The drama of daisies and stuff

wdaisies-may30.JPG
Daisies are so humble, but it’s flattering when they choose to grow in the weedpatch beside your driveway. Around here people mostly mow them down.

wclover-may30.JPG
Every morning and every evening I go out for a walk to see how the grass and clover are coming along. It’s chiefly in the morning that you notice a difference. The clover got off to a very slow start, but some of it is starting to look like real clover. It’ll be a red-letter day when the first clover blooms. I sowed three kinds of clover — red, white, and Ladino clover. I believe this is red clover.

wpeach-fuzz-may30.JPG
This bank was skinned back to the subsoil when the bulldozer made the driveway. I’m still weeks away from a vigorous stand of grass, but the peach fuzz is promising.

wbaby-tomato-may30.JPG
A baby tomato. It’s amazing how fast things grow in raised beds.

Vidalia onions

wvidalia-may29.JPG
The real thing

I would continue to testify that, awesome though California’s produce is, there are three things grown in the Southeast that California can’t duplicate: Vidalia onions (from Georgia, of course), proper summer tomatoes, and mountain cabbage.

Vidalia onions are showing up in all the stores here. The large ones can be expensive. The medium-size onions are very reasonably priced. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure it out, but I now understand the source of the soggy onions we had during the winter, both in California and here in the Southeast. The onions are imported from Central America and Peru. I’m guessing that they must be transported on ships with no ventilation, so the outers layers have already started to rot by the time they get here.

I’ll have plenty more on tomatoes this summer. I hope to visit a cabbage patch in Carroll County, Virginia, before too much longer.

Today's photos, in no particular order

wtree-work-may29.JPG
The local power company, Energy United, has been clearing trees around the power lines up on Duggins Road. I stopped and had a nice chat with the two supervisors about going as easy on the greenery as possible. They were very nice and didn’t disagree at all. Part of what they’re doing, though, is an infrastructure upgrade. They’re getting ready to replace the old copper and steel overhead wiring with aluminum and steel wiring. They say that the new wiring is stronger, less likely to melt when something falls on it, and has lower electrical resistance.

wstrawberries-may29.JPG
The local strawberries are in. These were in a produce market at Walnut Cove, and they told me the berries were grown in Madison.

wsickle-1-may29.JPG
In the agricultural history department, this old sickle caught my eye. It’s beside the main drag in Walnut Cove.

wsickle-2-may29.JPG
It’s meant to be pulled by a mule. It takes power from a rear wheel, and, through a shaft and cam, converts the wheel’s motion to reciprocal motion to drive the sickle. This machine was made by B.F. Avery & Sons Co., in case anyone is doing a web search on old machinery.

wsickle-3-may29.JPG
The sickle

woldhouse-1-may29.JPG
Abandoned homeplaces are always fascinating. There are lots of them around here, and we take them for granted. But they can’t be common everywhere. I would imagine it takes certain trends and circumstances to create abandoned homesteads, things like cheap land, changing technology, more suburbanized ways of making a living, migration patterns, and so on. In short, not many people want to live that way anymore, and the places aren’t worth keeping up. It’s a shame.

woldhouse-2-may29.JPG
Old houses are a repository of vanishing culture. They’re also a repository of heirloom varieties of flowers, shrubs, and fruit trees. This particular old house, on Stewart Road on the way to Walnut Cove, has two huge growths of roses, one pink, one deep red. The front porch is large and is still there, but it’s been taken by overgrowth.

woldhouse-3-may29.JPG
An overgrown outbuilding. It’s all so art nouveau.

woldhouse-4-may29.JPG
Honeysuckle everywhere. Right now you can drive for miles and miles on the backroads and never leave the scent of honeysuckle.

woldhouse-5-may29.JPG
Irises by the kitchen window

woldhouse-6-may29.JPG
Old roses…

woldhouse-7-may29.JPG
Can you find the chimney?

Rain today = tomatoes tomorrow

rain-may-27.png
The reddest part of this squall missed me, but it left an eighth of an inch of rain yesterday.

rain-may-28.png
Today we have real rainy-day rain, and it may go on for hours.

What I last lived in thunderstorm country (17 years ago), Internet radar didn’t exist. Now you can easily see when rain is approaching, and how much.

After they’ve had time to slurp up some of this rain, I’ll have some photos to show what the rain did for my baby tomatoes, peppers, peas, and beans.

Speaking of miracles…

harris-miracle.jpg
Cartoon by Sidney Harris

I came across this quote a couple of days ago at survivalblog.com:

There are only two ways to live your life. One as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. — Albert Einstein

I don’t think Einstein was deluded about the all-knowingness of science. I think he understood perfectly well, though he longed to understand, that he didn’t have a clue why grass grows or why roses bloom.

I’ve tried to verify this Einstein quote and see what its context might be, but I’ve not succeeded so far. Einstein was too complex to go around making up aphorisms. If the quote is authentic, there must have been some interesting context.

The miracle of May

wtruck-swallowed-up.JPG
Mountain View Road, Stokes County, May 23. This is the kind of grass I want — deep, unmowed grass that swallows pickup trucks. Note the color of the sky close to the horizon. That is Carolina blue.

wroses-2-may-23.JPG
More of Mama’s roses, May 23, Yadkin County. The amazing thing is, these blooms had not even started opening last week when I was there.

wroses-1-may-23.JPG
… and still more of Mama’s roses. By the way, the person who has done all the work of gardening on this old place for the past three years, and who has done a just remarkable job, is my sister’s husband, Graham. The older buildings and the homeplace are almost gone, and the land has been divided up, but the land upon which theses roses are growing has been in the family for at least four, if not five, generations. This rose bush, however, is only three years old.

Cover crops: slow going

wgrass-poking-up.JPG
I have many spots where silt collected after rain, and the soil looked flat and barren. But there was grass seed under there, and eventually the grass breaks through with a vengeance.

It’s been a constant challenge to get cover crops going on more than an acre laid bare. The overall result is still far from photogenic. The soil was brutally disturbed three times — first for the taking out the pine trees, then again for removing the stumps, and then again for putting in the septic tank. I flung a variety of seeds, at different times, onto different conditions — fescue grass, rye grass, red clover, and white clover. In places I have pretty good cover, but the roots are still shallow, and rain is needed more often than it comes. In the really tough spots where the topsoil was removed — the front ditch and beside the driveway — I’ve watered regularly with a hose. Into the bare spots I poked beans and peas. Anything resembling lushness is weeks or months away, but stuff is growing.

wcorn-clover-fescue-cucumber.JPG
Crops in straight and orderly rows, nicely segregated? Ha! Maybe someday. I poked seeds wherever I thought they might grow. Here we have corn, clover, fescue, and cucumber all in one place. Whether I harvest corn and cucumbers is not my main concern this year. I’ll take anything that has roots and holds the soil. The variety also makes for good experiments. I’ll learn a bit about what wants to grow where.

wbaby-beans.JPG
The beans and peas I planted all around are coming up very enthusiastically. With decent rain and a bit more nitrogen, who knows what might happen.

wcanteloupe-may21.JPG
The cantaloupes are flourishing…

wtomatoes-may21.JPG
… and the tomatoes are doing well.

wditch-recovers.JPG
I’ve won the war for the front ditch. I now have strong fescue and young clover there, so even in a heavy downpour it’s no longer likely to erode.

From Mama's house to my house

w-m17-01-mamas-roses.JPG
Mama’s roses

All these photos were taken yesterday. I let the GPS device pick a route from Mama’s house to my place in Stokes. I told the GPS device to pick a route that led past a particular place along the Yadkin River where I’d remembered seeing an old mill 30 years ago, and I told it to stay off the main roads. What a route! I knew some of the roads, but others were completely new to me. This was an amazingly scenic route that just happened to lead past the places where parts of three movies were filmed: Junebug (Pinnacle, Stokes County), Cabin Fever (Priddy’s General Store, Stokes County), and Leatherheads (Donnaha, Yadkin County). This area is rich in agricultural history. More posts on agricultural history another day. It took me along the foot of Pilot Mountain. The route also led past two old Stokes County resorts — Vade Mecum and Moore’s Springs — and it took me past the entrance to Hanging Rock State Park, not to mention downtown Danbury (the Stokes county seat) and Priddy’s General Store, where I stopped to get a Cheerwine and say hello to Jane Priddy-Charleville, who runs the store. It took me past a winery that I was not previously aware of, about which I’ll post another day.

w-m17-02mamas-grapevines.JPG
Mama’s young grapevines

w-m17-03-mill-1.JPG
The mill on the Yadkin

w-m17-04-mill-2.JPG
Machinery in the mill on the Yadkin

w-m17-05-mill-3.JPG
More of the mill on the Yadkin

w-m17-06-mill-4.JPG
Cogwheel at the mill on the Yadkin

w-m17-07-mill-5.JPG
Cadillac in the barn by the mill on the Yadkin

w-m17-08-mill-6.JPG
The hardworking owner of the mill on the Yadkin

w-m17-09-moores-springs-1.JPG
Moore’s Springs, Stokes County

w-m17-10-pilot-mountain-1.JPG
Pilot Mountain

w-m17-11-vade-mecum-1.JPG
Vade Mecum (Stokes County), now a summer camp

w-m17-12-vade-mecum-2.JPG
The road to Vade Mecum

w-m17-13-homestead-1.JPG
A Yadkin Valley homestead

w-m17-14-homestead-2.JPG
Another Yadkin Valley homestead

w-m17-15-dogs-1.JPG
Residents of a Yadkin Valley homestead

w-m17-16-priddys-1.JPG
Security guard at Priddy’s General Store

w-m17-17-priddys-2.JPG
Priddy’s General Store

w-m17-18-priddys-3.JPG
The owner of Priddy’s General Store

w-m17-19-farm-machine-1.JPG
How they did it then

w-m17-20-farm-machine-2.JPG
How they do it now

w-m17-21-farm-machine-3.JPG
How they did it then again