For you travellers

Happy Friday!

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

A Farewell

A few weeks ago we received the terrible news that a friend had died in a car accident back in the states.

Susan is a very dear friend´s sister. We met when she moved to Chicago to make a fresh start. A former military police officer with a fondness for white wicker and lace, Susan was a genuinely good person with a ready empathy. She was dealt many challenges in life, and while she occasionally paused to catch her breath, always kept on fighting the good fight. She was an inspiration and she will be sincerely missed.

We sponsored a memorial grove with the Trees for Life organization dedicated to re-foresting the Caledonian forest in the Scottish Highlands. The image is from their website.

If you´d like to participate more trees can be added. The memorial grove is under Susan M. Kihlgren.

http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/index.html

I don´t know if Susan was a Loreena McKennit fan, but I do know that J is.

O Bonny Portmore I am sorry to see
Such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree
For it stood on your shore for many's the long day
Till the long boats from Antrim came to float it away.

O Bonny Portmore you shine where you stand
And the more I think on you the more I think long
If I had you now as I had once before
All the Lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore.


All the Birds in the forest they bitterly weep
Saying "where shall we shelter or where shall we sleep?"
For the Oak and the Ash they all cutten down
And the walls of Bonny Portmore are all down to the ground.


O Bonny Portmore you shine where you stand
And the more I think on you the more I think long
If I had you now as I had once before
All the Lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore.

Let´s see what we can to do restore the environment, instead of hurtling headlong toward its destruction.

Seeds

I have never grown anything from seed. At least not since the third grade.

I would like to have heritage, organic, non-GM, saved seeds - but I don´t. I even made an excel worksheet after getting a couple of catalogues. They don´t ship outside the UK. Sigh.

We have a lovely patio which V has lovingly filled with all kinds of flowers. All my experience with gardening has been with flowers, except for one lonely jalapeño pepper we had in our back yard in Chicago and whose bounty mainly went to our friend Marcos who had a higher tolerance for ¨heat¨ than either of us do.

My associations with vegetable gardening are of my father and his constant battle against weather, plague, and various critters. I focused on flowers.

But now I´m convinced that homegrown produce should be better tasting and better for you. We are limited here to containers, but some day. . .

So throwing caution to the winds I bought several packets of seeds from Lidl (a discount grocery chain). I recycled yogurt containers and shallowly planted in the bagged potting soil we had on hand. Results - bupkis, nada, pfffft. Except for several little tomatoes (unnamed hybrids - so much for my organic/hippy cred). It was indescribably gratifying. After waiting until they got a couple more leaves, I have now transplanted them into flats, along with some new seeds (cilantro, basil) and promptly lost 3 more. We´ll see.

San Isidro

I have many things on my list to learn in preparation for the future I anticipate. Fortunately, I usually like learning new things and I hope that in addition to being practical and useful, they´ll also prove to be enjoyable at least some of the time. I´m challenging myself to learn to make soap, knit, spin, start seeds and grow vegetables, cook something new every week. I think all these skills will come in mighty handy on my Galician Homestead. I expect to add lots of renovation skills too - but more on that later.

To follow up on the gardening theme - today is San Isidro, the day of the Patron Saint of Madrid. Never heard of him? Me neither - until I ran across this lovely excerpt from ¨In a Unicorn´s Garden¨by Judyth A McLeod which I thoroughly enjoyed. Turns out San Isidro is also the patron saint of farmers and all toilers of the soil.

. . .St. Isidore (San Ysidro in Spanish) was born into poverty in 1070 and lived throughout his life near Madrid. He began work as a farm labourer, but, being very devout, began each morning by attending Mass. As a result, he often arrived late at work and his fellow labourers finally complained to their master, Juan de Vargas, saying that Isidore was not shouldering his fair share of the work.

So the story goes, de Vargas hid in the woods one morning to watch. Isidore, as always, was late and de Vargas was about to reprove him when he saw an angel on either side of Isidore, ploughing the land with him so that his work was that of more than three men. Not surprisingly, de Vargas did not dismiss him. Isidore worked several miracles for the de Vargas family, including raising their daughter from the dead, and was responsible for several miraculous cures. He died in 1130 and was cannonized by Pope Gregory XV.

OK - I´ll leave the cautionary capitalist exploitation of the worker out, or the lack of solidarity amongst his fellow laborers, especially considering he was doing 3 times the work they were while they complained. Maybe this has a tie-in with the current crisis after all. And I´ve never seen it spelled Ysidro, as Ms. McLeod has written it, but at least I know who the guy was.

To celebrate, Madrileños dress up in typical costume from the turn of the 20th century, known as Chulapos and Chulapas, and there is accompanying music, dancing and the consumption of lots of pork products and wine. Oh, and bullfights lots of bullfights.

Image from Wikipedia.org - http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Madrid_-_Fiestas_de_San_Isidro_-_Chulapos_-_20070515-15.jpg