i got an email

i emailed John Zerzan and
HE WROTE BACK
i'm finally somebody!!!!
:) :) :)

i got a bike!!
AND
i have a second interview tomorrow for a wonderful job with a non profit!
AND
in less happy news
my boyfriend fell off a cliff and broke his wrist!
we put out beer traps for the slugs and it absolutely worked. this morning we came outside to bowls of dead slugs and pabst all over the garden. yummm.
the tomatoes are doing wonderfully, as are the nasturciums which are in with the geraniums in the window boxes.
i need to go give this bike a test ride... seeya!

Kitchen Song

The trumpet vine grew in the kitchen window
and blew bright orange on the wall
You sat in the morning light, holding a guitar
as the first summer rain began to fall.
Like the gentle raindrops, your words fell in the air
Making things so clear as you quietly sat there
It reminded me of other times you had come before
And brought a song, or just walked in through the kitchen door.
Now it seems the truest words I ever heard from you
Were said at kitchen tables we have known
Somehow, in the warm room, with coffee on the stove
Our hearts were really most at home
Sitting at a table, looking hard at you
Catching up on stories of the things we'd tried to do
And it seems we really said the most when we didn't talk at all,
And let the song speak for us like the sunlight on the wall.
Now as you come and go, in sunshine and in rain
Some years are seen more clearly than the rest
If it weren't for kitchen songs and mornings spent with friends
We all might lose the things we love the best
I can see you sitting there, beneath the trumpet vine
With sunlight in the window, in the kitchen in my mind
You came when you were needed, I could not ask for more
Than to turn and find you walking through the kitchen door.

- Kate Wolf RIP

What's been up

A few very exciting things!
1) Slugs ate all the of the fucking spinach!
2) Kyle has been hunting the slugs- WITH A BOW AND ARROW (really)
3) We have a delightful new room-mate, Miss Sarah B. Killion. Sarah is small and she has short red hair. She likes to make puns and rap raps. She cooks well and creatively and she cleans up her mess when she's done. Her room is colourful and full of horse figurines and artwork she has made. Sarah is very positive and she is full of love for everyone.
4) I (Elizabeth) have just had an un-paid CEO position handed to me, and a free house, if I want it. I can't really explain this to you but trust me. It's gonna be a community art space and garden and it probably won't happen because a 60 year old madman and a forestry defense kid are at the helm, but it would be magical if it did.
5) You know what WILL happen, though? SALEM FREE SKOOL. what classes would you like to take? what classes could you teach? think about it. the first class will be Your Rights & The Police, taught by Rory Gravelle, and it will take place on June 9th. After the class there will be time to talk about future classes. So... yes.
The cat is adorable. Did I mention that we have an adorable cat? I love him so much.

I'm so glad we elected this man!

GOOD JOB AMERICA!!!!!!
also i'd like to point out that one of the rail lines set to be revitalized is the pacific northwest corridor, serving eugene to salem pdx seattle and vancouver BC! can you imagine how amazing a lightrail train would be? we can rebuild it better than it was before! smarter! faster! stronger! cheaper! amazing. we would be able to head up to canada in like, less than two days, involving no bullcrap bus transfers and stinky chemical toilets. omg y'all. omg.

wow!

recycled lanterns...

recycled lanterns! i'm going to scrub the paint off later so you can't tell they're just old beer cans- and then hang them up in the flowering quince next time we have a garden party, to make things a bit more festive.
got the idea from these folks and their site also features a step-by-step instructable for making apple cider using nothing but some clamps, two boards, a pillowcase, and old 2 litre bottles. and apples, obviously. it actually doesn't seem like it would turn out too bad. i think i'll try it this fall.

i'm all covered in dirt

today was a very busy day in the garden! we got new beds dug! when i say that, i mean that kyle dug new beds, and i followed him with a trowel digging out roots and rocks and blackberry vines. it was hard work considering we were hacking them out of 50 year old lawn with some pretty resilient grass. you wouldn't think grass would be that hard to get out of the ground, but it is.


it may be a small area, but it's one more area that ISN'T useless, boring lawn, and IS producing food, and that's a fine victory, any day!

also kenney came over last night and brought some of his delicious homemade beer with him. he brought an IPA and a heff and they were both wonderful and rich and... creamy? can beer be described as creamy? i think maybe it can.

dinner was just okay last night, not one of my more shining acheivements- the theme was "crepe your pants!" and so for dinner i did sour cream potato and sweet corn crepes with cheese melted on top. i meant to throw on applesauce but i clean forgot. too bad, i think it would have added some much needed flavor, as they were pretty bland. and for desert i made fresh furit filling for the insides, and topped them with ice cream, caramel sauce, and FLAMING CHERRIES. basically i just made a batch of cherries jubilee and dumped it on before lighting. but guess what. when you dump it on the ice cream, the ice cream mixes with the brandy and so it didn't all burn off, so they tasted VERY strongly of booze. which was okay with the fruit, for instance the cherries and plums, but the crepes themselves were vile and whiskey-like. not so good. looked beautiful, had great presentation value, though. also we ate dinner outside at the picnic table with funky little tea light holders shaped like lotuses for light, and everyone was so happy because of the nice weather, i don't think anyone really cared about being served a big old plate of alcohol for desert. plus this is not really a group which will say no to alcohol in any form, if you know what i mean, and i think you do (my friends are drunks)


that's all for now! tomorrow we plants the tomatos and transplant the chives! also hopefully finish the lattice work on the patio so i can plant the hops! i think the raspberries died! oh well!

After the long hiatus!

Eliazbeth has returned from Central America! Here are some of the ong-going goings-ons you and I both missed.
Michelle Obama planted a garden at the White House! Damnit, Michelle, I just love you so much. You are such a kick-ass lady.
Did you know that Michelle also gave the first lady of France an acoustic guitar upon meeting her? And broke protocol to give the Queen of England a hug? Did you know that she's the same height as me?
Here's a great little animated video about the history of gardens at the White House. It's really great.
Speaking of gardens, I can see Kyle outside working on the garden right now! The plastic has been put up on the greenhouse, and right now he's digging a bunch of new beds along the fence.
I'm working on a project, too- the patio. Until yesterday, the patio had a picnic table and benches, a whole bunch of firewood, and really gross grey paint on the floor which was peeling to reveal red underneath. Well NOT ANYMORE BABY. I've been pressure-washing off the grey paint, and I'm going to paint a cool trom de leis (sp?) of an Oriental rug in the middle, and hang up hammocks. It's going to be mad tropical.
Also I'm putting up lattice-work on the South side of the patio, to try and a) use that sunlight for something, ie, growing hops, and b) create some nice cool shade during the hot part of the summer, so I can chillax in my hammock in a dark little den of coolness.
Tonight we're making crepes. Savory crepes for dinner, sweet crepes for desert.
I went to Word of Mouth with Kenney yesterday for breakfast. The owners live right across the street from us! How funny. They seem like really sweet people (I only met the lady) and I guess they used to own Busick Court too. I got the "Heavenly Veggie Hash" which was huge and delicious, it comes with two eggs and huge thick slabs of Cascade Bakery bread. Good prices, too. Offcenter Cafe is going to have to STEP UP.
My aunt Jamie is the owner of Queen of Tarts Baking Co (see sidebar for link) and she is eligible to win a couple of the Best of Salem catagories! It would help her out ENORMOUSLY if I could get a couple of people to go to the Statesman Journal website and vote for her! If you've never eaten at her cafe, you are seriously missing out. It's in the basement of the public library. She used to work as a baker for the Conditeri but they wanted her to use cheaper ingredients to keep the prices down (like margarine instead of butter- ugh) and so she quit and opened her own place. It's really wonderful, the sandwiches are huge and fresh and original but the baked goods are where she really shines, the scones and cinnamon rolls especially. And the Marionberry handpies. She uses fresh local organic ingredients whenever possible, getting a lot of her produce from the Farmer's Market and even picking her own blackberries for the episode of Living Culture she was featured on (which you can view here) and as if that wasn't amazing enough, she built her business all by hand. She's self-taught and she had two small children when she decided to become a baker and by God, she became a baker. If you know Jamie, you know how typical of her that is. She doesn't have any advertising budget for her cafe, so it would really mean a lot of she could win one of the Best of Salem catagories so go and vote for a local, independant, woman-owned, local-food serving delicious bakery!
We adopted a kitten from the Humane Society.

Matthew and Fiddlesticks

His name is Fiddlesticks. He was one of those "animals in need" that basically are going to be put to sleep really soon and I just couldn't bear to leave him there so he had to come home with me. He's awesome. He has a ton of zany zippy energy though and I'm having a hard time coming up with stuff for him to do! We need more cat toys.
I HAVE A COLD.
I will put up some pictures of the new vegetable beds tomorrow afternoon, stay tuned, folks.

One more cup of coffee 'fore I go... to the valley below

A lovely photograph from Miss Allie Learn (click for better res) taken at dinner at the D St house. Elizabeth on the left and Matthew on the right. Classy.

Here are some pictures from the yard. Hope that you enjoy them. I hope they give you kind of an idea of how the garden is progressing, ie, very slowly. We are so poor it is hard to find money for expensive things like plant starts and also Kyle works a lot and Matt goes to school a lot, plus we are super popular so it is hard to find time. But it's comin'. See:The greenhouse! Still needs plastic. More on that in a minute...

This is where we chop the firewood, because we're hella mountain men.


Here is our lovely patio! Look how pretty the flags look in the sunlight. Please ignore the coffeecups and overflowing ashtrays.
Some beautiful flowers growing out back.
And here are some irises that popped up the other day! What a suprise! We thought that was just a random shrub!
What will be the tea garden, and on the right, part of the crown of an oak tree that Fenderson rescued from certain destruction. It is beautiful and complex. We don't quite know what to do with it, to tell you the truth. Something will come up, I'm sure.

This is going to be the main vegetable bed. This is kind of an "action shot" meaning that we didn't finish what we were in the middle of because we got distracted, so you, lucky reader, get to observe the process of turning shitty old lawn grass into sexy funky dirt to grow things in. This is largely done with sticks with pointed ends and compost.
Speaking of compost- here's the inside of the compost bin! I had to brave some stinky smells to take this picture but we are pretty proud of how much kitchen scraps we have been able to throw in here. We have been very disciplined about it. Peelings, gross leftovers, stale bread, anything. We are not cooking the eggshells before we throw them in because we are lazy but we are pretty sure it will work either way. We shall see .
These are only a few of the many compost bins. This whole fence you see behind them will be covered in beans, peas and scarlet runners. Maybe even hops!
Some of the flowers, cut and inside on the piano. Also here you can see a globe which has the USSR on it and a Japanese float from a fishing net. Yes.

Right before dinner was served the other night. Forgot to take pictures of people but doesn't the table look attractive?





Here are the seeds we bought at the store the other day:
Collards
Kale
Beets
Carrots, long and skinny
Beets, cylindrical? Do these taste different from regular beets?
Chamomile (yum, tea garden!)
Leeks
Kale- earlier
Mixed Salad Greens
Cucumbers, normal
Sugar Snap Peas
Lemon Cucumber
"Early Wonder" Beets (these are round)
Sweet Basil
Zucchini Squash (don't worry, just one package of these!)
Summer Crookneck Squash
Carrots
Different Basil (what is it called if not sweet? just basil? spicy basil? savory basil?)
Italian Striped Zucchini (oh, I lied)
Cilanto/ Coriander
Pole Beans




About the greenhouse: where can you get plastic for a greenhouse? Well, according to Mark Wigg, you can get it from Agri-Plas in Brooks. I intend to do just that. Yet again, Living Culture turns out to be insanely helpful and relevant.

The other night I was over at Casa Rafn, birthplace of Living Culture, and I discovered two things. One, they linked to this blog on their site! Haha yay our first link!
And two, I met Chris and Elizabeth, who are Minto Island Growers. They're awfully sweet people, very funny and charming, and I'd like to get to know them better and possibly go see their farm! Here is a link to their website.

Dinner this Saturday is a private pizza party in a closed restaurant. Top secret and very delightful, my friends are so wonderful.

Anyway this will probably be the last post for a little while, as Elizabeth is off to Costa Rica on Sunday and she very much doubts that Matt or Kyle will remember to blog it up. It's possible, keep checking back, and if nothing else, we'll see you on March 26th!

another day, another dinner

so you may remember that we went over to dinner at the D st house recently, and allie completely dominated us with her chicken. well we've upped the stakes- last night we made walnut broccolli asparagus onion quiche with a potato crust, green salad with home-made mango chili pepper salad dressing, and an oreo cake.
joe wiley came to visit which was nice because i never see that fool.
guests were allie brooke rachel sarah k and logan, the usual suspects. oh and matt made some more bread, this time it was egg bread and we all agree it was better than the regular old non-egg bread he made last time.
off to wash every dish i own! huzzah.