I know I know, I said that this blog was over didn’t I? Maybe I lied. Whatever. Sue me. I’m an old man. Today I am 57 years old. Am I there yet? 

Using up the final few days of my vacation time, the weather was spectacular on the 5th of June, so a nice long bicycle ride was in order. Got an early start- 9:30 am. Guess that’s not really all that early is it?

As is my custom, it’s required that I ride my age in miles on or near the actual birth date. So the 5th was the day for it. It was a great day for wildlife. Scarcely 7 miles from home, in the swamp of Sutton, where the wild blueberries grow, a cute little brown bunny rabbit bolted from the bushes right in front of my bike. Paused for a millisecond, looking at me and my blue Fuji Touring Series VII, said in rabbit-speak “what the hell?!”, then shot across the road. Bunny rabbit’s life came within a foot of my front wheel. Scwewy wabbit.

Continuing north on Route 114, I took the Hominy Pot Road, seeing no less than 4 pairs of women with dogs out for their morning constitutionals. That’s old-timey talk for “going for walkies”. And one old guy, also with his dog.

Crossing Route 11, continuing up Old Main Street, I avoided passing by my workplace, the college, even though there was still a subconscious possible plan to get back there in time for the spectacular lunch being offered in the dining hall. Wednesday menu: flank steak, creamy orzo and many other lovely delectables as our Sodexo staff offer to the Gordon Research Conferees every summer. There would not be time for that. Someone had suggested the Route 10 north out of Newport route and that route took root in my birthday brain. I had 57 miles to cover … never make it back to New London in time.

Old Main Street becomes Burpee Hill Road. Aptly named. Many hills. And many lovely homes. Eventually the hills led back to Route 11, George’s Mills, Sunapee, and on to Newport.

Newport was as busy as one would expect for a Wednesday morning around 10. As I passed the Middle-High School, I stopped to use the porta-potty by the track. It was disgusting. But best to empty the bladder before tackling Route 10 up to Croydon and Grantham. Across the road a woman doing some very conscientious pre-run stretches by her car attracted my eye as I exited the porta potty and remounted my bicycle. She was just getting into her rhythm as I passed her with a good morning greeting. What a lovely day it was!

As I passed the airport a truck with a large, complicated-looking white tank on the back passed heavily by me. A few miles up the road, that same truck was parked by a river running by the road. Someone was doing something with the tank thingy. I rode on. That tank truck passed me again. And again I saw it parked by a pond. And again it passed me a little further north. Finally, by Spectacle Pond in Croydon I stopped by the truck to ask what they were doing. A woman was scooping a large net full of something out of the tank. She handed the net to the other guy and he showed me about 50 nice-sized wriggling trout. They were beautiful! I asked him if I could have one. He said “Sure! You can have 5!” as he flung the net-load into the pond. “Go get ‘em!” We all laughed. “See you at the next stop.” I said as I mounted up and rode on. Next time I saw them they had emptied their tanks and I waved to them as they headed back south.

Continuing on up to Grantham I went to see if I could find an old friend at her workplace to see if she’d like to have lunch. She was too busy to take a lunch break, so I went to Pizza Chef on my own and got a veggie wrap with not enough jalapenos on it. If you want a lot of hot peppers you have to ask emphatically.

Route 114′s northern end is right nearby, so I headed south. Somewhere in Springfield, from a little brook just to the right of the road, a great blue heron popped out and took wing, flying a hundred yards or so ahead of me before veering to the left and out of sight. When we (my family) see these birds, we think of storks, and then think of babies. The midwife who delivered our children had the license plate STORK on her car. So that got me thinking that maybe another grandchild will be on the way soon.

I veered off of Route 114 in Springfield, heading over to Route 4A. Down 4A into Wilmot and Kearsarge Valley Road to Sutton, then back to 114 and on home. Just a quarter mile from home, a single, confused deer ran onto the road 50 yards or so ahead of me, then turned back the way it came.  Mileage for the day: 68. Mission accomplished.

The title of this post, by the way, references not only the Heinz “57″  trademark, but also the TV show Mad Men. Since rejoining Netflix, I’ve managed to consume almost all of the first 5 seasons of this series, set in the USA of the 1960s. Several friends recommended it, and after the closing episodes of season 1, I was hooked. The excessive smoking and drinking were really getting to me, and I was ready to take it or leave it, but then the flashback scenes to the Korean War made me commit to the antihero’s plight. Not that Don Draper isn’t any more of a schmuck than his fellow ad men, he’s certainly carrying a different sort of baggage than most of his colleagues.

The ’60s I witnessed as a child were indeed the days when everyone smoked and drank and threw trash everywhere. The cars were big, solid and heavy, and the seat belt was nothing more than a parental forearm in yours and sister’s faces in the event of a sudden stop. It’s a pretty good show, capturing the period nicely and re-examining it under the lens of all the history since. I especially like the animated opening montage with its darkly dramatic music, everything coming loose and falling as soon as the Mad Man sets down his briefcase. In season 5 they have spent an awful lot of time and energy trying to land the Heinz account. At episode 9 I’m still not certain that they’ve really got Heinz signed up.

Yes, another post. Aren’t you the lucky one, dear reader?! This post is dedicated to my good friend and commenter, vermonter, who recently expressed interest in the progress of this year’s garden. It reminded me that garden journal was one of the sub-purposes to this otherwise random endeavor. Over the years, some of my best, uh, thinking happens while gardening. Which then reminded me that a garden is something that you do, not so much something that you have. 

These trees were too big for Dave and his Giant Chainsaw.

We hired a crew late last autumn to take down some half-dozen really large trees that were too close to our house. This dangerous closeness to the house was pointed out to us by Irene and Sandy. Thanks ladies. The project cost some major dollars, but the crew removed everything except for 3 large piles of wood chips. We didn’t have firm plans for these chips, but we knew we could develop some pretty easily come the following spring and summer.

Giant wood chip pile under the apple trees.

So here’s where the chips fell. We’re trying something new in the gardens this year. After preparing and fertilizing each planting bed, we covered them with this black, permeable landscaping fabric. Then we filled the paths in between the beds with many wheelbarrow loads of the tree chips, laid atop kraft paper (horse bedding shavings bags).  The covered beds were then mulched with oat straw (expensive @ $10/bale but nicely free of sprouting seeds). This layered affair seems, so far, to be putting a serious dent in the weed sprouting.

Diagram: Oat straw, landscape fabric, wood chips, soil …

We’ll see how this progresses. One thing I anticipate is having to remove the landscape fabric from under the straw mulch next autumn. The fabric is not biodegradable and will need to be removed. I wonder whether it can be used for more than one season. Obviously one needs to make holes in it where the plants go. Then there’s the question as to how fast the wood chips will decompose into the soil.

As it is every year, the garden is experimental. This year’s experiment has been one of the more intricate procedures. Let the photo essay begin …

Beds 1 and 2 planted with onion seedlings a few weeks ago. They’re still small, but doing well. At the front of bed 2 are some red onions planted for seed crop. Parsley, barely visible, in front and back of bed 1.

Apparently, the forsythia was too aggressively pruned last autumn … the bird bath now lives there, and the birds like it better.

 

Beds 3. 4. 5, not planted yet. Probably peppers. Bed 6 (left of frame) is garlic that’s doing the best. See Garlic Discrepancy below …

We’ve decided to fence in all our brassicas, of which the deer are especially fond. Outside the fence are two perennials: lovage.

Also in the fenced area; asparagus, a bed of red potatoes, leeks, and Jerusalem Artichokes.

We’re probably ready to start putting all these plants out now. We had a frost scare on the last full moon- last week.

Alternated planting of purple and green cabbages.

Baby Brussels sprouts.

Now let’s go over to the garden behind the horse barn!

Here are the major cultivation tools, resting in the shed at the back of the barn.

Our cat Hunter likes to hang out in and around the horse barn.

Garlic Discrepancy. The plants on the left are significantly bigger than those on the right.

Oh dear, the memory of this INFP (yeah, that’s what the MBTI says I am) is not even a sieve. It’s just a hole. Luckily there is this writing thing that allows one to reference those perceptions of the distant past. Looks like the reason that garlic in the right of the frame above is smaller because the second half of the insane 600 cloves planted last autumn was planted from smaller cloves at a closer spacing. Glad I wrote that down in the cloud …

The bigger plants enjoying a sunny day.

The horseradish my friend Nancy gave me is thriving in its 3rd year of living in a mini-prison of boulders. It’s reaching out …

Two beds west of the garlic, the area for sweet corn is staked out. Believe it or not, the cord between the stakes is telephone cable I got at the town dump.

Two beds between garlic and corn will be tomatoes. They’re still not in the ground. Below the corn will be the usual squashes and pumpkins. We did some clearing that should allow the squash vines to seek the sun further west rather than invading the cornstalks. This may require some training of the vines. That has never gone so well.

If you happened to visit and expected to not find a new post, sorry about that. The statement about wrapping up this here blog has turned out to be as dependable as so many of the other statements issued here.

Yeah, I know, I said I was done with this blogging stuff. But this morning, something happened. I had a lot of dreams last night and the one that stuck with me the most featured a young man that I worked with many years ago. He was a super nice kid and went on to study computer science in college. In the dream he was loudly stating that it would not be possible to have an “UNDERSTAND” button on any sort of computer program or machine. No more is remembered from this dream, but I awoke thinking how cool would that be if you could just click the “UNDERSTAND” button? The software would then tell you just what it all meant.

We had a seasonal setback last week. But today the yard is clear of frozen stuff.

The garlic sprouts didn’t mind the frozen crap at all. It was sleety snow. Ick.

The other cool thing that happened this morning is that a small flock of turkeys appeared in our front yard. A tom and three hens. The tom was earnestly displaying his macho desirability while the hens pranced about pecking distractedly at the gravel in our driveway. Maybe there were microscopic grains or seeds or whatever snow fleas survived last week’s sleet storm. Maybe their pecking at the ground while the man-bird struts his stuff is just their way of saying “What EVER dude. You ALL that and a bag a chips.”

It’s a good thing the turkeys don’t come into the back yard to hang out under the bird feeders. The dog would find that completely intolerable.

It’s been over a month. I guess I can take a hint. It’s not me, it’s me. Today is as good a day as any.

The garlic is coming up! Spring has really arrived.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the passing of our son Daniel.  We still have pictures of him all around the house, and not a day goes by when he doesn’t enter my thoughts.

This is some odd-looking moss growing on a cinder block in our greenhouse.

This blog thing has been grand! I’ve met some really wonderful folks who I’d never have met any other way.

The snow is receding, but today it’s quite cold again.

I’m not much on long good-byes, and I may pop back in here from time to time, should the spirit move me.

Thanks so much for visiting, and I wish you all the best!