Run video game, in which you not infrequently mow down cartoon pedestrians as you mishandle your vehicle.  (In my defense, that's not the point of the game and we try hard to stay on the road!  And if you hit someone, they just yell at you as they roll out of your way.)  To be honest, I just can't see Candyland or Chutes & Ladders (other games which all 4 of us can play) as being anywhere near that much fun.  When it comes to old-fashioned values, The Simpsons Hit and Run game fails miserably on all counts, but that much laughing together has to be good for us.  So I suppose I try to look on the bright side, but I also try not to romanticize things like a Depression, peak oil, power outages, or having to stay inside the house for 3 solid weeks because of H5N1.  The fact is, I kind of like the 21st century.  I can't help it -- that's what I'm used to.

My own (minor!) "crisis" experience, when I went without power for 4 days in August of 2003, was far from romantic or refreshing.  I huddled near the radio, clinging to our local radio station like a lifeline, praying the batteries wouldn't quit, because by the time I'd gotten to the grocery store (45 minutes into the blackout) they were totally sold out of batteries.  And ice.  And bottled water.  And any kind of meat you'd typically grill.

Let me tell you, if you're an Internet junkie -- and we know who we are -- you need radios.  I mean, you need a hand-crank back-up radio, a regular radio or two, alkaline batteries, and possibly rechargeable batteries and a solar battery charger, plus headphones or ear buds to save those batteries.  Maybe even a shortwave radio.  My MP3 player has FM radio and I can charge it in a few minutes off the car battery, without starting the car; if you have one, consider getting the car charger.  You might even consider one of those radios that picks up TV, even though supposedly they are always about to halt old-fashioned TV network broadcasting.  If you are the kind of person who checks the internet more than a couple of times a day, you need INFO and you need it YESTERDAY, and thank god the local station put on BBC at 10pm so I could go to sleep feeling connected to the rest of the world.

Secondly, you need light.  Flashlights don't cut it, not even close.  A single night of reading by flashlight is enough to depress you and make your children crazed and creeped out.  I would aim for at least one small room that you can keep pretty well illuminated.  There are bright LED lanterns that are totally kid-safe, including some that are solar.  There's the old-fashioned kerosene lantern, the antique oil lamp (which we used in 2003-- thank you Grandma for giving it to me!), and there are 100-hour candles if you can manage those safely with the kids in your family.  (The 100-hour candles are round, squat, and hard to tip over.)  Hand-crank flashlights are a good back-up and kids think they're fun, and I'm glad that we own a couple.  But they do get tiresome, so I think recharge batteries with an AC and/or solar recharger are a good bet.  By the way, Costco sells a recharge battery set that has the "spacers" that convert an AA battery to fit a C or D slot.  This means that with one set of AA batteries and one AA recharger, you can put batteries into almost any flashlight.  Lastly, head-lamp style flashlights which strap onto your head may look ridiculous, but hey-- it's a no-hands flashlight.  Could be very useful.  Kids find them amusing.

So again, from my experience, a couple of flashlights somewhere in the house doesn't cut it.  It's not a matter of "Can I get to the bathroom without breaking an ankle?"  It's a matter of "Can I get through 4 days without power while not becoming depressed /creeped out by darkness every evening?"  Some kind of little battery / solar nightlight, or light sticks, are a good idea if you have kids in the house, as they can panic when waking up in pitch darkness.

And then, of course, you need entertainment.  If you can work out some way of listening to an audiobook, that's fairly entertaining and can be done on batteries.  Obviously someone can read aloud.  You can also put aside some "beach reads" for the adults & some previously unseen books for the kids -- I'll bet your local library has cheap paperback novels -- for emergency escapism.  I've also put aside sudoku, crosswords, cards, games, puzzles, etc.  Keep in mind that during crude oil disruptions schools will be closed, so whether you homeschool or not, in such a scenario you'd be (or someone would be) with your kids all day, and possibly without power.  (We take coal to our power plants largely by diesel truck-- brilliant, eh?)

And, for those who are stockpiling beans, barley, wheat, rice, and other wholesome Amish fare -- may I suggest Doritos and candy?  (Okay... organic non-GMO tortilla chips and fair trade cocoa powder?)  Don't forget junk foods as a treat.  Even if you very rarely eat junk food, your family may need something to cheer them up, make things a little easier.  Canned soups (Costco has good deals on Progresso), chewing gum, chocolate, potato chips, and so forth may compensate for other inconveniences and keep everyone in a cheerier state of mind.  (Whiskey or half a case of Charles Shaw doesn't hurt either, for extended disasters... for adults, I mean!)

So that's my two cents on crisis preparation, on the sanity front:

Connection, light, entertainment, and treats.

10 Reasons to store food

Yesterday there were some bits of news that were positive.  There were some indications that more money was being passed around in the financial sector, and the Dow was only down 189 points, a relatively good day.  Six central banks around the world had made a coordinated interest rate cute of 0.5%.  Translation: they all pitched in and took emergency measures to make it cheaper for banks to borrow money from one another.  For about three seconds it looked like it might be helpful in getting money moving again.

Eh, well.  That all came to nothing.  Today was positively hideous, with GM stock closing at $4.76 and Ford headed for penny-stock status if this continues much longer.  The Dow was down 679 points to 8,579.  (One year ago today, the Dow hit its all-time high of 14,165.)  Credit markets were frozen again, with the LIBOR rising.  The LIBOR interest rate is what determines the new interest rate for many American adjustable rate mortgages, so this has a direct effect on US families.

Tomorrow, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of bets taken out on Lehman Brothers will undergo "price discovery."  The people holding these legalized gambling contracts might get 12 cents on the dollar, or 50 cents, or who knows.  And we don't know how many of these bets are in existence.  And we don't know who the bookies are-- as in, just who is it that has to cough up the dough?  It's a big unknown.  Depending on how the Lehman thing works out, markets could rally, or the Dow could drop a thousand points.  Some folks on the blogs have already dubbed it "Black Friday," but if the news were good, we could see some stabilization in stock prices.

Things are not improving in Iceland.  The IMF says it's going to "help" them.  This is like Dracula saying he's going to cure you of a disease by draining half your blood.  It's true that Iceland allowed its banks to grow to 11 times the size of their entire GDP, but their entire GDP is piddling.  Google is bigger than Iceland.  Hell, if the amount of money the Fed gives to banks on an average day could just be funneled to Iceland instead, the country's problems would largely be solved!  But no.  Iceland is to be thrown to the wolves.  This is how the West treats the least among us: we cut them off, and worse, sic the IMF on their asses.  Meanwhile, the head of the European Central Bank says the banks can have as much money as they want.  No-- seriously!!  Unlimited cash.  Unlimited cash for banks, and Iceland can go starve.

On to the title of this post: 10 Reasons to Buy and Store Food.

1. It's only going to get more expensive, so buy it now and eat it later.
2. Banks could be closed for days by government order; stores would close.
3. A diesel shortage could disrupt food distribution; stores would run out of food.
4. Extra food provides a cushion when you have an unexpected expense.
5. #4 goes double when the banks begin canceling all our credit cards.
6. Buying in bulk and at bulk discount stores is cheaper anyway.
7. The government says you should have 2 weeks worth of food.
8. They're serious about #7.  They're hopelessly incompetent during disasters.
9. You'll learn about shelf life, food preservation, and nutrition.
10. You will feel less scared and more empowered during this economic unraveling.

At least get a sack of rice, a big box of spaghetti, and a giant #10 can of marinara.  How hard is that?

38 good things about oil shortages & economic depression

No, seriously!  No sarcasm in this post.  We are in for one hell of a painful transition, but the end result is a better life than we have now, in many respects.

In the future, food will be mostly local:

• Food will be fresher
• More food will be organic
• More animals will be free range
• Small farmers will no longer be in poverty
• More produce will be of heirloom varieties
• Produce, eggs, and cheeses will be more varied
• Small-scale processing means no artificial food additives

Most of that means better flavor, more vitamin content, more mineral content, and fewer pesticides, preservatives, colorings, and so on.  This is one reason Americans will be healthier and will feel better.  It doesn't mean everyone has to garden or can their own salsa and tomato sauce, but these foods will be produced in the community.  Meanwhile this also means less cruelty to animals and less harm to the environment from animal feed lots. 

On a lighter note, I can't wait to eat eggplants that honestly look like eggs, tomatoes that look like lemons, red garlic, and things I'd never heard of before, such as rice peas.  Supermarkets have given us a cramped, limited idea of the fruit and vegetable world, in which tomatoes are always red, and eggplants are always purple.  Backyard and local farmers are sure to be far more daring and plant certain veggies just for fun.  (Check out the Peter Pepper.)  Consider that at rareseeds.com they divide their tomato varieties into categories:  green (13 kinds),  orange (9 kinds), pink (29 kinds), purple (15 kinds), red (66 kinds), striped (20 kinds), white (10 kinds), and yellow (13 kinds).

In the area of food, there are previous examples of how the food supply eventually improves following a crisis.  Cuba suffered a crippling loss of oil imports and a massive decline in GDP when the Soviet Union failed.  People went hungry and malnutrition was common for about 2 years, but since then 85% of their food has been locally produced and entirely organic.  They have less hypertension, fewer heart attacks, less diabetes, less cancer, and so forth.  Life expectancy is now higher than before the crisis.

On to the next topic.  We will have to manufacture real, useful things locally:

• Butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers will have better morale than Dilbert
• Kids & parents will not have to go $100,000 into debt to buy a degree an entry ticket into the middle class
• More people will be self-employed
• Money will stay in the area
• More children will understand their parents' jobs and recognize adults' skills
• Household items will last longer, and less will go to landfills
• Less harm to the environment from diesel exhaust
• No exploitation of sweatshop labor in the developing world

We'll have more respect for local artisans, and what we buy will be of better quality.  (A person might swindle a Wal-Mart customer 15,000 miles away, but you won't swindle your neighbor.)  No longer will the upper management of multinational corporations be taking our money and sending it to Switzerland or the Caymans, either; the community's wealth will stay in the community.

Community life in general will be resuscitated:

• The run-down main streets in some small towns will be revived
• Local diners, coffee shops, and pubs (think Cheers) will replace Chili's, Applebee's, etc
• Some subdivisions will gain shops, farmer's markets, and very small schools
• You'll get to know most people in your neighborhood
• Equipment and tools will be shared, reducing expense
• Bartering will reduce expenses (e.g. your kid's old clothes for a neighbor's home canned goods)
• People will engage in small acts of kindness and charity

Unlike many of the men who write about peak oil and economic collapse and seem to feel we will descend into dog-eat-dog, Mad Max-style carnage, I think people will become a lot more decent.  People are naturally both empathetic and altruistic, but only in person; there is no guarantee of this at a distance, or when the victims are anonymous.  People who would never donate to a charitable non-profit (too abstract) will nonetheless find themselves donating eggs or firewood or slippers to an elderly lady down the block.  People like James Howard Kunstler mostly forget about the existence of women, but clearly we will be the ones in charge of creating order in our neighborhoods in the midst of a crisis.  Usually it's a woman who is head of the family, in my observation.  Furthermore, we all know it's better to run across a male bear than a female bear with cubs in tow, don't we?  And I can't see women neglecting the young, the old, or the disabled.

Then there are the health benefits:

• Less depression, osteoporosis, hormonal dysfunction, and cancer, due to more sun exposure
• Trans-fats can't be made in the kitchen (hurrah!)
• Neither can MSG, aspartame, or high-fructose corn syrup
• We will all walk and bike a lot more
• We will often forgo high-tech medical care for alternative medicine, which is superior for most chronic disease and for preventive purposes
• Our food supply will be safer, less polluted, and more nutritious
• Better sleep (from exercise & darker nights) means better health
• Healthier gut bacteria from raw pickled foods, unpasteurized vinegar, raw milk, & fewer antibiotics
• Better mental health from creative and productive activity, less isolation, helping others, and having a community safety network

Healthier gut bacteria means a decrease in all auto-immune disease, such as allergies, eczema, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, various digestive diseases, and perhaps even lupus and multiple sclerosis.  It also means a better uptake of minerals, more serotonin production (90 to 95% of your serotonin is in your intestines), slower uptake of sugars, and better utilization of fats and proteins.

Meanwhile, doctors will have to focus on real emergencies, and not on prescribing enough Lipitor to meet this month's quota and get that free trip to Bermuda (courtesy Pfizer).  I should also point out that school shootings will be a thing of the past, as we will no longer have the resources to prescribe amphetamines, pseudo-cocaine, and SSRI's to millions of children.

There are other benefits to education:

• Small schools, very small work groups
• More parental control, not just "involvement" (meaning homework enforcement)
• Less red tape, fewer dehumanizing rules imposed on students
• No standardized testing
• Far less age segregation
• More homeschooling and tiny co-ops
• Shorter days and/or fewer days

Schooling is the third largest government expenditure after Social Security and defense spending.  Education funding will be hard hit by the economic decline, but it will force us to fire administrators, depend on parents, and begin to de-centralize our schools.

"Relocalization" is a peak oil term for many of the changes I've described above.  If power corrupts, then decentralization of power should be a good thing.  I just hope Americans can get back their autonomy, self-reliance, and critical thought-- all of which have been quite intentionally taken from us over the course of the 20th century.

Yarn, thread, and many, many mistakes

Well, crocheting seems to be not so hard, when you have several YouTube videos to show you how to do it.  I was able to make this within 15 minutes or so, before I somehow knotted the thing and the hook got stuck:

Considering that mere hours before this, I was at JoAnn Fabrics buying my crochet hooks in pairs as if they were knitting needles, I'm pretty happy with my progress.  (I looked at the variety pack and saw I had only one hook of each size, and I thought "Geez, talk about stupid packaging..." and bought two.  Heh.)

Sewing, on the other hand, is fairly tricky.  So far I've made a goldfish costume, some drawstring flannel bags, and a "bath apron":

The idea with the bath apron is that you can lift a baby out of the bath, put her on your chest against the towel, and pull up the bottom half of the towel to cover her.  That way you don't have to try and lay the baby down somewhere in order to wrap her up in the towel.

Along the way, I've learned these things about sewing (all of them the hard way, believe me!):

1. It's always nice to have the presser foot down to hold your fabric onto the thingy that pushes it along... otherwise it's verrrrrrry hard to sew in a straight line.
2. If you forget which way the fabric is supposed to move and attempt to shove it through in the wrong direction... well, let's just say it's frustrating, and leave it at that.
3. When sewing through thick bath towels, using the "lightweight fabrics" needle will result in the needle breaking.
4. You can't use "coats, carpets and buttons" thread (looks like twine) in a sewing machine, not even when it's the only white thread you have left and you reaallllly want to make it work.  Nope, it's a no-go.  And I hope you have small, sharp scissors and a seam ripper to handle the knots.
5. The presser foot has to be up when you thread the top thread (at least on my machine), otherwise the tension goes all screwy and you get a series of tight knots and loops instead of a seam.
6. No, that wasn't the oil that goes in the sewing machine.  Maybe soap will get that stain out.
7. Don't put pins 3mm from where the seam goes, because pins don't fit under the presser foot, and you will only have to take out all 200 pins and put them back in, 1-1.5cm from the seam.
8. When sewing things inside out, don't sew all the way round, thus making it impossible to turn it right-side out again without getting your seam-ripper.

I bought some material today and I'm going to try to make a skirt (seems easy enough... I'll make it a drawstring waist).  I also bought some thick chenille yarn that's dark red, to try and make a scarf I might actually wear.  I enjoy this stuff, but I secretly worry that I will be required to wear cat-eye glasses, dye my hair blonde, sleep with curlers in, keep kleenex in the sleeve of my cardigan, and vacuum in heels should I become too domesticated.

The beginnings of our backyard garden

Today Anya and I planted 2 dwarf cherry trees (1 sweet, 1 sour), 6 blueberry bushes, 6 raspberry plants, and 2 cranberry bushes.  (Yesterday we planted 2 almond trees.)  It was 80 in the shade and humid.  I'm pretty grouchy right now, although very glad to have these plants in the ground.

I HATE grass.  Oh sure, I understand why we've chosen it as our standard, "biological pavement" ground cover.  It has to be the most invasive, persistent, nasty little plant in the Midwest.  It makes oxygen, and that's the best you can say for it.  I had to dig 10 holes in the lawn, in what is now becoming our orchard (we already had 1 apple and 1 pear tree).  So, I got out the pointy-ended shovel, aimed it into the grass, pushed-- and then stood on the shovel-- to no avail.  The shovel didn't sink one iota.  Due to avid pogo-sticking in my youth, I was able to actually stand on the shovel and bounce.  I am here to report that 130 pounds slamming onto a pointy-ended shovel is of no concern whatsoever to your typical suburban grass thatch.  It just sits there smug as a rock.

Eventually I realized I could attack at an angle, until I got the teensiest foothold beneath the grass roots, and then I could crowbar my way under a divet of grass at a time.  Once the grass was cleared off, it wasn't so tough to dig the holes.  After that, I'd hold the plant upright while Anya put in soil, then peat moss, then soil, etc. until the plant was stable.  I'd move on to my next grass battle, and Anya would continue tamping down and adding soil and moss, up to the proper level.  She was also careful with the hose, drenching the plant without disturbing too much of that last top layer of peat moss.  I don't know where she gets her green thumb, but it's not from me.  I never insisted on her help or even cajoled her into helping me; she simply volunteered, and moreover, was wired up with excitement for a long time after the last plant had gone into the ground.  Kids do like to do real (as in meaningful) work.

A few weeks ago I explained to her how, in the future, the grocery store might not always have grapes or oranges or other foods, and how food was going to get more expensive.  Therefore, I went on, we should grow some of our food.  In other words, it was peak oil for almost-7-year-olds.  Today she asked me: "So will we have blueberries before the gas runs out?"

Speaking of gasoline, I understand we are at 30-year lows in our gas reserves, going by the number of days of supply.  Gas prices went up close to 4% just last week, and around 11% in the past month.  There is no geopolitical crisis to explain this, nor any hurricane.  But I do know that Saudi Arabia's oil production is falling yearly, Mexican production is falling precipitously, and Hugo Chavez is looking to sell his oil elsewhere (these are our #2, #3, and #4 sources of crude oil). 

This gas price, or even twice this price, is simply how it's going to be.  And if there's a major hurricane we could have shortages, empty grocery stores, and/or gas rationing.  See how many presidential candidates mention that.

...and more yardwork

This is what the entire herb garden looked like 10 days ago:

Dandelions aren't hard to get out, nor thistle (at least the kind we have), but grass is a nightmare.  I don't know if all grass is like this, but this stuff sends out underground runners.  If you pull up one grass plant by the roots, you can unearth a subterranean cable over to another grass plant, which could be several feet away.

Anya, it turns out, is capable of planting and transplanting with little or no supervision.  She even got the garlic chives planted (3 plants), though they were very small and fragile.  (The regular chives we got from my parents, who have a... well, basically a hedge of chives.  Apparently these do very well in Michigan.) 

Both kids love to water, to the point where we're liable to get root rot or something.  And they've both claimed ownership of certain plants.  Tristan owns (and exclusively waters) two patches of forget-me-nots.  Anya owns all phlox, one lupine, and a crimson dianthus that hasn't bloomed yet.

So far we've made this progress:

(That glimpse of blue tarp is the area where I'm attempting to kill everything through denial of sunlight.  I peeked underneath today and everything is wilted and yellowing, so that's a good sign.  I am not sure how long to wait before I go at it with a garden rake.)

The photos don't look like much, but we now have:

• thyme
• rosemary
• curly parlsey
• flat-leaf parsley
• dill
• lovage
• tarragon
• basil (5 plants... it's my favorite)
• lemon balm
• spearmint
• peppermint
• oregano
• garlic chives
• regular chives

Also, as fillers:

• vinca (myrtle)
• dianthus
• forget-me-nots
• phlox
• lupine
• yarrow
• grape hyacinth

Lastly, I had to mail-order the medicinal herbs as seeds.  Eventually I will be putting in:

• arnica
• calendula
• valerian
• feverfew
• comfrey
• hyssop
• echinacea
• heartsease
• (I have yet to locate St. John's Wort)

Anya now knows as much about plants as I did three or four years ago, not to mention she has hands-on experience.  I am going through another round of What I Never Learned In School, marveling that I took Life Sciences and Biology without ever tending plants or taking care of animals.  If I were designing a Life Sciences curriculum, I'd include: common pets & how to care for them; bacteria & fermentation; bacteria & cheese-making; yeast & bread; yeast in beer and wine-making; acetobacter and vinegar; common herbs, vegetables, and fruits & how to grow them; bees & pollination; Mendel, basic genetics, and hybridization; the human body & nutrition.

But back to gardening--  As recently as last summer I absolutely hated all yard work.  And then a couple of months ago I figured out that a big part of my gardening aversion was that I hadn't been growing anything I really wanted to grow.  Personally I think it's ridiculous to go to a nursery every spring, plunk down good money for annual flowers in bizarre color combinations, and then watch them die in winter.  Blueberries, though... that I can get behind.  (There are 6 blueberry bushes en route to me in the mail, as I write this.  I had better get my behind to someplace that sells acidic peat moss, and speedily.)  I find perennial flowers more attractive anyway, and as for scent, well... basil, lemon balm, and rosemary all have smells which are far more appealing to me than flowers.  In fact, I prefer the smell of freshly minced garlic to the smell of roses.  Possibly I have farming in my genes, but I just don't get the obsession with flowers, and yet the aversion to growing food.

Whatever happened to the kitchen gardens of yesteryear?