Well, we're back in business, boys and girls, just like the old days.

Last week I went meandering in the garden store down the street for a little change of pace. A slow afternoon in the greenhouse, so an employee came over to spend time with me. Is it too late to plant this? Will that come back in the spring?

Whenever I plant a little rosemary, I told the woman, it's a goner. She disagreed, proclaiming anybody can grow that herb. I bought a little rosemary, just to be an optimist, along with a mint plant and two brussel sprout plants. Maybe I could exorcise my childhood brussel sprout trauma by growing some of my own!

"Of course," I told the garden store woman, "the white butterfly will find these brussel sprout plants before you can say, 'Butch and Sundance." She gave me a look that said she was too darn perky to poison her mental outlook by prolonging her exposure to me, and went off to water ornamental peppers.



Am I a pessimist? Or am I a realist? I'd like to think I'm just in awe of the abilities of Mother Nature's creations to find their favorite food source. Don't mark me down as a party pooper on my cosmic permanent record!



So it was no surprise when the white cabbage butterfly arrived on the patio this afternoon to do an Isadora Duncan version of egg-laying on the little brussel sprout plants. I hadn't seen her for months, but she was back in business, boys and girls.



I'm thankful to Paul Newman for his gift of precious cinematic moments that color my take on life. It helps to imagine old Butch entering a heavenly Union Pacific boxcar to chat with Woodcock, aka George Furth, who is still in the employ of Mr. E. H. Harriman.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Extreme Okra Arts & Crafts

It's been a tough summer in the school garden. The pepper and tomato plant flowers didn't set. The squirrels ate the tops off the sunflower plants.

The basil and salvia took over their corner, but the real monster is the okra plant. It's taller than I am, and far, FAR wider. The preschool class is drying okra pods to make okragators/pod lizards for fall Open House, but that barely dents the supply of okra.

That's why I'm so excited to discover block-printing with okra to make a flower/star pattern on fabric. This will be the second year for the school to create a quilt to raffle at the spring music festival. It would be very cool if the students could print the fabric for part of the quilt with the bountiful okra.

What kind of child-safe, non-toxic paint or dye could be used that would be fairly permanent? It can't break sewing machine needles when the fabric is pieced and quilted. Please send suggestions!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Vegetable tastings against my will

When my sons are home, I learn about the popular culture and television that I usually avoid. This summer I've been introduced to "No Reservations," on the Travel Channel. The host, writer, chef, and grump, Anthony Bourdain, travels to different parts of the globe with a willingness to eat whatever weird food item is part of the local cuisine.

Of course, my sons also watch "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery Channel, hosted by Mike Rowe. At first I didn't distinguish between the two shows, and thought the New Orleans Norwegian rats caught on the one were being wok-fried on the other. Please be patient. I've just arrived on this planet. I still think Rachel Ray has a sister named Evoo.

The preschoolers give me plenty of opportunites to clean up dirty jobs without special infrared night vision goggles. The school garden has provided two episodes for my own culinary growth show, known as "Severe Aversions."

We grew a brussel sprout plant that provided close to one hundred fresh mini-sprouts in July. The little students had to be really strong to pull the sprouts from the stalk. Cooked with enough garlic and olive oil, the two I willingly ate were quite tasty.

Now I understand why Southerners grow and eat okra. The last few weeks have been brutally hot, but the okra plant is thriving. It's a bush really, and about as big as those inflated Christmas Santas. The blossoms are a lovely creamy yellow with alizarin crimson centers. Today we sampled our pickled produce, and I'm sad to report the okra was slimy and disgusting.

So perhaps on pay-per-view brussel sprouts knock out okra.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Peter Piper On the Patio

While I was watching a hummingbird at the feeder, this little anole lizard leapt onto the pepper plant and called for my attention. He only consented to pose for one photo as he scanned the airspace around pretty much my entire crop of peppers. Jeepers creepers, this has been a hot summer to garden.

I've had three [3] peppers, and one [1] tomato. Total. The basil is going great, but the cilantro and other herbs shrivelled up and died. Even the red cannas that attract the hummingbirds are shorter and slower to bloom than usual. I would blame all this on a brown thumb, but the school garden isn't doing much better. Only the okra and basil are thriving. The okra can thrive all it wants, but I'm still not going to eat it!

Johnny Mercer wrote casual, memorable, and witty lyrics from the 1930s into the Seventies. He collaborated with a Who's Who roll call of the best and most famous composers and singers of the era. Louis Armstrong premiered "Jeepers Creepers," the jazz standard Mercer and Harry Warren wrote for the movie "Going Places" in 1938. Incidentally, Ronald Reagan was in that movie.

Jeepers creepers, where'dya get those peepers?
Jeepers creepers, where'dya get those eyes?

Johnny Mercer/Harry Warren 1938

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Permanent vs. temporary

Digging into the clay soil with my garden trowel, ever so sweaty last Sunday afternoon, I pondered the concept of permanence. My two tomato plants needed bigger pots on the patio, so I went on the rampage creating space "out back".



The condo "backyard" is about 7' x 11', with maybe thirty-five square feet of dirt, and the rest concrete. When we moved in as renters, I stuck some red canna bulbs, myrtle groundcover, ivy, and wandering purple stuff into the mud around the four silly shrubs. We were "just renting," aka "temporary," but I couldn't live with the mud and dead leaves out by the patio slab. A mismatched collection of pots holding miniature roses, dusty miller, and eighty-eight cent mums and Home Depot lantana gradually encroached onto the patio slab in the years since. When you feel temporary, you don't plant things in the real ground.



"Permanent" in the early Sixties meant something briefly stinging, drippy, and smelly "given" to you by your mom to cause your hair to break off and frizz for several weeks. I received the occasional Tonette permanent wave on weekend afternoons while sitting on the tall kitchen stool watching roller derby, Mr. Wizard, Jon Gnagy drawing lessons, and Green Bay Packers games on the small black and white t.v.



"Permanent press" was an advertising phrase of the early Sixties. Women's sportswear maker Joseph Koret developed the permanent-crease process in the late Fifties. Fabrics were coated with a resin solution and baked to set a crease. Koret used this marketing phrase to proclaim the emancipation of homemakers from their ironing boards. My mom sewed our clothes, so they were not "permanent pressed". She spent two or three hours every week ironing clothes for our family of five.



Digging and sweating, my tomatoes are in the big pots, and my herbs are replanted together in a dish-shaped pot. How will the mums, dusty miller, and lantana cope with being plunked into the seriously unimproved soil around the patio?



Kelly Girls temporary services were advertised on 1960's KFOR radio. It's strange to consider the heavy load of baggage packed into the words "Kelly Girl". My gosh! Bad enough that a woman wouldn't have the time to iron her family's clothing, she might have to get a job, but not a real job, just a temporary staffing job popping in and out of offices to do typing, and having to buy permanent press clothes and nylons! Sheez! This was the sort of woman who might phone in an order to Chicken Delight, the only delivery food in town. "Don't cook tonight! Call Chicken Delight!"


In college I used Permanent Pigments paints. The Permanent Pigments Company developed the first water-based acrylic gesso in 1955, and called it Liquitex. Like permanent-press store-bought garments and temp service stenos, acrylic paints weren't considered the proper way to do things!



In Gail Butt's composition and watercolor classes we used the combination of cadmium red #2, cobalt blue, and permanent green light to solve many creations. This green paint is semi-transparent due to it's recipe of phthalo green and hansa yellow.

I've never given myself a permanent green traffic light. But I've replanted the mums into the unimproved dirt of my "out back". It's been six years since I became an owner instead of a renter, but I still feel temporary. Maybe the experience of divorce makes my inner understanding of permanent vs. temporary less clearcut.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Companion planting or online bad date

Marigolds are allegedly the front line in the organic battle against garden pests. They are supposed to be the companion plant of your dreams--The golden guy who just looks tough, and scares away nematodes and whiteflies.

Marigolds are the sort of guys who still hold doors open for tomatoes, and wait for those tomatoes to unlock the front door and turn on a light before driving off. Marigolds broil great burgers on the Weber. They prefer beer but can open champagne and wine bottles like connoisseurs. Marigolds give little kids piggy back rides, do their own oil changes, nap on the couch, and accompany you to any cultural event you request as long as there's a steak & baked potato dinner beforehand.

Marigolds love teaching a kid to bait a hook. They can be appropriately somber when that same kid buries a dead goldfish in a metal Band-aid box in the backyard.

Marigolds are not perfect. They forget to close the sunroof in the monsoon season. Marigolds leave the toilet seat up. They often smell like aged sweaty soccer socks, and ALWAYS overload the washing machine. Still, they play frisbee with dogs and in-laws at family reunions, even if it isn't their family. They rinse their dishes, but don't actually load the dishwasher.

Marigolds call their moms every other Saturday without being nagged. They are the sort of person you want to have the extra key to your house.

I've not tried online matchmaking sites. I've been misled too often! The perfect sensitive macho marigold that is supposed to ward off garden pests is the plant on my patio afflicted with pests.



What's eating the marigolds? Some pest is systematically mowing off my dream dates. Maybe the marigolds were creating fictitious online personas to attract gullible tomatoes.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Ants day and date night

With no rats this time, and only one snake, the fourth Indiana Jones has to rely on insect vermin. We enjoyed the "Crystal Skull" movie immensely. It's taken a few hours for little nagging nitpicks to cut through the euphoria. Mostly I'm grateful for one last date with the dashing unmarried archaeology professor in the fedora. I'm willing to ignore some flaws for the chance to reminisce about our past adventures.

Indy's Russian foes have splendid difficulties with large computer-generated Peruvian ants. Certain parts of the movie seemed like Indiana Jones Joins Men In Black. I was hoping the "crystal skull" would resemble a Mayan inlaid stone mask more than the "galaxy in Orion's belt" cat collar!

Just the other day we learned of an invasion of "Crazy Rasberry Ants" in Houston. Crazy Rasberry is an indication of the ants behavior, and a salute to Mr. Rasberry, an exterminator who did battle with these ants.



The preschoolers have been checking the progress of the black swallowtail caterpillars eating the dill in our garden. When the caterpillars began disappearing, we hoped they were crawling off somewhere to make their cocoons. Unfortunately, the beautiful caterpillars are being attacked and eaten by fire ants. Nature can be such a bummer! The caterpillars need fedoras and whips against obnoxious ants.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Christmas spider and New Years back-up

Almost stood on my head to get a photo of a small spider inside a big flower pot of sedum. The angle of the web made it impossible for me to see the spider's marking with my own eye, so I did photographer contortions to get an image. What a fun surprise to discover the Christmas tree shape with snow on the ground!

Back in January I made two New Years resolutions. These were not save-the-whales-and-lose-fifty-pounds lofty goals, although I did plan to follow through on them with "firm determination". My planned course of action called for improved care of my teeth, and frequent backing-up of my computer files.

Four-plus months later, I'm amazed that I've really implemented those two little resolutions. Bet this is the first time I can even remember my resolutions by mid-May!

Now when I wake up at 4:40 a.m. and can't go back to sleep, I make back-up cds of my computer files. Sometimes the thought of hauling myself out of bed to back-up the computer is enough to solve the 4:40 insomnia. If it isn't, at least I'm eliminating computer crash anxiety as a wee hours worry.

"Take better care of my teeth" is a pretty subjective resolution. My dentist's hygenist will tell me if I've succeeded. My Oral B Vitality Braun electric toothbrush is definitely a step in the right direction. Okay, that's probably too much information!

Still, if I ever become the elderly blue-haired owner of an obese, low and long-haired, yippy, irritable condo dog of the Pomeranian or Spitz type, I will name it Gingivitis. Its puppies will be called Swish, Floss, Tartar, Plaque, and the runt, Hyperactive Gag Reflex.

Perhaps computer back-up insomnia is more to be desired than fat dental Pomeranian nightmares. Next time I see 4:40, I'll meditate on the Christmas tree spider, and pop Vince Guaraldi into the cd player.



© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Blooming mommies

Growing blooming mommies can be done easily in most home gardens with the proper cultivation techniques. The preschool students love the idea of a blooming mommy with flowers growing out of her head. Today they each made a portrait of their own blooming mommy on the seed packets for our special Mommy Seeds.

The Mother's Day projects are nearing completion. Like the Little Red Hen, the preschoolers grew the plants last summer, collected the seeds last fall, saved the plastic applesauce containers from their lunches this winter, drilled holes in the containers this spring, then filled them with potting soil, planted the seeds for the flowers, and marked the flowers with plant stakes. The Mommy Seed packets are the Mother's Day cards to accompany the gift of flowers.

The children are learning about cultivation, which they define as "taking care of the things we plant". At the same time, the children are being cultivated.

I've spread out my old American Heritage Dictionary, turned to cultivate and cultivation. Preschool is all about forming, refining, educating, fostering, and nurturing. To educate, we improve and prepare, plow and fertilize, tend and till.

Cultivation can also mean "socialization through training and education to develop one's mind or manners". Preschool is a never-ending battle for acculturation, which is "the adoption of the behavior patterns and norms of the surrounding culture". We aren't talking about diversity and multicultural awareness here. That is the territory of my eldest son working with university students. We are talking about not picking noses in public, and remembering to flush the toilet, the behavioral norms of the surrounding population of human beings! It's often a harrowing experience.

Till means to prepare for the raising of crops by plowing, harrowing, and fertilizing. It means to work at, to labor. It is definitely hard work to get preschoolers to stop picking their noses and start flushing the toilet. The word "till" seems to carry the frustrations of hundreds of generations of farmers on its back.

My young sons each went through a John Deere phase of fascination with farm implements. As a MOBO, I excelled in the choo-choo railroad fascination phase, and performed bravely in the truck stop big rig phase. I could identify every Matchbox car pulled from the three-gallon tub by year, model, and color. I really knew my hook-and-ladder trucks in the firefighter stage. I was damn tolerant in the military vehicle phase, if I do say so myself, waiting out G.I. Joe. I was never very good at farm implements, aircraft ID, or motorcycles, though. If I crammed for the test I could pass, but I never retained the information!

Harrowing experiences sometimes require using a plunger instead of a farm implement. A harrow is used to break and level plowed ground. It's a farm implement with heavy disks and teeth. To harrow is to inflict great distress or torment on the mind. Or perhaps on the foot. My mom used to receive an annual Christmas letter from an old high school chum. The best year the letter recounted the farmer dropping a sharp harrow upon his foot, but having to pull the harrow teeth out of the punctured foot so he could drive himself to the regional hospital because his wife couldn't shift gears on the manual transmission pick-up truck.

Sometimes on the commute home from work I chant, "It was a tough day, but at least I didn't drop the harrow on my foot." Being a mommy is a tough job, too. There were a lot of days when I felt I'd dropped the harrow on my foot as a parent. The most difficult years were those when I felt unable to shift gears.

Fortunately, there were many more days when I felt like flowers were blooming out of my head!


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Like worms through the collander

...so are the Days of Our Lives.*

Removing composted dirt from the worm bin for the first time late this afternoon, I couldn't help thinking about the polygamist ranch mess that keeps growing. On my commute home I'd heard the NPR "All Things Considered" story about the FLDS children and teen mothers now in foster care. In the drive-through bank lane I listened to the problems in store for school districts receiving the FLDS children as new students.

I'm just moving dirt out of the worm bin because it is so full, and because it was the sort of day that leaves a teacher unable to do anything more challenging than picking earthworms out of dirt. My method for taking dirt from the worms is primitive and inefficient, and quite satisfying. I'll put the wormless vermicompost in the container plants out on the patio.

Worms don't like light, so I opened the bin and set it under a bright light. I scooped some of the vermicompost into a collander, and set that on top of the worm bin. I pulled out the large materials that had not yet decomposed to put back into the bin. I plucked out all the worms I could catch without effort, and set them back into the bin. Then I watched the rest of the worms wiggle down through the collander holes to get back to the shadows again.

A tired teacher separating dirt from worms in a contained tub environment after a long day is a fairly low-keyed, spontaneous event with minimal impact. Law enforcement officials going into a religious cult compound to remove over four hundred minors based on an anonymous phone call need to have better plans in place.

I can't draw too fine an analogy here, but I did try to do no harm to my worms. Could the Texas officials have considered taking the dirt from the worms, instead of the worms from the dirt?

*I admit I used to watch the afternoon soaps back when Macdonald Carey was still alive.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Worming Its Way Into Snack?

Fresh vegetables were a tiny fraction of our diet back in Lincoln in the early Sixties. Except for carrot sticks and corn-on-the-cob, I thought the Jolly Green Giant and Del Monte put all veggies into tin cans. I willingly ate canned green beans, wax beans, niblets, cream-style corn, sauerkraut, and diced beets. Under duress I ate the minimum amount of canned peas. Sometimes Fritzi would serve canned lima beans or butter beans. Those were always suppers that led prematurely to bedtime. At Christmas and Thanksgiving we ate fresh celery sticks.

Nearly all my little students eat a wide range of fresh vegetables on a regular basis. Lunchboxes often hold sliced peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, edamame, broccoli, cauliflower, bean sprouts, sugar snap peas, and jicama.

In the upper elementary grades after 1964, I learned to eat chopped iceberg lettuce with Kraft Italian salad dressing, stewed tomatoes, and canned spinach with lemon or vinegar. It was high school before I ate baked squash. In college I pushed the limits trying fresh spinach, asparagus and mushrooms in some quiche/crepe fern-decor restaurant downtown. It was a wild and crazy time!

Sometime after I got married, but before I had kids I encountered eggplant and avocado. The charms of eggplant still escape me.

Tomorrow will be a challenge. My little students harvested the garden broccoli heads today. I've expended much attention removing the green caterpillars known as Imported Cabbage Worms from the broccoli plants over the past few weeks. The caterpillars are fiendishly camouflaged. When the broccoli florets are served with a dip of Ranch dressing, I will want to holler to the caterpillars, "I know you're in there! Come out with your hands up!"

Barbara Damrosch writing in the Washington Post, 7/5/07, calls those green larvae of the cabbage butterfly, "unintended garnish" and says they are harmless if accidentally consumed:

The green worms hide so well in the broccoli heads that you rarely see them until they are cooked, at which point they turn a conspicuous, incriminating white .... But there will always be a moment when you've just served an honored visitor a beautiful plate of homegrown broccoli and there's that little extra ingredient. Proper etiquette requires a guest to move it inconspicuously to the side of the plate and exclaim "Good protein!" if caught in the act .... Soaking produce in a sink full of salt water before cooking will send most worms flocking to the bottom.

Fritzi told me over the phone long distance that a salt water soak brought all the little creepies crawling out of a broccoli head. I can't recall why she actually began to use fresh broccoli in her kitchen. I was already married and living in Omaha, but we still had to live through Reaganomics before the first President Bush would proclaim his dislike of broccoli. By then my dad had decreed that he would not eat any salad that didn't have at least two ingredients besides the iceberg lettuce. That would be not counting the cabbage butterfly larvae.

"I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli." George Bush, U.S. President (1990)

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

When patios talk

Speech bubble

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Wendy, Michael, John!

This cabbage butterfly flits about the broccoli leaves in her layered chiffon dance costume looking ever so much like one of Dracula's undead wives in the recent Texas Ballet Theater production at Bass Hall in Fort Worth. So delicate, beautiful, and evil, and ready to suck the life out of our spring garden. Fiendish...


Sitting in the box at the Bass, I turned around and whacked the nearly-snoring males of our party on their knees with my rolled-up program. Wake up, you village oafs, youths, and innkeepers! The undead wives are flying!!! D'that ever happen at your crypt?

"Flying by Foy," I learn, is the industry standard for theatrical flight rigging. That Peter Pan television special starring Mary Martin and Cyril Richard that I loved far more than brussel sprouts back in the 1950s was managed by Peter Foy.

Judanna Lynn's costume designs were perfect. Dracula's gorgeous batwing cape alone was worth the drive to Ft. Worth. I wish I knew more about the process of inspiration, research, design, and construction for it. The velvet and brocade costume weighs thirty pounds, and has a fifteen foot wingspan! The details are as luscious at the images of moths in Joseph Scheer's Night Visions, and as powerful as an evening at Austin's Congress Avenue bridge!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Flash flooding

The National Weather Service didn't issue a personal warning that my patio Q School worm bin might experience flash-flooding. Dang. The tray under the bin filled with water, and the aeration holes of the bin let water soak up into the compost. Worms who weren't smart enough to crawl to higher ground drowned.

I'm going back to an indoor-only, one-bin worm operation. If the PGA* Tour worms don't finish the compost for use in potted plants, they have still saved me many, many trips to the dumpster already. I just need to know everybody is home safe so that I can get a good night's sleep.

It's ten p.m. Do you know where your worms are?

*Professional Garbage Adventurers

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Ma Barker in the cabbage patch

Surveillance cameras captured this composite photo of Ma Barker laying eggs under the leaves of a broccoli plant in the school garden. She was creating a diversion while one of her sons, probably Lloyd, was chomping a big hole in the leaf of the next broccoli plant [lower right].

The real gang matriarch known as "Ma" had three other nasty outlaw sons besides Lloyd--Arthur, Fred, and Herman. This cabbage butterfly must have hundreds of voracious criminal offspring. They are all Public Enemies Number One in my mind.

Different opinions about how involved Ma was with the Barker-Karpis Gang have floated for decades. Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, who did time with Fred in the Kansas Penitentiary, became the leader of the gang. If you look at the vintage Ten Most Wanted posters in the post office you will see that "Creepy" was a velvety green caterpillar, same as the Barkers.

So I called up my dad. Sometimes I get fiction and memories intertwined. It seems like I heard tales of an outlaw car in Pierce. Did Dad remember ever seeing the shot-up car of Bonnie and Clyde on display at the Pierce County Fair? He didn't, but he did remember that the Anderson Garage had a classy car belonging to an outlaw named Flannery on display in Pierce for a long time.

Dad remembers hearing about the Chicago gangs, Pretty Boy Floyd, the Barkers, and John Dillinger as a kid in the Dirty Thirties. Dillinger changing his fingerprints with corrosive acid was a big story back then. Dad could get the latest news by wandering two blocks down to the Skelly station, and hanging around the cold water fountain at the sidewalk. "The Best Water in Pierce" drinking fountain was also the place to exchange news and gossip.

I'm ready for J. Edgar Hoover's FBI boys to conduct a four-hour shoot-out against the cabbage butterfly and her pesky broccoli gang offspring. I'm a tad irritable because, hey! I resemble that remark about Ma in an online biography:

ARIZONA CLARK "MA" BARKER (1871-1935) Person: In her younger years "Ma" Barker was a rather dumpy fiddle player and Bible reader. In her 50s she was even dumpier, running to gray hair and fat.

But I don't chew holes in the garden plants!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Q School for worms

When the day started, my lengthy To Do list did not include cleaning the patio. The list doesn't have many things checked off, but I'm feeling better. Stepped outside to move my little Weber grill back into the storage shed, and started pulling out some ugly old canna stalks left from last fall. One thing led to another, until I had filled two black trash bags with fall leaves and debris.

My worms are making lovely compost in the kitchen bin, and I want them to have a goal in mind. People are asking why I started the worm bin. They aren't sure if I'm quite sane when I answer that I just thought it would be an interesting project.

[Worms are difficult to photograph, but you never have to worry about flash "red eye".]

So now I will be saying that the vermicompost will go into my container garden. I stopped at Home Depot for two cherry tomato plants, two pepper plants, one dill, and one bag-o-dirt. My shed had a big stack of flower pots, and I put the new plants in the largest ones. They don't quite feng and shi with Sammy Kaye, but they will do. Divided a couple mums, whether or not it is the right season.

Enjoyed the blooms on my "miniature" rose bushes. One has pink roses, and the other has orange petals with magenta edges. I got them at the grocery store a few years back for a couple bucks each, when they were in four-inch pots, and four inches tall. The flowers are still "miniature," but the two foot tall rose bushes are ridiculously hardy and thrive on neglect.

But what about Q School and worm motivational goals? My worms have been eating my fruit and vegetable scraps for over two months now. It's time for me to stop adding food to the bin and let them finish turning what's there into compost for my container garden and house plants. It's time for these worms to go pro, bring home the trophies and the Green Jacket.

I don't want to go back to tossing all my garbage in the dumpster. I drilled aeration holes in an old, unattractive Rubbermaid storage container I found in the shed. It will be the patio bin. It has bedding, a bit of soil, and the largest and least decomposed materials I found in the kitchen bin. I've added a small fraction of the worms from the kitchen bin to the patio bin.

Called Dad while I sat out on the patio enjoying the improved scene. Dad, the lifelong golfer, is now a Golf Channel viewer. The name Q School popped into my head for the patio bin, where the worms will have rather primitive conditions and have to carry their own golf bags. The kitchen bin must be The Tour, a comparative vermi Palm Springs where the worms are playing for big money.

It's been a lovely day, but the To Do list is still waiting.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Preschool organic control of ICW

At recess the preschoolers rush over to the garden to examine the lacy damage to the broccoli and brussel sprout plants. They are excited, at least for these few days, to search for the offending imported cabbage worms (ICW), and quite willing to pick them off the leaves. Cupping the caterpillar in their palms, they run to the other end of the playground to release the very hungry caterpillars on different sorts of plants.

ICW are soft and unthreatening. If you were going to sew one, you would use a spring green sueded polyester fabric of just the sort your great granny might have for a special occasion pantsuit with elastic waistband for bingo nights at the assisted living center. Then you would stuff the polyester worm with old snagged knee-high nylons.

The preschool girls aren't the least bit squeamish about touching these cabbage granny caterpillars. The trick is to find the darn things! ICWs are perfectly camouflaged against the leaf veins. They are just as hard to see when they are an inch long as when they were at a quarter-inch. The five year old girls are getting better at this tricky sport. I can almost hear Curt Gowdy's breathy "American Sportsman" delivery commenting on the hunt.

The smaller girls are glad to hold, cuddle, and relocate the caterpillars. Interestingly, the preschool boys are only interested in this process if they can put a caterpillar in their pants pocket and take it home. O, ye snips and snails!

Like most of March Madness, I don't care who wins this game. Unfond as I am of brussel sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli, I just enjoy watching the competition. I'm putting some J. J. Cale in the cd player. Eric Carle is playing Eric Clapton in the semi-final! I'm a lucky mom to have attended the 2004 Crossroads Guitar Festival at the Cotton Bowl with two of my sons!

Kale or Borecole is a form of cabbage (Brassica oleracea Acephala Group), green in color, in which the central leaves do not form a head. It is considered to be closer to wild cabbage than most domesticated forms. The species Brassica oleracea contains a wide array of vegetables, including broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. The Cultivar Group Acephala also includes spring greens and collard greens, which are extremely similar genetically.


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Why worms? Why opera?

The beauty of having one thousand red wiggler worms as pets is not having to walk along behind them scooping poop and picking up steamy droppings in a plastic bag before dawn. To worms it is pretty much always before dawn, except for those occasional solar flares when I take the lid off their worm bin. The whole point of having worms is to collect their castings (aka poop), but I don't have to put them on a leash and go out into the cold night wearing my bathrobe and slippers.

All my red wigglers are named "Dave". Dave is a good, solid name. My first boyfriend was named Dave. True, we were both toddlers, and the relationship didn't last. We shared some good skinned knees and graham crackers, though.

Dr. Seuss created Mrs. McCave, who "had twenty-three sons, and she named them all Dave". The story is part of The Sneetches, one of the greatest books ever for kids or grownups. I only had three sons, but it often felt like twenty-three!

And so, my little Daves are making new and improved dirt that I'll eventually use in my garden. While that is the projected product of this endeavor, the process is intended to make me more mindful of my personal kitchen waste. Beyond that, it is about being part of the most basic cycle of our earth, and acknowledging the efforts of the smallest participants in this contract.

Why opera, then? While the worms break down life to the simplest of sitcoms, opera piles everything on like a cultural game of Dogpile with the Princess and the Pea's mattresses. At it's best, an opera brings everything down to a gut level of rich improved soil, while showing off for every sense like a gleaming scarab beetle.

What are we made of? If we pile all our leftovers in a heap, then let them be digested, can we become as rich and layered as the arias of "Tosca"? Can we also become the form of the most elemental nourishment for garden and soul?

I love the dirt, the sounds, the color, the dark, the rich complexities, and the simple worms.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Gratitude by the sand bucketful

How very fortunate I am to spend time in a garden with small children! Everyday has such opportunities for wonder.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Rodeo Spider Ropes and Drinks Juice Box

This spider made a wonderful web between two tomato plants in the school garden. We had just arrived at the garden to release a very hungry anole lizard from a student's show-and-tell box. Twenty-five preschoolers were arranged in a semi-circle. Suddenly, a bee flew into the spider's web. Faster than you can remember your ten-digit home phone number with area code first, the spider sensed the disturbance in the web, scurried out from under the tomato leaf, wrestled the bee, and roped it with loop after loop of silk until the bee was completely mummified. After secreting digestive juices onto the bee, the spider resumed its position under the tomato leaf.

About fifteen minutes later the spider went back out into the center of the web to retrieve the encased bee. It took its package back under the tomato leaf and began consuming its now liquified catch by holding the case and tipping it to its mouth. Spiders don't have teeth. They use their strong sucking stomach to slurp the pureed bug smoothie out of the box. I'm so sorry I didn't have my camera! I will never ever watch a preschooler drink from a juice box in quite the same way!

Four hours later the spider was still under the tomato leaf, but most of its web was gone. That's when I took the photo.