All posts by reneeinnd

Family, gardening, home, Nature, Uncategorized

Weeds

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Husband and I returned home last Tuesday from Brookings to a garden jungle of weeds. It rained every day we were gone, and the temperatures were quite warm, so everything grew. We weeded on Wednesday.  Husband estimated we  hauled about 50 pounds of weeds to the city  grass clippings and weeds dumpsters,

I have never seen the utility of using a hoe to weed. It just cuts the weeds off at the top, and leaves the roots to produce the weeds again. We are hands and knees, crawl through the garden and pull the weeds up by the roots sort of gardeners. We are, however, getting older and Husband has neuropathy in his fingers from diabetes.

This year we tried a new strategy, laying down newspapers between the rows  and on the edges of the beds and covering them with a layer of top soil. That really helped  keep the weeds down. Husband has bought at least 30 bags of topsoil toward this endeavor, and after weeding yesterday he liberally strewed newspaper and dirt in all the places he hadn’t before.  It was a real pleasure to gaze at the garden yesterday and see nary a weed.

What is your favorite garden tool?  What special satisfaction do you get from gardening?

Family, gardening, home

Fomenting Rebellion

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Husband and I  have a friend in town who we have been helping with her garden.  I will call her Kay.  She is in her early 60’s, has never married, and lives with her 90 year old mother.  Kay is a college graduate. She has held teaching jobs in small communities in our region, but mainly lived at home.

Kay has lived  under her mother’s power and control her whole life. Her mother is failing now, and in poor health, and yet still tries to boss Kay. They have an enormous vegetable garden and many flower beds impractically designed by her mother, that Kay is expected to keep the way her mother wants.  All the gardening must be done the way her mother expects, and she better not spend too much money on anything,  or water more than every two weeks. Her mother never taught her to garden, however.  (I should also add that she and her mother are devout Baptists and leading lights in the area WCTU. )

Kay has stopped asking her mother how to keep up the flower beds, and takes our advice regarding soil preparation,  plant varieties, soaker hoses, and equipment. She bought twelve bags of peat moss without her mother’s permission and had Little Nick come with his tiller to work it into the vegetable garden. (Little  Nick is 3 ft tall, about 60 years old, and as mean as a snake. He has gardening equipment especially adapted for his height.)  She put down soaker hoses, and waters when the plants need it. She even bought a wheel barrow.

I see gardening as a way for Kay to have a quiet revolution and become liberated from her mother.  I know at a certain level that she has allowed her mother to treat her this way, but it is hard to get yourself out of  situations like this that have gone on for so long. We are making sure she doesn’t become too dependent on us. We also put her in touch with the Regional Aging Services coordinator to discuss Power of Attorney  and care taker support. I don’t think I will ever be able to take her out for a drink, but those twelve bags of peat moss are a real positive sign.

Who have you known who was overcontolled by someone else?  What other rebellious advice would you have for our friend?

Family, Food, Health, History, home, Uncategorized

Biscuits And Gravy

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Husband, as a rule, has excellent taste in food. There are  exceptions,  like cornmeal mush, that I won’t touch.  That is traditional to his mother’s family who came from southeastern Ohio.  I don’t understand it. I like polenta,  but the mush his family makes isn’t like that at all. He also likes fried clams. My nonexistent gallbladder, which rebels over fried food, can’t tolerate it.  The main  food disagreement we have is over biscuits and gravy.

He never started eating biscuits and gravy until we moved to North Dakota. Don’t ask me why.  I like biscuits. I like sausage. I just don’t like glutinous, gloppy gravy on top of them. Husband has taken to making it in secret. He says the combination of softness (from the biscuits) and the  spiciness (from the sausage), all held together with the comforting gravy, is too appealing to him to give up. I noticed this week that there were bags of biscuits in the freezer I hadn’t noticed before, and he admitted he had made biscuits and gravy for breakfast, and tossed out the leftovers before I got home.

I think part of this has to do with his diabetes, and his feelings of hunger when he wakes up in the morning.  He says there isn’t really isn’t anything I like that he doesn’t like, but that he finds biscuits and gravy so comforting.  He blames it on the diners and truck stop cafes that he ate in while he worked on the Rez for six years.

What do you eat that your housemates won’t eat? Do you eat anything in secret? What are your comfort foods?

Technology, Uncategorized, work

Under Lock and Key

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I saw a young man by a white car in the college parking lot near my work the other day. His bicycle was propped up against the car, and he was evidently trying to get into the car with  a long wire inserted through the window frame on the driver’s side. Given it was broad daylight and that there is a low crime rate in our town, I knew that he was the owner of the vehicle and he had locked his keys in the car.  He was still there, with a friend, when I went home for lunch, and they were still at it.

We are preparing for my agency moving to a new building, and we are faced with clearing out decades of materials before the move. Storage space in the new building is limited, so we need to go through multiple filing cabinets to sort and toss what we don’t need. We have discovered full, locked filing cabinets in storage rooms. We have no idea where the keys are. What now? Do we try, like the young man in the parking lot,  to jimmy the locks? Do we toss the whole thing, hoping that what ever is in the cabinet is not useful? It is a hard decision to make. I am glad that it is not up to me. I have the keys for the four psychology filing cabinets in my purse, and there they will stay until the cabinets are in position in the new building. I just better not lose my purse.

What do you have under lock and key? Ever been locked out of anything?

History, Travel, Uncategorized

Following Directions

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On June 24, 1497, John Cabot and his ship bumped into Nova Scotia, thought it was Asia, and claimed it for England.  My, was he wrong!

I love maps and reading maps. I hate being told I am wrong. I don’t know if Cabot learned he was wrong or how he felt if he found out he was wrong.  I reluctantly use Google Maps in cities if I don’t know my way around.  I am a visual person, and I prefer to see where I am going. I wonder about the maps Cabot had to follow. I would have had a word with chief navigator about this entire continent being in the way of Asia, and no one knowing about it.

When have you been wrong? What is your favorite way of getting information?

Fantasy, Health, History, Media, Uncategorized

Mass Hysteria

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I news clip caught my eye yesterday about incidents of hysterical dancing that broke out in Germany in the 1300’s.  Men and women started to dance, and were unable to stop.  Others  joined them. The dancers rarely stopped to eat or sleep for days and sometimes weeks.  They did not appear happy to be dancing, but they didn’t stop. Outbreaks of this dancing continued through out the Middle Ages.  It was sometimes called St. John’s Dance, and, later, St. Vitus Dance and the Tarantella. There are theories that it was caused by ergot poisoning, but that is still up for debate. Other theories attribute it to living in stressful times. It seemed to die out with the advent  of Protestantism.

There was a modern outbreak of hysterical laughing  in 1962 in a girls’ mission school  in Tanganyika which eventually affected  around 1000 people in the surrounding community for 18 months.

Given the stressful time we are living in, I started to wonder what sort of mass hysteria might we see occurring. I thought it would be nice to see mass recycling or picking up litter and trash.  Unstoppable acts of kindness would be refreshing as well.

What mass hysteria would you like to see? Have you ever been “hysterical”?

Family, History, Media, News, Uncategorized

What Party Do You Belong To?

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Husband started volunteering  at the local food bank on Thursdays, and was asked rather pointedly by another volunteer what political party he belonged to.  The questioner was a disabled Gulf War Veteran who was rather unhappy with the possibility of a George Floyd protest march at the local mall, and who was supportive of the local bikers who surrounded our mall to make sure there wasn’t any destruction or looting. (It was the most peaceful, non-eventful happening our town has seen.)  Husband answered, quite brilliantly I thought, that he was a member of the Lutheran Party and Lutheran Tribe. That seemed to puzzle the questioner, but ended the discussion. If asked the same question, I suppose I would say I was a New Deal Democrat, but I don’t know how many younger people would know what that meant. I am so proud of the questioner to be volunteering at the food bank, no matter what his political persuasion. I am dismayed to think that he would judge someone on the basis of their answer.

What party do you belong to?  Be creative.

books, Games, Health, sports, Uncategorized

Knuckleheads and Knuckle Balls

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Husband had been so hopeful.  The two libraries in town (Public and University) had been closed until two weeks ago.  The Public Library opened “appointment only”  and he ordered a classic, 1930’s book from inter-library loan about the history of the Great Plains. He has been reading it this week and is pretty happy about it.  He was hoping this was a sign that things were returning to normal.

The COVID-19 numbers had not increased in our county for about three weeks, with a total of 63 as of last Sunday.  That was until yesterday,  when it went up two. It went up because there is this baseball league in town in which young adult players come from other parts of the country, live in sponsor homes, and play baseball all summer. Well, an 18 year old player from Oklahoma came up Sunday, was feeling ill on Monday, and he and one more person tested positive for the virus. Now, all the players and hosts  and their families are being tested. The rest are all negative as of yesterday, but we will have a couple of weeks of continuous testing to see if it has spread. This is frustrating.

How do you think reopening should occur?  How are you doing with precautions?  What will be a sign to you that things are returning to normal?

100 Words, Food, gardening, History, Nature, Uncategorized

Successful Combinations

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In 1892, on this date, macadamia nuts were first planted in Hawaii.  They are native to Australia. This was a rather a successful combination, and Hawaii was a leader in macadamia nuts until South Africa took over that role in 2010.

I am not a great fan of macadamias, preferring pecans and pistachios.  When I think about successful combinations, I think about hazelnuts in Oregon, wine grapes in France, and potatoes in Ireland. I suppose there could be successful combinations with people, too, such as Julia Child in Paris.

What is your favorite nut? What are some successful combinations that you can think of?

Family, gardening, News, Uncategorized, work

Hilling Up the Potatoes

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We decided to try something different in the garden this year, and are mounding dirt up to almost the top inches of the potato  plants. I don’t remember any of my relatives doing this, but we have seen others do it, and decided to give it a try.  It is supposed to increase your potato  yield. The guys in husband’s Friday morning Bible study were pretty skeptical when he told them about it, but just the other day I drove past a garden where someone had done it. I suppose it would be difficult  to do if you had a whole lot of potato plants, but we only have eight hills, so it is doable.

The garden is coming along pretty well, although it has been battered by the relentless southeast winds we had lately. We need rain.  There are a couple of errant bunnies who are leaving all the greens alone.  I keep my eye on them, as do the dogs who live in the  on three sides of our house.

Given all the recent weirdness, stress, and uproar in the world, I would rather stay home and  pull weeds all day instead of go to work. Gardening is a refuge right now

How is your garden coming along? How are you coping?