Moving: The Ultimate Test of Living Green

Graduation Day

February 2012 brought with us the culmination of "Five Year Plan." After completing both his Master's and Doctoral Degrees, as well as surviving both a thyroidectomy and a surgery to remove a massive pituitary tumor within 6 months of his defense, Jay was offered a faculty position at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee.  He starts work on my birthday in August.  We'll be living in the Town of Jonesborough.  With all the joy and excitement that come along with seeing a goal met and a dream beginning to coalesce, comes the reality:  HOLY CRAP, we have to MOVE!!! (I'm not the one with the PhD, people, so it took me a while to really have it sink in that we won't just magically appear in the new place complete with chickens and cats.

How does this fit with the theme of the blog?  Well, I try to keep it about living in a 'green' and eco-responsible way.  Apparently moving is the both the Ultimate Test of Living Green, as well as a good opportunity to not only talk the green talk, but also walk the green walk.  Let's start with the basics:  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  It turns out that they're all connected.

1. Reduce.  Those of you who know us know that we live in a pretty tiny house.  Less than 800 square feet inside, with a substantially sized glassed-in porch that we don't count as living space. What genius thought that glassing in a sun porch in Florida was a good idea is beyond me. The house we're buying (We've named it "Little Boone") is slightly larger at just over 1100 sq. ft.   We already don't have what we consider to be a lot of stuff, but probably had kept a little more than we might have otherwise because in our minds 'the next house will be bigger.'  Well, yes... but not enough to really count.  So we've been reducing like crazy.  I've gone through just about every room in the house and have found things I think we can live without.  The hardest decisions for me were shoes and pens.  I expected to have some separation anxiety and guilt over the culling of the shoes. I loves me some shoes, people! None are crazy cute heels. All are cute, sensible and comfy. Merrills, Chacos, Keens, OH MY!  I probably should have taken the opportunity to count the ones that made the cut, but I forgot, and now the winter-ish ones are packed. Oh, Darn.  Now we'll never know how many I have (and stop calling me Imelda!) The pens, now, were a surprise.  It wasn't that I was somehow emotionally attached to the pens.  I just didn't want to be environmentally irresponsible and throw out perfectly good pens, and who would buy a used pen at the thrift store?? But how many pens do two people in the age of digital communication really need?  My reduction in pens and other associated writing implements resulted in the use of another of the Three R's: reuse.  I gave them to a school teacher for use in the classroom.  As a former teacher, I get how much of your own money you spend on basics, so I felt much better that my reduction was someone else's gain, and that I didn't have to clog up a landfill with half-used gel-pens from my paper journaling phase.

2. Reuse.  This one was a bit easier.  We had a need to reduce, and we knew a lot of our stuff was re-usable.  One of the girls at our favorite local  Tea Shop, TeBella Tea Company, was getting her very first apartment.  I'm not the maternal type, generally, but if I had wanted a daughter to call my own, Brooke would be it.  She's smart, strong, hard-working and responsible.  She manages to be all those things and also be just the sweetest kid on earth.  She also needed "stuff."  And boy did we have stuff to spare. While I was doing my Reducing, I kept a "Brooke Box," and managed to fill it several times over with all kinds of kitchen supplies as well as our kitchen table and chairs.  By reducing the amount of stuff we were having to move, Brooke is able to reuse some of it.  Warms the cockles of my hippie green heart, it does.

3. Recycle.  I had fun with this one.  I recycled a bunch of old t-shirts into yarn a while back, and realized how many crafty activities can benefit from recycling.  Right around the time we started getting ready to move, a really cool business opened up in Ybor City.  It's called Tampa Upcycle.  Morgan takes in all kinds of supplies that crafters and artist no longer need and provides a place for them to live until another crafter or artist comes by and gives them a home. She puts it best on her website: "Tampa Upcycle is an arts and crafts supplies boutique that collects and offers used (and some new) art supplies such as paints, canvasses and brushes, sewing supplies such as fabrics, notions, and patterns, and craft supplies such as scrapbooking papers and embellishments, yarns and tools with “pay-as-you-wish” pricing. The idea is to have a central location where indie artists, designers and crafters can find materials that can be repurposed and made into something new. Everything from partially used paints to vintage sheets to cereal boxes."   Isn't that just the coolest? It appeals to me on so many levels. Another box was soon filled with Tampa Upcycle stuff.  I took every scrap of wrapping paper, gift bags, little glass bottles, and all kinds of crafty supplies up there and donated them.  I would love to be a part of something community-minded like that when we move.  I recently took a class to reacquaint myself with my decades-old sewing machine at Tampa Upcycle offered by Tampa FreeSkool.  FreeSkool is  community based education in action.  Basically, if you have something you know how to do, and can teach it to others for free, you are encouraged to do so.  Things like beer making, to friend-making, to yoga, to fun with compost.  Recycling your knowledge, in a way, and making it available to those who want to learn for themselves.  This is something else I'd love to get going in Tennessee, if it doesn't already exist. 

Little Boone

We will also be re-using and recycling the Little Boone house.  Built in roughly 1941, it's a bungalow style home at the top of a little hill on Boone Street, across the street from the Visitor's Center, Town Hall and the Library.  Our good friends Terry and Sandy own it, and I've actually been calling it "the house we'll live in when we move to Jonesborough" for close to ten years.  Go figure.  You can't see it in this photo, but it has a green (!!!) tin roof, and sits on a nice big yard that is just waiting for a chicken coop, worm composter, daylilies, a square foot herb garden and a hydroponic farm. Because it's small, we'll continue trying to live minimally, and reduce our footprint.  I love the idea of living in a house with history.  We will be in walking distance of the Old Towne Pancake House, Main Street, with the Farmer's Market, The Storytelling Center, and Music on the Square.  There is a shop called Boxcar Betty's Eco Depot and another called Hands Around the World that feature upcycled and hand made items. Add to this a Lavender Store, a Cupcake Shop and Artisan Chocolates. The only thing I think we're really going to mourn is a cup of really good loose leaf tea.  There are two really good restaurants in town, and another opening soon, but nobody serves good tea. We might have to change that!   

(sub)Urban Farming

This is a reprint of my very first published article in the 2012 Spring Region 12 Newsletter for the American Hemerocallis Society.  I had never really thought I wanted to write for publication before, but I actually had a good time with it, and with writing the local club news article at the back of the issue. My apologies for the redundancy to those of you who have followed the blog.  If you know me, you already know all of this. But I hope you enjoy the recap!

When Greg Crane asked me to write a piece for the newsletter about “Chickens and Daylilies” I was, frankly, stumped. I’m a part-time blogger, and I’ve written about our chickens, and I’ve written about our daylilies on www.cari-daway.blogspot.com. But I 

never really thought about “Chickens AND Daylilies.”  A few weeks were spent with this 

concept rolling around in my mind, and more than a few attempts at writing that were actually spent looking at a blank screen and a blinking cursor. I asked the Facebook universe for ideas. My friend Timi said she understood my block by equating her being asked to write about her jeep and her dogs: two things she loves but don’t really intersect. 

One of our daylily club friends, Kyle Pierson, said that the feathers of the chickens could be like the colors in daylilies, or that going out to see the flowers in the morning is like looking for eggs. All are valid points. But nothing really lit my literary pilot light. I 

flirted briefly with the comparison of my hobby of collecting lists of potential chicken names (such as Magdalena Van der Flocken) with some daylily enthusiasts’ hobby of collecting lists of potential daylily names (I know you’re out there. Terri Jones can’t be the only one who does this!) Then it hit me: Poop! Yes, poop. Not literally, thank goodness. Put a pin in that thought, we’ll return to it in a few minutes.

I realized that the chickens were an integral part of the mini eco-system we’ve created in
our little neighborhood city lot. My husband and I both have green thumbs. I also have a
passion for healthy organic food and a clean environment that borders on the obsessive
(and occasionally annoying.) These qualities combined a few years ago into a 10-tower
hydroponic garden, a square-foot garden for my kitchen herbs and natural pest control
aphid-trapping bed, a worm composter and traditional compost bin, and our chickens:
Phyllis, Pearl and Francine. We also grow about 150 daylily cultivars. Small potatoes in
the daylily world, but when you consider how tiny our house and lot is, that’s about all
we have room for. I believe that in the chemical sense, one should impact the earth as
little as possible, but while doing that impacting, one should get as much out of it as one
can in the space allotted.

In the hydroponic garden, we grow enough produce to feed ourselves, the chickens, the
neighbors, my Pilates instructor, the girls at the local tea shop and sometimes our friends,
family and co-workers. The catnip grows especially well, as do tomatoes, Swiss chard,
onions, carrots, basil, snow peas, broccoli, cabbage, cucumbers, beans and many other
things. The ability to grow 6 times the produce in the same space as conventional
gardening appeals to me, as does the ability to do it without chemical pesticides,
fertilizers or fungicides that leach into the water table or harm wildlife. The only real
challenge we had was squirrels. Eventually Jay caged in the entire structure with chicken
wire, and that has kept out the squirrels, but continues to let in a tiny field mouse with
whom we’ve agreed to share. He doesn’t eat as much as a dozen squirrels do, so it seems
like a good balance. And the structure only looks a little bit like a prison camp….. but I
digress.

  Two years ago, Jay and I decided to get chickens. He spent about two months of
weekends and a spring break building a really nice coop. He is especially proud of its
door. In April of 2010 we brought home Babette, (who later grew into Bobette and had to go back to the farm) Sylvia, Pearl and Phyllis. Sylvia has since passed away, but Francine recently joined our flock. During the construction of the coop, Jay had dug up and potted all the daylilies so he’d have room to work without having to worry about tromping all over them in his many trips back and forth across the yard. When the coop was finished, he built two big (for our yard, about 8’ x 8’) raised beds about 18” high, to put all the daylilies back into. Here’s where the poop comes in. I told you we’d get back to that.

We – and let there be no doubt that when I say “we” it is all “Jay” - filled the beds with 

compost and bagged oak leaves we liberated from lawns and curb sides all over South
Tampa. But what really got the beds ready for replanting for the daylilies were the 

chickens. We finally got brave enough to let our very spoiled, indulged, coddled and
generally over-protected city chickens out of the coop to free-range every afternoon
(supervised closely, of course.) Jay tossed sunflower seeds up into the empty beds and the girls hopped in and started turning over the soil and, well, pooping. Poop = fertilizer = daylilies. Happy daylilies. 2011 was our best daylily season ever. The sunflower seeds in one of the beds did not get eaten as much as the other, so at one point we had a bed full of giant sunflowers with happy daylilies growing in their shade. When it became time to cut down all the sunflowers to give the daylilies room to grow, I dried the heads and gave them to the chickens. Poop = fertilizer = sunflowers = chicken treats = eggs + poop.

Every morning, Jay takes organic brown rice mixed with organic yogurt out to “the
girls,” and in bloom season he deadheads the daylilies and chucks them into the chicken
coop along with some Swiss chard, field-mouse-chewed tomatoes, or carrot tops from the
hydroponic garden. Since we don’t ever spray any dangerous chemicals in our daylilies
or in our hydroponic garden plants, we can safely feed them to the chickens. Poop =
fertilizer = daylilies + hydroponic vegetables = chicken treats = eggs + poop.

Since we have the chickens, and because I’m pretty militant about not spraying chemicals all over the yard that my chickens and invited wildlife and beneficial insects frequent, we do occasionally have to deal with uninvited guests such as aphids or sooty mold in the veggies that are in the squash family. This is where the worm composting and square foot garden comes in. Worm tea is a great anti-bacterial and insecticide that is safe to use in the garden. Gaura lindheimeri 'Whirling Butterflies’ is an aphid magnet. We plant it in a small square foot bed in relative close proximity to other plants that are aphid candy like daylilies or hibiscus, and the aphids glom onto the stems of the Guara and tend to stay off the plant we actually care about. Jay calls the stems “Aphid Popcicles” because I cut them off when they’re loaded up with aphids and feed them to the chickens. In the past, I’ve brought in ladybugs to then eat the aphids, but for the last couple of years, I just let the chickens eat them. If the aphids wipe out the Guara it’s not a big loss since they reseed like crazy, and are only $3 at the garden center. They’re cute, too. Worm tea + castings = Guara = aphid magnet = chicken treats = eggs + poop.

I bet you’re wondering now “What does she do with all that poop?” We make compost,
of course. And the cycle continues. We can use the compost to top dress the daylily
beds, and the butterfly garden, as well as supplement the Guara and my kitchen herb
garden. The compost bin is located next to the door that opens to clean out the hen house,
so I just have to scoop, turn and dump. Of course the garden and kitchen produce waste
that doesn’t get fed to the worms or the chickens goes into the pile, as well as eggshells
and tea leaves we pick up from a local tea shop and coffee grounds we get from Whole
Foods. It’s also located next to the fence by the neighbor’s yard, so they toss their kitchen waste into it as well.

Our chickens give us enjoyment every day, along with the eggs and poop we use to keep
our daylilies growing. Our daylilies give us enjoyment every day during bloom season,
and are good treats for the chickens. They do look a little like bloody dinosaurs when
they dig into a deadheaded blossom from a red cultivar, though. That can be a little
disconcerting. They love to take dust baths underneath my kitchen herb garden, and also
work diligently to keep down the unwelcome insect population in the yard. We rely on
our hydroponic farm to feed the chickens, and ourselves and compost whatever we can in
order to keep the cycle going. So there you have it. Chicken poop is the substance which
binds our (sub)Urban eco-system together.




.

Kefir Madness

Water Kefir

Hello Everyone!  Long time no blog! It's been quite a busy 9 months for me.  Since my last post in April, my husband Jay was diagnosed with a massive pituitary tumor in July.  This was just on the heels of his having a golf-ball sized nodule (along with the right side of his thyroid) removed in April.  A short time after his brain surgery (which went well and he has been recovering from nicely) he successfully defended his PhD dissertation in October and then graduated in early December.  During this time my job also got measurably busier, and I've developed a nasty bit of tendonitis in one of my thumbs, so at the end of the work day I'm not motivated to sit for more time at the computer to write.  But I realized I had things knocking around in my head that I wanted to share, so here I am.

I became interested in balancing my body's digestive health a few years ago, and started drinking a dairy-based kefir. Kefir is a fermented drink that contains beneficial microorganisms and probiotics that can help keep your digestive and immune system healthy.  It contains vitamins, minerals and has anti-fungal properties.  Dairy-based kefirs can also be expensive, especially the goat-milk ones that Jay has to drink due to an allergy to cows milk.  As a way to continue eating in a more healthy way, we wanted to reduce the amount of dairy we consumed, but I wanted to continue with the 'idea' of kefir.

I found out from my sister-in-law that you could make your own water kefir.  This sounded like a great way to keep drinking kefir, reduce the dairy, and make it myself.  I did some research and found a local company that sells kefir grain starter kits. Erin, from Water Kefir Grains sent me a little starter packet to get me going. Her website has more than a dozen different recipes as well as tips to keep your grains happy.  I also used a resource called Love and Trash to get a basic ginger-based recipe that is a favorite.  Since I started with my first batch, my sister-in-law has begun her own business based on healthy living, and also does Kefir Classes as part of her service offerings. She can be reached at My Plentiful Living  I don't want to steal anyone's thunder and research that went into their kefir web pages, so my post is just going to be a little pictorial of my first batch.

Kefir Starter Kit

You start with about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of grains in a quart-sized jar.  The grains come from some sort of cactus and look a bit like translucent cauliflower.  Each time you grow a batch that is successful and happy, the grains multiply.  Yes, this is equivalent to Amish Friendship bread starter.  I've shared my grains with friends and family, and anyone else who wants any.  I've also added it to my morning green smoothie and to rice dishes and treats for the chickens.  To the grains, you add a solution made of about 1/2 to 1/2 cup of organic sugar of some kind to about a cup of Spring Water (NOT tap)  I've used Evaporated Cane Juice, Organic Dark Brown and Sucanat.  I've found the lighter the sugar, the happier my grains are.  Some people's grains respond well to the higher molasses content in the dark sugar, and even add a tablespoon of molasses to their kefir, but my grains multiply like crazy with the lighter sugars.  Leave about an inch to an inch and half space between the water level and the top of the jar to allow for fermentation gases to expand.  Let it sit for about 18-24 hours.  I find I like mine best if I stop fermentation before 24 hours.  It gets too sour for my taste if I go much past 36 hours.

Fermented Grains

Strained Grains

After your time is up, strain the liquid from the grains (and you'll see you have at least 50% more than you started with).  At this point you can start a new batch right away, or store the grains in a tightly-capped jar in the refrigerator.  You can also freeze them indefinitely.  Some people do what's called a Secondary Fermentation, where they add some sort of fruit or flavoring to the kefir and let the solution ferment for more time, infusing it.  I tend to add ginger and lemon to my kefir from the start, and bottle the solution in those nifty Grolsh-style bottles for another evening, allowing more fizziness to build up, but not necessarily any more flavor.  I have also added unsulphured dried apple, figs and apricots to the initial fermentation.  As I said earlier, I like mine not-so-sour.

I will add a little note of caution:  I can't drink this during the day.  I have to drink it after dinner. When I first started making water kefir I had a small glass with my lunch.  Around 2:00 every day I began to get s-l-e-e-p-y.  I'm talking can't-hold-your-head-up-drooling-on-your-keyboard-sleepy.  I thought it was just latent stress from Jay's surgery/recovery/medical bills catching up with me.  Then one day I realized that fermentation = alcohol.  I was catching a pretty healthy buzz from my 1/2 cup of water kefir.  So I had to stop having it during the day.   Now, my sister-in-law and her family (which includes mom, dad, an almost-five-year-old and an 18-month-old) drink it all the time, in amounts well above what I have daily.  I have NO idea how any of them function like that.  I joked with her that they're all self-medicating using water kefir.  I think I'm just incredibly sensitive to the alcohol produced because I can get pretty buzzed off about a half-inch-worth of a really good Lemon Drop martini, too.

If anyone wants to try some grains, let me know.  I've got plenty to share.  Maybe you, too, will catch Kefir Madness.

Lessons from Daylilies: 1. Bloom Where You Are Planted

It started innocently enough in March of 2006 when we bought 4 daylilies from BADS, the Bay Area Daylily Society at Greenfest.  Shortly after that, we found that the Central Florida Hemerocallis Society was having a daylily sale at Leu Gardens in Orlando.  We came home with about 40 varieties. About a month after that, we drove up to Brooksville to Johnson's Daylily and Bamboo Farm, and the owners, Jeff and Linda Johnson invited us to a picnic the next weekend.  Little did we know at the time, it was the annual end-of-season picnic for BADS, and we met most of the club members and became members ourselves. Well, I did anyway.  Jay mostly sat outside in the shade under the cypress trees in the daylily garden.

Jeff and "Lori Goldston"

Over the next year Jay came to a few meetings with me, and we started to become friends with a few of the members.  When the club invited us to go to "Mecca," the annual pilgrimage to the East Coast of Florida where a majority of the daylily hybridizer "royalty" resides, we went along.  We saw some gorgeous commercial gardens as well as beautiful private daylily home gardens.  Now Jay is the President of the club and I giggle about that almost every time I think about it.  We are currently gearing up for the club's 18th annual show and sale.

Watermill Gardens, 2007

We've had our ups and downs with bloom success, and have learned a lot about what daylilies like (chicken, mule and cow poop, sun and water) and don't like (tree roots).   This  has been our best bloom year yet.  We have about 110 named varieties in our yard, and are foster-parenting about 50 plants left over from the BADS sale and show last year. 

Swirling Spider

Most of our named cultivars are in 3 raised beds that Jay built, and the rest are in pots by the house.  We have about 50 unnamed seedlings (affectionately called The Bastards) and two or three unidentified (lost tag) plants as well. 

Two beds and a coop

Friends who dabble in hybridizing have shared their seedlings with us.  It's always fun to see one  of these bloom for the first time - knowing that you're seeing a flower that nobody else in the world has seen.  The science behind hybridizing is really fascinating, but we haven't started trying to do it ourselves.  It requires much more record-keeping than either of us has time or inclination to do.  We like that it's fun and not work.  I'm afraid that hybridizing would make it more of a work project.

Some of our favorites have come all the way from Merrymeetings Daylilies in New Durham, New Hampshire.  They were hybridized and grown by a dear man named Les Turner, and have given us some of our most beautiful plants this year, now that they are well established and happy in our warmer climate.  Here are a few of the outstanding Merrymeeting Seedlings this year.  We are probably going to enter them in the show in the Seedling category.

MMS Seedling #2

 We've shared many of these seedlings with neighbors, family and friends, and all of them have produced beautiful faces for people to look at in the spring mornings.






This yellow spider is so fragrant you can smell it when you are 8-10 feet away from it.  It looks a lot like two other cultivars named Boney Maroney and Lemon Madeline, but is actually bigger than they are, and has more 'diamond dusting' on it. (This is daylily geek-speak for being all sparkly on the petals.)

MMS Seedling #5

Every morning, about 6:30, Jay and I head out to the garden in our "yard shoes" with our cameras in tow to see what is blooming for the first time that day and to ooh and aah about how pretty everything is.  We probably have 100 pictures of the same place in our garden, but each one is slightly different depending on what has bloomed that day.  Jay walks around with a bowl and picks off all the dead flowers from the day before while the chickens putter around and chat to one another. When it's time to go in, all the spent flowers go into the coop with the girls, and they munch on them for their morning snack.  This is the only thing that gets me up on my own, excited about morning.  The rest of the year I'm highly resistant to the concept of daybreak.

We're both so grateful for the beauty and friendship these little plants have brought to us.  Some of our closest friends are 'daylily people.'  The plants also teach us to be appreciative of individual beauty, and to be tough and patient.  As pretty as they are, they are really resilient little guys, and will perform their little hearts out if given the chance.  Next weekend is the show.  It always hurts my heart a little bit to cut the flowers to take in to be 'judged.'  As if one is more beautiful or more deserving than another.  Mother Nature knows what she's doing, and it seems arrogant to me to put one flower up as a paragon of beauty, when, like people, each one is probably doing the very best it can do under the circumstances it's been placed in.

Peace, Love and Yarncraft

Manos Del Uruguay

I'm a Crafty Woman. Some of you might be surprised by that but it's true and official. My friend Terri invited me to join her Crafty Women group.  We meet once a month and everyone brings their crafty projects - crochet, knitting, beading, etc.  At my first meeting in November, Rose and Meg put a hook in one hand and some yarn in other and now I'm hooked.  (get it? Crochet? HOOKED!)

I haven't really tried to tie in (get it? Yarn? TIE IN?) my newly-acquired yarn-craft obsession with my blog until the group held a yarn swap. It was a lot of fun seeing what everyone brought that they didn't want anymore, and that there was a home for everything.  I was sifting through the pile looking for natural and sustainable fibers and scored HUGE with about 5 or 6 skeins of Manos Del Uruguay cotton yarn produced and dyed by hand in a fair trade non-profit collective whose mission is to bring economic and social opportunities to rural women.  I have no idea what I'm going to make with it, but I love that I got it for freesies and that it's the kind of fiber I can feel good about working with.  That got me thinking...what else could be 'green' about this hobby? Turns out a lot.  I plan on doing a series of posts about the greener aspects of yarn craft, starting with projects to help me keep our house 'green.'

Ann's Peace Sign Dishcloth

Terri's Watering Can Dishcloth

My first crochet and knitting projects were dishcloths.  I've made a dozen or more since November.  Dishcloths are a great way to learn to do basic stitches, and to learn how to be consistent with tension.  I like making my own, and giving them to friends.  I've gotten a little obsessed with knitted pattern dishcloths, and have had a lot of fun collecting patterns that 'belong' with different friends. (so everyone act surprised if you get a dishcloth.)

Swiffer Sweater

I also made some 'Swiffer Sweaters' to use instead of the disposable cloths that go on the bottom of the Swiffer-like floor sweepers.  I had bought some micro-fiber ones a few years ago, but had fun making these myself.  They work well, too.  I like that they are quick to make, and take very little yarn, so I can make them out of smallish bits of leftover yarn from other projects.

Bags for Rounds

Cotton Rounds

Next, I found a pattern for re-usable cotton rounds.  These are like little pads that can be washed and used over and over instead of buying those flat cotton pads for removing make up and washing your face.  I made some bags to put them in, and keep the clean rounds in one bag, and used ones in another.  I just toss the whole bag full in the washer when I run out.  I made a set for my friend Natalie, and included a soap sack as well.

Finally, I made an iPod Touch case for my friend, Jenn.  I think it turned out really cute.  I found a button made of reclaimed wood to hold it shut.  I've got loads of ideas now about how knitting and crocheting can be part of a 'green' lifestyle.  Be watching for future posts!

 

Cari-d Away to Callaway

 Every other year or so in December, we bundle ourselves up in multiple layers of our warmest woolies and drive up to Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia for some winter wonderland fun at their Fantasy in Lights event.

 The resort starts putting up light displays throughout the park in September, and it takes until around Thanksgiving to install all 8 million lights.  After sundown, you pack up into open-air Jolly Trolleys and are driven through the park to  see all the displays.  I won't show you any of my pictures that I take at night because they never turn out, but you can see them on Callaway's website.  The two pictures above are ones I took of two of the displays the next morning on our drive.

our cottage

The resort has many options for lodging.  We usually get either a cottage or a villa lock-out (when someone rents a 3 bedroom villa but only needs two of the rooms, we rent the third at a significantly reduced rate).  This year our cottage overlooked part of the 10 mile bike trail.

Butterfly Conservatory

The morning following the light show, we have breakfast in either a country style restaurant or the new restaurant in their Lodge and Spa building, then we tour some of the garden sites.   There is the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower trail, the location of the Southern Victory Garden and our favorite, the Butterfly Conservatory.

Inside this glassed-in structure are literally thousands of butterflies - over 2700 the day we were there, according to the Butterfly Count board.  There are butterflies hatching in a display, and then once you walk into the humid tropical enclosure, you see them everywhere... flying, feeding, just hanging out.  It's a magical place.

ladybugs

We walk around in this lush indoor garden, looking all around at the butterflies that are on plants, feeding on fruit, walking around on benches and windows and even landing on people.  There are even hundreds of ladybugs, part of the garden's practice of using natural pest control methods instead of chemical pesticides.  Ladybugs LOVE aphids, so having them hatch out colonies of the little red and black buggies help to control the aphid population on the host and feed plants for the butterflies.  We do the same thing in our yard every year, too.

the hatching display

feeding tray

greens and cabbage

Next we moved on to the Victory Garden.  The resort employs 6 full time gardeners on the 7.5 acre plot. They grow veggies that are used in the in-park restaurants, and they also sell the excess to park guests.  Of course while we are there in the winter, all that's really growing are collards and cabbages, but my gardener's eye could fill in the blank spots that I'm sure come spring and summer are filled with all sorts of produce.  The park gardens also serves as a testing ground for new varieties, and also employs natural and 'green' growing practices to treat pests and diseases, should issues like that arise.

There is an herb garden as well as a sundial garden, and some really nice shady spots that I'm sure are welcome in the warmer weather.  They film some of the PBS Victory Garden tv show episodes from there.  We always say that 'next year, we should come back and see the park in the spring or fall when everything is blooming' but so far we haven't. I'm sure that when the azaleas and rhododendrons are in bloom the entire mountain is swathed in rosy pink and fuschia.

Jay on the victory garden porch

This is one of our favorite places to go, and I can heartily recommend it to anyone in need of something to get them in the Christmas spirit.  We've talked about spending Christmas there, treating ourselves to the spa and sipping cider by a roaring fire...Maybe next year will be the year we actually try out those bike trails and see actual wildflowers growing on the wildflower trail, and actual veggies in the veggie garden!

Long Overdue Hydroponic Garden Update

I took some pictures last night, while Jay was outside covering the plants in preparation for the cold, and when I realized I hadn't posted about the garden since May, I figured I should fix that.  We have been thwarted by squirrels ever since we started our garden.  They ate almost every tomato we've grown (or at least taken big bites out of them) along with a whole tower full of swiss chard as it was just sprouting.  We decided to fight with a steel cage match of sorts.

before

after

Before, the squirrels (and probably fruit rats, but we try not to think about that) had free access to all of our garden goodies.  Now, the entire set of 10 towers has been enclosed in chicken wire, including the top.  This has had a profound (and not unexpected) effect on our productivity.  Duh.






Since the drastic steps, we've been able to re-grow the swiss chard, to the point where both chickens and humans can enjoy it.  We also supplied two counties of family with lettuces on Thanksgiving.  There have been tomato feasts, cucumber festivals (of sorts) and radishes galore.  I had forgotten how much I love radishes.
I even harvested so much thyme that it took me three days with the dehydrator getting all of it preserved.  That much thyme is also a little bit nauseating to smell, by the way.  It ended up not even filling a quart sized mason jar.  Everyone act surprised at Christmas if you get a Gift of Thyme from us :-D

I took a bit of inventory last night.  We have asian eggplants for the chickens, two kinds of lettuce, two kinds of tomatoes, red beets, sweet Florida onions, two kinds of non-Plant City strawberries (this will make sense to my Florida readers), two kinds of swiss chard, snow peas, a boatload of thyme (yes, even after all that harvesting), and two kinds of basil and mint.  I'm probably forgetting something that I'll remember after I hit PUBLISH.  Isn't that always the way?  I've gotten a chuckle or two watching The Ladies follow Jay into the cage to see if he'll give them some swiss chard, or to eat some beet greens that are hanging over the side within beak-reach.

herb tower

lots of thyme

We still have issues with squash getting powdery mildew.  Squash doesn't do so well in high humidity, I guess.  We have huge plants, huge leaves that bloom but don't flower... and then get mildewy.  But most everything else is doing really well.

first cuke

I'm pleased with the strawberries, despite their slow start, although if they make gorgeous berries with no flavor, like the variety we planted the last two seasons, it will probably be the last time we grow them.

berry and onion tower

When the weather threatened to get close to freezing last night, we (and when I say, "we" in this case, it means the incredibly tall and handsome man I'm married to) reused some old sheets to cover the towers to keep the tomatoes from freezing, after harvesting all of them that had started to get red on them.  One of the best things about growing hydroponically (aside from more yield, squirrels notwithstanding) is that we save water.  Not just when we grow, but even when it gets cold.  Last year the traditional strawberry farmers, for example, pumped so much water out of the aquifer in the Plant City area that it caused massive amounts of sink holes and water shortages all around the area.  Hydroponic growers can do like we did, and just cover the towers, and not need to spray water as a protective coating on the berries to keep them safe.  We also can turn the pumps on and off, since they're on timers, and we can make sure the unit doesn't water on days without sun.  Handy, huh?

tall and handsome Jay

cold harvested 'maters and cuke

There were probably more than a dozen tomatoes in here, and one cuke.

swiss chard harvest

It took two green bags to store all this swiss chard.



















Before we went to bed, we (remember what 'we means'?) put some plant lights out under them whole thing, to keep everybody warm.  Between that and the red heat lamp we have in the henhouse, it looked like we had the biggest french fry lights in the world in our back yard.

good night, Garden!

good night, Chickies!