Hornworm meets alien!

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Pests
4 Comments

So much better than that pointless Prometheus movie, is this glimpse into the kind of parasitism Hollywood just can’t match. In this Purdue Extension Entomology Service produced video, you’ll see a hornworm devour a tomato and then fall prey–Alien-style–to a species of parasitic wasp (Cotesia congregata). Not only do these parasitic wasps devour their host but in order to overcome the caterpillar’s defenses, mama wasp injects a virus before laying her eggs.

How do you create habitat for Cotesia congregata? Adults feed on nectar producing plants and, of course, you need to make sure you keep a few hornworms on hand!

Thanks to Jeff Spurrier for posting this video in Facebook.

Saturday Linkages: Beer Caps n’ Plants

Mr. Homegrown
Saturday Linkages
2 Comments
beer cap bathroom floor

Beer cap floor via Dude Craft.

DIY
Beer Cap Bathroom Floor http://www.dudecraft.com/2013/04/beer-cap-bathroom-floor.html …

Lecture on stone-wall building, with miniature stone wall built: http://boingboing.net/2013/04/02/lecture-on-stone-wall-building.html …

Plants!
Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land http://j.mp/12r218m

Transmitted light photos of houseplants: http://plantsarethestrangestpeople.blogspot.com/2013/04/exceptionally-pretty-pictures.htmlntsarethestrangestpeople.blogspot.com/2013/04/except… …

grounded design by Thomas Rainer: Noel Kingsbury: The Ghost in the Machine http://landscapeofmeaning.blogspot.com/2013/04/noel-kingsbury-ghost-in-machine.html?spref=tw …

For these links and more, follow Root Simple on Twitter:

The Present Order is the Disorder of the Future: Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta

Mr. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
4 Comments

Scottish artist and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay spent forty years creating his garden. He called it “Little Sparta,” a reference to the battle he fought with the town council who wanted to tax it, claiming that it was a gallery not a garden.

Little Sparta was a place of healing for the intensely agoraphobic Finlay. In the city, he could barely leave his room–at Little Sparta he could go outside.

This is one of my favorite gardens–I’m a sucker for classicism but I also like that it has a narrative, that it tells the story of the people who lived in it.

Here’s here’s another nice video about Little Sparta narrated by Finlay’s son:

I hope to visit it someday. In the meantime, I’ve got my own Little Sparta to work on.

Roasted Asparagus

Mrs. Homegrown
Food, How-to, Recipes
15 Comments
This, believe it or not, is a cake! I found it at Sweetopolita, where she'll tell you how to make it.

This, believe it or not, is a cake! I found it at Sweetapolita, where she’ll tell you how to make it.

Erik’s aunt just called to ask me how I cook my asparagus, because she wants to make it for company tonight. It’s so easy to make perfect cooked asparagus that I forget that some people find it intimidating. Maybe that’s because of those dedicated asparagus cookers they sell, and associations with silver tongs and Hollandaise sauce and hotel brunches. Yet the truth is all you have to do is roast it.

Here’s a universal rule: everything tastes better roasted. Even vegetables. I can’t think of one vegetable that doesn’t roast nicely, and asparagus is one of my favorites. All vegetables are roasted the same way, basically, but here’s an asparagus specific recipe.

Roasted Asparagus

Pre-heat your oven to 400F (is that 200C?)

Trim the pale, woody ends off of the asparagus. Lay the asparagi down on a cookie sheet or in a baking dish–or hey, even a roasting pan!  Somewhere they can spread out in a single layer. Drizzle them with lots of olive oil, then get in there with your hands and toss and massage that oil in, so all the stalks are completely coated. Lay them back down in a single layer. Give them a generous salting and a grind of pepper and chuck the pan in the oven.

Roast for about 30 minutes at 400F until tender but still retaining a bit of spine. Fat stalks might take longer, skinny, less long.

  • You may like to push the time in the oven until the asparagus browns, if you like that roasty, almost-burnt flavor, like I do.
  • You can roast them with lemon slices on top, too, if you swing that way.
  • While they’re good hot, they’re also fine at room temperature, or even cold out of the fridge in salad-like applications.

The Upside Down Fire

Mrs. Homegrown
How-to, Preparedness
17 Comments

This is how I make a campfire fire now. I used to use the teepee method, or some half-assed rendition of the teepee method, and I often had trouble with such fires. They required babying, rebuilding, etc., and they burned fast. This fire is built in the opposite direction: heavy stuff on the bottom, lighter stuff on top, tinder on the very top. Basically, the finished product looks like a bird’s nest sitting on a log cabin.

This style of fire is great because it takes care of itself–build it, light it, and get on with your other chores. It lasts a long time too, as it makes very efficient use of the wood. I’ve done this many times, and it works like a charm.

The video above is a little shaky, but the technique is clear. He’s building a big campground fire in a fire ring. It’s not necessary to use so much wood–the technique scales. Here’s a link to another video showing the same method with smaller sticks and a more bushcraft-y technique.I’d recommend watching both.

The only thing I’d add to the technique in the video above is that I would lay down a larger layer of thin sticks (the 1″-2″ diameter stuff) on top of the big logs. Somehow he pulls it off with remarkably little small stuff. I found that if I didn’t have a good supply of twigs and small branches on top, the big logs in the under layers didn’t catch fire fully.

In video #2 the fellow builds a complicated teepee structure on top with his twigs. I don’t think that’s necessary, either. I mean, it’s okay, but it seems like work. You can just pile lots of little stuff on top any which way and light it.

It’s like Goldilocks. I think the first guy has too little tinder, the second guy, too much. But to each, his own. You’ll find your own way–and you’ll love this fire.

ETA: I forgot to mention that a Vaseline soaked cotton ball or a lint firestarter or some pieces of fatwood or something similar can really help foolproof the fire. Just tuck the firestarter under the small stuff. Not at all necessary, but helpful if you’re a beginner, or if conditions are bad.

Of Gnomes and Peak Oil

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
RLeave a comment
800px-German_garden_gnome

What it looks like when I’m “reflecting” on concepts like peak oil.

Being momentarily or, perhaps, permanently carless has given me the opportunity to reflect on the long term future of oil. As coincidence would have it I stumbled on CNN commentator David Frum’s delusional editorial, “Peak Oil Doomsayers Proved Wrong,” at the same time as I discovered Renaissance physician, alchemist and philosopher Paracelsus’ treatise, On Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies and Salamanders. They have a few things in common. First, Frum’s notion that oil has no limits:

Predictions that the world would imminently “run out of oil” have been worrying oil consumers since at least the 1920s. They always prove wrong, for reasons explained by the great oil economist M.A. Adelman after the last “oil shortage” in the 1970s:

Oil reserves, Adelman writes, “…are no gift of nature. They (are) a growth of knowledge, paid for by heavy investment.”

For all practical purposes, the world’s supply of oil is not finite. It is more like a supermarket’s supply of canned tomatoes. At any given moment, there may be a dozen cases in the store, but that inventory is constantly being replenished with the money the customers pay for the cans they remove, and the more tomatoes that customers buy, the bigger an inventory the store will carry.

Paracelsus uses a more poetic metaphor. Instead of ordering shipments of tomatoes, it’s our task to command gnomes,

The earth is filled by gnomes even to its center, creatures of diminutive size, guardians of mines, treasures and precious stones. They furnish the Children of the Sages with all the money they desire, and ask little for their services but the distinction of being commanded. [Source: Arthur Edward Waite, Real History of the Rosicrucians]

Apologies to Paracelsus for the comparison–he is a much better read than Frum. And, just so you know, the wives of gnomes are, “tiny, but very pleasing, and their apparel is exceedingly curious.”

Just to be clear I don’t think we’re on the verge of a Beyond Thunderdome/Tina Turner future. But I don’t believe that we can order up oil like canned tomatoes anymore. And it’s possible to piss off the gnomes.

For more on this debate I can’t do better than to direct you to Archdruid John Michael Greer who is on a roll right now on his blog The Archdruid Report. Check out his most recent posts. And we’re going to go hear him speak at the Age of Limits Conference. Perhaps we’ll see some of you there . . .

Picture Sundays: Doberman Chariots

Mr. Homegrown
Picture Sundays
6 Comments
Doberman harness racing

“Ready for the race! Brutus of Quintre and his charge are ready for the sulky races, a regular feature of some of the South African sporting events.” Photos via The Doberman Insider.

Now that we are without a car, it’s time for us to figure out alternative forms of transportation. Our late dog was a Doberman and I remembered a book we used to have about the breed that showed some unusual events that used to be held in South Africa in the 1970s: harness racing with Dobermans and kid jockeys!

Remembering just how powerful and fast our Doberman was, I imagine these races were quite a thrill for the kids in those carts.

doberman race

Try this in the US and, no doubt, child protective services would shut down the fun in no time. For the adult version I imagine we’d need a team of Dobes to pull our cart. Practical transportation and the start of Los Angeles’ answer to the Iditerod!