Heat And Light

Posted on August 17, 2020 by Ann Lovejoy
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

My frog visitor chilling on the hottest day

Cooling Off When It Gets Too Hot

This weekend brought high heat to most of the West Coast, blasting people and plants with stressful temperatures and drying winds. A lot of critters were feeling the heat as well, from birds and bees to deer and bears. When I went out to water very early on Saturday, I was greeted with enthusiasm by a bevy of birds and even found a fine fat frog sitting up to her nose in my birdbath. It’s really just an old enameled bowl, plunked down in my miniscule “shade garden”, but it gets a lot of customers over the course of a day. Shade garden is a big name for a very small space; it’s merely a 60-foot by 10 inch strip on top of a retaining wall, yet it’s fascinating how much diversity such a seemingly inhospitable place can host. As an advocate of cramscaping, I’ve packed about 30 kinds of plants in there, from ferns and fuchsias to compact Pistachio hydrangeas and candelabra primulas, Chinese and Himalayan Impatiens, Disporum longistylum and Podophyllum difforme, hardy cyclamen and snowdrops, even some Solomon’s Seal. Birds and bugs and bees are common visitors, and now I’ve got a frog.

As an indicator species, I’m delighted that she is making her summer home with me. It means that despite the tiny size of my garden overall and the ridiculously teeny shade garden, there’s enough food and shelter for her here. No toxic pesticides, of course (!). Since our cats are strictly indoor critters with their own lovely catio/greenhouse/sunroom, she has only natural predators like crows and snakes, which so far haven’t made their way into the sheltered, partially covered shade garden. It’s a very small world, but perhaps it’s enough. I’ve added a nice smooth rock for her to rest on, and I’ll certainly be sure to keep the birdbath bowl just full enough so she can keep her head above water and stay cool when the heat is on.

Watering Well In Heat

Wise gardeners try to water deeply before a projected heat wave arrives. Containers especially are vulnerable to drying out fast on hot, windy days so if at all possible, set them in deep saucers. Once dried out, container plantings can be tricky to water well, since dry potting soil shrinks and lets water slide away without wetting soil thoroughly. Saucers catch the runoff and let it be slowly absorbed. Annuals are especially vulnerable to problems if allowed to dry out; tomatoes are apt to crack or get blossom end rot, while basil, cilantro, lettuce and spinach will bolt or die in despair. Naturally enough, different plants have different watering requirements as well, which can be tricky to keep in mind when watering before heat. Those squash and potatoes are still growing well, so they need consistent moisture, but oops, the onions and garlic are starting to dry out and don’t want more water at all. A friend confessed that she got so worked up about watering wrong as the temperature kept rising that she burst into tears, went inside, and took a nap. Good idea! When worry leaves us frenzied, it’s time to slow down.

Yes, watering methods vary in efficiency and wastefulness, but really, when the heat is on it’s more important to get the water to the plant than to worry about doing it right. It’s best to water early in the day, but if you can’t, then water when you can. Ideally, we’d all be using drip irrigation systems, but that’s not always practical or possible. If the only way you can water is by hand, make it a meditation and take it slowly. If too many plants are flagging and you’re feeling the pressure, water everyone lightly then go back again and again, counting slowly to 60 or 100 each time. At first, the water may pool up, but with repeated visits, the soil crust will soften, allowing the water to penetrate deeply. Check back later in the day, when the sun is off flagging plants, and see if they perk back up. If so, they’re actually hydrated enough but are flagging as a way to shed heat and reduce sun exposure.

Stay Cool And Keep Your Head

Like my neighborly frog, I’m trying to stay cool these days, both physically and emotionally. As each day’s news brings fresh shocks and shenanigans, many of us are stressed to the breaking point. Like my flustered friend, many, perhaps most of us are already so anxious and worried that any little thing can trigger impulsive reactions that are rarely helpful. Not too surprisingly, I’ve really been noticing this lately as I try to encourage thoughtful conversations about all sorts of things from community budgets to racism and white privilege. Some folks have suggested that perhaps this isn’t the best time to try to have uncomfortable conversations but it seems to me that it’s great; when we are already uncomfortable, we may be more aware of our deep feelings than when everything is going along just fine. (Remember that feeling? Barely?) And maybe it’s like watering on a hot day; do a little, move on, circle back and do a little more. There’s lots of ground to cover and the crustiness may be softening between visits.

So I’m interested in having important if uncomfortable conversations. Apparently for many people the openness to having meaningful conversations peaks in the young-adult years and dwindles as life tumbles us around. Apparently too, attending a lecture by an expert feels safer and less vulnerable than exploring our own ideas and opinions with others who might possibly disagree or even call us out on muddled or mistaken thinking. I miss them, though. I miss talking, listening, pondering, imagining with someone or several someones. With so many hot issues seething and bubbling up right now, I’m sadly noticing even less conversation and a lot more blaming/shaming and attacking. It’s especially counter-productive when people who are in agreement about many major issues tear each other apart over secondary or even minor ones. If we want healing for our nation, our community, our families, ourselves, let’s practice our conversational skills together.

How To Know A Conversation

While poking around on the internet, I found a very helpful short article about recognizing when we are having a conversation and when we are actually not. Please give it a read and, you know, let’s talk about it. Please. Let’s slow down, cool off, and talk.

View at Medium.com

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Beware Invasive Bugs

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Ann Lovejoy
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Southern Green Stink Bugs

Stink Bugs And Stinking Thinking

Last week I found what turned out to be invasive Southern Green Stink Bugs in the garden and now I can’t get them put of my mind; they seem like a perfect metaphor for the state of the nation and perhaps the world. As summer rolls on, I’ve been watching the way each day’s fresh new horrors pile up, obscuring those that occurred a month or two ago. The relentless arrival of more bad news every single day feels like a tactic designed to keep us anxious and enraged. The flood of evil takes our minds off pushing for real change as each successive concern washes away the previous ones. It feels important to stop and add things up, looking for core issues. It’s not difficult to find them, since most relate to racism, white supremacists, the war on the poor, kleptocracy, and/or the war on the environment. What these in turn boil down to is an old, old truth: the love of money really is the root of all evil. Read power for money and it all makes sense. When money is power, addictive wealth hoarding becomes an overwhelming obsession that kills off every spark of human decency and compassion. People in power get hooked and anyone or anything that interferes with their accumulation of more more more is seen as an obstacle to be removed, stripped of value. That thinking just stinks in my spirit, like the stink of cancerous lesions or rotting compost that’s not getting enough air.

I’ve been watching with dismay as a flood of new affronts push the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor out of the news and the Black Lives Matter movement out of America’s awareness. Even the recent release of the bodycam footage of George Floyd’s murder barely made a ripple in mainstream media and that’s no accident. The ongoing peaceful BLM protests in Portland and elsewhere get little coverage, though any violence is widely reported. Back in July (seems like years ago), there was concern that the largely white Wall of Moms and Dads With Leafblowers brigades were taking attention off the essential BLM message. I wondered about that too, but I also saw that, often for the first time, middle class white people who considered themselves progressive and not racist were directly experiencing and/or seeing on all kinds of social media the vicious treatment by the police, treatment that’s all too familiar to Black, Indigenous and People of Color. I heard many stories of wake up calls from folks who suddenly got a tiny, momentary glimpse of what it’s like not to have automatic White Privilege. The shock! The outrage! I’ve got very mixed feelings about this displacement, yet I’m also feeling that anything that acts as a significant and lasting wake up call to middle class white America is valuable and ultimately helpful. For a lot of us not-racist white folks, becoming actively anti-racist is clarifying and energizing. If it’s not a comfortable process, it is most definitely salutary.

Five Calls, Five Minutes

Wake up calls are especially enriching if they lead us to positive action. With so much to be worried, frightened and/or enraged about, it’s easy to let the floods of badness overwhelm our spirits. Depression and anxiety are at all time highs in America, and not just because the pandemic is warping our world. With more down time, many of us get caught up in obsessive news-following (who, me?), which is not designed to make us feel peaceful or powerful. One excellent way to deal with the multitude of issues is to take them just a few at a time. Among the best tools I know of for making sure that our protests and concerns are heard by people who can do something about them is Five Calls. This volunteer organization provides a full palette of important current issues from which to pick and choose. When you select a topic, you’ll get contact information for relevant elected officials as well as thoroughly researched scripts for you to follow or alter to suit your own ideas. I like the scripts myself, as I tend to choke up and start crying when I try to talk about SO MANY THINGS these days.

Calling works because all calls to elected officials are tracked by staffers, who record both the messages and the number of callers. It’s been amply demonstrated that a flood of angry callers can change the their thinking and change their vote. Also, the right has long established paid phone banks to fight against any and all progressive legislature and action, so it takes equal or more pressure to balance out the haters. Each call takes about a minute, so you can get them done with your morning coffee and feel like you are taking positive action, not just passively fuming.

To learn more and/or sign up for the app, follow this link:
https://5calls.org/

About Those Stink Bugs

If you’re freaking out about Asian Giant Hornets, bee killers that pack a bullet-like sting, calm down. So far, only a few have been found near the Canadian Border (Blaine and Custer), but Washington State Department of Agriculture entomologists are asking us to take pictures and report any possible examples. They are NOT asking us to kill bumblebees; sadly, over-enthusiastic folks have been waging war on the wrong insect, killing valuable, gentle bees that are prime pollinators. However, please DO be on the watch for Southern Green Stink Bugs (Nezara viridula), bright green, shield-shaped insects that develop black and white spots on their bottom half as they mature. I recently found some of these admittedly beautiful bugs on Bainbridge Island. When ID’d on line, I discovered that they are also being tracked by the WSDA as recent and worrisome invasive pests for farmers as well as gardeners.

I sent my pictures to Chris Looney, a WSDA entomologist, who confirmed the identification. When I asked Dr. Looney what to do about them, he suggested tossing them in a bucket of soapy water; of course you can also stomp them, but they aren’t called stink bugs for nothing. A few days later, I took a bucket of soapy water back to the bugs’ site and found that the handful I’d originally seen had produced scads of tiny babies, glossy black with bright white spots. Yikes! It took me an hour to trim back all the plants they were now on and vigorously shake the stems over the nearby sidewalk. This probably odd appearing activity prompted quite a few passersby to stop and ask me what the heck I was doing to those poor weeds. When I showed them the insects, they mostly squirmed and left rather abruptly. As I whacked the leafy stems, the bugs young and old fell of and scurried about and into the soapy water they went. Sadly, I’m very sure that I missed at least a few, which fell into the compost mulch in the beds.

Babies and Mamas

If you find any of these invasive bugs in Washington State, please report them here: invasivespecies.wa.gov/report.shtml

In Oregon and California, contact your State Department of Agriculture to report invasive bugs.

Don’t Dawdle, Act Now

Had I known in time what they were, I could have nipped this local invasion in the egg. Sadly, it took me a few days to go back and get pictures, then figure out where to send them. After getting a response, it took a couple more days before I found the time to deal with the stinky pests. I hate to think my dawdling may have costly repercussions but of course it certainly could. Acting quickly seems more difficult these days, as the pandemic, social distancing, and self isolating keeps our overloaded brains too busy to think clearly and act decisively. This morning, however, I read a news item that made me determined to get my act together. It was a poignant and painful first-person story from a Black woman who was sitting in a public outdoor space, looking at her phone, when a car pulled up and the driver yelled a racist epithet. It was clearly aimed at her, since she was the only Black person in sight. The white people around her, young, old, male, female, all totally ignored the driver’s abusive comment.

Nobody spoke up. Nobody said, “I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Nobody said, “That must feel terrible.” Nobody said, “What a horrible experience for you; it felt horrible to me too.” Nobody said a word or even gave her a sympathetic look. Where did this happen? When? It happened right here, today and yesterday and the day before. It happened right here, right now. Here’s my take away from this true story: May I never ignore an opportunity to speak up in support of anyone who is being abused or bullied. Never.

 

Posted in Health & Wellbeing, Hoarding, pests and pesticides, Pollinators, Social Justice, Sustainable Living | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Roasting, Steaming, & Putting Up String Beans

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Ann Lovejoy
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

When Bountiful Beans Arrive

After a slow start, the beans are coming in fast and plentiful. The slender, tender French filet beans tend to get eaten in the garden, or tossed in a lunchtime salad. Flat, strappy Romanos and colorful string beans, yellow, purple and green, may be steamed and stir fried, oven roasted and caramelized or grilled until lightly charred. As usual, I planted way more than we can eat, so every few days another batch gets tucked in the freezer. If those little filet beans aren’t picked daily, they quickly become flageolet or shell beans. Let them dry completely, still on the vine, and now they’re French haricots, classic dry beans for cassoulet and soups. I’m letting most of the Good Mother Stallard beans get to the dry stage, as they’re utterly delicious in hearty winter soups. If hefty Romano beans get a little leathery, they too can be allowed to dry, but the extra string beans end up in my freezer.

Fortunately, string beans freeze well, whether blanched or not. Blanching beans and other vegetables involves briefly steaming or boiling them, then cooling them fast to halt the cooking process. This inhibits enzyme activity that impairs the quality of frozen food but it definitely affects the texture. If fresh green beans are harvested a day or more before freezing, it’s better to blanch them; fill a metal colander or fryer basket with clean beans, tipped and tailed. Plunge them into rapidly boiling water for 2-4 minutes, then immediately transfer them into a big bowl of ice water for 1 minute. Whirl them dry in a large salad spinner, pat them totally dry, then arrange them in a single layer on a rimmed pan and freeze until firm (15-20 minutes). Packed in tightly sealed containers and frozen immediately, they’ll remain delicious for 3-6 months. If freshly picked green beans are washed, dried and frozen immediately, they retain excellent flavor and texture for up to three months even without the usual blanching.

Vacuum Pack Or Freezer Wrap

All frozen produce resists freezer burn and retains quality best when thoroughly dried before freezing in vacuum sealed pouches. It’s easy to make your own vacuum sealing system with zip-closure freezer bags and a drinking straw. Fill a bag, press out as much air as possible, then seal it around the drinking straw. Suck out as much air as possible and quickly reseal tightly. To avoid plastic, tightly wrap well-dried produce in freezer paper, seal with freezer tape, and pack in sturdy freezer containers. Yay!

Big Beans & Vinegar

High heat often brings out the boldest flavors in big, mature beans, especially oven roasting, perhaps with peppers and tomatoes. When it’s too hot to fire up the oven, grill your beans along with fish or poultry, or try this simple, speedy stovetop version. Fruity vinegars bring out the singing sweetness of meaty, tender beans, experiment to find your favorite combinations. My summery vinegar making includes the usual blueberry and raspberry, both of which are pleasant indeed, but my new favorite is nectarine vanilla, which is also fabulous with steamed or roasted beets. Still in the bottle; lemon mint vinegar. Hmmm. We shall see…

Lightly Charred Big Beans

2 tablespoons olive or avocado oil
4 cups mature Romano-type beans, ends trimmed
1/4 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
4-5 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon finely chopped hot pepper
1-2 teaspoons fruity vinegar

In a wide, shallow pan, heat oil over medium high heat. Add beans, stir to coat, sprinkle with salt and cook without stirring until lightly charred (2-3 minutes). Flip with a fork or tongs, adding garlic and hot pepper. Cook until well browned (2-3 minutes). Splash with vinegar, stir to coat and serve. Serves 4.

String Beans And Bitter Greens

In Italy, tender young string beans are often paired with bitter greens to contrast the peppery bite with the beany sweetness. This favorite recipe lends itself to variations, perhaps using oregano, rosemary or basil instead of thyme, and spicy garlic or shallots instead of sweet onions. Unless they’re chopped up, it’s a little challenging to accurately measure things like string beans and broccoli raab, but I just loosely fill my bigger glass measuring cups to get an idea of quantities. I often make this satisfying dish with golden wax beans but it’s delicious with any kind of string beans.

Golden Beans With Bitter Greens

1 tablespoon olive or avocado oil
1/2 sweet onion, thickly sliced
1/4 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
1 teaspoon stemmed thyme
3-4 cups yellow wax beans, ends trimmed
2 cups broccoli rabe, stems included
2 cups shredded arugula, lightly packed
1 teaspoon brined green peppercorns (optional)
2 tablespoons toasted pumpkin seeds

In a wide, shallow pan, combine oil, sweet onion, salt, and thyme over medium high heat and cook to the fragrance point (1-2 minutes). Add wax beans and broccoli rabe, stirring to coat. Cover pan and cook until barely tender (2-3 minutes). Stir in arugula and green peppercorns and cook until barely wilted (2-3 minutes). Serve warm, drizzled with pan juices and garnished with pumpkin seeds. Serves 4.

Warm String Bean Salad

Make this with tiny, tender fillet beans, or use several colors of beans for a playful, pretty presentation. Fillet beans can be used raw or steamed for just a minute or two, while meatier beans might need another few minutes, so taste often to catch them while they’re just tender-crisp.

4 cups string beans, ends trimmed
2 tablespoons olive or avocado oil
1 tablespoon balsamic or cider vinegar
1/4 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
Pinch of smoked or hot paprika
1/2 red onion, chopped
2 cups halved cherry tomatoes
1/4 cup stemmed cilantro OR parsley OR basil

Steam beans for 2-4 minutes, drain. In a serving bowl, combine oil, vinegar, salt, and paprika and whisk to emulsify. Toss warm beans in dressing, add tomatoes and gently toss again and serve warm, garnished with stemmed herb(s). Serves 4.

 

Posted in preserving food, Recipes, Sustainable Gardening, Sustainable Living, Vegan Recipes | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

At The Crossing Of Bitter & Sweet

Posted on July 27, 2020 by Ann Lovejoy
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Arugula watercolor by Robert Morris

Reveling In Chicory, Endive & Radicchio

Chinese medicine practitioners often note that Westerners don’t know how to “eat bitter”. The phrase refers both to foods, such as bitter tea, bitter greens, and bitter melons, and to the capacity to withstand hardship. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately, as the insanity unrolls through the news and social media; are people who are willing to wear a mask, willing to limit activities, willing to exercise social distancing especially able to suck it up and ‘eat bitter’? Are those who can’t seem to find that capacity less resilient? Too afraid? Too…weak? It’s curious that for some folks, doing a few simple things that have a clear potential to reduce risk of harm for individuals and communities reportedly feels like showing weakness. For others, compliance in itself apparently feels way too much like risk or harm. I’m baffled by the weird intersection of angry, tough-guy, aggressive refusal and apparent remarkable fragility that prevents cooperation for the greater good.

Turns out that during 1918’s deadly influenza pandemic, the same scenario played out in America; an ‘Anti-Mask League’ led angry, violent protests against closing down schools, bars and dance halls while the pandemic raged and people died in terrifying numbers. Scientists and health experts tried in vain to explain that simple precautions like wearing masks reduced the spread of the disease; statistics were valueless to people who wanted to party. Today, in spite of the refusers, millions of people are wearing masks, withstanding discomfort, eating bitter for the common good and feeling better for it.

The Bright Side Of Eating Bitter

As we do our civic duty, we’re also bonding in solidarity, both with each other and against the insanity. I’m proud of the Wall Of Moms who came together to protect peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors, first in Portland, now in cities across the country where BLM protests are under attack both by infiltrators bent on violence and federal secret police, also demonstrating vicious violence against peaceful, unarmed citizens and journalists who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights. I’m proud of Dads With Leaf Blowers who are learning how to return aerosol volleys of tear gas and other warfare chemicals, sending toxic sprays back to the senders. I’m proud of the hockey stick wielders who deftly lob tear gas canisters back at the anonymous feds, and the bucket brigades who submerge and defuse the canisters. I’m proud of every single person who wears a mask in public. Thank you. Thank you.

The Delicious Side Of Eating Bitter

This seems like an excellent moment in history to learn to eat bitter greens, not as a grim duty but with enjoyment for their flavor complexity and health benefits. Some countries, from China to Italy, have been doing this for millennia, appreciating bitter greens and herbs as tonics and digestive aids as well as intriguing elements in savory meals. While they haven’t previously formed an important part of the American diet, bitter greens are making a splash on the trendy culinary scene. Red and green and in between, chicory and endive are joining radicchio and frisee in farmers markets and upscale grocery stores. Savvy gardeners can easily grow their own, getting the best flavor and texture as well as the biggest nutritional boost. Happily, now through August is prime time for setting out starts for cool season harvesting.

When you plant them out, give each start about a foot of space for early croppers (precoce varieties) and allow a little more room for late varieties, which can spread their wings a bit wider. When you harvest, the outer leaves come off, revealing the beautifully shaped heads, rounded or elongated. In the kitchen, these classic Italian greens add a pleasant piquancy to sliced tomatoes, green salads, and steamed vegetables. Grill a few endive heads, split lengthwise and lightly rubbed with oil, alongside salmon or trout for a bitter-sweet, lightly caramelized accompaniment. Next time you grill poultry, lightly char-grill some red chicory (aka radicchio), again split and oiled and sprinkled with rosemary and thyme, for a spunky side. Or try this astonishing salad of Italian greens with sweet ripe figs and tangy feta.

A Late Summer Salad

Smoky-sweet dressing and succulent ripe figs balance the tart, mildly bitter crunch of endive and arugula in this simple yet stunning salad. Use soft goat cheese if you prefer, and add spinach and Romaine to mellow the mix even further.

Bitter Greens With Figs and Feta

1 shallot, finely chopped
3 tablespoons fruity olive oil
1 cup chopped chicory greens
8 figs, cut in quarters
Pinch each sea salt and smoked paprika
1-2 teaspoons pomegranate molasses
3 cups shredded endive, arugula, & frisee
2 cups shredded spinach & romaine (optional)
1/2 cup stemmed basil
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese

In a saute pan, combine shallot and 1 tablespoon oil over medium high heat and cook to the fragrance point (about 1 minute). Stir in chicory greens, salt and smoked paprika and saute until barely tender (2-3 minutes). Remove from heat, add figs and toss gently to coat. In a small bowl, whisk together remaining oil and pomegranate molasses to taste. Toss shredded greens with basil, arrange on four plates and divide figs between them. Top with feta and drizzle with pomegranate dressing. Serves four.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments