a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: How Things Grow

Floppy Ears

The fava beans are up, and this morning in the heavy dew their leaves are flopping over like droopy dog ears. Instead of waiting to eat their beans, you can cut the tops off the plants and use them as vegetables in stir fry dishes.

Some varieties of fava beans can overwinter in our cool winter. One winter they provided us with a steady supply of fresh greens into January, even when it was snowing, until a bitter freeze did them in. I’ll be taking some to this Saturday’s Harvest Market and Food Swap at Belfast Feed Store, an annual event put on by Bow Little Market.

September 26, 2016
Who Loves Artichoke Blooms?

Spiders must hate foggy mornings. It makes their webs visible. There’s little chance of a bee or fly getting tangled up in a web when they sparkle like strings of diamonds.

Niji-hime 虹姫 is a mother whose path you dare not cross. She will pluck your eyes out to protect her chicks. She leads her chicks with her head held high. While I was taking these pictures, a belted kingfisher flew around high in the sky, making its loud, rattling cries. Niji-hime cocked her head, saw the noisy kingfisher, and told her chicks to be still. They froze and waited until she gave them the all clear call.

The bees have discovered an artichoke blossom. In droves they come to drink its nectar and gather its pollen. The next time you eat an artichoke, imagine how many bees would have come to feast on it if it had been left to bloom. I can imagine a worldwide movement arising, boycotting artichokes. “Don’t buy artichokes. Let them bloom and save the bees!” It could get ugly very fast. These movements have a way of spinning out of control. Restaurants would hide their artichoke dishes with lids so that their customers could savor artichokes without being yelled at. Farmers would have to truck their artichokes to market in the middle of the night. Pity the poor politician caught nibbling an artichoke. There would be no chance of them winning an election. Farmers would rush to have their artichoke farms certified bee friendly by leaving thirty percent of the artichokes on their plants to bloom. Want to make bees happy? Plant an artichoke and let it bloom.

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September 21, 2016
It’s a Bee Thing

I’ve seen enough bees waking up on sunflowers, that it must be a bee thing. “You haven’t lived until you’ve spent a night on a sunflower,” I imagine one bee saying to another. Or, “Don’t forget to add it to your bucket list,” they might advise. For a bee, their bucket list starts early. Humans dawdle over their bucket lists for years. Most bees have one season to pack it all in.

If I was a bee, spending a day on a flowering artichoke would be high on my bucket list. So would visiting all the tomatoes that resulted from my pollination work. With my stinger, I’d carve my initials on the really big ones.

September 20, 2016
What’s at the End of a Rainbow?

What’s at the end of the rainbow? A big tomato, that’s what.

The tops of the trees are in flames this evening. Fall sunsets make for spectacular evenings. Each season has its palette. Fall’s palette is that of the burning bush. Drop by drop, the autumn rains are washing away summer’s brilliant hues.

September 17, 2016
Terror in the Garden

Picking beans this afternoon I stumbled on a harvestmen waiting for prey. Look at it closely, and you can see that it’s not a spider. It is in the order of arachnids known as opiliones. They are not venomous and they don’t spin webs. They have been around for 400 million years. They tend to be nocturnal and catch prey by ambushing them.

Seeing creatures like this harvestmen make me glad I’m not a small bug. Life would be one constant nightmare keeping an eye out for monsters like this to ruin a perfectly good day. After one of these has made a meal out of you, they clean their legs by pulling them through their jaws.

September 16, 2016