Compost, the Harbinger of Spring

It's been the third snowiest winter on record in our newest home state of Minnesota. It has been a persistently snowy April as well, with twelve inches of heavy wet snow on April 1^st, three more inches on the 16^th, and enough to cover the deck on the 22^nd. I suppose this persistent winter was why I was so excited last week to discover I had four buckets of lovely compost ready in the garage, just waiting to be added to my stock tank gardens on the back deck. Nothing shouts "Spring!" more than compost ready for the growing season.

I've always been a composter, with various piles and bins in each house we have lived in. In the early days of this blog, I published a post on composting in celebration of Earth Day. I've even had a compost pile be the selling point of one of our homes.* For years I had a decorative glass bowl sitting on the kitchen counter for coffee grounds, tea bags, vegetable scraps and other sundry organic matter waiting to be added to the outside compost pile as well as a vegetable garden into which the finished compost would make its way.

When we downsized from our last house to a townhome, I downsized my expectations of what vegetable gardening would look like, buying two 2 x 6 foot stock tanks to put on the back deck to plant all the vegetables I used to grow in the ground, just in smaller amounts. The stock tank vegetable gardens were a success, but I couldn't let go of the nagging thought that the soil wasn't good enough unless some homemade compost was involved.

In the middle of my first townhome growing season, Aldi, that purveyor of useful and often surprising seasonal items, had composters for sale. I had my doubts about it's usefulness. It was small, slightly below the minimum three cubic foot critical mass for good aerobic decomposition. But it was small and would fit in the garage, hidden away from our HOA. It was on a stand that allowed frequent tumbling, and it was inexpensive, becoming more discounted in the Aldi way the longer I procrastinated in my decision to buy one. I finally decided to give it a try, bought one, put it together and placed it in the corner of the garage.

Saving kitchen scraps for composting was such a long standing habit it was easy to slip right back into it. I found my decorative glass bowl for the kitchen counter and reverted to my scrap saving ways, though with some modifications. I opted not to add coffee grounds since our frequent coffee consumption would make for a very acidic compost which only a few of my garden vegetables would survive. Since the garage composter was small, I also decided to chop all scraps and garden debris into small pieces. Old floral bouquets that went from vase to compost pile now got cut into two inch pieces. I gave my visiting daughter a pair of scissors and a pile of end-of- season tomato and pepper plants and as well as old hostas and frost-killed annuals to cut up in bite size bits for quicker decomposition. Into the composter it all went.

Swiss chard, lettuce and peppers, Summer 2022

Roma and Patio Princess Tomatoes, Summer 2022

All that was needed now was some activator for the composting process. I've always used garden soil, but access to dirt is a challenge when living in a townhome. Our HOA religiously believes in landscaping fabric covered with decorative stones with an occasional shrubbery popping through. I do, however, have easy access to neighborhood trails that meander through woods and densely forested parks. I also have a husband that strives for 10,000 steps a day. All I had to do was provide him with a hand trowel, a sturdy ziplock bag for one of his walks and convince him that I just needed a few shovelfuls of dirt discretely taken from under the trees a few steps off the trail and into the woods. It was a bit harder than one might think. "Is this even legal?" I assured him that I'd come and bail him out if he got taken away for dirt stealing. I eventually got some nice humusy forest dirt and added it to my composter.

All fall and winter I continued to add organic matter and tumbled the contents with each addition. Yes, the compost did freeze – this is Minnesota – but the tumbling also allowed it to thaw quickly in the spring. About a month ago I stopped adding new material, putting the vegetable scraps in a temporary bucket in the garage, and continued to tumble the old compost for that month. Finally, not sure what I would find in the dark depths of the composter, I emptied its contents into a bucket and did it three more times for four buckets of beautiful black compost. Into the stock tank gardens it went, stirred into the existing soil. Soon after, I planted snow peas, spinach, purple top turnips and broccoli raab. Yeah, they did get snowed on by those late April snows I mentioned earlier, but cold weather crops that they are, they took it in stride and are now well above the ground and look happy in their composted soil. Ah, spring has truly arrived!

*For that story and more about my adventures in composting and how to build a compost pile, here's the blog post:https://marynapier.blogspot.com/2013/04/p-margin-bottom-0_22.html

So You Say You Want a Revolution...

One of the joys...and burdens...of my life is that I save everything, at least for a while. Oh yes, I go through periodic dejunking and clean out stuff whose time has come to move on to the trash or to become someone else's treasure. My home has always looked relatively neat, if you don't count the basement,* but I still keep a lot of things I've deemed too significant to let go. It's why there is a copy of a fifty-two-year-old Time magazine sitting in the "Truly Miscellaneous" folder in my file cabinet.

On June 21, 1971, Time Magazine's cover had a psychedelic portrait of Jesus Christ on it, the featured story titled "The Jesus Revolution". If it sounds familiar, you are probably one of those who saw the recent movie by the same name. The movie, which I've yet to see, tells in part the story of the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 70s. My son saw the film and reported, "Hey, Mom! Your magazine is in this movie!" A peripheral part of the movie plot, so I'm told, is about the Time reporter doing research for the writing of this magazine article.

In April of 1971, I was a senior in high school. During Holy Week of that year I had had a profound and lasting encounter with God. Some would say I was saved, or became a believer or gave my life to the Lord. I probably would say that God/Jesus became real to me. It was a time in the the spiritual history of this country that all sorts of weird and wonderful things were happening to a lot people and churches, and I found myself in the midst of it.** I shared my experiences with a few of my high school friends and one of them, having a subscription to Time magazine, passed along the Jesus Revolution issue, thinking I'd be interested in it, "being into that kind of thing." That magazine became one of those items deemed too significant to let go.

After I heard about the Jesus Revolution movie from my son and several friends, I did a deep dive into the most likely spots that I may have stored the now vintage Time magazine. I found it, reread it and then took some snaps of the article. They may be a blast from the past for some, or a time traveling portal into the 1970s for others. They are posted below to read and enjoy.  

The last page of the article mentions an upcoming Catholic Charismatic Conference at Notre Dame that was expecting 3,000 attendees.  They underestimated - 6,000 people showed up.  I was one of them...

 (Click on an individual picture and it should open up in an enlargeable and readable format.  You may have to right click on the picture and open it up in a new window, but it will eventually be scrollable and readable.)

*If you want to read more on the blessing and curse of my saving tendencies, check out these two posts:

https://habanrus.blogspot.com/2023/03/written-from-heart-love-of-letters-part.html

https://marynapier.blogspot.com/2014/03/mentalshelving-myhusband-grew-up-in.html

** More details here: https://habanrus.blogspot.com/2023/04/haban-r.html

 

The Slippery Slope to Wordle

"Go ahead. Just try it. It'll be fun. And it will develop your mouse skills." It was another century, and my husband was trying to spark in me some interest in our first computer. He was always slightly ahead of both the curve and his peers when it came to technology. I, however, was downright Luddite when it came to adapting to such nonsense. So it was a brilliant idea to tempt me onto the new computer with a solitaire game. I did try it and it was fun. And it did develop my mouse skills. And it started me down a somewhat dubious slide toward always having some computer-generated game available to "take a break" from housework, homework, kid's sports or whatever was the main focus of my day during various stages of life. Eventually, I did see the advantages of word processing over a typewriter, and fully bought into computers when the internet provided unlimited knowledge online, whether it was really useful or not.

Over the years since, I've Tetrised shapes into solid blocks, had gorillas toss exploding bananas, and dropped many colorful circles into their appropriate places. Solitaire games grew in number and availability. Terrace, Forty Thieves, Spider and all their variations have been played at least once...O.K., a lot more than once... I've wasted much time, I'm sure, and dinner has sometimes been late, but I've also had a lot of fun. My mouse skills have grown into touch pad skills.* So here, in another century, I'm still at the keyboard, "taking a break" from writing or reading or housework or whatever I need a break from. The following are my top five break-taking games I've slipped into over the years:

#5 Wordle https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html: "Do you play Wordle? No? Why not? You'd love it!" A conversation with my old college roommate prompted me to give it a try. I was already getting the New York Times email everyday and had tried their Spelling Bee and their Mini crossword. Couldn't hurt to try the Wordle...and that's how my most recent addiction started. I quickly developed my own set of rigid rules for playing – I use the same starter word every day; no sacrificial words, i.e., if a letter is in the right place it stays there, no words used with eliminated letters. Wordle fever spread and my husband started playing, developing his own set of rules. He tries to choose a topical starter word everyday. Bad winter weather? How about "snowy" as a starter? He goes the extra mile every day, keeping a spread sheet of his Wordle choices and then creates a Wordle "story" with his attempts which he emails out to a select group of Wordlers. A typical communique from last Tuesday, which also happened to be the mayoral election in Chicago:

#4 Solitaire: Here's where I started and here's where it's still fun to go. My husband put PySol Fan Club Edition on my latest computer and I'm embarrassed to say how many different Solitaire games I now have access to as well as types of Mahjongg. Many of the games are broken down into families. Like to play Forty Thieves? I do. There is a head-spinning number of variations on it. Same for Terrace and Spider and a dozen other solitaire families. Enter PySol Fan Club at your own risk.

#3 Numbrix: You may be familiar with the paper and pencil version of this game that appears in the Parade magazine insert of many Sunday newspapers. (Remember newspapers?) https://parade.com/numbrix/ is a 9 x 9 grid of 81 numbers you have to fill in to have numbers 1 through 81 snake through the grid in some kind of contiguous order. There is a new one every day. Some are easy, some are hard. Most are fun. There is a visual pay-off when you get it right at the end.

#2 Jigsaw puzzles: Like to do jigsaw puzzles? Yeah, I know, not really a game, but online jigsaw puzzles can be just as addictive as solitaire. www.jigsawplanet.com has a great collection of thousands of jigsaw puzzles. Don't like what you see? You can then take any photo of your own and turn it into a puzzle. Whether you use one of their images or one of your own, you can manipulate the puzzle by choosing eight different size puzzles up to 300 pieces, and choose one of eight different puzzle piece shapes, including straight-sided pieces, a real challenge. The default has the puzzle pieces in the correct orientation, or if you prefer to make yourself crazy, you can choose the rotation option and have a really, really hard puzzle. (I'm not that crazy...yet.) I enjoy doing the 300 piece mandala and geometric design puzzles, just the right amount of hard. Added bonus: Turn the sound on and there is a very satisfying click each time you put a puzzle piece in the right place. Like Pavlov's dog, it keeps you coming back for more.

#1 Kakuro: My all time favorite online game. (Sorry, Wordle friends...) Not Suduko, but a number game where you fill in numbers in squares so they add up to a certain designated number. https://www.kakuroconquest.com is the best kakuro site out there, which I found out recently when their website was down and I was forced...forced!...to try other kakuro sites. Kakuro Conquest allows you to choose the size of your puzzle and one of four levels of difficulty. This site also lets you put in multiple choices and eliminate them as you work through the puzzle. For those of you out there that are thinking "Math?! I didn't know there was going to be math!" this is more of a logic game than a math game, more about elimination than just adding numbers. Give it a try.

I've arrived at a stage of life when I probably have more discretionary time on my hands than ever before. While I try to use that time wisely, I still take breaks from my productive pursuits, justifying those breaks to myself in various ways. I tell myself I deserve a change, a mini vacation from my work. I tell myself I'm stimulating my aging brain. I tell myself I can listen to the news and do a jigsaw puzzle at the same time. If all else fails, I can tell myself I'm developing my mouse skills...still.

*I've never made the jump from playing games on computer to playing games on my phone. I don't want to slow down my phone with any more apps, and I have some finger mobility issues, so it just makes sense to stick to my laptop keyboard.

They say I'm lazy but it takes all my time 

- Life's Been Good by Joe Walsh