For Ladies Only

At my work, we have a tea box that is randomly filled with the rejects from our donated food. Usually things are run of the mill, you get your earl greys, your breakfasts, your herbal greens. Today we have:

"Absolute Natural: Women's Tea"

Obviously, I was compelled to try it. What made this tea so lady specific? It looked pretty normal in the tea bag and smelled surprisingly like chicken bouillon and celery seeds. When I added the water, the ingredients separated out in a weird way, causing  a white powdery layer to form on the top of the bag that was a little disturbing. I forge onward.

The taste is surprisingly mild and herby- not salty like the smell led me to believe. A little bitter, a little spicy, very complex and a bit sweet. It tasted pretty wholesome while it was hot. But as it cooled it started to get more medicinal and kind of nasty.

I did a little research and found out it contains dong-qui, red dates, and goji berries. I found this on a forum about "natural breast enhancement". Apparently it helps keep your boobies big when you're trying to loose weight.

Dong qui, also known as Chinese Angelica, is a root used in ancient herbal medicine used to treat lady problems (PMS and Menopause), anemia, and fatigue. It's also traditionally associated with causing miscarriages.

Red Dates, also known as jujubes, are a natural sedative/ stress reliever. It's powers also include laxative, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, and wound healing properties. It is also a traditional contraceptive!

Finally, Goji berries , also known as wolfberries, are supposedly good for cardiovascular and ocular health. They are a well known trendy "super fruit."

So basically, this stuff is a witches brew of weird medicinal herbs. Also, kills babbys dead.

Get your own here!

Wildflowers

They are my favorite sort of flowers really, I think. I have many good memories of being a kid in summer, in a meadow near my grandparent's summer cabin, making bouquets with my cousins. What's my favorite wild flower?

 Rudbeckia Hirta. Alias: Black-eyed Susan.

This flower is purported to have a variety of medicinal uses; it's roots have been said to remedy sores, snakebites, colds, worms, and earaches.

I was always attracted to it's sunny color. Plus, it's long basal leaves are perfect for rounds of "he loves me, he loves me not."

I'm sad to hear it referred to by some as an "obnoxious weed!" Because it is beautiful. I am interested in reading botanist Richard Mabey's book "Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants". Can't we all just get along with our uninvited vegetation?

Benchmarks

Spring is here y'all. Proofs:

1. Ample Daffodils in the yard.

2. We cooked dinner out tonight on the grill.

 

We had steaks and aspargus. Our complementary beer was the good as always Allagash Dubble.

 

3.New spring slip-on shoes.

I decided to get some sweet Tom's as my shoe of choice. For those who aren't in the know, Toms is a shoe company that donates a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair that is purchased. They're definitely wooing the "vote with your dollar" crowd. Along with my penchant craft beer, daily ponderings of literary tattoos and my burgeoning love of anime, these shoes make my transformation into an insufferable hipster functionally complete.

So far, I really like them! They're very comfortable and extremely breathable, so it's not gross to wear them as they are intended (ie: no socks!). I like how they're the most basic looking shoe you can imagine, which means you can dress them up or down. They are a lovely replacement for my poor ol' naturalizer flats that died over the winter.

Let's hope for a continuation of this sunny, 70 degree weather!

Picturesque

So, I've been lucky enough to snag another job that involves getting out of the office and doing some hands on outreach work. My new temp position in the Brown Bag program at the Food Bank gets me driving all over the 3 counties of western MA. Yesterday I visited by far my favorite town yet: Shelburne Falls


The town has two claims to fame, outside of being wicked beautiful.

1. The Glacial Pothole rock formations

2. The Bridge of Flowers, which is a beautiful, free community garden that just happens to be suspended across the Deerfield River.

Betheny, the food bank intern and I got lunch at that little pub that you can see on the left of the picture, over looking the bridge. I got grilled cheese and spinach and mushroom soup. It was a delicious addition to the first day that really felt like fall. We walked over the bridge on the way back to the car and it was positively exploding with Dahlias of every color. You can really tell they take care to plant the flowers so there is something blooming from April to October.

The village is just nestled in this little mountain valley, and full of these neat metal suspension bridges. The town center is surprisingly active too, given how isolated Shelburne is. There were lots of neat little artsy shops and independent cafes. No wonder Bill Cosby lives here. I am hoping to get back again soon!

Royal Buds

Everywhere I look when I drive around now, I see tons of Queen Anne's Lace blooming. It has officially come into season.

This plant is was brought to the northeastern North America from Europe, where it goes by a name closer to it's Latin Roots: Daucua Carota - Wild Carrot.

Yeah! Apparently the taproot of the plant is edible while young, but quickly becomes inedible and "woody". It's really interesting to think that all our modern carrots have been selectively cultivated from something people usually consider a weed.

Carrot Flowers for Comparison

Queen Anne's Lace seeds have also been prescribed as holistic birth control since the Age of Pericles. It blocks the synthesis of every girl's favorite hormone, progesterone.

Yay!

But before you go off nomming on wild carrot seeds, make sure you're not accidentally nomming Poison Hemlock, cuz they look really similar. OK?

Poison Hemlock for Comparison

But then all this talk about Queen Anne's Lace got me wondering. Who is this Queen Anne lady anyway?

Anne of Denmark was crowned Queen of England in 1590 in what some would consider a very sexy coronation ceremony:

"During the seven-hour ceremony, her gown was opened by the Countess of Mar for presiding minister Robert Bruce to pour "a bonny quantity of oil" on "parts of her breast and arm," so anointing her as queen. (Kirk ministers had objected vehemently to this element of the ceremony as a Pagan and Jewish ritual, but James (VI and I, her husband) insisted that it dated from the Old Testament.)"

She is remembered as a somewhat inconsequential historical figure, known best for being a patron of the arts and for throwing kick ass masques. Her harshest critic is the 20th century biographer who wrote "Alas! The king had married a stupid wife." Ouch!

She beget Charles I, who was executed during the English Civil War, and died of dropsy at the age of 44.

There are a few rumors about why this plant is named after her, including that she held a contest to see if anybody could duplicate the floral pattern. Some plants sport a small red flower in the center of all the white, which supposedly represents where she pricked her finger while making lace.

Neat.

The Almighty Dollar

I would consider myself a person who is more attuned than average to the dangers of materialism, on ecological, psychological and economical levels. That being said, I am always loathe to call my self a consumer. This week I think proved to me better than most that I am just as bad about acquiring stuff as any other American. I blame the heat wave, it made being inside an air conditioned store seem like a better option than sweltering in our house.

The first thing I bought was even to help us keep cool. Paul and I ran through the sprinkler the other day and it was awesome. I run it for a little while in the afternoon too, to keep the vegetables alive.


I was also fighting a really nasty cold earlier in the week. I decided that taking vitamins would probably help my immune system kick it. I opted for the gummie type, because I'm secretly 5. The name of this brand is a big oxymoron. "One-a-Day"....but you take two of them!

We finally decided to resolve the not having Mario Kart issue once and for all, and broke down and bought a new copy of the game. I missed playing so much!

A Hula Hoop. Paul and I are going to the Gathering of the Vibes music festival at the end of the month, and people often bring hula hoops to these types of events. I had always been bad at hula hooping, and wanted to see if I could get better at it. I'm still pretty terrible, but I like to think I'm improving...The check out guy asked me if I went to Hampshire College when I bought this.
These hot shoes. I could not resist them, for they were only $7.

Mmmm....Trader Joes Vegetable Gyoza are AWESOME!

Annnd in spite of them losing the summer beer taste test, A Harpoon UFO is still nice on a hot hot day.

Inch by inch, row by row

As I mentioned before, I've been spending a lot of time out in the yard trying to make the most of our little plot of land. I blogged in the past about my notorious plant-killing skills, but much to my surprise, things are really growing beautifully. The way things are actually staying alive has made me want to make the effort all the more to assure a harvest come fall. Here's what's growing at our house:

Green Beans, a variety that grows in vinous bushes, so no bean-poles are required!

Cherry Tomatoes

This little guy is the first fruit, way ahead of all the others. What a little edible prodigy! I'll have to put up bird netting soon to protect these guys from feathered fiends.

Raspberries. Ok, so I didn't plant these, They're growing in huge bushes all through the real brambly wild part of our yard. In the spring, I was thinking that I'd eventually like to take out all those pricker bushes. But now that I know that they're raspberries, I'm not so sure!


Red Potatoes. This project was one of the things I was most excited about when I started the garden. I used this tutorial to convert an old busted-up trash can into a potato planter. Planting them this way is great because it's a lot more economical, space-wise. You don't even need to have a yard to have a potato harvest. Plus, no digging. At the end of the season, just flip the can over to collect your potates!

I also spent some time on Thursday getting our poor bedraggled roses to climb a trellis.

And today, Paul helped me start a compost pile. I'm looking forward to having nice fertile soil from it to use in the garden next year. And I'm also really excited to put our food scraps to work, instead of just throwing them away.

Caturday XXI - In bloom....

Our yard is sporting some pretty amazing perennials right now. We have rose bushes and gardenias and all sorts of good stuff. It inspired me to get back into my college pastime of floral design.

I was a little nervous about putting the bouquet out on the kitchen table with Roosevelt around. Hammurabi was always really eager to eat up the projects I would bring home.

Guilty conscience? NO.

Much to my surprise though, kitty just likes to sit and smell the flowers. After I put these down, she sniffed them for a little while, then came over and licked my cheek. It's been a few days now too and I see no evidence of nomming.

I think it's because Rose has become obsessed with the idea of going outside. She's discovered that the screens in the bedroom pop out really easily too, so it's become kind of a hassle preventing her escapes and finding her afterward. She's a headstrong little fuzzball. Perhaps she was just glad we brought in some of those smells from outside that she's been lusting after.

Edible Treasure!

Ron Ben Israel is a cake decorator from New York City. He's known for making insanely beautiful, high end cakes. His creations are covered with thousands of handmade candy jewels that are made of sugar but sparkle like treasure. The best part is, that these cakes apparently taste amazing too, as the artist prides himself on using only the finest ingredients.





Please ignore the annoying title of this show, and the repeated, gentrified use of the word bling. Skip to 2:16 to get right into it. These cakes are pretty unbelievable. They look like they're right out of a fantastical renaissance feast.



I really love how excited and enthusiastic this guy is about his job. His enthusiasm for disco is also pretty great. I think the one at 6:35 is my favorite. All those gorgeous flowers are hand crafted out of sugar! Wow.

Alice in Wonderland- 1951

Going home for the family New Years party gave me a great opportunity to raid the VHS cabinet for some childhood classics. One of my acquisitions was the animated "Alice in Wonderland".

The book "Through the Looking Glass" was a favorite of mine when I was younger. I have a really beautiful illustrated copy. It was really my first introduction to British Literature, as well as absurdism. I always liked how when nonsensical and unusual things happened, Alice just sort of accepted it and rolled with it, as if there was nothing weird about it at all. The movie did a great job of playing that up too.

One thing that the movie didn't do so well was the music. Most of the songs are boring and forgettable, and the opening credit music is really shrill. It really is the worst of that 1950's style movie chorus music.



It is an interesting movie to watch, when you keep in mind that it was made about 15 years before the drug culture became part of public consciousness. You realize that the somewhat psychedelic aspects, the trippy imagery and all the chasing the white rabbit stuff, was done completely unironically. It's just good old fashioned innocent imagination. It does make me wonder though how the new version Tim Burton is making will interpret it all, now that the story itself is basically a euphemism for hallucinating. I don't think he's going to hold back at all, it's going to be a visual explosion!

I had a really hard time deciding which clip to put up for this. My favorite part of the movie is probably when the white rabbit thinks Alice is his maid "Mary ann" and makes her go find his gloves, just because it cracks me up. Mary Ann! Sadly, there weren't any clips of that part on the youtube. This reenactment was as close as I could get.

I also considered putting up the caterpillar scene. I always especially liked the part where he talks about the crocodile. But I also find the parts where he looses his shit at Alice kind of annoying.

So I picked this song, which I remembered the video for much better than the actual song itself. Again, its got that whole bland 1950's chorus thing going on. I really love the idea of doggerpillars and rocking horse flies though.



The weirdest part of it is at 2:15 when Alice messes up the high note in the song. I'm not really sure why they did it that way. I also really like Alice's parting shot to the flowers. "You can learn a lot of things from the flowers...Psha, They could learn some manners."

The only thing I know for sure though about the new Tim Burton version is that Johnny Depp plays the Mad Hatter. I'm pretty confident that he's going to make the character seem cooler than this guy did:

Plants etc.

My dad works at Weston Nurseries in Hopkinton MA. He works selling beautiful gardens to the richie riches, and generally thrives on making green things grow. All while I was growing up, he planted the most wonderful vegetable gardens. I loved going through in the late summer and plucking up the cherry tomatoes.


The smell of them on the vine is one of my favorite scents. Our yard was also always overflowing with beautiful daffodils in the springtime. He did (and still does) a really good job making everything beautiful.

When I was a freshman at Umass, I decided I wanted to get a plant. My dad was really excited when I told him, and picked one that fit my specifications. Not too high maintenance, and one that doesn't need a lot of sunlight, as my crazy roommate had hogged the entire gigantic picture window in our room.
It was a cute little green viney thing that sat on the bookshelf of my desk. As the semester marched on, and things got more hectic, I basically forgot that it existed. Leann confessed at the end of the year that she had been keeping it alive for me, sneaking water into the pot when I wasn't there.

Over the summer the plant thrived when I brought it back into my parents house. It grew so substantially that it had to be repotted. The vines overflowed the sides of the pot and skirted the floor. Subsequently, it became too big for me to fit in my teeny tiny Baker dorm room. Or at least that's what I said. I knew that if it came back to school with me, it would probably die. My parents kept it, and very quickly I forgot about it.

Last year, when Paul and I were still living in Amherst, my dad proudly announces that he still has my plant, and that I can take it back now. He had taken really good care of it for 4 years. He had put it in a nice new hanging basket with plenty of room to grow. I was kind of touched that he still thought of it as my plant.

As soon as it was warm enough, I hung the plant outside in our little fenced in lot. An unexpected frost came, and within a week the poor thing was stone cold dead. After 4 years of careful diligence, I had totally killed it.

My mom had also given me a little potted plant kit for Christmas last year. The pots were about 2 inches wide and came with seeds for Basil and some little pink flowers. They came with soil, fertilizer, and specific directions. I thought I followed them really well, but nothing ever sprouted.

However, for the gardening inept like me, there seemed to be a saving grace - hydroponics. Garrett got Paul and I one of those Aerogarden machines as a wedding present. I was really excited. These things are supposed to be fool proof. You don't need to water the plants, and every two weeks the machine automatically alerts you to add more nutrients.

Well, I guess I'm a fool:



The pictures are kind of blurry, so if you can't tell, they're dead. Dead before even making it out of the sproutling stage. The holes in the pic above are where ones clearly kicked the bucket right off the bat. The only one we're really holding out hope for is Parsley.

I don't know what happened. The little foam things they grew out of looked like they got moldy. We also waited about a year before we set it up, so maybe the seeds were duds. I also suspect that Roosevelt sits on them when we're not home. That sun-simulating light gets nice and toasty like a sunbeam.

At any rate, the verdict is in. Green thumbs are not genetic.