a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Author: theMan

  • Open Poppy – Embrace the Unexpected – Keep the Dream Alive


    Yesterday our skies turned hazy. The Cascade Mountains became wrapped in gray gauze, the snowy peaks barely visible. Smoke from the forest fires in British Columbia drifted south, dulling the sun, blunting our heat wave. The 90ºF heat forecast for tomorrow will just be 85ºF now.


    The garden has taken on its summer look. The ao-shiso 青しそ, Perilla frutescens, is ready to pick. This is a must have condiment for civilized people. If you can find it in a country’s grocery shelves, you know you’ve landed in a civilized land.




    I went out into the garden this morning to plant more cabbage and beets, and was interrupted by the sight of poppy pods opening. When the unexpected happens, you need to embrace it. I set aside my cabbage seed planting to harvest poppy pods. Let them go, and they’ll fall to the ground before you know it, dashing your hopes and dreams of poppy seed jam and Mach Kuchen.



    Few things delight like harvesting poppy pods. What other plant comes with seed chambers with doors that open when they are ready to harvest? To collect the poppy seeds, all you have to do is tip the pods upside down and tap them. The tiny black seeds pour out with ease. My dreams of poppy seed jam and Mach Kuchen live.

  • The Heat Is On


    The red alders on Bow Hill are slowly dying. My first encounters with these beautiful trees were more than three decades ago on hiking trips into the Cascades. They line the riverbeds and streams flowing out of the mountains. You can’t go for a hike in the Cascades without walking through groves of these soothing trees.


    Away from streams and wetlands, red alder don’t do well in long droughts. They drop their leaves like ours are doing in mid summer. And with our longer, dryer summers, they are slowly dying. When I go around the neighborhood, I see their bare, bleaching branches more and more.


    This morning while checking the upcoming forecast, I let out a gasp when I saw how hot this coming week will be. So far this summer, we’ve had one 80ºF day, so to have five in a row with Thursday the 3rd predicted to be above 90ºF, is most unusual.



    The young chicks are fascinated with grapes, the first they’ve ever seen. The one dashing off in the background is making off with a grape and looking for a quiet spot where it can feast on it without being disturbed.


    Madrigal’s chicks hatched during the night. She was sitting on a clutch in the woods, and she’s brought them into the chicken yard. As attentive as she is, showing them what to eat, and breaking apart large seeds and grains for them, she’s a bit clumsy too, stepping on them at times when she’s chasing off the other chicks and hens. Tonight they are sleeping soundly underneath her, safe in the chicken yard.

  • High Summer


    Anemone flowers are a sign that it is high summer. Their swelling buds, covered with white soft felt, are as beautiful as their flowers.



    In the vegetable garden, purple magentaspreen sprouts in a bed of tangy sorrel. Sorrel, do I take it to market? Will anyone enjoy its sour bite? There are a hundred ways to eat it, from raw, to soups, to deep fried, to marinated in olive oil, to mashing with potatoes.


    Blooming mint, another sign of high summer. And a sure sign of high summer, a blushing tomato. These I can take to market no problem.

  • Onion Honey


    Onion blossoms are a favorite of bees. So many blossoms in one huge globe. A bee can gather a flight’s worth of pollen and nectar from just one stop. As sweet smelling as onion blossoms are, I imagine that honey made from the nectar of onion blossoms would be amazing. I’ve read that onion flowers are edible and have a sweet, strong onion taste. I’ll have to try one some day.


    I searched for any place that might carry onion honey. I did find a folk band, Onion Honey, but no honey made from onion blossoms.

  • Batshit Crazy


    I listened to an interview with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel who said that once he turned 75, we was going to stop medications for prolonging his life, and let nature take his course. He said that doctors in Japan had discovered that by the time people are a hundred, nearly everyone has dementia, which means I have forty years left before I am batshit crazy, though there are some who probably think I already am.

    This morning, I stumbled on a bush loaded with thimble berries. It took less than a minute to fill a palm full of berries. It doesn’t get any better than this, though I wonder how many more years we’ll enjoy such treats.



    Or enjoy the delights of blooming Shirohana-mame, white flower beans in bloom.


    Or contemplate the potatoes swelling in the soil under the tall potato plants.


    Or be tickled by the humor of arugula blossoms.


    Or laugh at the silly poppy seed pods, dancing in midair like so many UFOs, a mass invasion of green aliens. So many things we love, but for how much longer? I may not be batshit crazy yet, but it seems that much of humanity is. In just the last few years we’ve seen the utter calamity of huge portions of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia destroyed … by us, by us humans. Corals all around the world are dying, and we humans are the cause. If coral reefs dying all around the world won’t move us to change our way of life, what will?