25 years alive!
I can’t say how much I appreciate this nerd in my life. She is the coolest. We’re sitting in front of the wood stove drinking mini bottles of scotch. All worn out from our long hike. What a day! To celebrate! My favorite person. Happy birthday Laura.
Grow Potatoes
Living in a small apartment we dreamed of being able to grow our own food. We read about rooftop and container gardens, but we never quite got there. It seemed a little too complicated. Now that we have a yard, we are able to experiment and grow our own food. It is shockingly easy. Like really very easy. For example, look at these awesome fingerlings:
Do you know the level of skill it took to create these? Absolutely none. We put our seed potatoes in the ground. That’s about it. We don’t really even need to water here. Now we have awesome potatoes. A lot of them. All my favorite kinds.
Growing potatoes has empowered me. No matter where I live next, I will grow them. There is no reason everyone shouldn’t be growing potatoes. They grown well in containers. Do it.
A gift from a friend
Marathon
Yes! The lady and I ran our first marathon on April 11 (hence the animated gif). This was a real feat for the both of us. 26.2 miles. That is really far. About 2 round trips of our old commute to work, but who’s counting.
Back in August or September, somewhere between swimming in the lake every morning, watching Lost, and the general cabin fever associated with living with 12 people, we decided to run a marathon. Seemed like a great way to become more intimate with this landscape and achieve a goal. We needed to sweat more, for everyones sake.
Training As we increased our mileage in training, our world here felt small and close and well… we had a hard time finding long runs. We zig zagged through streets in Anacortes trying to get enough miles. This is a small island. We even resorted to driving to Bellingham (nearly an hour away) where they have longer trails.
The necessity of mechanic rhythms and mantras is much greater than it was with riding bikes. The sound of the wind is much quieter than the sound of your feet, breath, and heart. So much pounding. The biggest lesson so far over the past 7 months: run no matter what. Don’t worry too much about distances or times of days or when you last ran or any other self-inflicted constrictions. Get out and run, every day, and the rest will come. After the first 4 miles, the weird aches work themselves out.
The Race We started out running around this tiny soccer field, graduated to jogging through the misty night air on the high school track, to 6 miles trails along the water, and now we’ve run 26.2 miles. In the early morning, the first 17 miles of the race almost felt like a breeze, even the massive hill at mile 7. My feet hurt and I was tired, but I felt great.
But the last 8 miles, now that is another story. This was the part of the course that the lady and I didn’t drive. We figured it would be mellow, on the water front, flat. Ha! The hills rolled on. If there is one word to describe the Whidbey Island Marathon it would be hills. Lots of them. I did get a lei, though. It seemed that everyone had an iPod. For some reason I thought this would be frowned upon. I thought I would want to commune with nature and the sounds of everyone running. But at mile 22 all I wanted was to listen to some Usher.
After the race we went out with Nick and ate a whole lot of pizza and then I slept for 4 hours. It took about two days to start walking normal again.
Chick starter
There is a box in our living room filled with little silver velociraptors! JK. We wish. We got some baby chicks to be our friends and eat cool bugs and scraps and turn it into golden compost and blue eggs.
Right now they mostly just chrip, chirp, chirp and poop in their water and sleep beak-down like real yogis. Margot thinks they are weird.
We mixed our own chick starter food for the babes because it will make for tastier eggs and healthier chickens. But mostly because it is a huge hassle to go get the food. No store in town sells any and the store bought stuff is sold in tiny bags (and is mostly soy and corn, etc.).
A quick search on good old google dot com and we were on our way to mixing up a nice batch of eats for those nerds.
Here’s the list/recipe:
2 x Corn
3-4 x Wheat
1 x Barley
1 x Oat groats
1 x Shelled sunflower seeds
1⁄2 x Lentils
1⁄2 x Split peas
1 x Millet
1⁄4 x Flax
1⁄2 x Seaweed
Oh man, plum jam
A few weeks back we discovered another gift from 1011 12th Street, a plum tree, in our very own yard, laden with delicious tiny plums. Actually no one knew what kind of tree it was for a long time. There were guesses that it was a cherry tree by the looks of the fruit. Someone tasted an early fruit and absolutely didn’t like it. I think the unripened fruit freaked them out. We all avoided the tree. But then a nice man came and was pumped and picked handfuls and shared the goodness with us. Now we know.
So, this week I decided to pick a few buckets before they were gone. Margot hung out with me the whole time. She finds solace in the shade of this tree. She is able to watch birds and remain aloof all day. But she was happy for me to come visit her in her zone.
It took be about an hour to pick and pit. This I did alone. It was fun and therapeutic. Afterward I had a bowl of pitted fruit and stained hands.
That is not to say I did all the work myself though, really I only did the easy part. Laura picked up some jars and sugar at the coop. We had a late night of making some decent tart jam. Exactly as I want jam to always be. Not too sweet, nice and gooey.
It was our first time canning and it was a real experience. I was extremely nervous and intimidated by the process. Laura reassured me and told me that I was a geek for freaking out too much. Turns out, the process is really mellow and now we have seven jars of extremely delicious plum jam. We are saving some for the winter when fresh local fruit is scarce.
I’m really only writing this post to boast. Sorry, but it is so delicious and I think about it constantly, like LOST.
Saturday mornings are for…
- Special treats
- Sleeping in
- No shirts/pants
- Another round (of coffee)
- Writing
- Catching up
- Baking if you want to
- Walking before breakfast
- Weekend America (RIP)
- Not feeling guilty
We have a screen!
Our living room has two big windows. They function as the main cooling element for our whole apartment. Last June, one of the screens fell out (and Margot went with it!). It is hard to describe the process of getting that screen back, but I will do my best.
But first! Let’s talk about the functions of screens and windows. Our apartment has outside walls mostly on the South side of the building so we get direct sun pretty much all day. And living in LA it gets fairly hot in the summer, like really hot. So all summer when we were less one window, we were burning up. And because we are energy conscious badasses, we are totally decided against buying an A/C.
But you may be asking, why didn’t you just open the window anyway? Well, let me tell you. We have a paralyzing anxiety about opening that window. What happened is, one night we were reading downstairs and we were so hot that we had to open both windows. While we were reading a HUGE COCKROACH FLEW IN THE WINDOW AND INTO LAURA’S FACE. That’s real, a true story. It was deeply traumatic.
So, since opening the window equals shepherding Margot and weird subconscious anxiety, we haven’t, for about 6 months. Well, that’s a lie. Sometimes we have to, like one night when we were sauteing chilies and couldn’t stop coughing. But it’s rare… and for < 5 minutes.
But now, today, six months and a day from when the screen fell out, we have two screens again. Let’s hope this is a metaphor for our country.
Agricultural Equality
To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it. – President Barack Obama, in his Inaugural Address
Our new president mentioned today in his Inaugural Address supporting poor nations through farming and clean water. I am very moved by this idea. It is symbolic to me of all the change that is happening. Giving everyone access to their rights as human beings seems to be a priority for Obama. It is good to see that food justice is being recognized as a tactic for spreading peace and equality, instead of starting wars with every country in the Middle East like our previous president.
“On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.” Hope over fear guys. We did it. Hope, farming, equality, peace. We chose this. We want to heal the disproportionate distribution of wealth in the nation and the world. And you know what the best way to start this is? Through clean water and sustainable crops. People have been trying to get the White House to join the sustainable farming train for a while, but it is very meaningful for it to be finally coming from the commander-in-chief.
And this is just the beginning, day 1, there is so much to do and so much that can happen.
Eco-billing
The truth is that I am a fairly cynical guy. I try to be an upbeat optimist, but we all know the deep dark truth. As a rule I don’t entirely trust businesses. I think they are looking out for themselves and their profit first and foremost. I think all of these “green” campaigns are based on half assed environmental responsibility and are ultimately just done to promote the brand and not the environment.
For example, at a company I once worked for, as part of their “green” month they gave everyone a cheap ceramic mug to replace paper cups. But they didn’t actually get rid of paper cups. And the ceramic mugs were cheaply made in China at a factory that probably pollutes a ton. Nice guys!
With all of that being said, I really liked this message I got from T-Mobile when changing to a paperless bill:
Sign up for Paperless Billing from T-Mobile, and you’re not just saving a tree, you could be doing your part to plant one. As a thank you for helping us to be more eco–friendly, T–Mobile will plant a tree on your behalf with the Arbor Day Foundation. Your tree will be part of the Restoration Project, planted where it’s needed most — in damaged regions like Southern California and New Orleans, where trees aren’t growing back on their own.
Maybe I’m a sucker, but I kind of believe them. Granted this is a ploy, but I am happy to 1) not get a bill in the mail and feel guilty about the paper used, and 2) for a tree to be planted on my behalf.
“But Matthew!” you say, “I don’t have T-Mobile!” Well, maybe you should pressure your mobile carrier to follow suit. Standards are created by demands.
