Birding Delmarva, Farewell on a Perfect Day

We planned our trip to include a last day without regimented birding activities, and it turned out to be the best day of all. The weather cleared up, and although it was still fairly chilly; it was warm enough to take a long beach walk at Cape Henlopen State Park in Lewes. We walked for miles along the beach, even walked in the cold lapping waves, enjoying the mild sunlight on our faces and the wonderful return to sea air. Have I mentioned how I miss the beach out here in the desert? I could rave and carry on about how badly we feel the lack of the water, but I will spare you, for now anyway.

After lunch we returned to Cape Henlopen, this time to an area called Gordon's Pond, for more walking and more birding. We were the only human beings there in a long afternoon of tramping and looking, but we had plenty of other company. At one point a group of whitetailed deer leapt splashing and crashing across the pond; the reeds and bushes were full of sparrows, kinglets, yellow-rumped warblers (about the only warbler left in the area), the beaches yielded semippalmated plovers and sandpipers, sanderlings, blackbacked and herring gulls. As the afternoon wore on, the skies filled with wave after wave of snow geese flying in to settle for the evening on the ponds and marshes after a day of feeding in the fields the NWR maintains for them. Even after our years of living on Delmarva, watching this happen every fall, it's impossible to feel indifferent to the wonder of the sight and sound of so many geese filling the evening and morning heavens.

It was twilight when we finally left the Gordon's Pond trail and went back down to the beach for an ocean farewell. The light was magical, the waters calmed from the wild crashing waves of the previous days' storms, and as we neared a clump of large black rocks at the waterline, I saw something waiting there for us. A piece of folded paper was weighted down by several stones and broken whelk shells in a small depression in the rock. It had clearly been left where it would be found by a passing beachwalker, so I took it back up to the parking lot where there was more light. It was a copy of Mary Oliver's poem, Whelks. A message from the universe, a final gift from the sea in the last moment of our visit.

Birding Delmarva in the Rain, Part 2

Our second day of birding was supposed to be by kayak on the Delaware Bay, in the James Farm Ecological Preserve. Alas, the storms mentioned in Day One of this posting caused the kayak trip to be cancelled. In its place we chose a birding hike through Newport Farms, an astonishing privately owned property of thousands of acres, with a conservation easement that is saving it from the development wildly proceeding in the area. Indeed, I found when I searched for this place online a mobile home development with the same name under way. The Newport Farms that we tromped through for four hours that Saturday morning comprises every environment Delmarva has to offer: forest, fields, wetlands, marshes, beach. and streams. It rained pretty much the whole time we were out, in increments ranging from mist to drizzle to outright downpour.

Despite the horrid weather, we enjoyed the beauty of this place and even managed to see some birds. A partial list of the morning's sightings: Cow birds, mute swans, black vultures, osprey, swamp sparrows, cliff swallows, tree swallows, coots, sanderlings, ring neck ducks, canada geese, a northern harrier, a small flock of great snowy egrets that we kept flushing up from the ditches, great egrets, cormorants, belted kingfisher, western meadow larks, boattailed grackles, great blue herons, a bald eagle, and something that would only be worth mentioning if you come from New Mexico where there are none of them, cardinals. I often say that if I had known there were no cardinals here, I wouldn't have moved here, and maybe I even mean it. Today's photo is a view out over the wetlands on Newport Farms. I could have taken an infinitude of photos, but confined myself to just a few. It was so amazingly beautiful there.

We were quite wet and tired after four hours of walking in the rain, some of it over pretty rough terrain, and were happy to get back home to change into dry clothes. Peg stayed home for a long nap, and Gail and I spent the afternoon having Thai food and seeing Where The Wild Things Are with a dear friend, the head of my department when I taught in Delaware. It was a warm and cozy way to stay out of the weather and catch up on news and gossip.

The next day, Sunday, we had signed up for an afternoon guided bird walk at one of our very favorite places, Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge. Gail and our friend Peg, bless their hearts, headed out for the walk, but I had had enough of wet feet and forced conviviality with strangers, even fellow birders. So, I stayed home and I had the long nap that afternoon. After my nap, I went for a long walk along the Assawoman Canal, through woods and beach cottages, breathing in the damp ocean air, imagining that I was rehydrating all my dessicated New Mexico cells.

At Prime Hook Gail and Peg saw snow geese, pintail ducks, mallards, kinglets, cedar waxwings, semi-palmated plovers, ruddy turnstones, robins, and most excitingly their group helped rescue a loggerhead sea turtle that was stranded on Broadkill beach. I was a little jealous of this adventure, but without that nap and solitary walk I might have turned into an ax murderer that afternoon. So, can't have everything, I guess.

Nature Deficit Disorder

Following is the text of a post that I wrote a year and a half ago, saved as a draft and just out of curiosity opened to read this morning. Yes, there are drafts from that long ago hanging around on my computer; I'm afraid it's true. Anyway, since I wrote this draft, many moons have come and gone, and this past summer was spent almost entirely outdoors in my gardens. It was the healthiest and happiest I've felt in a very long time. Ironically enough, now that summer has faded into deep autumn, the mornings stay dark and cold for entirely too long, and I'm back in the classroom much of the time, or preparing for time in front of my classes, I once again feel I'm experiencing Nature Deficit Disorder. I seriously miss getting out into the yard as soon as light breaks over the mountains, and staying there until the sun sinks behind the volcanos. My little beds of cool weather crops are growing apace, and this morning I thinned out the lettuce, chard and spinach, going to use the thinned-out babies in tonight's salad. There's lots of garden cleanup that needs doing before it gets much colder, and we made a start on it this past weekend. We've had some good hikes in the bright gold October weather, and hopefully will be able to continue to get some more in before the short afternoons grow shorter and colder. I need to do everything in my power to evade a winter of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), and/or the lesser-known NDD (Nature Deficit Disorder)

Written in March of 2008
There is now a "social trend" called Nature Deficit Disorder, which so far is only associated with children.The term describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties and higher rates of physical and emotional illness, The term was coined by author Richard Louv, in his book Last Child in the Woods. According to Louv, our children's lack of connection to nature is causing what amounts to an epidemic of overweight depressed kids with high rates of attention disorders. I'm so far past childhood that I'll soon be eligible for Medicare, but as soon as I read about this disorder, I recognized it as exactly the condition in which I've been living far too long. The book is one I've been meaning to read, as a person blessed with quite a few young children in my life; but I realized as I read about NDD that just about the only time I myself venture very far into nature is when kids are visiting. That's when we hike in the mountains, go to the Biopark, bird along the river at the Rio Grande Nature Center.

The rest of the time I'm like the kids in Louv's book, cooped up in the artificial lights and indoor air of a classroom, or in my home office in front of the computer, not, in my case, playing video games, but reading and writing, ironically, about the environment. I have been reading so much about gloom and doom lately that I fear I am also suffering from yet another twenty-first century disorder: Eco-anxiety.

And so, it seems to me that it's time to get out of this chair, away from this computer, and experience more of "the environment" than the view of trees and birdfeeders, tops of mountains, cloudscapes, that lies outside the office window. It's fully spring here, some days even feels like we're already moving into summer.

The Battle Plan

Which is what it is beginning to feel like.....this Thanksgiving preparation. I'll get back to posting about our Delmarva trip pretty soon, but for the moment this quest is what's on my mind. We are hosting a bigger Thanksgiving feast than we ever have, inviting family, friends and neighbors. Right now it's holding at sixteen, but eighteen or twenty is hovering on the horizon as a possibility. With this many people there are, of course, all sorts of bizarre food allergies and issues. So far onions, cilantro and nuts are out of the picture, and sweet potatoes are iffy. Four of the guests are grandchildren, none of whom eat very much, and certainly nothing very adventurous. So, roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and dressing/stuffing (one with onions, one without) are the only sure items on the list. I'm casting about now for some vegetable dishes that will be both interesting and acceptable to all. And no, green bean cassarole is not to be discussed. I would be happy to do green beans almondine, though even that has become rather clichéd, except for the anti-nut faction. I'm thinking of doing a big platter salad with all sorts of colorful raw and cooked cold things, but still, we've gotta have a cooked side vegetable dish, don't we?

If anyone happens upon this blog, and has a fabulous favorite Thanksgiving vegetable dish recipe to share, please please send me either the recipe or a link. I will be deeply in your debt. And now, I'm going to go wandering some cooking sites, and paging through old Gourmet magazines, ah, the late lamented Gourmet Magazine, can you believe it?

Birding Delmarva in the Rain, Day One

Our trip back to the Mid-Atlantic last month seems almost like a dream, just two weeks back into the daily grind of work, pets, general maintenance. I have to admit that, after almost twenty five years of living on it, the East Coast feels more like home to me than the Southwest. Although, of course, the Southwest really is my locus of origin, and probably the place I'll spend my final years. Coming across the Bay Bridge from BWI, seeing the water and sky open up before us, well, I can't help it, it feels like coming home.

We arrived to grey skies and rain on the Weds, which over the next four days evolved into two colliding nor'easters, bringing cold temps, high winds and seas, wind-driven rain. Not really the weather in which to take a ferry across the Delaware Bay, or tromp around wetlands, woods, fields and beaches looking for birds. But we did all those things, and after spending Thursday outfitting ourselves with foul weather gear from the LL Bean outlet on Hwy 1 in Rehoboth Beach, we managed to enjoy them all.

Our first event was an all-day trip Friday across the Delaware Bay via the Cape May/Lewes Ferry, to Cape May NJ, one of the prime Atlantic Flyway birding spots. Cape May Point State Park is the site of an ongoing hawkwatch monitored daily by volunteers from Sept. 1 to mid-December. Amazingly enough, on October 19th, three days after we were there, a sandhill crane flew past the hawkwatch platform. I'd like to know more about that sighting, and will try to research it a little. We spent the middle of the day at the hawkwatch platform, where we saw a merlin and a falcon flying overhead, a lot of ducks out on the water. The trees by the platform were full of golden and ruby crowned kinglets, as well as yellow-rumped warblers. After lunch we headed to the beach at Stone Harbor, where birds were pretty sparse, but there were some shorebirds, gulls, a couple of ruddy turnstones, cormorants, up on a wire a fishcrow was yelling at us, and a few terns zoomed past on fishing missions. The best birding of the day was actually on the ferry, out on the open waters, where the pelagic birds didn't mind the stormy winds. We saw gannets, jaegers, caspian and royal terns, black ducks, loons, many differents kinds and stages of gulls. At the end of these posts, I'll append a list from Gail's notebook with as many birds as we were able to keep track of. A highlight of the weekend was Friday night's reception, mainly for the talk and slide presentation by Jeffrey A. Gordon. His presentation was about the planning and publication of the Delaware Birding Trail in which he was instrumental. Gordon also was our bird guide on the ferry/Cape May trip, which made it a real learning experience. Above photo is Gail and myself on the outward bound ferry, DE to NJ. We stayed on deck the whole time, to avoid seasickness and see all and any birds. (To be continued)

First Blast of Winter Inspires Lentil Soup

If I just didn't have to go teach all afternoon, this would be a perfect introduction to winter. The Intermountain West is having an early winter storm, which is bringing snow to ski areas and the mountains in general. Here in the Rio Grande Valley, we'll probably have some snow showers, have in fact already had some this morning, some freezing rain, but not much in the way of accumulation. I woke up to the sound of icy rain on the roof, and went out to cover some more plants, bring in a few more to the warmth of the house. I'm fond of growing potted succulents and cacti which love their outdoor life during the summer, but have to winter over indoors. After plant duty, I was inspired to start a pot of lentil stew, which will warm our bones when Gail and I get home from work this evening. Although I indulged myself a couple of weeks ago by buying Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen, this soup/stew is one I have made for years, using whatever I find in the refrigerator at the moment I decide to make it. Today's pot includes: onion, garlic, red pepper, pumpkin puree, celery, kale and carrots, roasted green chile. This evening when I warm it up, I'll add the leftover rice from the weekend's rice and pinto bean cassarole. As I also have some coconut milk leftover from a Brazilian dish I tried to replicate after we had it at Globalquerque, rice with fish in coconut milk, and as my niece Jessica finishes off her lentil soup with it, I'm going to throw some into this stew. We have some cornbread in the freezer from a batch I made before we went to Delaware for the birding trip, and that will be a fine accompaniment.

The Brazilian dish replication was, BTW, a great success. The folks at the music festival used tilapia, but I found some lovely mahi mahi at La Montanita Co-Op and used that. And, yes, the Delaware birding weekend. I really will get down to writing about the trip as soon as I recover from it. It takes us a while to pull our lives together after being away for a week, and we are now beginning the Thanksgiving Offensive, as we will have possibly as many as sixteen people for the Big Feast. The kids are coming from Denver, and we've invited local friends and neighbors. As long as we're doing it, we might as well do it Big!! The real fear is that this snow, which is much worse north of here and in Denver, may be the start of a winter of weather that closes Raton Pass with frequency. It would certainly result in some major disappointment if it happened again in a month.

350 Species We Could Lose

Last Saturday's 350 Day of Climate Action was an international event of some magnitude, garnering attention from TV and print media alike. You can check out photos from actions around the world at the 350.org's collection on flickr.

But this was more than just one day's activity, it's an ongoing effort to draw attention to the seriousness of this situation and motivate world governments and peoples to take effective action to cut carbon emissions before it is finally too late. One of the most striking ongoing demonstrations of what the results of inaction will be can be visited at the Center for Biological Diversity's website. Called 350 Reasons we need to get to 350: 350 Species Threatened by Global Warming, it is a heartrending display of 350 species at risk of extinction by 2050 if current emissions trajectories continue.

350 Reasons contains a link to a petition to President Obama asking him to take a firm resolve for action with him to Copenhagen's international climate negotiations in December, but its strongest aspect is the interactive map of the USA (and I'd certainly like to see one of the rest of the world as well, but I guess we think globally, act locally, okay) divided by region, with photos of the animals in each region which will , without lowering our carbon emissions, be committed to soon and certain disappearance. With a click of your mouse, read about polar bears in Alaska, monk seals in Hawaii, sea otters in California; bone up on Atlantic salmon in the Northeast, sea turtles in Florida, or corals throughout the world — and hundreds of other species around the globe, big and small, iconic and unknown — that we’re hurting through our lethal addiction to fossil fuels. You can even read about one species that stands to be tragically impoverished by the effects of broader species loss: ourselves, Homo sapiens sapiens.

If you're short on time, you can just go to the map and check out your own region and what your children might not see there in the future. Will I miss the chubs and the pupfish? Well, perhaps not personally, but I will sure as hell miss the burrowing owls, the pronghorn antelope, the Mexican gray wolves, yes the "iconic species." Each of these threatened species, large or small, has its place in the environmental chain, no matter how often, how seldom, we personally experience them. Please add your name to the Obama petition at the Center's site, and share this information with your friends and readers.

350 Day Of Action

If you belong to any environmental organizations, read any environmental blogs or magazines, or pay any attention at all to what's happening in environmental activist circles pre Copenhagen, you are already well aware of what's happening around the world this coming Saturday, October 24th.

Bill McKibben's group 350.org has been planning this day of action to draw the attention of governments and peoples everywhere to the importance of doing something about global climate change NOW before it is finally just too damn late. On the 350.org site you will find the questions you probably have prominently displayed on the first page, the most basic of them being, of course, What does the number 350 mean? And the answer is: 350 is the most important number in the world—it's what scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.Two years ago, after leading climatologists observed rapid ice melt in the Arctic and other frightening signs of climate change, they issued a series of studies showing that the planet faced both human and natural disaster if atmospheric concentrations of CO2 remained above 350 parts per million.Everyone from Al Gore to the U.N.’s top climate scientist has now embraced this goal as necessary for stabilizing the planet and preventing complete disaster. Now the trick is getting our leaders to pay attention and craft policies that will put the world on track to get to 350.As we currently are at 387 ppm in the atmosphere, we have some work to do in order to get things into the minimally safe upper limit.

The next question of course would be: How do we do that? McKibben's group's theory is that we do it by creating the political change to steer us toward 350 FAST. His grassroots movement is all about an international holding of feet to the fire (pun quite intentional) to use Copenhagen to produce a treaty that is strong, equitable and grounded in the latest science. I've been working on this post since yesterday, and this morning came this email from McKibben and company, one last prod to keep me from wanting to sleep in tomorrow morning instead of joining one or more of the many events planned right here in New Mexico:

Dear Friend,Saturday's the day -- October 24, the International Day of Climate Action. So join the nearest 350 action knowing you'll be part of something big.Very big, in fact. This campaign has gone viral--there will be over four thousand events taking place simultaneously in over 175 nations. As far as we can tell, you'll be part of the single most widespread day of political action about any issue that our planet has ever seen.There are too many incredible events to list in one place, but here are some of the highlights:

In Cambodia, citizens from across the country will gather at the famous Angkor Wat to take a giant 350 action photo.In Hungary, hundreds of bathers will jump into the public baths in Budapest and do a 350 synchronized swimming performance.In Nepal, over a thousand young people and monks will march to the Swayambhunath world heritage site temple where they will form a large 350 with traditional lanterns.In the United States, 350 people will dance to Michael Jackson's Thriller in Seattle -- because if we don't stop global warming, we might as well be undead. In Panama, indigenous youth will lead a moonlight vigil in Kuna Yala, their vulnerable low-lying islands off the coast of Panama, forming a 350 at sunrise.

When you're out there marching or rallying, biking or kite-flying, singing or taking part in whatever is going on in your community, take a minute and try to imagine all the other people doing the same kind of things all around the world--every one taking the same basic scientific fact and driving it into the public consciousness.350 is the most important number in the world--scientists have told us that it's the most carbon dioxide we can have in the atmosphere, and now we're making sure everyone knows.

We'll be taking photos from all the events, projecting them on the big screens in New York's Times Square, and delivering them to major media outlets and hundreds of world leaders in the coming weeks. The combined noise from these events will ensure that world leaders who gather next month at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen to create the world's new plan on climate change will hear our call. They will know that when negotiating the fate of our planet, there is a passionate movement out there which will hold them accountable.After your event on Saturday, check out http://www.350.org/, where we will show a glorious slideshow of photos from events in every corner of the earth. Be proud of what you've accomplished.And if you have any doubts about where the fun in your neighborhood is on Saturday, check out this link to find an event near you: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=NOCZi%2F44zIu8FiHjPF2EK15WuoA8ncELOnwards,Bill McKibben for the 350.org crew

There's bound to be something happening where you are, please please please check it out and be part of this very creative demonstration. Everything you care about may depend upon it.

(Crossposted from The Blue Voice.)

Community Supported Agriculture

After mentioning in my previous post that Los Poblanos Organics is our area's largest CSA, it occurred to me that perhaps not everyone knows what those three letters stand for. They are the abbreviation for Community Supported Agriculture, something that is no longer the innovation it was some years back, is in fact coming to be an institution all over the country. A basic definition from Local Harvest, "Here are the basics: a farmer offers a certain number of "shares" to the public. Typically the share consists of a box of vegetables, but other farm products may be included. Interested consumers purchase a share (aka a "membership" or a "subscription") and in return receive a box (bag, basket) of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season."

This section of Local Harvest will give you not only general information about CSA's, but everything you want to know about local family farms, organic groceries and co-ops, restaurants, and help you locate them in your area into the bargain. It's a great site for anyone wanting get in touch with locally sustainable food sources.

Frying The Tomatoes

It's still too dark to go out and see if any of my bumper crop of tomatoes are ready to be picked; but it's now or never for them, I'm afraid. We leave tomorrow for a week, with a ton of fat green globes hanging on the vines. In a previous post I fretted about a killing frost happening while we're gone, but in fact the opposite will be true. The forecast is for sunny dry days with highs in the mid to upper seventies, lows as warm as mid fifties. Perfect tomato ripening weather. I've asked our house sitter to please water the plants, then harvest and enjoy any that ripen while we're gone, and I can only hope she values good eating enough to do so. But, if there are any greenies still on the vine when we return, I'm going to try out this recipe from Los Poblanos Organics weekly newsletter.

Los Poblanos is our largest CSA in the Albuquerque area, with a farm in the North Valley and one in the South Valley. Although I discovered this wonderful outfit researching the Albuquerque area on the web, well before moving out here, I haven't joined up. I did join the local Co-Op, La Montanita, which has incredible produce, much of it local; and there are many Growers' Markets in the city, where local farmers bring their produce in to sell. And, of course, this summer our own backyard supplied us with most of our salad fixins, and salad is about all we could bear to eat, it was so constantly hot through the summer months. A couple of our friends have joined Los Poblanos, and find that they get more food than the two of them can eat, so perhaps we'll go in with them and share a weekly box. If there isn't too much cauliflower I'll be okay. Few are the veggies I don't like, but that's one I've never managed to get into. If it was a weekly mainstay maybe I'd learn to love it. Anyway, here's the way to deal with the green tomatoes:

Classic Fried Green Tomatoes

INGREDIENTS

• 3 medium, firm green tomatoes


• 1/2
  cup all-purpose flour


• 1/4 cup milk


• 2 beaten eggs


• 2/3 cup fine dry bread crumbs or
  cornmeal


• 1/4 cup olive oil


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Cut unpeeled
tomatoes into 1/2 inch slices. Sprinkle slices with salt and pepper. Let tomato slices stand for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, place flour, milk, eggs, and bread crumbs in separate shallow dishes. Heat 2 Tbsp of olive oil in a skillet on medium heat. Dip tomato slices in milk, then flour, then eggs, then bread crumbs. In the skillet, fry for 4-6 minutes on each side or until brown. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

October Musings

If April is the cruelest month, as per TS Eliot, October has to be the exact opposite. Though, in fact, it was the loveliness of April that occasioned that Eliot line, I think. The beauty of October is still the opposite of April's; Instead of the heartbreak of new life, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, it's the heartbreak of knowing any day now we'll be greeted by the results of that first killing frost. Right now everything in the yard seems to be at its most vibrant, full of life and color. Here, of course, I'm speaking of the perennials, the maximilian sunflowers, tithonia, salvia leucantha, and all the other salvia, goldenrod, ruellia, desert marigolds, several different flowering sedum, all the wonderful creeping things that have finally taken hold on the new berm, even the pink Mexican primroses are stunning right now. The weather is still glorious, blue skies/golden and warm during the day, just chilly enough for great sleeping at night. We have even considered laying and lighting a fire the past two nights, but ended up getting caught doing other things until it was too close to bedtime. It's my favorite time of year, always has been any place I've ever lived. Well, maybe not Dallas, it's often still too much like summer there in October, and this year it seems to be raining all the time.

But, here's the thing, a few months back we foolishly jumped at the chance to register for a three day birding weekend back at the beach in Delaware (where, up til Memorial Day 2006, we lived), on the temptation of an email sent us by a friend. Well, we miss the ocean so constantly that Peg's siren song just caught us at a weak moment. And now that weekend is upon us.

We leave from the Sunport this coming Wednesday and will be gone for a week. We've arranged a housesitter to keep all the living things alive while we're gone, that would be the cats and the gardens, but will she pay enough attention? As I mentioned in the previous post, the tomatoes and peppers are still producing, all the herbs are in full swing. I need to get out there this weekend and cut some of the herbs and dry them for use during the winter months ahead. I've bought frost blankets to cover the incipient cool weather crops that are coming up: lettuce, chard and spinach, and when I look at the ten day forecast it looks like this indian summer weather will continue until we come home, so maybe I should stop worrying. If I hold my mouth right the entire time I'm kayaking and birding and eating fresh fish (which I haven't yet managed to transition away from, though it's hard to find fresh fish here in the desert) the frost blankets can stay unneeded in the cupboard. And we will have the wonderful opportunity to enjoy October's glory in two of our favorite places: the mountains and the beach.

Where I Seem To Be Going

As the name of this blog suggests, I've been looking for a new direction, a new raison d'être as it were, ever since moving to New Mexico. I now see that some of the previous posts in the blog give a hint as to what that direction might be. Although it's been well over a year since I wrote anything (anything that I actually published, that is), the clues to where I am going are there. It's not really a new direction, just more of a focus on one in which I've always been headed.

I've pretty much given up on the political blogging over at The Blue Voice, as have most of my fellow Voices, with the big exception of Bruce Miller. And yet, the urge to chronicle something somewhere remains strong. As the things consuming my interest currently are gardening, food, environment, wilderness, and in some way the conjunction of all those things, I guess they will be the subjects of my chronicling.

While still teaching English to Spanish-speaking employees at UNM, I have spent the past six months mostly in my yard, gardening up a storm. I've always been a gardener, any place I have lived; as the child of two ardent gardeners, it's been in my blood forever. But the model I followed until now was that of my mother's gardening loves: perennials and herbs. Though I'll never abandon those loves, this growing season I embarked on my father's path, growing things we can eat. My father, a career military man, established a big vegetable garden in in the yard of any place we ever lived, whether military quarters, rented homes in towns or country, or ultimately the home where we settled, near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, his last posting.

Transitioning to vegetarianism, living in a place with terrific farmers' markets, getting into Slow Food, and growing many of our vegetables - these things seem to have emerged organically in a slow simultaneity. In the spring I planted radishes, mesclun and lettuces, which with a lengthy cool spring, lasted well into June and provided us with über healthy daily salad eating. I have quite a few herbs growing here, things I planted as soon as we moved in, plus those I've added in the past four summers. The tomatoes, peppers and squash were slow to mature and ripen, due to that same long cool spring, but the basil that I grew with the tomatoes supplied material for many a pesto for us and our friends. For some reason, the cucumbers developed a bad case of failure to thrive, and were a total bust. It's a challenging place to garden, my backyard and New Mexico in general. The cool cloudy spring included lots of wind, and was followed by very hot dry summer months, without any monsoon rains to speak of. Much of my growing was done in containers, as my hardpacked clay soil most resembles adobe, and takes long and backbreaking work to make ready to nurture any growth.

Well, time for the evening walk, then dinner, which is the second go-round for the results of a recipe I found on Deborah Madison's blog: Cabbage and Potato Gratin with Sage. This, with a salad of greens, avocado and tomatoes, has proved a most satisfying and delicious meal. So, having made this fresh start at picking back up the art of blogging, I hope to be back with more very soon.

Reconnecting with Old Friends?

Reminded by Coy, of Dancing In The Rain, of the closing of AOL Journals, I've tried to import one of my AOL blogs here to blogspot, with no actual success. I've neglected those journals for so long, that it really doesn't seem to matter if I retain any of their content or not. What Coy also reminded of, however, is the wonderful Journal community that we once had at AOL. I do hope that some of those old friends will start visiting this journal here at blogspot.

I haven't written here, or much of anywhere, since April, as the family events of May made this sort of thing totally irrelevant. I spent May and June on the east coast, in Washington DC with my sister after her husband died, with visits to Penna after my brother's bypass surgery there, and a brief vacation back on the Delaware coast to regain some personal sanity.

Plant Zones Shifting as Climate changes

Tomorrow is national Arbor Day, although each state has its own celebration of tree-planting, some coinciding with the national, some varying in accord with planting times. The Arbor Day site will provide you with your state's date, as well as your state tree, in case you don't know what it is.

In something from The Arbor Day Foundation yesterday, I learned an interesting, worrisome, alarming, (take your pick, or all of the above) tidbit, the fact that plant-hardiness zones in this country are shifting, causing The Arbor Day Foundation to draw up its own zone map differing quite a bit from the official USDA map. This morning I have stumbled upon an article in USA Today further explaining this trend and the map controversy that accompanies it. Anyone who gardens to any extent is aware of the USDA's map of hardiness zones. The map we are currently using is 18 years old, drawn up in 1990. In a further illustration of this admin's reluctance to base official statements on anything resembling scientific fact, a new map prepared for the Dept. of Agriculture in 2003 was rejected as showing a warming trend. The USDA hotly denies any hesitation to acknowledge the potential impact of climate change, and says they are bringing out a new map within the year, one reflecting a thirty year period of climate data giving a "fuller picture of the world climate" than the sixteen year period used for the rejected 2003 map. (Emphasis added.)

The article, Warming Shifts Gardeners' Maps, gives us the current USDA map upfront, then provides a place to input your zip code and find your new, warmer, zone using the ADFoundation map. As it's Arbor Day, and Earth Day, and just in general, spring, we're heading to our closest native plant nursery to look at trees that might thrive here in our ever-hotter and drier yard. It's one of the best things we can do right now for our planet. But before you invest in a commitment to a tree, check the Arbor Day Foundation map, the results might surprise you. (Photo: Pinyon Pine, New Mexico's state tree.)

Technorati Tags: Arbor Day, climate change, Earth Day, plant hardiness zones, trees, USDA,

Food Crisis Abroad and at Home

Well, looks like Tankwoman has beaten me to the post I have been mulling for a couple of days now....the one about the food crises taking place all over the Third World. In places where people already mainly live on beans and rice, or some local equivalent, these bottom line staples have been priced out of sight. It's not just the petroleum it takes to produce and ship them, it's also a consequence of what is happening vis-à-vis "alternative fuel," to wit: ethanol. Which is a subject for a whole other, and quite lengthy, post. The food crises in Africa, Asia, and, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti, didn't just come out of left field yesterday, they have been growing and worsening for several months now.

For the past two weeks Bill Moyers' Journal has focused on hunger, both in the Third World and right here at home. Two weeks ago the program was about the Congo, where the hunger is mainly a consequence of the unending wars taking place there; last Friday the focus was on hunger in the USA, and the struggles that foodbanks and food pantries all over this country are experiencing as they try to feed the people in their neighborhoods. People right here in Washington, and New York and Chicago and Albuquerque and Boston can't afford to buy bread, or rice or milk, and the food pantries can't afford to keep those staples on their shelves, let alone get any fresh vegetables, fruit or protein to offer their needy clients. No, we are not yet approaching the sort of situation happening in Haiti or Thailand or The Congo, but it is, perhaps, only a matter of time.Please go to Bill's website and watch the past two weeks' shows if you missed them when they were broadcast.

With Tankwoman I have to say that as I find out more about the real hunger all around me, my own full pantry and refrigerator, my ability to purchase just about anything I want to eat, is currently making me feel a lot less hungry and certainly a lot less smug about all those organic veggies and fruit I like to be able to buy. On the Moyers Journal Blog right now there is a guest post by David Beckham, president of Bread for the World, called A Chance to Help Those Who Need It Most. Beckham was Moyers' guest on the two shows I have mentioned here. He is a minister and an economist, and in his Moyers guest post he trains his attention on the Farm Bill currently threshing its way through Congress. He has suggestions for what we can do to get a farm bill passed that will help feed those in this great need. Until such a bill is passed, also please consider locating your local foodbank (mine is charmingly called "The Roadrunner Foodbank,"in honor of our goofy state bird), and donating on a regular basis, even, if you have the time, volunteering there as well. Foodbanks and food pantries in all of our cities are shutting down because they can't keep food on the shelves. They are the last beacon of hope for many...please help keep them lit.

Technorati Tags: Bill Moyers, Bread for the World, David Beckham, foodbanks, world hunger

Isn't The Environment Just A Big Bother?

Today's news brings the word that in order to complete the remaining border fence/wall between the Southwestern US and Mexico, a fence many think will never actually fulfill its proposed mission (We're talking actual fence here, not the "virtual" fence, which the feds themselves already acknowledge is not working.), The Bush administration is proposing to bypass more than thirty environmental and land-management laws and regulations. The area under consideration here is parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas that are home to many threatened species,the endangered jaguar, America's largest native cat, to name just one. Our friends in Congress have granted the waivers to the Department of Homeland Security, to the delight of gun-toting conservatives and the consternation of groups like The Nature Conservancy, Sierra club and Defenders of Wildlife. Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife, made the following statement yesterday in response to this decision:

Thanks to this action by the Bush administration, the border is in a sense more lawless now than when Americans first started moving west.

Laws ensuring clean water for us and our children—dismissed. Laws protecting wildlife, land, rivers, streams and places of cultural significance—just a bother to the Bush administration. Laws giving American citizens a voice in the process—gone.
Clearly this is out of control.

It is this kind of absolute disregard for the well-being and concerns of border communities and the welfare of our wildlife and untamed borderlands that has forced Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club to take a stand and say ‘No more!’

Just a few weeks ago we filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to fight the unconstitutional authority the Bush administration has seized to waive any and all laws it views as inconvenient in its rush to build an unpopular, ineffective border wall. Today’s egregious abuse of power is more proof that this cannot be allowed to continue.

Most of the lands where the border fence is being constructed are protected federal lands, National Monuments and Forests containing species that occur nowhere else in the United States. For more from Defenders of Wildlife on the impact of current federal immigration policy on the environment, read this paper, On The Line, about the Arizona borderlands alone.

Crossposted to The Blue Voice

Tell Me What You Eat...

As we move into the weekend it's fun to focus on a few of the day's lighter issues. It may seem that where Hillary Clinton is concerned there aren't many light issues. But Mimi Sheraton, whom I followed faithfully for eight years when she was the NYT food critic, managed to find one to write about a couple of weeks ago in Slate magazine online, and as a dedicated foodie myself, I find it to be pretty darned delightful. The article is How Hungry Is Hillary Clinton? An Analysis of The Candidate's Tastebuds. It's written with Sheraton's trademark verve, panache, and devotion to food.

After tracing Hillary's food choices from high school (olive burgers) through the White House years (pecan crusted lamb with morel sauce) and onto the campaign trail (competitive eating), Sheraton closes with this musing:

"In the end, how can anyone not admire a woman who, like so many of us, is torn between renunciation and appetite,with a weakness for the hot and spicy and the cool and sweet, and who surely represents the people's palate?

Significant? You be the judge."

Hopper Slideshow

As a devoted fan of Edward Hopper's art, and a former resident of the beautiful place where he spent his summers - the town of Truro on Cape Cod - I could watch this slideshow over and over, and have. The Architecture of Edward Hopper. The show is at the Art Institute in Chicago right now, and I need to do some exploring and find out where it's going next. Spend some time with the essay and pictures. It's a brief vacation to another world.

Carnival of the Green #118

This week's Carnival is posted here at The Expatriate's Kitchen Each week the Carnival introduces me, and I hope you, to new and wonderful sites in the ecoblog universe. The Expat's Kitchen is itself a site I've enjoyed spending time exploring, with lots of faabulous recipes amid the green food musings.

The post that caught my attention in this Carnival is a review of The Transition Handbook from the ethical pulse blog. The reviewer says he was tempted to confine his review to five simple words: "You must read this book." Fortunately he went further, and in so doing introduced me to the whole movement of Transition Culture, and absolutely convinced me that I do need to read this book.

"The subtitle for the book is ‘From oil dependency to local resilience' and that's exactly the journey you are taken on when you read it. It's divided into three sections - The Head, The Heart and The Hands - in other words get your mind round the need, become impassioned and then get working. It will engender very different reactions in readers depending on their current point of view and understanding. But I guarantee that everyone will feel a sense of change once they have read it."

Maybe...Who Knows?

This was a project begun, as I've said much earlier, in order to be able to participate in the group blog, The Blue Voice. Members of the group had to have our own blogger sites in order to be part of TBV. So far I haven't used this as a real blog of my own, but am now thinking to change that and actually begin posting here. Right now I'm just trying to figure out how to set up a template and get started, so it may be a while before this really happens. Kind of exciting to think of it though. Okay, gonna go tinker.