Botany Buddy

Where to start.  I am back from a pseudo fast from twitter and the blog for lent.  It was unofficial, but needed even though I did sneak in a few visits on feast days.  However, the thought of returning from the wilderness is very appropriate.  You all know I am prone to the nature side of things.  Yet this time has allowed me to get back to my urban and “cultivated” roots.  The vegetable garden is up to date, and I have been catching up on photos from more traditional plantings.  Besides working in the yard, I have been hanging out at the Biltmore and cruising neighborhoods to capture more cultivated plants while nature appropriately sleeps.

As for my writing, I have been fully focused on the web app and update for the iPhone.  That has been a journey to the wilderness as well.  Many know, we wanted to complete the database for the web app before updating the iPhone so that the two will work together.  Finally we have the first 120,000 plants names and family trees entered, and are moving on to populating the data.  As the programmers work on that, I am compiling more plants for the iPhone.  On top of all that, we are also starting on our third release that we hope to have ready by fall or winter.

An old friend of mine friend of mine once wrote a song called In the Garden.  In it they refer to “growing different kinds of mind.”   This time has harkened me back to this song often.  I know we are all obsessed with the plants that we grow, but if you are like me, it is really the mind that matters and keeps me gardening year after year.  As much as we run to the web to learn more, I have to think the can learn more in the garden.  The conversation that happens out there between nature, the dirt in your hands, and the thoughts in your head is far more enriching than most of the shouting and chatter that goes on in here.

I have no doubt that the relationships I have made online are real as well.  However, many are not, and this time off has made me even more determined to keep those relationships real.  I have always despised the automated twitter machines, but I cherish those of you who engage in honest conversation and have missed you greatly.  Needless to say I am glad to be back, but after this time of reflection I will also be sure to spend more time in the garden than I do in here.  After all, I will have far more to share here if I continue to grow my mind out there.

The holiday has come and gone, and the annual ritual of pardoning the White House bird has gone on as planned.  This time it was a 45 lb. / 18 week old broadbreasted Turkey named Courage.   According to the AP, “Obama said Courage will spend the rest of his life in “peace and tranquility” at Disneyland.”  Of course President Obama displayed some pure honesty that we should all be thankful for when right before the pardon he said, “”I’m told Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson actually ate their turkeys.  You can’t fault them for that; that’s a good-looking bird.”  If the birds that those guys pardoned had anywhere near the future ahead or life past this bird has had they should be applauded.  Let’s face it this is the worst staging I am yet to see our of a White House that really excels at staging the “green” agenda.  Having PETA standing there with The National Turkey Federation while pardoning a genetically modified bird is akin to having Monsanto host a vegan dinner with the Organic Growers Association as they serve GMO tofu fried in pure lard.

I am yet to verify the actual breed of the bird that was pardoned, but I do know that it came from a factory farm in North Carolina.  I can also tell you this, no bird that reaches 45 lbs. in 18 weeks is a heritage bird, and most definitely has been bread for one thing…eating.    Also the all white breeds of turkey that have been bred for factory farms are all genetically engineered.  There is no naturally occurring all white turkey that comes near 45 lbs. in its lifetime, let alone 18 weeks.  The closest thing you can get to a white heritage bird is the Royal Palm, which my 5-year old friend Louie (pictured next) happens to be.  For a White House that has lauded their organic garden and served from it to world leaders, to have chosen the bird they did was a Royal missed opportunity (sorry for the pun Louie).

Having grown both heritage turkeys and two broad breasted (genetically engineered) birds, this one touches a little too close to home.  Louie, my Royal Palm,  is in his fifth year, and is as happy as can be as King of Little Creek Farm.  He does live a life in  “Disneyland for birds”.  He had a mate who lived a similar life until she met her natural fate from a predator.  Heritage birds make fantastic long term companions, as well as tasty free-range fare.  Pardoning and growing heritage birds helps preserve one of the many breeds that are becoming endangered, and encourages their comeback.  It also helps to encourage biodiversity and prevents the conditions that harbor and promote diseases such as Asian Bird Flu.   However, the broad breasted birds that are bred for eating are bred solely for one thing and that is eating.  They are bread to live very short lives and develop bodies that frankly they cannot live with or physically support.  I hate to be so harsh, but they are bred to be killed before they are forced to suffer the misery that their breeding causes.

Our first year raising turkeys we ordered two broad breasted bronze birds with the intention of having them ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas as well as our Royal Palms for pets.  After Thanksgiving came and we had done the deed with #1 (40 lbs. dressed), we decided we just weren’t up for that much bird again at Christmas and thought we would hang on to #2 and try to breed her with Louie the following year.  The thinking was we might get a smaller bird out of the cross, and since Louie had lost Marie (his mate) to the bobcat we thought he would like having a companion.  So we pardoned #2 and decided to let her live a nice long life on Little Creek Farm.  That pardon might as well have been a sentence to a concentration camp.

Broad breasted birds that are bred for eating are bred to sit in a cage and be force fed until slaughter, not free-range to their hearts content.  In fact their hearts can’t even begin to support their weight and they have an extremely short lifespan compared to Louie’s so-far gracious presence.  A turkey that gets to the weight Courage has at the rate Courage has, won’t even be able to support his weight with his own legs before long.  Unfortunately these birds are born to die, and as soon as they reach that ideal weight they are engineered to reach, they loose all the wonderful traits and personality that give turkeys their essence and that our founders found worthy of making them our national bird.

Now as for #2, she  did eventually get a name.  Unfortunately to tell you the truth by the time she got it she had lost all the personality to go with it.  Once winter set in she literally had to be carried out of the chicken house in the morning, and carried in at night.  She was obviously miserable.  She was unable to attend to her own hygiene, and she definitely couldn’t keep company with other birds.  Her breast was even permanently void of feathers because she couldn’t keep it off the ground.  What we thought was pardoning her to a life in “Disneyland” turned out to be a sentence in Guantanamo.  In the end we did what had to be done, and should have been done in the first place, and she became Easter.

I do like the message of being kind to animals, and I am an animal lover.  However, the real lesson that was missed in this wasn’t the cruelty of eating a bird that was bred to be eaten, but the cruelty of breeding things for eating in the first place.  As gardeners we are finding our roots in heirloom vegetables and discovering the superior flavors and textures.  With this year’s devastating blight on tomatoes we are even seeing how preserving that biodiversity is crucial to preventing such catastrophes.  If raised where the space, water and nutrients they need occurs naturally, these plants grow better than those tortured by over planting, over feeding, and over watering in our mono-cropped farms.

The same is true of meats as well.  Grass fed beef and pork is coming back into favor, and micro farms are even starting to grow heirloom mammals as well.  Whether you are a meat eater or not, you have to be able to recognize that we are breeding the souls out of these animals or at the very least torturing them to death.  If you have a culinary inclination you can also taste this happening.  The soul in the flavor of heritage breeds can be tasted just like it can a free-range egg or wild shrimp and fish.  It is rich and identifiable unlike the pale eggs from the poultry palaces or fish raised in mud retaining ponds on the side of the highway.  These breeds have souls and we need to protect them and encourage their proliferation.

I am certain that  Courage is a mighty fine bird.  He may not be a heritage bird that truly symbolizes what our forefathers saw in this breed, and you can’t blame him for wanting to go to Disneyland.  There must be something about him that won the hearts of these people to become the chosen one.  In the end he may have deserved that pardon.  After all he is not the one that committed the crime.  That said, he doesn’t deserve the life he has ahead of him either, and he could have been pardoned from that.

I saw this headline out of the Telegraph (UK) today: “Garden Centre Tells Men to Make Wives ‘Feel Special’ With a Clothesline“. If it hadn’t been attached to a tweet decrying the backlash, I actually would have thought, “What a great idea!”.  Of course once the retail chain was attacked for their callousness, they admitted their insensitivity and apologized; claiming that it was meant to be in jest and their catalogs were known for such dry humor.  ”Humor?” I thought…I was dead serious.  This is the kind of gift that would make my wife feel special.  In fact, such a gift has.

Three years ago, my wife started begging me for a clothesline.  Now being the obsessive compulsive designer, this was not quite jiving with my vision for the garden.  I wouldn’t admit it at the time, but the other reason was to being the obsessive compulsive one I also insist upon doing the laundry.   That way I know things are hung and folded the way I want, when I want.  A clothesline would about to add some serious effort to my weekly ritual and at a time of year when I need my rituals the most.  It also was going to add chaos to my rituals as suddenly the ability to complete my tasks was about to be controlled by the weather.  As a gardener it took me decades to get over this weather thing,  and I wasn’t looking forward to this inner struggle again.

However, we are “homestead gardeners” and in terms of our homestead palet, and our need to be green, She had a point that it did fit in.  So fate had it’s way and one day my fence guy (who like the article is from England) was here to install a beautiful new Three-board fence for our new extended goat pasture.  You see at the very front of our front yard and lawn is not a cul-de-sac for everyone to view our house from, but instead a series of three mini-pastures for us to rotate our goats and poultry through so they can “range”.  This new beautiful fence was to go right at the end of the lawn framed by two large White Oaks to take your eyes across the pasture over the valley and up the mountains on the other side to frame our view, and it does this quite well.

So after months of avoiding the clothesline and trying to buy off my wife with the fence project, The day had come to install the fence.  When James (the fence guy) arrived we had our usual chat and caught up on various projects before he drove down across the lawn to unload the materials for his guys.  They had been picking through the rock for a day already to dig the wholes so I thought I would stay away so they could complain to James and he could do his thing.  As I headed back to he house I didn’t even look at the materials as I have known James a long time and trust him with every bone of my body.  Back at my desk I looked out the window and to my surprise my wife was down there with him climbing in the back of the truck.  It turns out once he had unloaded our materials left in the bed of the truck were 2 (qty) 4″ welded steel “T’s” that he had removed from another job.

I knew I was in trouble.  My wife spent three years living in a mud hut in Africa in the Peace Corps and she is a very resourceful and determined person.  The game was on, and as James looked up at me in the window, a giant grin came across his face as he quickly lowered them down from the truck.  The last thing he wanted to do was take them home and have to put them up for his wife.   So there you have it…my wife was getting a clothes line and she was “Feeling Special”.  So for Valentines Day the gift that year that we can actually remember is my sanding those posts, painting them green, and setting them in concrete to string those lines.

Truth be had, I love that clothesline, and I love my wife.  It is an integral part of our homestead garden that sits centered between those Oaks right in front of that fence.  When the clothes aren’t on it, it looks more than appropriate with the goats behind it, the vegetable garden to one side and the woods to the other.  When the clothes are on it they add life to the landscape and their play in the wind exudes the freshness of the nature that surrounds us.  I have to say I love aesthetically arranging the clothes on it, and hanging them just right to prevent wrinkles from the pins and to get them to snap just right in the breeze so I don’t have to iron my linens.  This addition was perfect for my Monkish tendencies and our lifestyle.  That clothes line does make my wife “feel special”, and it makes me feel special too!

Anyone who doesn’t thinks that clotheslines can be romantic or make a spouse “feel special“, probably has problems enjoying a fine piece of chocolate or a tomato picked minutes before slicing.  The feeling of a fresh linen shirt touching your skin right off the line and the smell of fresh air that permeates it is one of the finer things in life.  Sliding between line dried sheets that don’t wreak of fabric softener as the cool breeze of night air drifts in through the window is one of the greatest “Rights of  Spring”.  Never mind all the environmental benefits that come along with it, If you can’t see how a clothes line can make on “feel special” than you must just have a hard time feeling yourself.

My wife is a landscape painter, and you can see her work here.   In the spring she opens the studio door and paints studies of the view.  One of my all time favorite pieces is this one of the clothesline.  If this doesn’t embody romance, then you must need a little more in your life.  It is not uncommon in the states to find people fighting for the “Right to Dry” as exclusive neighborhoods with soulless landscapes have banned them with their covenants.  My recommendation to you is if you do want to make your wife feel special get a clothesline, and try doing the laundry for her every once in awhile too.  It might just make you feel special too.