a merry solstice to all and to all a good night

It's been a while.  Not because I don't like blogging.  It's been a while because there has been so much happening- good, bad and in between.

I'm home tonight, with the kids fast asleep in their beds.  I am somewhat doubtful that there are visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, since they've never seen a sugarplum in their lives, and honestly, I haven't either.

Gita has gone to an anniversary party for some friends of hers.  The kids both have strep throat, and I volunteered to stay home with them and put them to bed early.  This works out pretty well for me, since I'd be sitting in the corner at the party with the kids, watching the Disney channel, while all the other guests speak animatedly in a different  language and I try to make polite but awkward conversation when people come to sit near me.  I've been to many of these already.  Better to stay home and catch up on all the things I haven't done in a while.

I talk a lot about gardening here, and you may be checking in because you're also a gardener.  I have to say, with a small amount of shame, that I was glad to see the gardening season end this year.  Part of it was the weird weather.  Part of it was my stepping down as head of the community garden that I helped to start.  Part of it was just the sheer exhaustion of trying to do too much and not doing any of those things well, and being relieved that mother nature stepped in to take one task off of my plate.

My carrots froze into the ground before I could dig them out.  Usually it's one of my favorite jobs of the season- pulling up  a bucketload of super-sweet post-frost carrots and root cellaring them or making a batch of carrot wine.  This year, they've turned into green manure for next spring's garden.  My potatoes froze into the garden too.  Granted, the freeze came earlier than average, at least for as long as I've been gardening- and it came on quick.   They might re-sprout in the spring.  At least that's what I tell myself.

 To be honest- we did do a lot of putting stuff away for the winter this year.  We canned almost 30 jars of applesauce from foraged apples this fall, and a half dozen jars of apple butter from the peels.  We made a dozen or more quart jars of salsa from our tomatoes and more than a dozen jars of marinara sauce.  I made a big batch of pickles from a bunch of cucumbers I picked up from the farmers market.  And we have 3 5-gallon carboys of dandelion wine and applejack fermenting away in the basement. 

The competing use of time is our kitchen renovation.  In mid-November I tore out all of our existing kitchen cabinets, the floor, parts of the walls, all of the lighting, and with some help from WHD of Off the Grid in Minneapolis, I am rebuilding the whole mess.  The previous kitchen was a slapped-together 1980's remodel and was a non-salvageable mess of particle board and laminate.   Everything is now being done with quality materials and to code.   I've hired out the plumbing, but otherwise between myself and WHD, we've done it all and have done a pretty good job if I do say so myself.

Also competing for my time is an opportunity which involves fermentation, and which also involves getting lots of licenses and certificates at the city, state and federal level, which I am in the thick of at the moment.  I'll elaborate at a later time, but if you're interested in imagining what that might be, I'll refer you to a couple of previous blog posts:  'how to make homemade wine'  and 'carrot wine?  why not?'

Of course being a good dad and husband is a lot of work too.  It takes a lot of time.  But I love that job. 

So it's the winter solstice today and I'd like to be making a bonfire in the back yard, but instead I'll stay inside.  It's warmer in here, and if the kids wake up, I'll hear them.

So, being the end of a solar year, I'm thinking through where we are and taking stock.  Here are a few things that have happened lately that I'd like to think through and hope you'll have the patience to think through them with me.

One is the appearance of 'crazy ants' in Texas, that has come out of virtually nowhere, and which is making life on the American Gulf coast difficult.   If there's a story which embodies the maxim that "Mother nature always bats last"  this is it.  These ants swarm over things made my people, and are so prolific, their bodies pile up to the point that they create obstructions to human habitation.  They also seem to be drawn to electrical gadgets, frequently invading them and short-circuiting things such as electrical outlets or computers, and rendering them worthless. 

But this is a cold climate, here in Minnesota, and it's unlikely crazy ants will make it this far north.  Except that  a far more subtle and sneaky mutation in the world of small things hit much closer to home this morning.

I mentioned that both of my kids have strep throat at the moment.  They first had it around Thanksgiving.  We took them to the doctor and they were, as is pretty common, prescribed Amoxicillin, an antibiotic that has been shown to be effective against strep.  They both took it for the recommended 10 days and we figured it would be done with. Except that it wasn't.

The sniffly, sore throat lived on, and we took our daughter in again on Thursday- to a clinic full to the gills with kids with similar symptoms.  I had really never seen it so full- the parking lot where we had always parked was completely full, the overflow parking was full, and I ended up parking on the street and walking with my sick daughter to the clinic, a little further than I had expected (but glad to be in the city where they at least allow parking on the street).

So we did our thing there, and I asked the doctor about the possibility of antibiotic-resistant strep, and she glibly blew it off saying 'we haven't seen resistant strep around here- they probably re-infected themselves with their toothbrushes, etc.'  Which I took at face value, since, after all, she was a doctor.

Then last night our son started having the same symptoms.  So this morning, I took him to the little cheapo clinic in the department store, since our regular clinic wasn't open on Saturdays.  There he was seen by a very friendly nurse practitioner who had seen him 3 or 4 weeks before when we were dealing with our first round of strep.  She was less glib.  "I've seen a lot of this lately"  she said.  She told me that she had stopped prescribing Amoxicillin for strep throat not long after we had last been there because she had seen a number of kids on whom it didn't seem to be working- one of whom went to the same school as my kids.  She also said she was going to send an email to the other practitioners at the other clinics at the big box to be watching for non-responsive strep.  And she prescribed him a different, more powerful antibiotic.

So there we were- at the forefront of an antibiotic-resistant bacteria outbreak.  No mention of it in the news just yet.  Spread the word if you are able.   I am hoping that the new (and much fouler-tasting) antibiotic she prescribed will work for my poor little worn-out sore-throat kids.   I like home remedies, but know that strep is no small thing to deal with- having had it many times as a kid myself.  I don't want to have to rely solely on honey and cayenne pepper if I can help it.  For myself, OK, but my kids-- I just want the sickness gone.

So mother nature bats last.  Strep bacteria can number in the billions in one human body.  It has a doubling time of 20-30 minutes, meaning, even at the 30 minute rate, it can have 24 generations within a day.  Meaning, you can multiply 24 generations by a few billion, and that is the number of opportunities that strep bacteria has to develop a mutation that will allow it to resist an antibiotic in every infected person, every day the infection lasts.  It's amazing this resistance didn't develop sooner. 

So do we really want to feed this stuff to animals, and multiply that risk by the billions of domestic meat animals kept worldwide?  Which we're pretty much already doing, at least on the majority of farms in the United States.    Risking losing one the best weapon against bacterial disease in order to fatten the profit margin of feedlots?   Not worth it in my  book.  But inevitable given the lack of backbone amongst regulators in this country.   And of course by the overprescribing of antibiotics for things such as the common cold, by the medical profession. 

So that's no bright ray of sunshine.

But it's the darkest day of the year, at least here in the northern hemisphere, and if I'm going to discuss dark things, it may as well be today.

Which brings me to sulfide mining.  Which, unlike crazy ants and antibiotic resistant bacteria, you can actually do something about. 

The state of Minnesota is right now deliberating whether or not to allow mining of copper and nickel in northern Minnesota- in one of the most pristine areas of the lower 48 states.  This is an area which has been mined for iron ore, but not for copper and nickel, and not using the methods proposed.  The process they would like to use would likely end up sending acidic waste to Lake Superior, the second-largest body of fresh water in the world, and one of the cleanest. 

Yes, there are people who would like to see this mine developed for the jobs it would bring to the northern part of the state.  There are always people who will trade a paycheck today for the health of their children, grandchildren and great-great-great-grandchildren.  That's a decision that is considered rational in current economic thought, but personally I'd like to err on the side of the health of future generations.  I hope to have great-great-great-grandchildren, and I know that the choices that my generation and a number of generations before me are going to leave legacies that are less than stellar.  I'd like  to see that mistake not made again.  I don't want to be responsible for leaving the largest body of water on the continent undrinkable in a future age of heat and desertification.   We are leaving them that, yes, so we may at least leave them clean water to drink. 

See here to send a comment to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources about sulfide mining.  If you expect your offspring at some point in the next 500 years to depend in some way on Great Lakes water, you have an interest in the quality of that water.   You don't have to be a Minnesotan to care about such things.

Cheers,

Jeff

creating kid habitat

You learn a lot of interesting things when you do landscape design for a living.

I get to call myself a landscape architect now after running the gauntlet of higher ed, board exams and internships.  As a result I get to design parking lots and ballfields and sidewalks and other projects which, while not all that interesting, pay the bills and keep me out of trouble.

today I love my city: Saint Paul's Urban Oasis

artist's rendering of the proposed urban oasis food center in saint paul

Saint Paul is not my home town, but I've lived here for  11 years now- about as long as I've lived anywhere at this point in my life.  Almost exactly as long as I lived in the other, very nice city across the river, Minneapolis.  I love them both, the way I love both of my kids.  They're different, but both good in different ways.  One is more chatty and talkative, with a better art and music scene, always recreating itself and following the newest trend and trying to keep up with Portland and Austin and Seattle and Boston.

That would be Minneapolis, for those of you not familiar with Minnesota.

2013: the fruit trees are bare

red and white currants- the only fruit from our yard this year.

I have, admittedly, been a bad steward of our little pieces of the earth this summer.  Our yard, our community garden plot, the yard at our little rental place- the weeds at all of them are growing faster than I can manage to pull them out.   We are, as usual, crazy busy in the summer so that hasn't helped.  But I still don't feel good about it.

In addition to the kids- who always want me to play with them (which I don't really mind), work is really busy again this year for some reason, the rental place needs lots of little repairs- and we have another project to work on- which I will get into in future posts- but for now I won't.  But it's eating up just about all of the time I would have spent gardening in a normal summer.  And the garden looks it.

mother nature is not amused

our roof- after a big branch went through it early friday morning

I haven't been here for a few weeks, but the time has been anything but uneventful.

We've had a series of big nightime thunderstorms over the last few days, which have dropped large, heavy tree branches on our house and in our yard.  One of those branches cut a nice sized notch in our roof and took out most of the soffit on that side.

So we're now working through the process of finding a roofer and of making an insurance claim- the first one ever on our homeowners insurance- and waiting to find out what will happen.

This isn't something I enjoy, and really don't want yet another project to work on, but there it is.  There's no way around it.

some thoughts on neonicotinoids

 I was sitting down to lunch on Friday, and had a rare treat- somebody had left behind a pile of newspapers in the skyway food court where I eat my lunch on the days I don't bring my own.

Though this is downtown St. Paul, in the pile was a copy of Minneapolis' Star-Tribune.  I love the Strib, and in general love reading an analog newspaper, though I've never gotten into the habit of subscribing to one.  Mainly because I'm a cheapskate, but also because they have an army of telemarketers who will harangue you into submission if you ever let your subscription expire. 

So I was eating a burrito and paging through the Star-Trib and found an article on neonicotinoids that, I'm sure most people breezed by, but which nearly made me choke on my lunch.

winter to summer in sixty seconds

Our street- April 23rd 

 The picture above is from Tuesday morning.   Fresh snow, broken tree branches, another day of extended winter.  That was April 23rd and we had 4 or 5 fresh inches of heavy, wet slushy snow blanketing the ground. I, along with most of the population of Minnesota was ready to scream.

This has been a long, painful winter.  Not super cold, just super long.  The Arctic Oscillation decided to go negative at just the wrong time and the cold got stuck over us.  The days were getting longer- the light lasts until after eight o'clock now, but outside- snow, grey skies, bare trees, and brown grass when you could see it at all.

raising kids in a time of uncertainty

Gita and our two kids- the three people I love most

I'll call it a time of uncertainty- though every time is a time of uncertainty.  Nobody knows for sure what's coming from one day to the next.  You can have a pretty good idea, but you never really know  for sure.

What is fairly certain, is that the next generation is probably not going to live as well as the current one- the one I'm a member of.  And the next will probably have it even harder.

searching for a cure (to cabin fever)

light starved seedlings- just recently moved to the south-facing window

So the St. Louis winter in St. Paul is less cold, but is clearly still a real winter.  The couple of inches of snow I cleared off the sidewalk this morning is now blowing back onto the sidewalk in a 30 to 40 mile per hour wind.  I walked to the bus stop after shoveling, slipping on the thin layer of powdery snow on top of a layer of glare ice every few steps.  I almost fell on my butt, and a car slowed down as if to ask if I needed help, but I looked away, not wanting to let go of the little bit of pride I still had.  I do know how to walk in snow, thanks.

another St. Louis winter in St. Paul

This year's low temperature: -13F on February 1st.  Image courtesy of wunderground.com

Now, thirteen degrees below zero may sound awfully cold, and it sure feels that way when you have to get up early in the morning, go out into the dark and catch a bus in the blowing wind.  Thirteen below is no picnic.  But it's not the historical norm for the Twin Cities.

 -13F was where our temperature  bottomed out on February 1st this year, and I'm going to be the first one to call it the low for the winter, as we're pretty unlikely to get that cold again at this  point in March.  The 10 day forecast is calling for highs above freezing, so I think that's about it for old man winter.