Conservation of Mass

Today was the first day this week I got to spend a couple hours in the yard.  Our weekdays can sometimes be hectic between work, playing with the kids, and helping with homework.  I am really in awe with how fast plants grow this time of year.

These potatoes were just barely peeking out of the soil earlier this month.  

One thought struck me as I was admiring the garden vegetables and flowers: unless we are talking about nuclear reactions, matter is neither destroyed nor created.  Thus, the gain in the mass of a plant is equal to the loss in mass of its surrounding environment.  I am not a biologist or botanist, but I assume that most of the mass gained by a plant is due to water.  And so access to uncontaminated water sources is crucial not only for the health of the plant, but to those that depend on the plant for food - and all humans depend on plants for food.  Additionally, the plant extracts minerals and nutrients from the soil, and carbon dioxide from the air.  And so it goes...

  

A Compost Chicken Gate and a Clothesline Trellis

We have a compost pile, or bin, located at the back corner of our yard, right next to the fence.  Last year I had to cover it because the chickens could climb the compost and hop over the fence...not good.  One day on my way to work, when I got on the road behind our house I did a quick look in the general direction of our yard and saw a chicken.  And I remember thinking," oh a chicken, neat - we have chickens".....SCREEEETCH!  I quickly turned around, corralled the chicken and put a make shift tarp over the top of the compost.

Chickens do wonders for compost.  They do a great job of breaking down leaves in the fall.  But one disadvantage of having free range chickens (or as free range as they can possibly be in a ~50' x ~75' backyard), is that they occasionally lay eggs in places other than the chicken coop.  Well, it's only natural I guess; they see us as the people that take their eggs, so...they want to make sure their eggs are safe.  Ordinarily we'll find one egg here this week, and another over there the next, but today I found five eggs in the compost pile.  Fortunately we have baby gates from when the boys were younger, only now it's a chicken gate.

Don't feel too bad for the chickens.  They still get the lion's share of yard waste and much of our food scraps.  Much of what goes into the compost pile is the bedding from their coop.

I planted peas on March 10 of this year, under the protection of a cold case.  Because of height limitations within the cold case, I only built a small trellis out of last year's sunflower stalks.

Clearly, the peas had outgrown my attempt at a within-the-confines-of-a-cold-case trellis.  Last fall, in preparation for Hurricane Sandy, we accidently broke our umbrella clothes line.  But rather than throw it away, my wife disassembled it and thought it would be useful for something some day.  And that day was today, as a pea plant trellis.

  
A little bit of twine through the eyelets of the old clothesline made a nice trellis.  And lesson learned; next year I won't plant peas in the cold case, and I'll build a proper trellis before planting.

Pictures of the Week

I had to check if he was still breathing...(he was) 

The greatest job in the world...when you're seven

Our peonies began to bloom 

The first of the mystery lilies to bloom

Beans, Books, and Bed

Funny, or sad, as it may be, I don't recall ever seeing anyone prepare dried beans.  So...I gave it try.  We eat a lot of pasta,which I like because it is easy and versatile, though I'd like to have something just as versatile but more hearty.  I let a pound of beans soak all day while we were away at work/school, and I must say that I was impressed by how much water the beans absorbed.

When we got home in the afternoon I let the beans simmer for about an hour and a half.  For dinner I enjoyed some beans with garden fresh greens, sauteed mushrooms from last week's farmers' market, and pickled peppers. 

While the beans simmered, my younger son and I walked to the library to pickup a book I had reserve.  One of the things I enjoy about where we live is the close proximity to our town's parks, waterways, and the library.  And the library is real gem - when we moved here the library was housed in a musty room on the second floor of the Town Hall.  In 2006, a new library was built.  The new library building is very open, utilizes natural lighting quite well, and is heated and cooled by geothermal heat pumps.  I really wish our house had geothermal rather than an oil burning furnace.

The library also has a nice children's section that offers many activities throughout the year.

After dinner, the boys wanted to go "camping."  And so we did...in the backyard.  We do this a few times a year.  And each time it is fun to point out the night sounds to the boys that they ordinarily don't hear from the comfort of their room.    

I haven't taken my boys on a deep-in-the-woods camping trip.  But I think my four-year-old could handle it now.  And so I shall look for a quasi-nearby place that could offer a "wild" experience.

Volunteer Sunflowers

Over the last week I noticed a strange "weed" growing with the pansies.  These "weeds" look a lot like young sunflower plants, which is fascinating because until this spring, this section of the yard was grass - and this is the only place in the yard I've seen these type of "weeds."

We had a few sunflower plants last summer, and the boys really liked how tall they grew.  If all of the "weeds" with the pansies turnout to be healthy sunflowers, I expect we could see Van Gogh in the driveway painting a beautiful landscape....Okay, so that may be a stretch, but seriously, who doesn't like sunflowers? 

I was trying to get a good picture of a bee visiting the flowering kale (and if you look closely, there is a bee in the picture), but once I got inside, I really liked the yellow flowers contrasted against the red chard.

Smart as a Pig!

My 1st grader made the following Mother's Day card at school.  Oh, to be seven again...I wonder what the teacher thought.

So, a synopsis of the conversation:

Mom - I'm as smart as a pig?!!

Son - but Mom, pigs are smarter than dogs, but they have poor eyesight. And they have a good sense of smell.

This is definitely a keeper.  Fortunately he's seven, and although maybe not the best way to wish mom a Happy Mother's Day, he certainly does have some sort of innocent charm.  And then he spent most of the rest of the day outside, doing what kids do when near even the smallest of water sources, playing in the ditch water.

Both my boys often comment on shadows, and how much they "move" over the course of a day.  So today  we placed a stick in the ground, marked its shadow, and waited about fifteen minutes.

They were again impressed with how much the shadow "moved" over a short time.  Then we talked about how the change in the shadows can help us with our directions.  And with sidewalk chalk, we were able to draw a North arrow.

Maybe the Google satellite will update their aerial image of our house with our cool chalked North arrow on the driveway.

Opening Day...for the Farmers Market!

My sons helped plant the remaining two blueberry bushes yesterday afternoon.  We ran out of room in the front bed and had to dedicate space in the yard.  Cool! - that's less lawn to quasi-mow.  Now we have seven blueberry bushes: two that we've had for a couple of years and are already good producers, and five more we picked up last weekend.

This morning the Havre de Grace Farmers Market opened for the season.  We're regulars at the farmers market and today we picked up mushrooms, a block of cheddar cheese, and two pepper plants (the peppers I planted from last year's plants didn't come up...).

We've had a cooler than usual spring, and that was apparent at the market today in that I didn't see any strawberries.  The farmers said we're a few weeks behind.  I hope that the heavy rains we've had over the past week or so won't hurt the strawberry yields.