the verdant hills of north portland

I do love these tiny beet sprouts and their purple stems.

DINO KALE! RAAWWR! If only the leaves were dinosaur-shaped.

These peas are growing so quickly that I don't think I can afford to wait until the weekend to put up the trellis. Uh oh.

The chard is the only green in the self-watering containers that is still going strong. Perhaps we didn't trim the mesclun mix back enough (too much?), but they're bolting like banks from Bernanke. (Does that make sense? Topicality isn't my strong point these days. Bolting like hysterical tourists from Mexico?)

Hops! Mt. Hood variety. I biked them home and they've been reacting well to the transplant. A home-spun dry-hopping this fall? A girl can dream.

Remember when this strawberry was but three leaves and no flowers? They grow up so fast...

Garlic.

Pretty little spinach, row on row.

Arugula! Better, cheaper, pepperier than the store-bought stuff by a mile. Verily, by a hectare.

it's true

The greens taste better when you grow them yourself. These salads were picked about 30 minutes before dinner. Subsequently devoured with just a hint of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The mesclun had a thickness and - dare I say it? - meatiness to it that I seldom encounter in salads. Our baby rainbow chard is downright sweet. Yum.

food not lawns!

Sugarless Update: Easter ain't easy without sugar. I allowed myself a little hit of celebratory dark chocolate, but have been otherwise confined to agave when sweetener is needed. This has been a great excuse to avoid the peanut M&Ms at work. I can be strong. Aiming to drastically reduce my intake of refined sugar has been a far more manageable goal than cutting it altogether, but I've still gone over a week without any at all. Again, major progress.

Garden Update: We kick ass. Here's the 7'x4' raised bed in the front yard. Contains (left to right) arugula, oregano, mesclun mix, bitty kale starts. (I had a dream about tupperware cloches for the little things - that will probably happen today.)


The backyard. Note the raised beds and tomato planters on either side of the door. Also note the buckets, which are the self-watering containers that I may have raved about recently.


Detail of the left side. Left to right: directly sown peas and spinach in the large bed, strawberries in the repurposed peach crate, empty bucket, lavender in a pot, future site of tomatoes. In the right bed (not shown), we've sown beets and will plant jalapenos and broccoli later.


We made this raised bed yesterday out of cinder blocks that our landlord had just abandoned in the backyard. Soon to house tomatoes and basil. It didn't take too long, and I think it looks rather awesome, especially since we had to build it up around the rosemary. Salvaged materials are beautiful.


Self-watering containers! There are holes in the upper bucket that allow water to wick into the soil and condense back into the lower bucket reservoir. Here's a better description of how they work.


Mesclun mix and rainbow chard are totally BFF with their SWCs.


Tomatoes and jalapenos. We have more seedlings than we know what to do with. The little blue house has experienced a bit of a population explosion.


We may need to start a CSA once all this gets rolling! We're not even done planting, and I haven't yet made the bean poles.

ETA: Forgotten link for SWCs

Sugarfree Day 4 again/Victory Garden 2009

It occurred to me when a friend offered me cookies sweetened with maple syrup, and as I considered agave-ing my oatmeal, that I should probably define this project as a No Refined Sugar situation. Cutting sweets entirely ain't gon' happen in a month for this girl; that would most definitely be a set-up for failure. That said, the above cookies (cashew butter crunch somethings) are badass, and I'll post the recipe once I make the suckers.

But back to not setting myself up to fail. Cutting refined sugar is manageable in some ways. I can at least identify which foods are likely to be sweetened with refined sugar or high fructose corn syrup. "Baked goods and anything processed" has been a pretty handy rule of thumb. Drinking a cup of mint tea or just a big glass of water have not been entirely satisfactory fixes, but they've worked well enough to get me through two three-day stretches without sugar.

Enough blah blah blah, though. Victory Garden 2009 is well on its way. I (with intermittant help from friends and girlfriend) built three raised beds. The tomato and kale seedlings are going to town on our kitchen table, and the peppers are starting to sprout. The starts (so far: oregano, lavender, strawblies, arugula and mesclun mix. to come: mustard greens, beets, collards, leeks, onions, potatoes, garlic, runner beans, basil, mint and cilantro) are hardening off in the glorious sunshine that we've been getting. The chard and salad greens in the self-watering containers are doing smashingly. I plan to make a vaguely propagandistic sign for the raised bed in the front (it's the big one - 7' x 4') about victory over economy, food not lawns, or something like that. Any suggestions on the text are welcome.

Pictures of the garden and seedlings and the rest of it to come. Really this time.

recent accomplishments

-Shamrock Run 8k - ran the whole way and finished, my only goals for the thing. Don't ask me what my time is. I have no idea.
-FINALLY returning my library books. No, this is major.
-Brewing two batches of beer within a week, with another to be brewed tomorrow.
-Made and mounted a hanging picture thing/bulletin board whatsit out of an old bicycle wheel. Damn right, it's not on my floor anymore!
-Purchased book club book #5, am 136/500ish pages through it. Haven't complained too much, either.
-Put in my last volunteer shift at the Outside In kitchen. Didn't cry upon leaving.
-Tweaked brakes on new bike. Adjusted seat on new bike. Fell in love with new bike.
-Cooked. (Polenta loaf, zucchini crust pizza with about a million different veggies on top, stock, and black bean soup, among other things.)
-Carried the whole delivery of cleaning supplies (read: many 5 gallon buckets of things like disinfectant and cases of god knows what other chemicals) up our flights of fun house stairs at work, to the surprise of the delivery dude.
-Called my Papa on his birthday.
-Started knitting a beanie for myself. With cables!

But alas, all of this feels inconsequential because it's only 11:40 and I am out of food. My lunch rations didn't cut it. Leftover polenta loaf has forsaken me, and lo, I am hungry.

Count it, anti-choicers!

Total slam dunk: The Obama team is going to repeal the asshattery known as the "conscience rule" - a tricksy little parting gift from the Bush administration that allows medical professionals to deny patients abortions on moral grounds. As far as I know, this moral decision could override medical necessity or the incidence of rape and/or incest. Once this rolls back, a doctor's personal beliefs cannot affect a woman's health or the difficult choices she must make.

I'm all about personal freedom and responsibility for one's choices. I'm all about being able to air beliefs publicly and to have those beliefs respected. For some medical professionals, the Conscience Rule was a godsend because it allowed them a legal recourse for a difficult personal and professional decision. I sincerely do not envy the pro-life doctor who is asked to perform an abortion, and I hope that someone who disagrees with me out there can say the same thing in some inverse way (maybe, "I don't envy the queer who gets told regularly that she's in the wrong bathroom"). That said, a decision about one's own body is not fundamentally a doctor's decision. A doctor advises and performs their job, but the patient must make their own medical decisions or have an agent or guardian make the decision for them. Doctors don't have the right or privilege to impose their will, generally speaking, and the Conscience Rule was thus unfathomable to me; that affords doctors an enormous amount of power and sets a precedent for all manner of co-opted medical decisions.*

HIPAA (the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, for those who don't have the pleasure of dealing with it daily) gets a face lift, courtesy of the stimulus bill. Ultimately, the rules surrounding protection of health care information will be tightened up, and everything will be made electronic. This is great for protection of patients and efficiency, but it's going to be a short term pain. Pretty appropriate for the stimulus bill, which, if all things go as El Presidente says, will have much the same crunch effect.

*Obviously, there are many exceptions - ER medicine springs to mind - but I'm speaking of planned procedures here.

JD to be, suckas!

That's right. I got into my first choice law school, Lewis and Clark. AND they're giving me a monster scholarship. HELL YES!

Holla: Lilly Ledbetter

Today, the Senate passed (by an astonishing 61-36 margin) the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a landmark case in labor law. The holding is a little difficult to capture in a single sentence, but I'll try: Former employees seeking back pay as a result of a successful pay discrimination suit (race, gender, age, etc.) are now entitled to back pay starting up to two years prior to the alleged discriminatory act. Further, as the Library of Congress summary points out:

Amends the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 to declare that an unlawful practice occurs when a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice is adopted, when a person becomes subject to the decision or other practice, or when a person is affected by the decision or practice, including each time wages, benefits, or other compensation is paid.

This is really fundamental. No, really. Every time an employee gets a paycheck (or tips or what-have-you), it's a throw-back to Ledbetter. It's a legal check mark against a discriminating employer. Rather than look at the entire scope of an worker's employ, the courts must now look at each paycheck as a separate discriminatory act. This, rather than damages assigned as a blanket fix-it, seems like a more accurate dispensation of justice and a protective measure for those who do not get the pay they are owed.

Frankly, I'm stoked. Lilly Ledbetter campaigned and lobbied hard for two years to see this done. She was a plant manager at a Goodyear tire factory who realized way too late that she'd been getting crummy pay on account of her gender. Short version: legal loopholes stood between her and her back pay, so she took her fight to Congress. Props, LL.

Ground control to Major Tom

Happy Halloween and Happy Election Day! GO VOTE.

Vegan Mofo Day 29 and things I've made

Look tasty? You betcha. Mosetta Stone got me thinking about foods that are naturally vegan - like produce - hence the raw, no recipe, totally vegan post. Fresh picked by yours truly courtesy of some neighbors and the Portland Fruit Tree Project, a non-profit that solicits fruit from fruit tree owners who can't or won't fully harvest their goods. Half of each picking goes to the food bank and half goes to the volunteers. Hence, ten pounds of pears and four of apples. (Full disclosure: This went down a while ago and most of this fruit is long gone.) A fun morning, free fruit for myself and others, and the chance to play with a really cute two year old? Sweet.

Since I actually have access to my pictures, let's see what non-edible projects I've been up to, shall we? I wish I had a picture of the table I painted before I painted it. The camera has been sick lately. Anyway, the table:



Leg detail. Rock!



Plane detail.



Different plane detail.



The whole thing! Picture taken while the clear coat dried. I'm pretty damn proud of it.

Knitting has taken over my brain lately. I made myself a helmet liner as a maiden voyage project (pic below with my washed-out face). For the record, the difference between a helmet liner and a hat in my world is just a matter of thickness and when I wear the thing. For all intents and purposes, they're the same thing.



Finally, the cabled (!) scarf I'm making my brother for Christmas. My first attempt at cables, fyi. Not too shabby!



Shout out to Vegan Knitting for her tips on finding cruelty-free yarn. Word!

check it, part deux

I can kind-of, sort-of swim. I'm not very good, but I don't freak out in the water anymore.

check it

http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/npo/748478265.html