Hallelujah

As I drove to yoga with the children this morning, John Aeiley played this song on his radio program. I felt it so strongly, with the leaves of the bigtooth maples blazing through the car windows, the children chattering in the backseat, and the world as we know it cracking open in front of us to reveal its pure, gracious core. We are a nation perched, holding its breath, on the brink of tomorrow. It is so beautiful to watch America, and the world, offer up their broken hearts to the possibility of renewal.

I have been thinking a lot about the role of the arts in "times like these," when things have seemed so dire. And I keep coming back to a comment somebody made on Charlie Rose one night, and it was something to the effect that the young people in this nation really reached out in this election, and that what they reached for wasn't experience, or time-testedness. What they reached for was a poet. It is somewhat counter-intuitive, but the more dire things get, the more we need someone who can put the words (or images, or movement) together that will help us face whatever comes. We need a well to drink from that will feed our strength, and that is why the arts are so indispensable. We need a reason to keep walking, keep waking, keep the faith that our children will have a nation of possibility to come home to (even if they may always, on some level, want to escape it--as we have).

loving our lake

I have created a new blog with lots of info on our community for those who live here or who might seek to. Check it out at http://deercreekranchparksandlakes.blogspot.com
I took the kids to the Upper Lake this early afternoon to take some photos for the website and was just adoring the turning of the trees and the private magic of that little lake. I'll include some of the shots above, as well as some of Aurora that I took while over there.

proud to be an american

I don't think I have ever felt quite right saying that. But I do now. We did the right thing. Finally. My heart feels full to exploding. I am so, so excited to witness the break of this new dawn for our country.

And here are Maya Angelou's words, so relevant yet again:

On The Pulse Of Morning
by Maya Angelou
American Poet

Delivered January 19, 1993 at the Inauguration of President Clinton

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling words
Armed for slaughter.
The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A river sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.
Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers--
Desperate for gain, starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the tree planted by the river,
Which will not be moved.
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours--your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

laurel says . . . stand up and vote!

i did it! . . . chicken granola

I cheffed up some chicken feed. Let's see if any of my chickens keel over in the next month . . . Here is the recipe I came up with for my free(ish) rangers, who get supplemental milk products (left over cereal milk and yogurt):
3 lbs millet
3 lbs sunflower seed
4 lbs cracked corn
2 lbs corn meal
1 lb bone meal
1/4 lb dry yeast
1/2 lb wheat bran
1 package Bob's Red Mill 10 grain cereal (contains soy, flax, etc)

I just found this useful breakdown of the protein content (by weight) of several chicken feed ingredients:
Dried fish flakes 76
Dried liver 76
Dried earthworms 76
Duckweed 50
Torula yeast 50
Brewers yeast 39
Soybeans (dry roasted) 37
Flaxseed 37
Alfalfa seed 35
Beef, lean 28
Earthworms 28
Fish 28
Sunflower seeds 26.3
Wheat germ 25
Peas & Beans, dried 24.5
Sesame seed 19.3
Soybeans (boiled) 17
Wheat bran 16.6
Oats, whole 14
Rice polish 12.8
Rye 12.5
Wheat 12.5
Barley 12.3
Oats 12
Corn 9
Millet 9
Milo 9
Rice, brown 7.5
I'll refer back to this next time I'm making food for them. FYI--for layers you are shooting for 16-18% protein--

coyote creek

I'm about to run out of chicken feed and have been researching the best sources near Austin. Our first round of feed came from Jeremiah Cunningham's place in Elgin. His feed is absolutely the best, milled locally, with pro-biotics, totally organic. But you can only buy it at Buck Moore in town! Arghhh! Check out the Coyote Creek Farm website here. The second round of feed came from Tractor Supply and was that ACCO paymore crap. I don't want to feed them that anymore, but it is convenient, cheap, and easy to come by.

SOOOO--I'm thinking about experimenting with making my own feed, and here is what a super-smart fella has to say about that:
http://www.backyardpoultrymag.com/issues/1/1-4/Harvey_Ussery.html

Here are two other nice little tips on making your own layer ration (laying poultry feed):

5) MAKE FEED WITH WILD BIRD SEED AND SCRATCH GRAINS
From http://www.upc-online.org/home.html
Providing a Good Home for Chickens

foraging areas should be free of applied chemicals and their food must be fresh. Store their food in clean, dry, rodent-proof metal containers. Moldy food poisons chickens and should never be fed to them. Premixed nutritionally-balanced food is available in bulk (e.g. 50 lbs), or you can make your own by mixing together chicken scratch (whole wheat & cracked corn sold in bulk at feed stores) and a good selection of wild bird food. (Premixed poultry rations often contain antibiotics and typically include rendered dead and diseased birds, offal and other slaughterhouse refuse.) Mix roughly: 65% grains including barley, corn, milo (sorghum), millet, oats, wheat, brown rice; 10% alfalfa meal or ground hay; 16-20% sunflower or oil seeds, dried peas, cooked soybeans or soybean meal--don't feed chickens raw soybeans, which have toxins [See the Protein Section for a simple way to prepare soybeans; however, some farmers have reported feeding their chickens raw soybeans for years!]; 7% hydrated lime for extra calcium for eggshell formation; 1% trace mineral salt. Chickens have gizzards instead of teeth to grind food. To grind, gizzards employ grit--pebbles and other hard indigestible objects chickens pick up while foraging. An indoor chicken should always have some grit available. Chickens love fresh treats. (Contrary to what you may have heard, chickens do not like garbage.) Offer them cooked spaghetti with tomato sauce, steamed brown rice, grapes, fresh greens, chopped cooked potatoes, whole grain bread, raw tomatoes, and their own eggs hard-boiled including the shells (eggshells have calcium and other minerals for chickens).

---

6) MAKE FEED USING RABBIT PELLETS
From http://brill.acomp.usf.edu/~jvanhorn/care.html
FEED THEM WELL!
My chickens eat a basic diet of scratch grains and rabbit pellets. I feed rabbit pellets because lay ration contains dead ground up chickens and often lots of weird chemicals and stuff they don't need. In addition, my chickens get bread, all sorts of veggies and fruits, and pasta. Their favorites are leftover corn cobs, apple cores, squishy tomatoes and lettuce. I'm trying to start up a cricket growing enterprise too, because they just love juicy bugs. Don't give them roaches and things that may have been poisoned, though. Chickens that live outdoors pick up little rocks that they store in their gizzards and use as teeth to grind up food. You can buy grit to give to them if you think there are not enough rocks on the ground for them. Oyster shell, which is a good source of calcium, is also a good supplement to give chickens.

fab library of congress photos

At work on Belmont girl farm (LOC)
Originally uploaded by The Library of Congress

If you need a time waster . . . log onto flickr and check out their "Commons." The Library of Congress photos are amazing! This is one of them . . .

tricks in the sticks

We had a fabulous Halloween experience last night. Aurora was once again a pink kitty, and we dressed Laurel as a little farm hand. Tim was Waldo and I was some kind of a benevolent witch. We were a little worried that "twin lake loop," the closest thing we've got to a walkable street near us, wouldn't pan out. But it was great! Very safe, lots of folks with super kiddo candy, and the perfect length for a four year old and fam to walk. Met some neighbors (a great fringe benefit of Halloween!), and all were tired and ready for bed when we finished the loop. Ideal!

go timmie!

I got a free huge cast iron sink on craigslist a while back (remember when I was obsessed with sinks?). And Timmie just installed it yesterday! It looks great and has a big compartment so that you can wash pots with handles flat. Genius! It is not an apron-front as I had originally hoped, but it also did not involve MAJOR renovations to install. And it will last forever, for free. I love it!

a good library haul

Took the girls to the library today, and we found some super books for them (including Maya Gottfried's hysterical "Good Dog" poems), but on the way out I found three that inspired me too! It is garden season here in Central TX, so I am excited to read and learn from Doug Welsh's Texas Garden Almanac, and was thrilled to find fellow blogger Amanda Soule's guide to family creativity.

On a side note, the photo at the top is of Aurora at her school, giving us a guided tour of all of her lessons (a rare treat which occurred at the school picnic last Sunday). Cool! Laurel is moving toward even greater maturity too; she is becoming more verbal and making clear requests with her words, like "up" and "more." She is also cruising to beat the band. Walking should come any day now!

beautiful

Okay, this is a bit derivative as Sara sent me a link to somebody else's blog with these amazing photos on it. But here are some shots of Obama addressing folks at a rally in Chester, PA, in some seriously grisly weather, on Monday. I think they are just incredibly, incredibly moving. And oh so Shakespearean.

persimmons!

Persimmons, along with blackberries, are my new horticultural obsessions. They have so many varieties of them at the Natural Gardener and Aurora just adores eating the non-astringent ones right from the tree. It is almost impossible, sadly, to find them at retail (even at the Natural Gardener), so I may need to order my two favorite varieties (Fuyu and Chocolate). They did have a couple persimmon trees at the Lowe's a few weeks ago and I just knew I should have bought them, had that gut feeling, but then hesitated over cramming them into the Toyota Echo. That'll teach me to trust my gut in the future, because I have not been able to find persimmon trees anyplace since then. They are just utterly gorgeous, with their fruit hanging like ornaments from their bare branches, apparently pest free, and delicious. Below is what Travis County plant expert Skip Richter has to say about persimmons. I'm on board!

In Praise of the Princely Persimmon
By Skip Richter, Travis County Extension Horticulturist
Persimmons may well be the Rodney Dangerfield's
of the fruit world. They seldom are found with apples,
peaches, plums and pears in nurseries. Most catalogue
sources either don't offer them, or relegate them to a back
page status. Their place in the supermarket produce section
is off in a corner with the kumquats, plantains and other
obscure fruits. For most people they are either the golfball
sized wild fruit of childhood that taught you in no uncertain
term what the word astringent meant, or the bland, tasteless
baseball-sized varieties commonly sold in grocery stores
(and unfortunately recommended for years for home
planting).
Alas, I am here to defend this maligned fruit and
hopefully rekindle some interest in its virtue as a valuable
addition to our gardens and landscapes. Several ethnic
groups adore persimmons giving them the place of honor
they deserve. Why they have never made the jump to the
mainstream of the American palate is a mystery to me. Even
their genus name, Diospyros, means "food-of-the-gods"!
The recent arrival of numerous "new" persimmon
varieties has greatly expanded and improved our options.
Many have excellent flavor and aromatic qualities and most
offer a pucker-free experience even when not fully ripe! The
rich, subtle flavors and aromas of a fully ripe persimmon are
something to experience.
Persimmon varieties may be divided into 2 groups;
astringent and non-astringent.
Astringent types must be fully ripe (jelly-like) before they
are eaten. Some people are a bit turned off by the
"messiness" of a truly ripe persimmon, but don't seem to
mind the texture of pudding, jelly or any other similar food,
so what's the big deal? Perhaps we need a national
persimmon board who can take up the slogan, “ Persimmons
– the fruit you eat in the bathtub”!
The second type of persimmon is the nonastringent.
These may be eaten after turning fully orange
without waiting for them to get soft. Many of the new types
are non-astringent, and as such are very popular. I think
even the non-astringent types should be allowed to soften
before you eat them for the best flavor.
Persimmons are virtually pest free. About the only
significant pests seen are the twig girdler, which occasionally
shows up to prune off branch ends and a leaf spot fungus.
Neither requires spraying.
There are two persimmons native to Texas. The
first, Diospyros texana, is a shrubby bush/tree found in the
western portions of the state, and is plentiful in the Austin
area. Its dime sized, black fruit is hardly palatable although
some make jelly from it. It is a valuable, drought tolerant
landscape plant.
The eastern persimmon, Diospyros virginiana, is
native throughout the eastern U.S. including much of the
eastern third of Texas. This wild persimmon’s chief culinary
Native Eastern Persimmon Trees in Austin contribution to our area is its superior performance as a
Oriental Persimmons
Persimmon - Page 2
rootstock onto which the larger Asian varieties (Diospyros
kaki) are grafted.
Persimmons ripen in mid to late fall. Their bright
orange fruits hang on the tree on into early winter after the
leaves have fallen for a beautiful, ornamental effect. If your
neighbor has a tree it may be time to bake them a pie and go
visit...get the idea? Maybe they'd trade persimmons for a
loaf of holiday persimmon bread. Delicious fresh,
persimmons may be used in a variety of holiday recipes
including pudding, custard, cake, sherbet and a wonderful
holiday bread made with black walnuts.
For more information visit our website:
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/travis/

halloweeeeeeen!

www.flickr.com calyxdanceco's halloween! photoset

it's the great pumpkin, charlie brown!

We watched this one of Charles Schulz's masterpieces last night, and Aurora really enjoyed it. She hasn't been able to get into it in previous years, but now she is amused by the witty banter between the kids and by Snoopy's strange adventures with the Red Baron. There is no other character (none other than Charlie Brown) that so perfectly exemplifies the beauty in dorkiness.

morning light, the daily drop-off, and frisky chickens

The title speaks for itself. I think the brisk weather makes the chickens frisky. Me too!

punkins all over the place

It's pumpkin time! And squash and cider! All that delicious stuff that comes along with the cool stiff breezes and yellowing leaves. I am roasting acorn squash with rosemary tonite.

go go craigslist swingset

Found a lovely free swingset on Craigslist, Tim went into town and dismantled it, and then re-mantled??? it on our property. Yay! It is fun to swing out over the field and look to the houses perched on the far horizon. Someone carved the letter "S" in the top of the swingset--for swing of course! And they also carved some lovely vines up the supports. Sweet.

Had a little photo fun today, so here are some shots from around the place, as well as of the swingset--

guess what i did today!

I took both the ladies to the library after picking Aurora up from school, and what did I notice but signs that said Vote Aqui! So early voting has begun!

I took the girls upstairs in the elevator and cast my ballot with Laurel on my hip. What a rush! We need Obama in the White House to turn this country around!

bob ross

It is rare, when you have been with a man as long as I have been with my husband (over ten years now!) to discover that you have something in common that you had not yet realized. And yet that is just what happened to hubby and I recently. We both love love Bob Ross. Yes, that PBS painting guy that you used to watch and fall asleep to when you stayed home sick from school. The dude with the happy trees. I am telling you, this guy is a zen master. In fact, Tim tried to start a Bob Ross club when he was in high school (where everyone would paint along with Bob) but it was nixed by the art teacher who said that Bob was not a "real artist." Elitist snobs! We love Bob!

Incidentally, for those of you in Austin, Bob Ross is on the PBS CREATE! channel a couple times a week. Go ahead, indulge!
http://www.klru.org/

what a relief

RAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!! The earth is finally feeling a little friendly and spongy again, like things could live in it and off of it. We had a full day of rain and our pond is liquid again. The air has that crisp empty feeling of fall--full of possibility. I planted a new fig tree and a bunch of wildflower seeds. Fingers crossed for them!

We went out to Pedernales Falls with the Guilford Glascoffs on their last full day here and it was just gorgeous, if a bit crowded. There is something that happens when you get about half-way out there on Fitzhugh. The land opens up in this dramatic way, like a book, full of sweeps and crooks and crevices and bold stretches of openness. I am falling in love with it. I'll include a shot or two--

Just returned from my brothers B-day celebration "Will-toberfest." He was decked out in lederhosen and all. Adorable. We got him a dancing gnome and a Lowe's gift certificate for the renovation of their new house in town. They are leaving their spot on The High Road. It is just gorgeous, four acres and a view of downtown--but from their new place they can walk to cafes and the like. Good ol' city living.