2011... Who'd a Thought?

It's rolled in, and we're still walking around.

Sunny, chilly day up here at the Edge of the Wrong Rock.  The garden sleeps beneath a bed of frost.  My Other Blog (you know how to find it) is receiving more attention, but this one is not forgotten.

There's a fire in the wood stove.  As I type this, I have a cup of tea near (but not too near) my left hand.  The house is cozy.

Later, if I feel up to it, we may walk to the lighthouse at Point Wilson.  It would be good to breathe fresh air, stretch the legs, and (if the sky stays clear) to let some natural photons into the eyes.

Carry On

New Website, Weather, Food

Well, for those of you who know its domain name, I wanted to let you know that I've revamped my website.  I've pulled it off the local hosting service and moved it over to my "mobile.me" account w/ Apple.  That restricts the tools I can use to build and update the site, but it saves me $260 per year, so it's more than worth it.

If you follow the blog on my website, you'll need to re-subscribe to the RSS feed.  I plan to post there mostly, but there will be little stuff of a personal nature there.  I tend to focus that site more on my writing... especially the fiction.

The cold snap reached near Colorado-cold temps. Local roads closed.  Snow, etc., but we're through with that storm.  Now it's cold, but not terribly so.  Winter Solstice is in a couple of weeks.  Sheesh.

Made a pretty decent enchilada casserole a couple of nights ago.  Angel is off taking a yoga class, and I'm planning to heat up some of that casserole for dinner. Yes, it should be tasty.  Hatch enchilada sauce is available hear at The Edge.  That's nice.  It'd dark up here during the winter.  The chile reminds us of the sun.

Cold Weather

Well, it was inevitable, I suppose. Our daytime temps are now 38 degrees Obsolete. Nighttime gets near freezing and is forecasted to drop below several times this week.

The good part of this is the enjoyment of the fires in the wood stove. Our tiny Jotul stove burns cheerily, fueled by wood harvested from our property. In the course of a day, the stove makes the whole house comfortable; although we do run the modern heat pump to make the bedroom zone comfortable for about an hour in the morning.

I've taken to peeling the bark from our firewood, splitting the pieces to a good size for the Jotul, and stacking the wood on the front porch. That way the wood can dry (it's been raining here at the 48th parallel) before I try to burn it in the stove. In an hour or so, I can prep and stack enough wood for three days. There is enough firewood already cut and rough split for at least two years. There are stacked but un-split rounds for another three, I think.

That's all the good news.

The bad part of all this is, naturally, the dormant state of greenhouse and garden. I've shut off the water, drained the pipes down to the level of the hose bib, and removed the drip system "assembly" from the exterior wall of the greenhouse. Angel harvested the last of the fruit and vegetables from the greenhouse and cut the plants down to stubs.

If you don't think that is a sign of winter's proximity... well, I don't know what to tell you.

But the soil needs to rest, so perhaps this -- even the winter sleep -- is a good thing. Yes. It must be a good thing. But I'll tell you, I still miss the heat of the greenhouse on a July afternoon.

And There Are Still More

Today, I went out to tend the greenhouse and encountered a good pile of tomatoes ready to harvest. A red bell pepper and two ripe jalapenos chuckled in good-natured greeting. All-in-all, I think this is a pretty good haul for November 3.

We've had a couple of days of amazingly sunny weather. Yesterday our 4 KW PV array produced about 14 KWH of energy, and I think we may do something in that range again today (although there's now a gigantic splodge of bird poop on one of the panels, so until the next hard rain, the output will be sorely diminished).

Here at the 48th parallel, the sun does quite a seasonal zig-zag between north and south. At this point in the year, much of the arc of the sun's apparent path is obscured by large trees to the south (not our trees, else they'd be trimmed). This impacts our solar gain even on sunny days.

Soon the arc of the sun will matter less, because sunny days will be rare. From December through mid February, most days will be dark, and many days will be wet. A few may bring snow. But for now, the days are often mild and our greenhouse continues to yield food.  In the north garden, a new crop of lettuce nears harvest.

And winter rye, our cover crop for the main south garden is rushing from the rich, moist earth into the crisp air. Angel has just about finished winterizing the second south garden area. The blue sky calls.

The denizens of the rock answer according to their individual voices.

Disinformation Campaigns

A relative received an email about alleged claims to the effect that CFL's pose a fire risk when used under normal (i.e. intended) conditions.  I checked it out and found that it's listed under Snopes as a false rumor (you can click on the preceding text).

Here's a photo of the alleged offender:

It's amazing what people will do at the edge of the Rock.

A Second Crop?

Surprise of surprises, both the poblano plant and one of the bell pepper plants (these two share a pot... coincidence?) have put out a new set of blossoms.  The Old Amigo's been touching the flowers gently with the bristles of his greenhouse paintbrush.  There's pollen there!

There are a couple of new poblano chilies hanging from a high branch.  Similarly, there are two bells.  Of course the warm days will get rarer and rarer for the next four months.  It's not clear that the fruit can ripen under the conditions of October through December here at the Edge of the Wrong Rock.

Some of the greenhouse tomato plants are still producing and the fruit is still ripening, albeit slowly.  We also have five sweet "lipstick chilies" at or near picking ripeness.  The tiny super chilies continue to do fine.  Oh, and I've discovered that the jalapenos, if allowed to ripen to redness, actually develop a little heat of their own!

Angel's been clearing out the main garden.  Today she got it to the point where I could remove the drip system.  That's now safely coiled in the garage.  The intake and the supply outlet from the Assembly are both plugged to prevent dirt from getting inside the drip tubes.  If it's nice this weekend, I may turn a batch of our compost into the soil and plant winter rye.  Come February, we'll be ready to turn the soil again and plant 2011's garden!

The Latest in the Tea Party Sequence

Some of you will remember Mark's first Tea Party painting from 2005.  He's produced a new version, "Part D'uh."

I can't exactly say "enjoy" with regards to this piece, but it's definitely worth a look.

Don't drink the cool aid.

Equinox Harvest

Today, it's rainy at the Edge. This week and next, Angel & I are both teaching extra yoga classes -- filling in for teachers who are out of town. By the time we got back from our respective gigs, the cold wind was whipping up the bay and rain was sprinkling. Angel and a visiting friend of hers are cooking, baking, today. It appears a rhubarb pie might be in the offing.  I've built a fire in the wood stove.

Earlier, Angel and her friend went into the garden to dig potatoes, cut the last of the rhubarb, and gather some artichokes. As you can see, even at the fall equinox, even here at the Edge, the garden continues to produce. Dinner should be a satisfying affair tonight.

Artichokes, Potatoes, and Rhubarb, Oh My!

Krugman Article

Just read a NYT article by Paul Krugman. It's an opinion piece. Of course aren't they all these days?

Man, I bet he's on a few lists...

A Tasty Dinner

Dinner!

We bought two grass-fed buffalo steaks from a local "boutique" market. I grilled the steaks and some jalapenos over charcoal on the barbecue.

Angel cut fresh potatoes (we raised over 120 pounds of potatoes this year) into wedges, brushed them with olive oil, sprinkled them with spices, and put them in the oven. While the potatoes roasted, she pulled together a salad from (mostly) things we grew: tomatoes, broccoli shoots, lettuce. We got some radishes from the co-op.

As I've written elsewhere, the jalapenos weren't at all hot, but they had a great flavor.

Now that's a dinner.

Chilies From The Greenhouse... Two Hundred And Counting

The Top Section of a Double Boiler Containing 200 Chilies

Okay, so these are little guys -- the biggest of them about the size of your pinkie finger.

While they're not in the league of NM chilies, they're reasonably spicy and have a good flavor. Angel enjoys spicy food, but she has stomach problems that preclude chili-as-a-religious-experience levels of hotness. I usually put one of these (de-seeded) in a given dish. She tolerates that well and I get to think, to drift back in time...

Here's a Close-up!

Albert Fugere sent me the URL for a place in NM that sells several variety of chilies. Maybe next year I'll try some of those. I also grew poblanos and jalapenos but these came out about as mild as bell peppers. The jalapenos were at least flavorful -- especially after I roasted them over charcoal.

The Greenhouse seems to be a requirement for growing chilies at the 48th parallel. This year, I had an aphid infestation but it was manageable (each day I'd go out and pick 'em off my plants). Once the chilies began to ripen the aphids went away. Maybe they don't like chilies?  Serve 'em right.

Two hundred of these little guys add up to a lot of chilies. Not only that, I've got fifty or so more of them on the plants that aren't quite ripe yet. Someday I'd like to build a small (tabletop) solar food dryer that could manage a tray full of these chilies, but I'd need a table saw to do a good job with it. That's not going to happen; although I do have a neighbor who owns a table saw.  Maybe I could trade him some chilies if he'd do some cuts for me?

Anyway, these are small enough so that I can freeze them. We'll certainly have plenty to last through the winter.

relative investments

China is now the biggest investor in renewable energy & energy efficiency.

According to Grist, China invested $34.6B in 2009 while the US invested about 54% of that amount.  Anyone care to guess who's going to do better in the long run?

But don't fret, folks.  Shareholders in fossil fuel conglomerates will do just fine for quite a while yet.

Clean Sweep

With the Tea Party candidate knocking out the moderate Republican in the Delaware primary, we now have an interesting situation.  Now every Republican candidate in the 2010 US Senate race denies that our country needs to take action to combat global warming.  So despite the fact that the scientific community is all but unified in its findings, the Republicans find it expedient to ignore the published, refereed, results.

Here's a link to the Grist article.

Big Oil triumphs once more.

Happy Wednesday.

Chilies!

Harvested a couple of poblanos.  That's nice.  They're tasty but very mild.  OTOH, I also  harvested a bunch o' jalapenos.  Even they could use a bit o' oomph, but they're flavorful and have a hint of a kick to them.

Chilies on a Pie Plate

On a whim, I tried roasting the jalapenos (as well as the poblanos, of course).  I broke out the barbecue and charred the chilies over the coals.  The smoke took me back thirty-five years.  For a few minutes, I drove down Fisher Ave towards School of Mines Road.  For a few minutes, I imagined the lilt of women calling to each other in Spanish.  Their laughter mixed with the scent of roasting chilies.

Chilies Roasting in the Evening at the 48th Parallel

The jalapenos roasted surprisingly well.  I put all the chilies in a paper bag and rolled up the top.  After a while, I dumped the chilies onto the cutting board and, using a couple of salad forks, peeled the skin away.  Several of the chilies went into freezer bags.

More wait on the heavy branches of the jalapeno plants in my greenhouse.

Maybe it's the wrong rock.  Maybe not.

Wild Blackberry Pie

They're not natives, these invasive Himalayan blackberries. They're not native, but they grow very well here. In open areas, you have to manage them. I mow the meadow where they and some other hardy species try to take over. When we first moved here, the entire meadow was covered in obnoxious (some say noxious) thistles, wild blackberry canes, wild roses, large amounts of random detritus, and piles of dead weeds. It was a fire waiting to happen.

That first summer, I borrowed an industrial-strength weed whacker and took that stuff down. We had the gigantic "weedstack" hauled off. Now we manage the meadow.  At the height of the growing season, I mow it every other week. It's pretty. The neighbors enjoy it. The deer enjoy it. The crows mine for bugs in it. The folks who walk past on the hiking trail enjoy it. It's no longer a fire hazard.

So the meadow is clear, but along the boundaries, along the trail, many berry vines remain.

Yes, they're not natives, but there here. They've established a niche. They grow in our neighborhood. I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but now they seem to be roughly in balance with other wild plants. In other words, their vines seem neither to grow without bound nor to be on the verge of collapse.

Himalayan blackberries grow along the nature trails. They grow at the big, nearby state park. They grow in the common area of our neighborhood. And this time of year they produce sweet fruit.

Angel went out and gathered a couple of buckets' worth. That's right: she walked around the trails between here and the nearby state park. Then she brought them back and froze some. Others, she mixed with tapioca and simmered on the stove. Later, she made a wonderful pie.

Angel's Blackberry Pie

Here's a photo of the last slice:

Out Like A Lamb

I realize that summer isn't officially over until the Autumn Equinox (September 22nd). Even so, the end of August - in the Old Amigo's mind anyway - heralds the decline of the season. This year, August 31st is especially "fall-like" here at the 48th parallel: it's been raining since before dawn. Go figure.

Looking Through the Trees Toward Whidbey Island

Don't get me wrong. Weather such as we're enjoying today is perfect for many things: for cooking, for enjoying a cup of hot tea, for writing... I, for one, am taking a break as I work on the sequel to LQF. Doing "in-fill development" today.

Sequels are interesting: some sort of recap is necessary, as is some amount of character description. After all, I want reader who picks up the second novel first to be able to enjoy it as a quasi-independent story. At the same time, I want the second story to get going quickly enough to engage those folks who read the LQF.

More on this as I explore and write further.

Stay dry.  Stay warm.  Be well.

Compost!

Lately, Angel has taken to checking out the "free bin" at the local food co-op.  More often than not, there is something in the free bin that is perfectly fresh.  We're talking picture-perfect produce here.  Sometimes there's slimy stuff.  Slimy, but organic.  Angel often bags that and we either:

1. give it to a neighbor who keeps chickens, or 
2. compost it!

Of course we already compost our vegetable leftovers, kitchen scraps, and yard waste (we steer clear of noxious weeds).  We also have tubs (leftover  yoghurt tubs) that some of our neighbors take home and fill with their kitchen scraps.  In compost land, more is better.  Plus the neighbs seem very happy to do something other than toss their past-edible stuff in the trash.  


I've decided that people generally like you if you will take rotting food off their hands.  Anyway, according to the on-line magazine Grist, "the food we discard each year wastes more energy than we extract annually from the oil and gas reserves off the nation’s coastlines, according to New Scientist."  Hello?!


Here's a garage sale score for you: On a swing through the neighborhood on her way back from her Saturday AM yoga class, Angel spied a very cool, rotating composter in perfect condition at a local garage sale.  She walked in the door (I was, as usual, working on the next novel) and announced her find.  I leaped from the chair and said, "Let's go!"

The owners wanted roughly 20% of the retail price of this machine.  It now sits in the sun near our other compost bins.  For a long time, Angel & I have wanted to compare the performance of these rotating composters with our old stand-byes.  Now we can.  In fact, I'm going to dash out and give the barrel a few turns!

Bandits

We took our eggplant bushes out of the greenhouse to bask in what passes for summer sun here at the 48th parallel.  The eggplant fruit grew.  They were ready to harvest... at least that's what some local varmint(s) decided.  Night before last, all the fruit that was ready just disappeared.

The immature fruit was untouched.  The six tomato vines that are immediately adjacent to the eggplant bushes spot on the deck were untouched.  Those tomato vines are struggling in this climate, but they have fruit on them... several very nice, nearly ripe, red tomatoes.

Perhaps the varmints only like eggplant?

We're having trouble figuring out what sort of bandit would snag eggplants.

• Not rats.  The fruit wasn't gnawed, it was plucked and taken elsewhere for consumption.  
• Not deer.  The deer have (so far at least) not scaled the fence to come onto the deck.  Plus, very near the ill-fated eggplants, there are several sunflowers, and the deer just love those.  Plus, the deer don't pluck fruit; they eat the plant, the fruit, etc., from the top down.  
• Angel thought perhaps it was raccoons, but do those bandits eat eggplant?  My old friend, The Agriculturist, says that raccoons would have to be very hungry to eat eggplant.  Some of our neighbors keep chickens, and alas, the raccoons are seldom hungry.
• Crows?  (aka "flying rats" as the locals not-so-fondly call them).  Crows are crafty enough, I suppose, but it seems a stretch.

Anyway, the eggplant bushes are now safely ensconced in the greenhouse.  We learn, little-by-little, what works here at the edge of the continent.

Ah.  The sun has peeked out from behind the clouds.  The garden wakes, smiles.  The sun hides again... probably 'til afternoon.

CA Prop 23

You probably already know this, but the effort to kill CA's cap-and-trade law (AB 32) is funded almost exclusively by out-of-state oil interests.  The two biggest contributors to CA Prop 23 are Texas oil companies Tesoro and Valero.  The out-of-state forces are expected to raise $50M in their efforts to preserve business as usual.

What to expect:

• In this effort, Prop 23 backers will try to blame CA's economic troubles, including its unemployment rate, on liberals and radical environmentalists.  
• The backers of Prop 23 will neglect to mention the huge tax subsidies Big Oil and Big Coal already enjoy.  
• The backers of Prop 23 will neglect to mention the CA jobs that will evaporate if green energy startups are unable to compete with subsidized, established energy players.
• Prop 23 backers will try to establish a link in voters' minds between AB 32 and "out of touch politicians in Sacramento who want to raise your taxes."

In contrast, nearly all of the "No On Prop 23" funding is coming from CA "green-tech" businesses, venture capitalists, and environmental activists.

This is a battle between the old economy and the new economy.  Entrenched big (huge) business interests feel justifiably threatened at the possibility they could lose revenue if CA businesses become big players in the power biz. CA businesses at risk if Prop 23 passes include renewable energy startups, PV system installers, and R&D efforts.  And remember: oil dollars flow out of CA into TX and elsewhere.  In contrast, CA green tech companies bring money into the state, employ people in the state, pay taxes in the state.

If you'd like to read more, here's an article from Grist.  Disclaimer: Grist is a progressive on-line 'zine and this is reflected in its editorial positions.

Here Come the Zucchini!

Squashes & A Beautiful Red Cabbage

First the red cabbage: yesterday, Angel harvested a gorgeous red cabbage. We went to a potluck supper and she used the cabbage (and a couple of carrots picked at the same time) to make a delicious cole slaw. BTW, it was a vegetarian potluck and the variety and quantities of food were quite nice.

As you can see from the photo at the right, the squashes are ramping up. We've already eaten a few of the early  zucchini and yellow squashes and found them to be very tasty. Now more are coming on-line. In addition, we're starting to see some golden-yellow round squashes.

Interestingly, the deer rarely bother the squash plants.  They'll eat rose bushes, thorny stems and all, right down to the ground, but there's something about zucchini plants that causes the deer to look the other way. Works for me. Little-by-little, we learn to work with the local flora and fauna.

Angel and I both wish we could afford to terrace & fence the whole meadow and fill it with fruit trees. It would be a productive area as well as a wonderful place to hang out. That was part of the original plan, but of course plans change, don't they? Anyway, we're both very happy with the amount of produce we're already getting, and we do have four little fruit trees inside the fenced area behind the garage.

* * *

We're experiencing record temps up here at the edge.  The meadow area needs mowing, but I'm going to wait on it for a few days. The forecast is for milder temps by Wednesday or Thursday of this week. Yesterday, at about 10 AM, I mowed one of the flat parts of the property and it was already uncomfortably hot. Today's forecast calls  for even higher temperatures, so I'll go outside to water my tomato vines and will tend to my greenhouse chilies but am otherwise planning to stay in the shade as much as I can.

I will be teaching a yoga class tonight at the athletic club. It's especially fun to teach when it's warm in the studio (shucks, the Bikram folks pay money to do yoga in hot rooms); although I do have to be careful about standing up too quickly. It's generally considered poor form when the yoga teacher faints...