Sad to say the sprout project didn't really go anywhere. We had them the one time, and didn't make them again because I am too lazy to pay attention to a jar. Maybe if I liked them more, I'd make more of an effort, but frankly, I would rather read. I have found that I would almost always prefer to read about doing something than actually DO it. I am sure I have said that before, but it bears repeating because it is a THEME in my life.
Sadly, it is true that I would also rather read about gardening, consequently my garden is in shameful shape and we have joined a CSA (a local farm who brings us a crate of vegetables every week, in return for our subscription.) It is quite delightful, really, and the vegetables are amazing organic heirloom biological beauty.

Sprouts a getting sproutier!

I'll post more later, after I've worked in the garden for a bit, but here are our sprout's progress:

Sprouts!

The lovely Sonya at Permaculture Pathways in inundated Queensland is generously helping those of us who are wannabe greenthumbs by leading us step-by-step through the process of growing healthy food for ourselves.
Step one was sprouting.

First I assembled a jar (mine was nice and pickley - wonder if the sprouts will taste pickley?), my best rubber band, a piece of cotton (not muslin, but it will do), and some (1Tablespoon) beans for sprouting. I used mung beans.

Beans in, water in, cover and leave to soak overnight.

Next day changed the water and left to drain over the sink. Now I have to make sure the water gets changed a couple times a day, drafting help while I am at work...
We shall see what we shall see!

Drawn in to a wonderful little book that just arrived at my library...

from the back of the book: “Beautifully written, passionate, and engaged, without question this work makes a significant contribution. It is an urgent call to revitalize literary studies within the American activist progressive tradition, and Elizabeth Ammons gives the subject exactly the treatment it needs. In discussing the activist tradition in American literature, Ammons’s goal is to make that literature, and literary criticism too, available, accessible, and important. She seeks to open new conversations with practicing scholars, teachers, and graduate students. These are important conversations about social justice, environmental threats, capitalism run amok, and destructive exploitation of lands and peoples. She reads both the literature and the literary criticism as devices for opening these conversations and beginning the process of problem solving.”—Annette Kolodny, author, The Lay of the Land and The Land before Her

It is SOO agreeable and easy to read I was impelled to look up the author - here she is!

This would be a very congenial read for progressive, humanist teachers. I am finding it quite inspiring...

I was also interested in this book, the bulk of which is taken up with Italian squares, then other European ones,

then four American ones at the end. Anyway I thought it would be representative of communities, but it seems quite sterile to me. Hundreds of color photographs and architectural drawings and hardly any humanity. Where are the kids? Where are the vendors? Where are the gypsy caravans? I don't think it's the books fault - it's the way I interpret things. When I think of public squares, I guess I interpret that as "village green" not civic center, or financial district.

Slugs in the compost

Looked around online to see if we should be doing something about it. Apparently, it's nothing to worry about. In all the years we've had compost piles I guess we've never had slugs because I have never wondered about this before...
I seems like we've always had a population of alligator lizards living around there - maybe they kept the slug population down? Where have they gone?
Apparently they have gone underground. (It's under the heading "places and spaces" - scroll down a bit)

New Year, New Resolutions

Well, some are not so new. I will meditate more regularly. I will wipe down the kitchen counter every night. The new ones are that I will post to these blogs at least once a week. My resolutions have finally been affected by technology. I've never been very good at keeping a journal on paper, either... Oh, and gardening - I will not abandon the garden.
In fact, we will be building a simple greenhouse (meaning inexpensive), so I will document that here. I'm not happy with our composter, either, because nothing seems to compost. We seemed to have better results from a pit in the ground than this black plastic cube with vents on the sides. The ground is nice and wet now, so it'll be easy to pull up the bull thistles. So glad to have the green waste program now, because with our inadequate composting I don't want to compost vicious seeds.

Inspirations

This collage of inspirations is intended to be a sharing thing. I will share my inspirational nouns, Proper and otherwise, and maybe some verbs and adjectives too. I hope you will share your inspirations back at me. I'll start with the inspiration for my blog title. It is from a tale in Lord Dunsany's Tales of Three Hemispheres, called "A Shop in Go-by Street". (You'll find that many of my noun inspirations are books.)



Here is my copy.

From the story:

     "And so I came to be directed to the shop of a dreamer who lives not far from the Embankment in the City. Among so many streets as there are in the city it is little wonder that there is one that has never been seen before: it is named Go-by Street and runs out of the strand if you look very closely. Now when you enter this man's shop you do not go straight to the point but you ask him to sell you something, and if it is anything with which he can supply you he hands it you and wishes you good-morning. It is his way. And many have been deceived by asking for some unlikely thing, such as the oyster-shell from which was taken one of those single pearls that made the gates of Heaven in Revelations, and finding that the old man had it in stock.

     "He was comatose when I went into his shop, his heavy lids almost covered his little eyes; he sat, and his mouth was open. I said "I want some of Abama and Pharpah, rivers of Damascus.""How much?" he said. "Two and a half yards of each, to be delivered at my flat." "That is very tiresome," he muttered, "very tiresome. We do not stock it in that quantity." "Then I will take all you have," I said."




 
As well,  my copy has this evocative bookplate in it.
Below is a close-up, and you can see the wonderful and appropriate detail...