Book I recently read

Food grown in my yard (and other plants)

Garlic
Onions
Leeks
Red potatoes
Sweet potatoes (white yams)
Bush beans ('green' beans)
Foot-long beans (Asian variety of string bean)
Tomatoes (twenty plants, multiple varieties)
Basil 
Oregano
Dill
Parsley
Peppers (multiple varieties)
Aronia berry
Currant
Gooseberry
Elderberry
Apple (immature)
Cherry (unproductive in 2025)
Figs (two producing Chicago Hardy varieties)
Blackberry (spreading and thriving)
Hazelnut 
Winter squash

Books I read over the last year

 

First figs

 After three years, I had a small fig harvest. I have three fig plants that I planted in my yard. The one that is three years old produced ten delicious figs, five are shown below. I have a one-year old fig that I grew from a cutting, but it only produced a few figs and they are unlikely to ripen before its gets cold. My third fig in the ground is the largest, and it too is at least three years old. It is the tallest, over six feet, but it did not produce figs this year likely because it doesn't get enough sunlight. It is about time to winterize the figs so that they won't die back. All of these figs are the Chicago Hardy variety.

Ideological floorboards

Below, an excerpt from the book Godwin by Joseph O'Neill, from a review written by A.O. Scott in the NY Times:  "It’s also possible that reading Mark’s alternately diffident and combative first-person narration in “Godwin," Joseph O’Neill’s sharp and slippery new novel, will provoke a more intimate tremor of recognition, especially when he describes the intellectual milieu that formed him":

Netherlands Study Abroad - Summer 2023 (videos)

ENS and Geography students from UK attended this study abroad offerred through KIIS. Below is one of the food gardens maintained by Groengoed, an organization I coordinated with to allow for students and myself to volunteer to weed, hoe, plant and water. We worked at several gardens around the city over the course of our stay in Rotterdam. Students worked in groups of two to four, and we were often working alongside local residents. You can see some ENS students at the end of the video.

As part of the classes I designed, I arranged for all us to volunteer as docents at a Rooftop Rotterdam event. We were there an entire day on the rooftop of a mall in the Zuidplein neighborhood. These are annual events organized by Rotterdamse Dakendagen. Many thanks to this organization for working us into the event.

Another urban food garden where the students and I worked. This garden was on top of an old train station across from a high school. I hope my bean trellis stood the test of time. Talking to some of the other volunteers from Rotterdam while working was one of the highlights of my trip.

The Netherlands from one end to another is an evolving study in biogeomorphology. This is the view from a lookout in Meijendel, just a little ways outside of Den Hague. We rented bikes in the city and rode out this nature reserve. My Society, Resources and Climate class examined many of the water issues in the Netherlands, including how their water infrastructure is set up to balance demands for (dune-filtered) drinking water, coastal protection, and nature conservation.

ENS students on the bike ride to the dunes of Meijendel near Den Hague.

My favorite cafe on the trip. I only went their once. It's location will remain undisclosed.

On the day we arrived in Den Hague, a protest organized by Extinction Rebellion took place. The goal was to shut down the A12 roadway in order to call attention to government subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. There were several thousand people present and in this video I am very much in the rear of the activity. Water cannons were being used to dislodge the protestors down closer to the roadway.

These are the protestors that initially stopped the traffic so that the main protest could take place at a short distance away.

Another one of my favorite days. My partner Laura and I took the train to Haarlem, rented bikes and rode to the beach with a stop to swim in a lake in the dunes. We spent part of the day in Haarlem and this the view from the bench where I happily did nothing on this Saturday morning

 

Netherlands Study Abroad - Summer 2023 (photos)

Volunteer work group at a rooftop food garden in Rotterdam. The gardens are run by Groengoed. Two of our students are in the middle on the back row. Our leader from Groengoed was the woman in the front row center. I am in the back with the hat. 

 

 

 

Water tower at the Meijendel dunes outside of Den Hague. 

Interdune lake in Meijendel dune reserve outside of Den Hague. River water is pumped into the interdune lakes after initial treatment. This water percolates through sand as a way to clean it further before being pumped and piped for drinking water. These dune drinking water sources are becoming increasingly brackish with sea level rise and some of these lake sources now require additional treatment.

Rooftop Rotterdam as my students enter the exhibit for the first time. This is where we volunteered. The work was to make sure that visitors stayed on the yellow path as they toured the street art distributed along the rooftop of this mall in Zuidplein.

The interdune lake where I swam on the bike ride out of Haarlem to the beach. I swam my first strokes here after breaking my arm in December 2022

I traveled on my own to see Marker Wadden, a collection of artificial islands undergoing assembly in the Markemeer, the large lake (its not ocean) north of Amsterdam. 

Marker Wadden on the south facing shore. The island's assembly is designed to take advantage of winds and currents to allow more natural deposition and assembly of the island. The large bird observatory is also still visible on the horizon to the left of the photo. H5N1's presence was noted in the frequent occurrence of dead birds along the trail and a worker whose job was to remove dead birds. I also met a group of biologists out sampling fish in the interior wetlands.

 

On keeping a singular vision

 

Pretend singly, William James

 

Comminuted fracture of the proximal humerus neck

In December 2023, I slipped on ice and broke my left humerus. A comminuted fracture of the proximal humerus neck. In other words, I broke my upper arm bone just below the ball that fits into the shoulder socket, and it broke into several pieces. There was some displacement of the humerus, but the displaced bone >mostly< went back into place due to gravity while my arm was positioned in the sling. There is still some impingement in my shoulder, but I have returned to swimming and can do most of what I could do before.

December 26, 2022

April 16, 2023

Dehydrator for the garden

I've had it a year now. I dehydrated a lot of herbs, peppers, and tomatoes from my garden last summer. This dehydrator was well work the investment. I still have several jars this size of basil, tomatoes, and parsley in June 2023. I'm scaling back some of my tomato plantings this year, but I intend to restock the oregano and parsley, my most used cooking spices.

Berries in my yard

I have three elderberry shrubs, although only one is producing copious amounts of berries. This one sits by itself in my side yard. The other two in my backyard are just growing tall and spindly with lots of blossoms - and very little fruit. I plan to remove one of these two in my backyard and plant another variety of elderberry in its place. I didn't know this, but cross-pollination among varieties increases fruit production. The variety in my side yard must either self-pollinate efficiently or is benefiting from the presence of my two backyard varieties.

The aronia berries are very tart but when cooked down with a sweetener make a very rich blueberry-like syrup. I have three aronia berry bushes and all are producing abundantly even though the bushes are still small, only a few feet high.

My currant bush produced a pint of fruit, but I wasn't in town to enjoy them. The shrub is still small and next year should see the first sizeable harvest.

Gooseberries, aronia berries, and currant are my more dependable producers. Elderberry and cherry less so. Both of my dwarf tart cherry trees had lots of blossoms this summer but not an iota of fruit, which may have been due to the hard freeze in late spring when the blossoms had already started. I'm still waiting on the dwarf mulberry to produce flowers or fruit two years in. It died back to the ground this year.

The larger of my two hazelnut shrubs has several small fruits on it. It's hard to say if they will turn into a nut.

My blackberry is making more berries in my shady side yard where it grows untended than it did when I was carefully pruning and watering it in my garden.

Elderberries

Aronia berry, or chokecherry

How my zucchetta is changing

I am in my third generation of seeds for zucchetta, or tromboncino. I've been letting some of the fruits remain on the vine and grow large rather than eating them all when they are young and tender. I store the winter zucchetta in my basement and eat them over the entire winter and this year, well into the spring. I typically have ten or so plants that climb along a narrow strip of soil that runs along my back fence. This third generation of seeds produced a deeper orange flesh and a better taste. It is closer in flavor to a butternut or winter squash than a yellow squash or zucchini. I've also been selecting for size and taking the last of the individuals to select for storage. As of May of 2023, I still have several large winter squash like the one in the photo below. The long seed-free neck is easily cut into medallions for roasting.

Extracurricular reading from 2022? 2023?

 I may have missed listing of few of the books I've read over the past year and half or more. There's barely enough time to read, so adding them to my blog is not a priority. This was my third reading of Moby Dick. The novel is not what you think it is. Nor is Uncle Tom's Cabin the book you think it is.

Elderberry

The elderberry trees I planted last year have thrived. They may be doing so well as to require some rigorous monitoring and pruning to keep them from overtaking my yard. Sorry kids, when you inherit the house, the first thing you will have to deal with will be all the feral elderberry. I harvested some of the flowers to make elderflower tea, but I'd rather wait to see what I can do with the berries. They won't be ready until the end of the summer. I have four elderberry bushes, but how many berries I get will depend upon how dutiful the birds are at foraging.  I dug out my blackberry this year because the birds would get to them before I could. However, my blackberry were not producing very well because the very sunny location I planted them required more watering than I was willing to do. I wasn't interested in a making such a resource intensive berry. The elderberry so far seems much more prolific, although the preparation of the berries to remove the arsenic compounds may make it more work than picking and eating a blackberry.

First harvest of garlic and kale basil lemon pesto

The Kentucky soils again made me feel like I know how to garden. My first garlic crop worked much to my surprise.  I didn't harvest too soon or too late. We roasted some of the fresh garlic and I set the rest up in front of a fan downstairs to cure for a couple of weeks. I have about three dozen bulbs to store. And a week or so after the garlic harvest, my basil plants needed a first clipping to keep them from going to seed. My kale was doing well despite the heat, and from these confluences arose the return of  summer pesto. That's a bus tray piled with my garden's contributions in the photo below, the first of 2022. Actually, the twins have been eating my kale basil lemon pesto all year, as I still had enough frozen from last summer to last through this past June. To the basil and kale, I add raw pumpkin seeds, olive oil, and just a little bit of parmesan - easy on the cheese so that it is more vegetable than dairy product. 

Maypop (passionflower) juice

Maypop is a North American passionflower that is cold-tolerant. It makes an edible fruit that has long been eaten by native Americans and rural populations in the southerneastern US. In Louisiana it is sometimes referred to as pomegranate vine. It has a vine growth form that is known for being weedy, and some consider Passiflora incarnata invasive. I've had to pull runners up all summer to keep it from growing over my other plants. I'll know next year if I have a source of fruit juice and leaf cover to cool my porch, or if I have a weedy monster I can't control.  It does die back completely in the fall though. It does not leave behind a woody vine that persists through the winter. The fruits just needs to be scooped out, squeezed or pressed against the sides of water-filled pitcher to extract the juice, then chill. 

Harvesting my molokhia

Also known as Lebanese spinach, Egyptian spinach, Palestinian spinach, If I get a lot of seed pods I may make refrigerator pickles out of them. Below is a closeup of some of the leaves. And at the bottom are the plants in my garden. They are well over six feet tall. I had minor beetle damage on the top leaves mid summer, but they grew well and needed very little care or watering. I'll probably grow it again as I have been using the leaves all summer on pizza, sandwiches, and wraps. Photos of the cooked version coming soon.

White asparagus long beans

 I grew another crop of asparagus beans this summer.  Asparagus beans originated in Asia and are increasingly grown in the US. They looks like snap beans but are actually more related to southern cowpeas. They are also pest resistant and in my garden much easier to grow than some of the more common Kentucky bean varieties. The photo at the bottom is my storage freezer. It is filled with tomatoes and lots of bags of asparagus beans - I can make Lebanese green beans for dinner all winter.

On pragmatism and problem solving

Savransky, M. (2021). Around the day in eighty worlds: Politics of the pluriverse. Duke University Press

Savransky, M. (2021). The pluralistic problematic: William James and the pragmatics of the pluriverse. Theory, Culture & Society, 38(2), 141-159. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276419848030

 

Savransky, M. (2020). Problems All the Way Down. Theory, Culture & Society.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420966389

Excerpt is from Savransky (2020)