A Fistful of Spring Herbs

Bruce's hens were out and about pecking and poo-ing in his in-ground garden all autumn and winter. This week I popped over and he invited me to help myself to some herbs.

These spring tonics--parsley, chives, and the limey sorrel--are robust, flavorful, and loaded with nutrients. Into a slaw with you!

Methinks chicken poo is magic.

Dinner From the Garden: Spanakopita

Craving Spanakopita...

I harvested 3 lbs. of spinach from the garden...

chopped, mixed and baked.

Then ate it.

A Unique Way to Store Fresh Produce

This looks worth a try.

What Does a Green Roofer Grower Do in the Winter, You Ask?

Safely within the spring months, we can now look back at winter as a distant and uncomfortable memory. Green things are growing outside again, honeybees are buzzing. However, one might pause and ask, "What did Green Roof Growers do in the winter, when they couldn't grow?"

Though I, a humble and admittedly unenthusiastic journalism student, did not set out with the intention of answering this query, I did nonetheless. Okay so maybe my photojournalism final photo essay on Bruce and the Green Roof Growers would have been... brighter in the spring, but that was not the season I (oh-so-intelligently) chose to take the course. Thus, I can now present to you a full(-ish) documentation of Green Roof Growers in the Wintertime. 

Bruce took up metalworking, after adopting a friend's tools and machinery.

He even let me try! Unfortunately there is no photographic evidence but I have a metal sculpture to prove it.

Of course, the chickens need year-round loving.

Yum, fresh eggs

A late lunch

Bruce loves to cook. My favorite part of visiting was sampling his latest creations. (And Heidi and Art's, too.)

His winter mission: Indian cuisine

Bruce talks to his seedlings. (Okay, maybe this one was posed. Don't tell my professor.)

Bruce and Heidi prepare fermented vegetables!

Mmm

There's some green.

I got to tour Heidi and Art's spectacular abode.

It is possible to grow throughout the winter... just not on roofs.

Very sweet

Sampling some delicious greens

This homemade tunnel in Heidi's courtyard allows her to grow outdoors, too.

....despite the snow.

Something new and exciting on Art's Mac

Goal of the metal shop: construct a musical bicycle with Blake.

Carl curls up by the fire, which provides warmth for the otherwise unheated metal shop.

Fixing up the machinery

Hey there, Carl.

Gotta update the blog!

Surveying the scene. These boxes will be filled with green and delicious things soon enough.

Roofs are a good place to play with Carl, no matter the season.

In Coop with Chickens, Outside Sits Carl

I try to take greens for Bruce's Rhode Island Reds when I walk over. Carl likes greens too. You can see the challenge.

Bruce is training Carl to sit quietly outside the coop while I'm in there feeding kale stems to eight happy, talkative hens...and not to Carl. If he's patient, and he's learning to be, I poke a reward stem through the grid for him.

More posts on Bruce's coop construction and configuration here.

Our Kitty Plays a Guessing Game

Who says you can't teach a cat how to do tricks! We did!
Let's play Carl!

Good Dog Carl: Then and April 2012

Everyone loves Carl. When Bruce first brought him to visit in January 2011, Carl slept in my arms like the baby he was, and also in Bruce's while he tried to eat a salad. All that puppy cuteness...

 

Flash forward to today: Carl's like a giant circus dog(!). He's grown a bit, eh? 

Still a good dog, Carl...

"Money Isn't Real, You and I Are"

Stan Goff, on money as the "universal solvent".

In this essay, Hornborg crystallizes what he said in The Power of the Machine, albeit focusing in a bit on that old question, what is to be done? Whatever it is, says Hornborg, it has to do with money. I believe him when he says that. That is precisely what I mean by the term, “strategic imperative.” The strategic imperative is to get off the money grid.

Hornborg and a lot of other people have studied the impending consequences of our influence-without-control; and the prognosis is not merely disturbing, it’s scary as hell to anyone with a puff of imagination. We are in an epoch of inconceivable unintended consequences, in every dimension of human experience; and if money is the problem, we all inuit in a second how utterly overwhelming the problem is because we understand our own abject dependency on this thing that this man just said is a “sign,” a dangerous chemical — a solvent that attacks human connectivity, a change agent that can be as destructive as a flood of assault rifles into a big city slum.

Honeybee Saturday

On a soft spring Saturday, the bees are crazy happy. Watch for the white saddlebags made of pollen/nectar on some of the returning bees.

Easter DIY Egg Succulent Project

A while ago I saw this post and knew I wanted to make one of these for our Easter host. I started saving eggshells from Bruce's spectacular hens, cracking the shells more carefully and then washing and air drying.

Here are her beautiful results:

Photos by Easy Dreamer Photography

We love growing succulents and keep a nursery of succulent bits in a bin upstairs over the winter, to be repotted in spring. I chose a few for the project.

Mine's a little different, but what fun to create. I hope my sister will like it when I give it to her Sunday.

Miner's Lettuce Blooming

Also called spring beauty, winter purslane, or Indian lettuce, Claytonia perfoliata, native to the western U.S., with particular abundance in the Pacific Northwest, is the best known species of miner's lettuce. As one of the first spring greens to emerge, it's a valuable edible just when it's needed most.