What's the Hook?

I've been crocheting since I was 5 years old. Back then it was just little chains that I used as belts or hair ribbons, but my skills progressed with time. Over the years I have made umpteen blankets, hats, scarves, the occasional dress, and even "tropical sore bandages" (as part of a church service project). In recent years, I have become disaffected with the craft. Does the world really need another frilly synthetic-fiber crocheted candy dish? Sure blankets and scarves are useful, but I recently discovered where to buy recycled-content polarfleece (http://www.milldirecttextiles.com/dept2.asp), which makes up into a blanket or scarf faster, warmer, and with no greater expense than if I had bought the yarn needed to crochet one.

Last year I came up with a useful, if unusual, outlet for my old skill. The city in which I live is very proactive about recycling. Virtually all plastics marked for recycling (with a number from 1-7, which indicates the specific type of plastic used) can be placed in the recycling bin (although I have no idea what becomes of the plastic once it is collected). Plastics that are not marked, however, are still frowned upon. And a surprising range of plastic bags, usually food packaging, are not actually marked. Sometimes, if the bag is essentially clean (like those ridiculous double-bagged loaves of bread), I put it in the recycling anyway and hope for the best. If it is filthy or was used for meat, I consider it to be trash. If it is not filthy, but not clean, I hate to waste the water to wash it when there is a good chance it will only go to the landfill. So I crochet it.

Why on earth would anyone want to crochet a ginormous plastic doily? Because it is not a ginormous plastic doily. It is a tarp. A pervious plastic tarp, perfect for covering compost heaps. It allows moisture and air in, but keeps chickens out (as well as other critters, if I weight it down). I have at least one compost heap going at any given time, so a tarp like this is surprisingly utilitarian, recycled, and free.

To make tarps like this, I cut plastic bags open into long strips, knot the strips together, and stitch the resulting "homespun" yarn into a circle using the largest crochet hook I could buy. I could do other shapes, but round is simple and works for my needs. This one is about 30" inches across, the result of unmarked bags I have been collecting since about October. I usually sit down and work on it whenever I have 10-20 bags to use up. The ones shown at the top of the tarp are 25 lb pinto bean bags- it was time to top up the food storage. By the end of the summer, I should have amassed enough bread, frozen veggie, marshmallow, and various other bags to make it large enough to cover my typical 3-foot compost pile.

Now where is my rake so I can clean up the mess the ladies made while I was crocheting?

Bye Bye, Bees.

Somebody narc'd on me.

I don't know which neighbor it was (although I have strong suspicions) but one of my neighbors complained about my beehive. So a couple of city Vector Control workers came by the house Friday morning and said it would have to go. I brought them into the backyard to see the hive, stood a foot away from the entrance, and let a bee land on my hand to show them it wasn't a so-called "africanized" hive, the bees were not aggressive, and any fears about them constituting a danger to the public were groundless. No dice. They said once the complaint was made, the hive had to go.

I could have fought it. The Long Beach city ordinance is a little vague (see it at http://library.municode.com/index.aspx?clientId=16115&stateId=5&stateName=California  and search on "bees"). But the neighbors I suspect are involved are moving soon. I intend to wait 'till the new ones move in, and see if I can get more cooperation, and less paranoia, from them.

Fortunately, a lot of amateur beekeepers are looking for bees right now. Within a few hours of posting my plight on the Backwards Beekeepers Hotline (call them at (213) 373-1104 if you need a swarm removed in the LA area), I had two offers to come get my bees. Saturday evening, a man named John came by, loaded my hive into the back of his gardening business truck, and left with my ladies. He left me some fresh eggs from his hens (the dark brown are from a Maran hen) and a jar of the best lemon curd I have ever tasted. I MUST learn to make that stuff properly!

It was a sad thing to see the little ladies go, but I am optimistic that I will get to try again.

Femivore? What, am I eating Feminists?

I know it's a bit of a copout to post someone else's article on my blog, but this one is definitely apropos. While it doesn't explain everything about why I do what I do, it elucidates a lot of it, and shows that I have sisters in the cause. And thanks to Jean for bringing it to my attention!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/magazine/14fob-wwln-t.html?ref=magazine

Round One

The Artichoke season has begun.

These are only about two inches across, but as last year's artichoke season went on long enough for the kids to be quite sick of them, I figured we might as well start this year when the first buds were young and chokeless.

I used to just pull off the outer leaves and boil them 'til they were soft. Nowadays I prefer to boil them in acidulated water (add a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar) until just tender, then slice in half and dig out whatever choke there is with a narrow spoon. (The smaller ones in the strainer above had no choke at all - I almost could have eaten them whole). Then I place the halves in a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with coarse salt, and place under the broiler for a minute or two.

Today I got a little carried away with the lemon juice. Our lemon tree has the perverse habit of producing bushels of lemons in the winter, and only a few in the summer, so I like to use them up when I have them. I used the juice from one whole lemon in the boiling water, then another one along with the olive oil in the baking dish. "Lip-puckeringly sour" would be a fair description of the result. I thought the artichokes were fantastic that way, with tart being the first flavor sensed, followed by artichoke accented with oil and occasional bursts of salt. Ben enjoyed them, too, but my other two said "next time, Mom, only one lemon! Oh, well.

There will be a next time.

Defeating the Purpose

Of mosquito netting. But at least the rain barrel is full again.

One side of the mushroom will make you...dead?

I wish I knew if these were edible.

I have been trying to improve the microclimates for my various woodland-origin plants by plunking old logs around their bases, or even burying a chunk of wood and planting right over it. The idea is to replicate the kind of leaf mold/fallen tree/dappled shade neighborhood for which these plants have evolved. This log is next to one of my blueberry bushes, on top of the remains of last year's Christmas tree. Yes, you can grow blueberries in So. California, but only a few "low chill" varieties.

These lovely little mushrooms showed up this week, probably due to the rain and increasingly warm weather. I am not quite curious enough about their edibility to just taste one and find out. Anybody know how to test it without risking one's liver?

Droning On

I hadn't checked on my bees in awhile, so when I found myself with about 5 unclaimed hours on my hands, I wandered out in my beekeeping regalia and cracked open the hive.

On the positive side, there were plenty of bees. On the negative side, they were building cattywampus comb, crossing two or three frames at a time, and every frame I pried out was peppered with drone cells.
I know hives build up their drone population (drones are the boys, fyi) in the spring, as the season for producing new queens (who will need to mate) approaches. But seriously, One hive doesn't need a thousand males. So I cut some of the drone comb out and dumped it on the ground.

I am hoping the chickens will eat the dead larvae.

Not surprisingly, the bees were torqued by my apparent apiacide. I probably would have escaped unscathed if I had remembered to tuck my pants into my socks. As it was I got two stings on my calf. No biggie. As long as I was infuriating them, I figured I might as well get really reckless and see if I could split the hive. I obviously didn't have enough room in my Langstroth hive (the grey box in the first picture), and my top-bar hive was empty. So I yanked a few frames of brood, workers, and honey and put them in the top-bar box. Chances are pretty darn good that you will never hear of that experiment again because it failed. (It will only succeed if there was some very young brood or eggs in the combs that the worker bees can raise to be a new queen, and the ladies were way too aggressive for me to be inspecting cells for newly laid eggs.) Then I will have to drive up to LA and buy more boxes to expand my hive. But stay tuned.