Keeping Warm

This is how our animals are keeping warm during the winter. Princess, the loner cat, is the only one missing. She sleeps in the barn by herself.
Beau, the white furball of a puppy, is growing so fast his head usually has to hang over the side. Just a few weeks ago they all fit inside the bed.
Bella, the Siamese, and Allie, the other orange kitten, are growing fast, too. Punkin, the biggest orange cat, is pregnant. I think it's definitely time for two beds.

Gainsville, a hidden gem for mountain biking. The trails are nicely layered like a worm infestation while shooting out in all directions like a klepto octopi.

My first bike trip of a decent length was 10 years ago from California to Florida. Nevada City to Gainsville actually. Now having rode down to Gainsville from Maine its like the golden spoke of sorts. Two pointsmeetingin my spiderweb of tire tracks. This makes the 6th time I've ridden across the U.S. from one point or another. It felt welcoming, strange and sentimental to be back.

This trashed out and neglected spot is where I used to live 13 years ago. (yep, in the shed)

A metal roof I installed in 99, before I made a living fiddling with bicycles.

A bunch of Great dudes (and Isis). Thanx for the everything.

My honorary ride with the Velo Vixens

We made more than a few stops by Volta for these.

I spent a week in the G-ville. Truly great to see Dru again (the only old friend I found from back in the time) and traipse through the old spots. It still had the smell and feel of what made me stay those years ago. Good town, super folks. Its also saturated in bike shops and there is a lot of buzz in the air of making and building the cycling infrastructure. You can find yourself made of velcro in that fuzzy place.

The only blurry shot I got of a fantastic night ride

This is what I call a "Go Bag".

A huge and fat Thanx to David! It was a fantastic pleasure to hold down the Ranch! And to both Lauren and Dustin, your tour/ trail guiding and dirtbag adoption isunparalleled.

Surly beasts

Cheating a little - this was taken before the big freeze. (Click to see it larger.)
We stopped just in time to spot this flock rounding the corner up ahead. I wanted to talk turkey, but they were not agreeable.
The two on the right were torn between joining their friends on the open road, and turning back to the brushy path at hand. In the end, they remembered that saying about birds of a feather, and ran to catch up.

Miss mom and dad! But, am having some fun

Love the parkie!
Little bit of swimming.....
Saw some views...
Met this little fella, named Oscar.Miss you mom and dad! Hope you are having a nice trip! Having a fine time here.Hugs and tail wags!

Homecoming

.. is the Year of Homecoming for Scots from all over the world. In my own home village tonight will see young and old, natives and exiles enjoying traditional entertainment and delicacies in the community hall. Wish I was there.
* 'weel kent' = well known. Stovies are a traditional, rib-sticking dish which provides fuel on which to dance the night away.

My Stove

Susan, this post is for you.  You were wondering about my stove.  Well, like everything else in our house, it has a story.  
I knew I wanted an old style stove for my new, old house when we built eighteen years ago.  I thought about a wood burning type stove, but the reproductions were so expensive.
I found a new stove that cost $1500 just like the old one I eventually bought, and it was a piece of junk.  The bottom drawer wouldn't even pull out right.  It was very light weight too.
I found this one in a used appliance store for $150.  It was owned by a little old lady who only cooked oatmeal on Sundays.  Not really. I love it and have had to have very little work done on it.  The door on the left is a deep drawer.  I had wanted two ovens but figured I'd better go ahead and snatch it up.  Who knows when I'd find another one at that or any price.
See the towel handing on the door handle?  That and another one was sent to me by my good friend Katy.  She hand-embroidered both of them.  I love them, Katy!  Thanks so much.
See the tiny checkerboard area next to the floor where your foot hits?  That area is called something.  I just can't remember what it is.  Anyway, I stenciled that checkerboard around the base of my cabinets.  I could only do about three feet at a time before all the blood rushed to my head!  The only way I could paint it was upside down.
The little copper teapot on the stovetop was bought for me by my husband for our third wedding anniversary in San Francisco.  It has a blue delft handle and lid knob.  The grease container was one my Mama had when she first started keeping house in the fifties.  It didn't have a knob on top, so she cut off a small section of corncob, stuck a screw through it, and bolted it to the top of the thing.  It's now been on there for several years and is holding up fine.
So there you have it; the story of my second hand stove.  Someday I hope to write a book about building this house.  There are so many stories to tell. 
 One of my favorites is when the children used my clawfoot tub for a pirate ship.  It, along with many other bathroom fixtures, was sitting in the backyard at our other house waiting to be put into the new one.  They filled it up with water, climbed into large plastic buckets, and sailed away for parts unknown.

Our Kitchen Garden

Here at Circus~Cercis we have a Kitchen Garden. It's exciting to see and read about people all over the country deciding to grow food for the first time by starting "Victory Gardens" - we wish all you Victory Gardeners the best of luck! Our relationship with Kitchen Gardens is longstanding, so for us that name sounds better. Growing vegetables wasn't something we decided to do - it's something we've always done.
Philo remembers long drives to the small town where his grandfather lived, the small frame house and the garden with rows of beets and onions .
I remember my grandmother's small Chicago garden with Swiss Chard and Rhubarb and parsley and remember 'helping' my aunt with her suburban garden.

Where Philo and I grew up, even if there were no rows of vegetables, most yards had some kind of food plants - apple or pear trees, a grape vine for jelly, a clump of rhubarb or a raspberry thicket.
Almost everyone had a tomato patch. I well remember the gross-out chore of picking hornworms off tomato leaves and there's a permanent photographic record of Philo's early success with tomatoes.



As newlyweds in the late 1960's we planted flowers and a few vegetables near the door of our aluminum graduate school hut and squeezed in a few tomatoes and flowers around a rented townhouse in the early 1970's. Once we bought a house on a quarter-acre of land, we could begin the first of 5 real kitchen gardens. In all five gardens we've dealt with clay soil, semi-shade, tree roots and ravenous animals. The first three houses were in the Western Suburbs of Chicago.


Garden #1 (1973-1977) had several large wild cherry trees on the lot but there was a sunny place behind the garage to grow beans and tomatoes and squash and peppers.
Garden #2 (1977-1987) was on a lot with old pear and crabapple trees and wild grape vines. Philo fitted the main bed into the semi-sunny corner of the back fence, eventually adding raspberry trellises and garden grapes.
Another patch in sun on the opposite fence let the kids in the sandbox watch the zucchinis grow and a trellis on the side of the garage let us enjoy the new Sugar Snap peas.
At Garden #3 (1987-1999) we had a reasonably large space at the back of a long narrow lot. Even though the lot was overhung with wild cherries, mulberries and Box elders, this garden really pumped out peppers and tomatoes! Philo had all the salsa he could wish for but I never had enough zucchini. The fence helped keep out rabbits and groundhogs but couldn't save the squash from the squirrels.
Then we moved to Texas, and instead of owning arable land we lived in the deer-filled Austin hills. At Garden # 4 we did our best to grow a few peppers in pots on the deck and tomatoes inside this 4 and 1/2 foot tall, deer-resistant wire enclosure. The soaker hose failed in this situation and the deer nipped every leaf that dared to stray outside the wire. Philo started our current Kitchen Garden #5 in fall .., a few months after we moved to this house and had Swiss Chard & tomatoes by June ... As usual, the plot isn't in full sun, the soil is heavy clay and tree roots creep in from the other side of the fence, but after 5 years of stooping over to fit into the wire house, this feels like a real garden!Instead of either Kitchen Garden or Victory Garden, Yolanda Elizabet uses the term Potager, encompassing not only her decorative vegetable plantings, but grapevines, fruit trees, cold frames, a greenhouse & conservatory. That very cool word may be a little too grand for a 9 X 10 sort-of-raised bed of tomatoes, peppers and a few salad vegetables. We have no greenhouse or conservatory but we've grown wonderful lemons, we hope each year for loquats, pomegranates and figs, were astonished by a crop of edible pecans one memorable autumn and all year long use the herbs planted in troughs and tucked into flower beds. Marjoram and thyme grow in the hypertufa trough above, along with a plant of Italian parsley shared by Rock Rose Jenny. No matter how long you garden, there are new things to learn. We no longer incorporate pecan leaves from our two large trees into the soil, but once the juglone-free Arizona Ash leaves fell this winter we had enough to redo part of the garden using a modified version of Renee's lasagna method. We used timbers to hold up the 'lasagna' in two areas of the garden, one 3' X 4' square and another 2' X 3', making layers of existing soil, decomposed granite, various composts and the dry leaves, then watered regularly and waited. The front edge got a sprinkling of radish and spinach seeds, some shallots and a line of red onions. About 10 days ago I dug the rest of the bed over and made cedar mulch paths. I hunted around to find the soaker hose and decided to give it another try. Last week Philo revised and reinforced the Tomato Scaffolding from last summer and we set it into place. On Sunday we planted a few tomato and pepper plants, adding more soil, compost and granite as we planted. 'Juliet' already has a few flowers but I'm still trying to decide whether it's a good idea in this climate to cover the soaker hose with mulch - what do you think? Even if the drought breaks, the intense summers mean we can't get yields in Austin like the ones in Illinois, but we'll enjoy whatever we can get!In the back of the garden I'm experimenting with an old wooden box discarded by my youngest son and his friends. For years the guys kept it behind the shed, hauling it out once in awhile to use as a backstop. After long exposure to Austin weather one end started to rot off and the box was moved to the trash area, waiting for Bulky Trash Day. But then I had the idea to talk Philo into fixing the bad end and drilling drainage holes in the bottom. I lined it with roll window screen, put it near the fence where nothing ever grows, filled it with potting soil and even though it was a little late in the season, planted seeds. To keep the squirrels and birds out of it I covered the soil with some old racks from the garage. On a recent visit my son took a look at the vegetable garden, and I showed him the seeds sprouting in the repurposed ammo box, saying that it might need a decorative sign. My son knows me too well...he raised an eyebrow and asked, "Peas on Earth?"
Pretty close - what I'd been thinking was "Give Peas A Chance".