My broccoli/collards have flea beetles. I'm surprised I've never run into them before.

This is why people grow so many radishes. Not because they like radishes. Because flea beetles like them more than better food. Do I plant radishes? Is it too late?

Hrm. I will start with a garlic/mint spray and see where that gets us.

More and more people I know want me to follow them on Facebook. But an equal number of people have been telling me horror stories about its miserable and annoying interface, unwanted photo tagging, posting of private financial transactions, and tracking of your related movements in ways that seem to go way beyond any of the other half-a-dozen Web 2.0 apps I am happily a member of.

It's awfully hard to draw and defend a line in the privacy sand with regard to the Internet these days, not to mention the annoying and timesucking sand, but for now at least, Facebook is beyond my limit. Sorry.

Along with our actual goal, which was good pictures of all four of us together, our Saturday photo "shoot" (thanks to kombu and her family!) also generated a great series of pics of Nadia and Zack playing in this fun stand of very closely growing trees. We didn't dress them both in red on purpose, but it makes for neat shots.

More will also likely appear on Robin's Flickr account too soon, since we were using two cameras.

We went to Peebles Island State Park today for a Mother's Day picnic. Along with throwing three tons of rocks in the Hudson, learning to distinguish motor boats from tugboats, and not learning to distinguish ducklings from goslings, Nadia learned that geese eat grass. And the first several times she saw this, her observation was "Geese do down dog!" Go baby yoga.

Also, tonight was the first time I observed her voicing the thoughts of a toy or doll, having a conversation in which tone of voice changed and you could clearly tell who was who. It was a stuffed horse, and it was going something like this:
Horse: I bite hand?
Nadia: No
Horse: I eat wall, self?
Nadia: Yes.
Horse: I fall down. Help?
Nadia: Yes.
(repeat)

If you wipe up a spill on a hardwood floor with a baby wipe that contains some sort of lotion, even if you didn't know it contained said lotion, you will create a really, really slippery spot on the floor. Now you are warned.

Luckily for your patience, I think knotweed "season" will be over soon. I have now located three major patches of the stuff in my neighborhood other than my yard. So I don't think I'll be over to weed yours, posniesd and pesto_maker. Sorry!

But for posterity, here are two recipes, or at least proportions you can use in your own recipes.

Filling for apple/"japanese rhurbab" crisp:

6 c. sliced apples
4 c. sliced knotweed
1 c. sugar
3 T. whole wheat flour

top with your own favorite crisp/crumble topping and bake as you would an apple crisp.
Mulberry and Japanese Rhubarb Sauce:

So mulberries are plentiful, sweet, and a pretty color, but don't have a lot of taste besides sweet. Knotweed is tangy and tasty, needs sweetening (in desserts at least), and cooks to a nasty gray/green color.

Clearly a match made in practicality, if not heaven. It would be better if they were harvested at the same time, but I still had some frozen mulberries in the freezer with which to try this experiment.

1 1/2 c. sliced knotweed
1/2 c. pureed mulberries (was about 2 c. frozen whole berries)
Mix together, let sit for 15 min-1 hour.
Bring to a boil over medium low heat, cook until knotweed is soft, and puree again.

The results are totally tasty with no additional sweetener, but not wildly sweet, so for in some uses you might want to add some. I found it to be great unadulterated on vanilla ice cream, and I bet it would make neat jam-filled cookies too. It's pretty thick when cooled, almost jam-like.

I realize I'm not cutting edge here or anything, but I just participated in my first "webinar," on eminent domain reform. (platform: Elluminate) It worked quite a bit better than I expected, rather nicer than the interface for the one e-class I took. Submitting questions to a queue via chat, and being able to post your own answers individually to others while the presenters were talking was nice.

In terms of ease of joining a group and being able to hear everyone, it was soooooo much nicer than a conference call, and especially nicer than trying to sit in on a real-space meeting by speaker phone (which is only slightly this side of utterly pointless). I guess it would have been awkward for a real back-and-forth conversation, but it's something I would do again.

Welcome, May
for Melanie and Laura

In their whites and their bells,
the Morris dancers call in the May
at crystal daybreak
knocking their flower-laden sticks
in echoing unison,
tracing with their steps and humble hankies
the intricate pattern of a flower opening.
They celebrate the
bold, brash perfection that is
creation's details,
echoing in genetic tradition
down the ages.

I glory in their steps
but I have never lived a May
that achieved the golden mean
half as well as the humblest apple blossom,
never mind the trumpet of an iris or
the soft suggestions of a rosebud.
No, when the lens pulls back,
it finds these little miracles of new life
piled up at unplanned angles,
tripping over each other's ankles.
The new baby rips up the dandelions,
the creeping charlie makes way for the garden plot.
the cat beheads a baby bunny, and
a carpet of tiny maple trees spreads
futilely in what will soon be total shade.

So I join the unpracticed maypole dancers
chattering in the less-pure late morning air,
our multicolored ribbons
dripping with fertile hope.
No matter which way the pattern we are to follow is described,
some are befuddled, drunk on sunshine,
wondering what they got themselves into.
One—there is always one. I have been the one—
grumps at those who are slow to catch on
and those who are not explaining well
and those who are not listening.
This may seem to be interrupting the ritual
but this is the ritual.
If there are musicians, they start off too quiet
or with an undanceable tune.
If we sing, we sing too slowly for some,
a key good for none.

Still, we step gamely forward,
over and under, over and under
(sometimes, it's true, over and over and under)
a motley, uncertain crew.

Until someone looks up and finds she is dancing
and everyone passing her is smiling
and a child giggles
and his father notices that around the pole is growing
a chaotic braid
its splendid glyphs found in no one's pattern book
a meadow of wildflowers,
unnamed beetles and the tracks of weasels
and someone's eyebrows relax as the ribbons become taut
and she feels her skirt brushing the legs of her fellow dancers
and the punctual contrarian passes his ribbon
to an eager latecomer
and the singing turns to hoots and hollers
as we run the too-short-to-keep-braiding ribbon ends
in ecstatic, goofy circles
and tie them off in a sweaty, pregnant knot.

May is here.
From flower to field to season
From dance to disorder to worship
From precision to chaos to fertility
We welcome May.


Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike License, 2008.

Nadia describes the work status of her immediate household:

"Daddy job fixing houses.
Mommy job fixing words.
Mama job taking care of Nadia.
Nadia job bippity boppity boo."

(Becca told her my job was writing words for magazines, but the parallel she drew is at least as accurate, percentage wise. And her idea for her job was entirely her own, and she's sticking to it.)

Second knotweed experiment: adding about 3/4 cup to an apple pie. Result: *way* yum. The resemblance to rhubarb is astounding. Much closer than the resemblance to asparagus, which is mostly visual.

A quick note: I'm curious to try Steve Brill's funky apple and knotweed pie recipe made with buckwheat flour and sweetened with stevia and full of funky herbs and spices, but I was a little annoyed when I was looking up recipes ready to go with my crusts and apples and sugar that that was his only baking recipe option. If your goal is to have suburban homeowners eat the stuff instead of dumping chemicals on it, you might want to offer a more familiar option. Then again, maybe that's not his goal. I think it would be mine. Anyhow, I just treated it like it was rhubarb and all was well.

Also, today was my second day in a row of supplementing my lunch with a salad of baby japanese maple leaves, thanks to a tip from the Neighborhood Forager. Apparently once they're full sized, or if you pick them and try to refrigerate them for even a few hours, they taste like tree  leaves. But young and fresh they're like a very tasty lettuce, a real neat flavor, especially with a vinigrette and some fresh-from-the-neighboring-community-garden-plot (with permission) scallions. Not true for any other maple trees. But we've got a japanese maple, or rather, our neighbors do, right next to our fence, and I figure they won't miss the leaves off the shoots at he base of the trunk.

Hooray for spring food before the farmers markets open or the garden is even fully planted, even if it's mostly just a taste here and there.

...because I'm relieved to have just sent off some revisions I thought might forced me to be working on a Friday night...

--sidewalk chalk is a Good Thing, and I am extremely pleased that my daughter, partners, and sister-in-law (and me a little) decorated a large portion of our block last night. (Nadia kept running to the next sidewalk square and saying "No picture here yet!" And telling everyone what color to use.)

--cousins are a Good Thing (at least as good as sidewalk chalk! ;>) and I'm also very pleased that we took a random Wednesday off to hang with some we hadn't seen in too long. Hooray. Much cuteness.

--when you are two and have spent long, tiring, sunny day with several cousins, apparently the ending of I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew ("I bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me.") is distressing. Distressing to the point of that rare, twitchy, seizure-like crying that always freaks us out. Yikes. Of course when I quote it out of context like that it sounds rather distressing. I always took the message to be mostly about not running away from your troubles looking for the place where there aren't any.

--It is *really* weird to be called by your first name by your child. Even, or perhaps especially, when it's the exactly pronunciation your younger brother used to use. I don't think she's going to give up on "Mommy" or anything, but it's still weird.

happy friday all...   

Reposting from kombu, cause this building is in my neighborhood too, and I so wish I was in the position to buy it.

Steamed, young  knotweed shoots are tangy and tasty! As Rebecca said, "not the bliss that asparagus is, but totally food." Exciting that it's so easy. We shall also have to try the whole baking with it like rhubarb approach. If we have enough. (Yes, chezjake, you may laugh at me for even considering the idea of "not enough japanese knotweed.")

As many of you know, I'm not much of a hot weather person. I've gotten better in recent years at consciously making a transition to being OK with heat during normal activities. But working at home adds another layer: the laptop generates heat, right underneath my wrists. If I leave my desk, it also radiates heat into my lap. This is just miserable.

I want to keep our air conditioning use down to a minimum. I want to not be miserable.

Thinking about this, it occurred to me that as I work for myself, I'm at least somewhat in charge of my own schedule. What if I decided to get up really early, when it's cooler, and then take a siesta? It would be easiest to just nap with Nadia, which would have the added advantage of giving Rebecca some time when she could leave the house without baby in tow. It would be a little earlier than the peak heat of the day, but it would be something.

Has anyone done this? How hard do you think it would be to shift sleep patterns like this? Is it a stupid idea for someone with history of insomnia to try to fall asleep twice a day? Many questions...

I don't need to overprocess this, really. I mostly just think it's a cool idea and am curious if anyone does it seasonally. Maybe I'll try it.

There are other less interesting solutions, of course. I can plug a separate keyboard into my laptop and set it on a stand, or work on the desktop we got from Jake.

Amusingly, I find I'm eagerly waiting for our japanese knotweed shoots to get to Steve Brill's recommended 6 to 8 inches before slicing them all down to cook and trying to decide whether get permission from the neighbors before cutting theirs too. And I'm also eyeing all the little shoots in the garden to see when I can tell which ones are lamb's quarters.

While I've never been one for monocultures, still these two plants have in the past been somewhat considered the bane of our backyard and our garden, respectively. Paying attention to what's edible gives you a very different view of things.

in which i tremulously stick my neck out and talk about the presidential race, or at least about a few interesting things others are saying about the presidential race.

Hey folks. I'm wondering if there's anyone out there who has ideas, or even better experiences, with participating in a neighborhood safety initiative in a way that is effective but steers away from being racist/classist/exclusionary/alarmist. I know it's a lot to ask.

My neighborhood is an awesome integrated neighborhood. There have been, I understand, a few violent incidents on the street over the past year, as well as some trouble local businesses have had with harassment/vandalism. Still, I do not feel unsafe here, and neither to most of the people in my social ciricles, but I know crime does happen, and I am a big believer in "eyes on the street" in an urban neighborhood, paying attention, speaking up, calling the police when appropriate, etc. So in theory, I support things like a neighborhood walk and watch, and I think the people who recently started one here have the right attitude.

But. The cop's "training" was intolerable, all full of "you know, people who look like they don't belong" and "unfortunately the courts have said we can't make people disperse when they're not actually doing anything wrong." And it was *only* white people there. And now we get listserv messages about horrors like a bunch of teens "milling about" next to a basketball court by the city department of recreation. Where the hell do you want them to be? Would it be better if they were home in front of their TVs on one of the first warm nights of the spring?

Argh. I don't want to make an ass of myself. It would probably be most productive if I could find a time in my schedule to pair up with one of the people who leans that way, walk around with him/her, and say hi to as many teens of color as possible. If I'm not going to do that, I should probably stay quiet.

But I can't be the only one who's faced this kind of tension.

In the garden, yesterday morning:

Nadia: Robin!
Me: Yes. Do you know what it's looking for? It's looking for worms. Robins eat worms.
Nadia: (concerned look). Daddy?
Me: No, just the birds, not Daddy.

(She knows her dad that kind of bird share a name. She's also gotten as far as once calling me "Mommium.")

She also greatly enjoys planting peas.