koyaanisqatsi

There are only a few films that I can say that I've enjoyed watching more than once and fewer that I'd watch again.  This is one of them.  Maybe the only one.

Yes, the music is nice and all- that's what most people focus on when discussing it.  But there's a lot more than that.  It's remarkably current in it's illustration of the situation that we, as a species have put ourselves in, despite the fact it was released 31 years ago.

the great indoors

This is the time of year for turning inward.  At least in our part of the world- the center of the North American continent.  At the 45th parallel- exactly halfway between the equator and the North Pole.

This is the coldest time of year, and the weather feels much more like that of the North Pole than the equator.  

exhaustion

I've been a full-time single dad for the last 12 days, and it's cutting into my ability to just about anything else.

This is not an appeal for sympathy, rather it's an explanation of why I'm not putting together a more thorough or well-researched post this week.  I resolved back in November that I would post something every Sunday night in the coming year, managed to do it through the month of December, and really enjoyed it in the process.

But Gita left for Nepal on Xmas day to see family and friends and take care of some family business.  She planned for a three-week stay, as that's more or less the minimum reasonable stay given the cost of the ticket and the 36 hours of combined flight and layover time it takes to get there.  Not to mention the jet lag.

When she  was going through chemo and radiation the thought of going back to Nepal again sustained her through some of the difficult weeks, so I couldn't hold taking the trip against her.  But I wasn't looking forward to being alone with the kids for three weeks.  What would I do?

2012's results, 2013's hopes

I hope you'll forgive the all too common trick that's used by just about every media outlet to fill page space at a time of year when there isn't a whole lot to talk about, except maybe the weather or possibly about cliffs that are fiscal in nature.

I'm of course referring to all the articles recapping the year in review.  I did it at the end of 2011, looking at all of the seeds I had ordered and reviewing how well they did in my garden that year.  It's one of the most read posts I've done, so I suppose it'd be silly of me not to do it again.


And this year is significant in that it is ending much better than it started.  Last year at this time Gita was on her second chemo treatment, hair falling out, future in question, our family under a lot of stress-- life really was not good.  This blog was one of my few outlets, and I poured myself into it, and appreciated those who read and responded.

winter composting in a cold climate

the new compost pile- still going

If you garden, and especially if you garden organically, you know the value of compost.

Making rich black garden soil from garbage is a feat that could be compared to alchemy.  You're taking what is virtually worthless and making it incredibly valuable.  At least that's how I see it.  That's how our backyard garden manages to be more productive each year, though we pull an awful lot of vegetables out of it.

Of course- we live in Minnesota, and one of the main climatic limiting factors when composting is the cold winter.  There are five months when the average low temperature is below freezing.  From November 4th to April 5th we, at least according to the averages established within the 1970-2010 time period, bottom out at or below 32F.

love to the parents of kids now gone

So much of what we have is so fragile and so small and so temporary and so transient that it's hard to appreciate it when we have it but easy to mourn when it's gone.

Raising a child is so difficult.  Waking up every night, dealing with all the bodily functions that as adults, we've become used to doing for ourselves, but learning again fresh about them doing them for another little person.  The crying and screaming and the diapers and the exhaustion.

But raising a child is so wonderful too.  I've never felt so much love, and have never felt so loved.  I sometimes don't feel worthy of all the love I get from my kids.

snow day.

yeah.  that's my kid.  she loves snow.

So, last post I was bemoaning the lack of snow in Minnesota this winter.  Maybe someone heard me because now we have around 14 inches of it in our yard.  It's beautiful, as the first and usually second snows of the winter are.

And now tonight its going to drop below zero, Fahrenheit.  It's almost there already and it's not even that late.

waiting for winter

one of the huge carrots from our backyard.  I accidentally cut it while digging it up

Today was a beautiful day for late fall.  Mid-40's, foggy, mostly cloudy, with a few breaks of sun.   I went for a long bike ride, put some leaves on my community garden plot, stopped by the rental place to check on it and tidy it up a bit, and checked out the new section of the Midtown Greenway that I haven't ridden on yet, though it was completed years ago.

Astronomically- that is according to where we are in our solar year- we're still in the fall.  Meterologically though- when one looks at the patterns of the weather- we're in winter.  Here, in Minnesota, the first snowfall usually seems to happen around Thanksgiving, and it did this year, just enough so the kids could go sledding with their cousins on Black Friday while other people were standing in lines to get gadgets with a picture of an apple on them.

building with dry-laid natural stone

chilton limestone walk-front yard.

I love things made from natural stone.  There's really no substitute for it and no short cuts to take when building with it.  It's a masochist's medium.  Even building something relatively small with with stone leaves you with a backache and bloody hands.  But it's worth it.


To me it feels like dry-laid natural stone is to hardscape what permaculture is to softscape, or the planted world.  It's a human intervention in the landscape, but one that uses a product of nature, with minimal fabrication.  And the material is re-usable if the maker decides to unmake and create another thing with the same material.  Working with natural stone also pretty much guarantees you won't be using machines since cutting it isn't really practical, at least not often, and the uniqueness of each piece makes placing it with machinery difficult.   So you're doing a lot of lifting, then looking, contemplating, and re-lifting.  It's exhausting and also a little bit zen.

urban resilience: what sandy has shown us

from: "The Ruins of Detroit" by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

Hurricane Sandy has been an interesting window into what Americans in a dense urban area will do when deprived of power, water and all of the other things that we take for granted in the early twenty-first North American city.

Fist fights are breaking out in lines at gas stations, as suburbanites wait to fill their cars with hard to find gasoline.  New Yorkers are stranded as the trains stop, crank up generators if they have them, and plan to get them if they don't.