wiredfool

Now that it’s June, it was time to put in the hot weather plantings. Tomatoes got in under cover a week ago, with peppers and a tomatillo. This just past weekend, we prepared the two additional gardens that had been rototilled earlier with a light round of rototilling to knock down the new grass and weeds, and a little compost to cover the surface. Now, the nevada shaped garden is planted in 5 1/2 rows of corn and 1/2 row of quinoa. These are experimental, the corn because it’s so cold here, and the quinoa because while i have seen evidence that it grows here (at the county fair), I’ve never actually seen a plant of it in the ground. The other garden, known as the sprawly one, has sunflowers, pole beans, and various squashy things planted.

If it all grows, there may be 10+foot tall sunflowers, 6′ bean vines, and 20′ pumpkin vines. This is a scale that doesn’t really work for the littler raised beds that we have in the main garden patch.

In the other garden patch, something ate most of the beans. We need to replant. The spinach is going berserk, as is the lettuce. Somehow the latest plantings of salad stuff wound up pretty unevenly distributed, so I have to redo some of that. Most of the cauliflower came up from the first planting, and the two remaining hills got replanted and are showing tiny leaves. The biggest is about 4″ tall now. Broccoli is coming up, as are the leeks, carrots, parsnips, turnips and rutabagas. Not so sure about the lavender or the wildflowers, but the other flower bed is showing some activity. The kale that was transplanted in last fall, and then moved this spring is just about done, to be replanted at the end of the month. And the potatoes are going nuts. They like this weather. The two first plantings are about neck and neck, the one from mid May is pretty short still. The radishes have all been eaten, and now replanted to have more things for Ben to pull up. It’s good to have things that we’d prefer he pulls up, rather than going after the stuff that we wish he didn’t.

It’s a little nerve wracking when the seeds haven’t come up in a bed, and you don’t know if it’s something that you did or if the weather is just against you or what. So far though, we’ve only completely lost one planting of peas (which I suspect something ate). And most of this stuff can be replanted a few weeks later without too much trouble.

This is the main patch as of about a week ago:

And Really Large: a 4000 px wide version of the original 11k pixel wide panorama.

I haven’t been in Iowa in the spring in a long time. In fact, it’s probably been since I was 5 or so, when we moved away. What I remember of the countryside is growing fields, corn as tall as me, and rows of soybeans converging on the horizon. This time, we were there in planting season, so everything was brown. Plowed and in the process of planting. And in that process, i realized some of the scale of the place. Three large tractors plowing one field. Looking very small in the process. The pattern of farmland with a corner carved out and surrounded by old oak trees, to provide a little shelter from the heat. A farm house, with an old dilapidated wood barn, and a couple of newer smaller metal buildings. repeated here and there to the horizon, over and over and over.

One thing that I know I don’t remember is the wind farms. Every so often, there would be a cluster of little windmills out in the fields. Then we saw one of the blades being trucked down the road, and realized that they’re probably 75 foot blades on 150 foot towers. And our experience last month is that wind is a really good idea. There’s not a lot to stop it once you’re in the flat lands of northern Iowa.

The most surreal moment was when I needed to get a power adapter replaced at the Apple Store. Mine died in a warm burny smelling way, and I had enough battery power to find out where the apple store was before lights out. They had no problem replacing it under Applecare, I expected to have to argue a little bit, but no, simply no problem at all. Then, as the paperwork was printing out, I recognized the music. The Talking Heads, The Big Country. Not a big hit, sort of an obscure little tune from the end of their second album. All about the fly over country, and how they wouldn’t live there.

Then we come to the farmlands, and the undeveloped areas.
And I have learned how these things work together.
I see the parkway that passes through them all.
And I have learned how to look at these things and I say,
(chorus)
I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.
I couldn’t live like that, no siree!
I couldn’t do the things the way those people do.
I couldn’t live there if you paid me to.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard that on the radio. And to hear it in an Apple Store, in Iowa.

There’s something about this image that catches me, or at least, I think that there’s something in current art photography that’s rubbing off on me in this image. I’m not sure how much I like it, but I think I see it there.

(at least, for the rodents)

The score over the last few months is: Pointy Furball: 11, Opposible Thumbs: 0.

We’re up to 11 confirmed kills of small rodents, either mice or moles, as sometimes its a little hard to tell. Most of them have been outdoor kills, a few have been indoor, and only one was not intact at time of disposal. And this is from a cat that did not know what to do with a mouse until this year, when he turned 10. We have a few traps out, but no luck in them yet.

I’m beginning to believe that cats really are a better mousetrap. As for why we have so many rodents, we’re in the country, and the previous owner of the house apparently spent a small fortune on birdseed, some of which was eaten by birds.