Gardening, gardening

Today was such a busy day.

Nathan has been doing volunteer bird banding.  We have to get up at about 4:55 a.m. to get him there on time.  But, hey, it sure beats early morning seminary!  So, I'm thankful.

I planted wild strawberries in an area in our garden.  We are hoping that these will multiply so that we can share some with Fenner.  Deer like strawberries and it just didn't make sense to plant a bunch over there just to have them all eaten up.

Then, I went to the Capital Area Audubon Society board meeting.  I'm on the board now.  I wonder why I did that, but it'll be good for me.

When I got back, I picked up Elijah and we headed back to Fenner with some strawberries, three Michigan Holly shrubs, and approximately 76 pots of Pen Sedge.

Everything we had previously planted was really, really dry.  Some of the shrubs look like they may not make it.  While we were camping in the U.P. (so that Elijah could attend Engineering Camp at Michigan Tech.), the temperatures got up really high and there was no rain.  I tried to pour at least two gallons of water on each shrub and also to water everything that we have planted really well.  While I did this, Elijah went around and planted all of our new plants.  We tidied up the pathway that keeps getting messed up by the turkeys, and got hissed at by a couple of deer.  Really!  They are so creepily bold over there.

Upon arrival back home, I went right to the back yard to dig.  Nathan grew a lot of plants from seed and many of these have been needing to be planted.  We have to get them in the ground now to give them a chance at making it.  Coming up soon, they will have to live through a week of not being watered.  We are really hoping that we can get them established well enough and mulched so that they can survive.  After some digging and planting, I had to ask Nathan to finish up.  I was feeling dead tired after a whole day of gardening action!

Tomorrow, we are heading to Point Mouillee which is a State Game Area.  We are planning on doing some amazing birding, photography and field notes.  I told the kids that I would buy them treats to bribe them to do the hike they are going to have to do.

On Saturday, Nathan, Elijah and I are heading to Highland Park (near Detroit) to do a one-day intensive permaculture class.  That's right!  We have finished four of our online classes and this offering came along at just the right time because I wanted to take them on a field trip.  We are learning so much and I'm so proud of the boys for sticking with me to do this class.  I do usually get a couple of nice eye rolls when I say it's time to watch a class.  But, then they are happy they did it.  OR at least they fake it for me.

I think May spent her whole day doing art.  She is really dedicated and determined.  She tries new things with each piece that she does.  Elijah also finished a piece of art today and Nathan started one.  Sariah got her modeling clay working materials in the mail and has experimented with them.

I feel like I lost touch with Brigham today.  He looked happy at bedtime, so I guess his siblings treated him well and fed him too.  Getting lots of treats to keep him motivated tomorrow.  Sariah and Brigham are the "can we go now?" team when it comes to hiking and nature experiences.  Though, I have to say that Sariah finds the coolest bugs and she's inspiring Brigham to look a little closer too!

Just a quick mention that Joseph had some tests done on a growth in his hand and we are very thankful that it is a benign tumor that will be removed hopefully after we have our vacation with Anne and Pam.

That's all folks! :)

Compost, Permaculture and Chickens

Compost

Our composting worms are doing quite well, thank you!  We still have a lot to learn and eventually I want to graduate them to a commercial bin rather than the plastic, vented bin that we have now.  It's just a regular large storage bin with holes cut out and vents put in the sides and top.  The commercial bins allow for compost to be in three stages with the oldest at the bottom and the newest at the top.  The worms naturally migrate up the layers as their food source runs out.  Then the bottom layer can be used in the garden and placed on top with new food and bedding in it.

I do not think that our worms have begun to reproduce and I will be very excited when they do.  They came to us as such small worms that I think it may take them a while to grow larger and then copulate and lay egg cases.

When we first got the bin, I was amazed at how moist the bin was.  We hadn't put food in yet and the moistness on the sides of the bin was causing the worms to crawl up in search of food.  I didn't know they were searching for food at the time because the instructions with the worms said not to put food in for the first little while so that the worms could become acclimated to their new environment.   Once I realized they wanted food, I put a bunch in and we haven't had many more problems with worm "escapes."

It can be tricky to keep the bin from turning aerobic.  If the conditions go aerobic, that's when it gets smelly.  I think the best thing to do in a case like that is to use the trowel and give everything a good turning over.

I'm still learning, but I'm glad to be throwing my compostable items either in my worm bin or my outside compost bin.

The outside compost bin is another story entirely.  I started that bin to cover for the items that we can't put in the bin inside.  The book I read about wormeries said not to give the worms citrus, onion, starches (and of course nothing fatty or meaty; those have to be kept out of the outside bin as well).  I wanted a place to put those things.  I also wanted to be able to use some of our mowed lawn and other vegetative matter in that bin.  I read Rodale's Book of Composting, and feel I have a very basic understanding of composting.  I'm planning on taking Michigan's Master Composter class in the fall to become a really qualified composter.

I had been layering the outdoors compost bin with leaf mulch from leaves we'd been dumping on our property behind our fence, grass clippings, some food items (mostly moldy fruit and orange halves that had been eaten out by the birds), and dirt.  It's also been fun to include egg shells into our compost knowing that we are adding calcium to the system.  The other day, I decided to turn the compost.  It's really best to have a system of two or three bins for the same reasons as with the worm bin.  We only have one though, so I just shoveled out the contents onto the lawn.  There was a healthy population of isopods, or pill bugs.  There were some pupa of some kind of gross fly, probably.  There were some brown cricket-like insects and at the bottom there were a few earthworms.

The compost had gotten too wet.  We had a huge rain storm and the lid had been left open.  So, the soil I had added, full of clay as our soil is, had done a pretty good job of clumping things together.  But, the really cool part is that there were only a few orange rinds in sight.  The hair I had put in (a very good source of nitrogen) had not broken down at all, making me wonder if I should have shredded it in some way.  There was very little else that was recognizable, meaning that something really is happening in there!

Compost works best with a source of manure, which I don't have right now.  Alternates are blood meal and bone meal available at feed stores.  I think I'll try that soon.

Permaculture

I do not have very much experience with the word permaculture and only the vaguest idea of what it means.  Just yesterday Earth Tipi posted about a 40 hour permaculture class that can be viewed as videos online.  I'm going to listen to all forty hours, I think.  Permaculture is going to be a goal for my yard.  I think Nathan will listen with me.

Chickens

Somehow this fits into the idea of permaculture to me.  I've heard of movable chicken coups.  About once a year, you move the coup and use the amazing soil underneath to grow new veggies or plants.  My friend Angie got chickens lately and I believe she said that her ordinances didn't allow it.  I was figuring our ordinances were the same, but hooray, we can have up to five chickens.  We probably won't get any until 2015 since we'll be gone most of next summer, but I'm determined to have chickens.  Too bad I can't have a goat too!

Doodle 4 Google recap

I was scrolling through old posts and realized that I had never posted the kids' Doodle 4 Google drawings.  They were pretty nice, so I wanted to share:

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

Earlier today, I wrote a message to my family about my experience in South Dakota.  I'm resharing here in case anyone is interested:

May and I got back from working with a group called Re-Member about two weeks ago.

Long story short, and maybe many of you are familiar with this history, but I was not, the U.S. government has made many treaties with the Native People, but never kept their end of the bargain.  

Re-Member is located in South Dakota among the Lakota Indians.  After being pushed off much of their land, they were promised the bulk of five states of land.  Then gold was found in the Black Hills (their sacred land) and the United States decided that they were going to buy the Black Hills.  The Lakota cannot sell their sacred lands and refused the money, but to no avail, the land was taken anyway.  And, the buffalo were all slaughtered.  Then their "reservation" (also called Prisoner of War camp when it was originally set up) was reduced to the size it is today.  You would think the U.S. could let them be.  Nope.  During WWII, the U.S. decided that they needed a place to set off their bombs and took over land in the middle of the reservation.  Today that land has been sold to white owners and also turned into another segment of Badlands National Park.  The people that were pushed off of those lands now live in severe poverty.  They live in poorly constructed used FEMA trailers, often with no running water, toilets, or electricity.  Sometimes 20-25 people share these trailers.  They have high suicide rates, high alcoholism, high rates of drug use and other diseases as well.  They are the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere besides the people of Haiti.  I was shocked to find all of this out.

Sometimes people are tempted to say, "Well, why don't they just...(fill in the blank here...leave...find work...quit drinking...etc.)  Unfortunately, it isn't that simple.  Broken families produce broken families, as I think many of us are aware.  Occasionally, some amazing people have arisen out of the dust and rubble and are trying to help resuscitate 

the language, culture and pride of these broken people.

Re-Member is a non-profit organization that allows people to come and serve.  But, it is also there to help educate U.S. citizens about what happened in the past, what the reality is there now and also about the rich culture of the Lakota.  

While we were there, May and I worked on helping to skirt trailers, which will reduce heating costs in the winter.  I also worked in a community garden.  Other projects include building bunk beds, building outhouses, installing outhouses, putting siding on trailers and roofing.  We also had two "tour" days where we were able to see more of the reservation, learn of the history and explore the culture.  In the evenings, we heard Lakota speakers who taught us even more.

Upon returning home, I spoke with Joseph about taking our whole family to serve with Re-Member in the summer of 2015.  I had learned that they have a couple of "Family" weeks where there are activities for the kids who are not old enough yet to work (12 and under).  We want our kids to learn some of the history that is not taught in the schools.  We want them to understand just how privileged they are (despite not having i-things, a big house, etc. etc.)  and what poverty looks like.  We want them to learn about a culture that has a rich heritage and how amazing some of these people are.

Foggy, rainy Maine!

After May and I got back from South Dakota, we had a day to regroup and then we headed to Maine to drop Nathan off at his Hog Island Bird Camp.  We pulled up to National Audubon's location in Bremen, Maine and learned that we were required to take the short boat trip to Hog Island to meet the counselors that would be with the teen birders for the week.  It's a lovely island with quaint, historical buildings, Northern Parula nests, an Osprey webcam, plus amazing instructors!

After returning to the mainland, the rest of us had over two hours driving time to reach Lamoine State Park which is just east of Mt. Desert Island, the home of Acadia National Park.

What followed was a rainy night in which our leaky tent kept May and I up mopping up dripping water.  Despite putting several cans of waterproofing on this tent, it still leaks.  The rain water gathers in a pool and then there's no where for that water to go except through and onto sleeping us!

We drove onto Mt. Desert island to make a reservation for the following day's Puffin/Whale watch and then headed to Wal-Mart.  Elijah and I decided that we could get a tarp and rig it so that it would protect us.  We also had to replace our five year old GPS unit because it utterly died while we were driving around.  I felt much better once we had a working GPS and after we had gotten our tent protected from the rain.

On Tuesday morning, we got up early so that we could be at the boat dock for our Atlantic Puffin and Whale watch.  This trip did not disappoint.  We got great looks at Puffins, Razorbills, Common Murres,  Arctic Terns and more.  We were also very lucky to see Finback Whales which are the second largest creatures on the earth.  It was a little choppy out there on the open ocean, making me very glad that we had all taken our motion sickness medicine at the beginning of the trip.

Wednesday and Thursday were for exploring the national park.  From Cadillac Mountain (1530 feet; tallest peak on the Eastern shoreline), to the rocky seashore, to mudflats, to tide pools and gorgeous forests, we enjoyed it all.  I have not been to a tide pool since I was a graduate student.  We still didn't get the tide pooling experience that I was hoping for since it was so slippery on the rocks and then it started to rain on top of that.  But, it made me anticipate our trip to California next summer.  Both Wednesday and Thursday were drizzly and very foggy.  The top of Cadillac Mountain was quite the place to be in the thick fog.  We hiked a trail and had to keep close touch with the cairns that marked the way so that we wouldn't be lost on the mountain.  That's more dramatic than it actually was as May reminded me that all we'd have to do is hike up and we'd be able to find the parking lot.

On Friday morning we picked up Nathan who we had all missed a lot.  He was emotional upon leaving camp.  He had such a wonderful experience and made some close friends just in that short 5 days.  It was forecasted to be a rainy day, so we headed to Maine Discovery Museum in Bangor.  As we walked in, the kids moaned about how much better the museum in Marquette is.  I'm telling you, we were only 10 feet inside the admissions desk.  By the end of the day, I heard May telling Joseph on the phone that she had thought she was too old for Children's Museums, but this one was fun!

On Saturday we showed Nathan our favorite parts of Acadia.  Our day started with going to the visitor center where Brigham and Sariah were sworn in as Junior Rangers.  The pledge includes committing to studying the wildlife and plants of Acadia and other natural areas.  Brigham really took that to heart when we stopped at the Wild Gardens of Acadia, asking to bring his notebook so that he could "study the plants."  The end of the day was spectacular at the top of Cadillac Mountain with strong gusting winds.  The kids leaned into and played in the wind and then we got to hear bagpipes being played.

I told the kids that I didn't know when we'd be able to return to Acadia or even if we would return.  Brigham informed me that he would have to return.  This is due to the pledge he made.  So cute.

While in the van over our camping trip the kids worked on artwork and while out hiking they did photography.  There is still a lot to be done for their Young Birder of the Year contest entries.

On the way home, we stopped briefly in Vermont to try to see a Bicknell's Thrush.  We are pretty sure we heard one and Nathan saw one briefly by the side of the trail.  It was a beautiful hike through Woodford State Park.  We were treated to many native plant species as well as the Red Eft stage of the Eastern Newt, something none of us had ever seen before.  I loved Vermont and told the kids that I wanted to move there.  Nathan said that he was quite shocked to hear me say it.

We also got to stop for an hour or so at Niagara Falls.  That's a beautiful, but crowded place.

We were able to listen to some amazing books on CD: The Wild Trees, The Earth Moved, and now we are working on Flight Behavior.  At night, I read to the kids out of the book, The Forest Unseen.  The author of that book is coming to speak at the Stewardship Network conference that I'm planning on attending next January.

Upon arriving at home we learned that Nathan won a scholarship to attend the American Ornithological Union conference in Chicago in August.  While he attends, the rest of us are going to the Field Museum which is a Chicago attraction I've always wanted to visit.

 The view from on top of Cadillac Mountain.

Rocky Coastline

Castings of a mudflat worm called a Lugworm

Tide pool crab

Peering into a tide pool

Lovely spring-green Hay-scented Fern

One of the cooler hikes I've been on.  The whole thing was stairs made out of rock.  When we got to the part where we decided to turn around, there were small waterfalls all around.

May gazes into a tide pool

Brigham informed me that this flower from Lambkill looks like a barnacle.  It really does!

Eider females and chicks.  We came back a few days later and there were fewer chicks probably due to Greater Black-backed Gulls and Common Ravens. :(  Well, they have to eat too!

Fenner Photo of the Month

Seems I'm always bragging.

Elijah won the "Photo of the Month" contest at Fenner Nature Center.

Click here to see his winning photo.

P.S.  We are back from Maine.  Hopefully more on that later!