Perkins 2008

It's a dark, January night... a good time to think about what will be growing in the People's Republic of Perkins this year. Here are my thoughts so far. Now to make sure there is a) the space in my 2,000 square feet, and b) enough time to plant all this and still have time to join some friends for a hike of the Coastal Trail in Lake Superior Provincial Park over Memorial Day weekend.

Here's the list in alphabetical order with some comments. The plan is to grow for our family, and to have 3-5 households with which we also share produce for a small fee.

Arugula, Astro II - I've not done this one before. Reportedly it is mild. I also have some seed saved from last year's Arugula crop, which was from imported seed from another gardener's father's garden in Italy.

Basil, Genovese - Typical sweet basil. Does really well at Perkins.

Basil, Red Rubin - Purple basil, which I have not grown before. Similar to Genovese in leaf shape.

Beans, Butterbeans - Edamame soy beans like at the sushi bar. Just steam them and eat like peanuts... really...

Beans, Royal Burgundy - Purple green beans. They are purple on the vine, but turn green when you cook them. They taste just like normal green beans.

Broccoli Raab, Spring Raab - Mix between a green and a broccoli. Tiny broccoli, lots of leaves. Steam and eat it all. A little on the bitter side, but this variety is quite mellow, especially if I pick it early in the morning.

Broccoli, DeCicco - Heirloom variety. Good flavor, but smaller heads. Early (if rabbits and woodchucks don't get it first).

Broccoli, Gypsy - I have not grown this variety at Perkins yet. Pretty standard broccoli.

Cabbage, Lynx - Fairly standard green cabbage. Have not grown this variety at Perkins yet.

Cabbage, Regal Red - Fairly standard red cabbage. Have not grown this variety at Perkins yet.

Carrots, Mokum and Carrots, Sugarsnax 54 - two different varieties, as I have not tried growing carrots in the clay soil at Perkins. Other gardeners, however, have had some good success.

Cilantro, Santo - The standard stuff. Will plant throughout the season to try to have with some regularity (but probably in small doses).

Corn, Luscious, Seneca Dancer, and Spring Treat - Three varieties so that it is available throughout the summer (if the raccoons don't get it like last year). All sweet corn varieties.

Cucumbers, Olympian - Have not grown this variety at Perkins yet. Cucumbers do well out there, but so do the cucumber beetles. This variety is more disease resistant than those I have done in the past, so I am hopeful.

Eggplant - Variety to be determined, but it will be an elongated, Japanese variety.

Greens, Joi Choi - Like Bok Choi, a Chinese green. Great in stir fry or just steamed up. Have not grown this variety yet.

Greens, Tatsoi - Probably the most mild mustard green. Good in stir fry or salads. I have grown well at home, but have yet to try at Perkins.

Kale, Toscano - Have not grown this variety yet. This is the sweeter "dinosaur" type.

Lettuce, Allstar - A nice mix that regenerates very well for big harvest.

Lettuce, Claremont - A Romaine type I have not grown yet. Other gardeners have had good success with Romaine at Perkins.

Lettuce, Sylvesta - A nice, green butterhead type. A new variety of a type I had great success with last year.

Lettuce, Wildfire - Another nice mix, but with more reds. Another gardener did very well with this at Perkins.

Melon, Honey Orange - Honeydew with orange flesh. I am the first to admit that I am not very good at growing melons, and Michigan can be a little too cool and short of a season for melons, but I'm compelled to try again this year...

Onions, Evergreen - Bunching onions. Have not grown this variety yet.

Onions, Purplette - Cipolini onions. Pink. Have not grown this variety yet.

Peas, Caseload - Shell peas. These will only be shared if a large crop.

Peas, Snow Sweet - Snow peas. Should be a small amount for sharing. Good in salads.

Pepper, Apple - Sweet, red pimiento pepper. Does excellent at Perkins.

Pepper, Gypsy - One of the finest sweet peppers. Light green and orange. Does excellent at Perkins.

Pepper, Habanero - The infamous hot one. Good for making salsa. Does excellent at Perkins.

Pepper, Italian Relleno - Great roasting pepper. My personal favorite. Does excellent at Perkins.

Pepper, Tiburon - A rather mild chile. Prolific. Does excellent at Perkins.

Pepper, Yankee Bell - Thick-walled green/red pepper. Have not grown this variety at Perkins yet.

Pumpkins, Baby Pam - Excellent pie pumpkin. Does excellent at Perkins.

Radish, Nero Tondo - Spanish radish. Fall planting. Stores well. Big and black. Have not grown this variety yet.

Radish, Pink Beauty - Early spring radish. Have not grown this variety yet.

Shallots, Ambition - Have not grown this variety at Perkins yet. Shallots are good keeprs, so I'm hopeful these will extend the garden eating season.

Spinach, Space - Does excellent at Perkins (until the rabbits find it). Can be grown throughout the summer.

Squash, JWS 6823 PMR - Butternut. Lousy name, but great taste and super keeper. WAY better than acorn. Does excellent at Perkins.

Squash, Sebring - Golden zucchini. Does excellent at Perkins.

Squash, Sunshine - Bright orange, Japanese variety that looks like buttercup. Have not grown this variety yet.

Swiss Chard, Bright Lights - Multi-colored and grows throughout the season, especially early and late. Does excellent at Perkins.

Tomatoes, Black Cherry - People just rave about this cherry tomato. "Black" heirloom. Does excellent at Perkins.

Tomatoes, Amish Paste - Sweet, and just fine for fresh eating. I have not grown this variety yet.

Tomatoes, Piriform - Italian heirloom. Have not grown this variety yet.

Tomatoes, Olpaka - Paste tomato. I've had good success with these at home, but have not grown this variety at Perkins yet.

Tomatoes, Pruden’s Purple - Big and pink. Heirloom. Does good at Perkins.

Thoughts? Comments?

Cannonsburg Ski

Mid-January graced west Michigan with a good amount of snow after an early January melt (which even provided 60-degree temps for a Monday evening walk across town!).

While our beautiful snow is now melting (I'm writing this on a rainy Monday night), we had a good foot and a half of the white stuff on Saturday, and a couple of inches of it were fresh. That was a good thing, because Matt Hahnfeld was leading a cross-country ski outing for the Western Michigan Chapter of the North Country Trail Association at Cannonsburg State Game Area.

It was a good event in the sense that all six who showed up were competent skiers. This allowed us to ski about nine miles in three hours. Temps stayed in the 20's, so conditions were about perfect.

Here's a video of the group (minus me and Hahnfeld) coming down a hill. Some were daring enough to ski right across the footbridge. The first skier is Georgia. Let's just say she's "retired." A real inspiration!

Top Walks

I was just reading Will Self's column for today and he listed his "favourite winter walks", so I got to thinking about what were my favorite walks of 2007. Here are some of them.

Carter Dome Loop (NH). In February, I had the opportunity to take a 10 mile solo hike and snowshoe up and over Carter Dome in New Hampshire's White Mountains. I blogged about this hike earlier. The most memorable thing about this hike was the brilliant blue sky and the absolute stillness and silence on the top of Mount Hight.

Millennium Park, Chicago (IL). In late winter, early spring, I had to go down to Chicago for a meeting with the folks from EPA Region V. A colleague, Chuck Hoyt, joined me for the trip where we took Amtrak to Chicago and back. There was no time in the morning, so we had to take a cab instead of walking. But after the meeting was done, we had enough time to walk from East Lower Wacker Drive back to the Amtrak Station via Millennium Park. While I have been to Chicago a few times recently, I had not been to this section of Millennium Park since the bean and other public art were installed. If you're ever in Chicago, make sure to check out the Cloud Gate sculpture and the Crown Fountain (photo courtesy of christopherdale).

Pictured Rocks National Lake Shore (MI). I blogged about this hike earlier also. Current memories include fields of forget-me-nots, incredible bird song, good company, and of course the fact that this was Abbey's first backpacking trip. Forty-plus miles and three nights out. Not bad for a three-year-old!


Holden Beach (NC). The memorable walk during this June vacation was down the beach to the south and back. The fact that we overshot our beach house on the walk back by nearly a mile was actually the best part. I enjoyed Julie and Abbey's company as we back-tracked on the road in the dark, peeking into lit-up beach houses full of vacationers. While down on the beach, we chased ghost crabs, walked in shallow tidal pools, and watched the pelicans glide on as the last minutes of daylight waned.

Raven Rocks (NC). A few days after the Holden Beach trek, Julie and I found a nice surprise in Raven Rocks, a state park in North Carolina where old limestone cliffs have been worn away by the Cape Fear River. It was a nice break from driving across the state. Abbey slept for half of the walk and Julie and I got to have a nice, quiet walk in the woods.

Loco Pops in Chapel Hill (NC). This walk was with Johnny and Candace Waken later the same day as the Raven Rocks walk. We walked down East Main Street in Chapel Hill on a hot June night to get us some Loco Pops. While the chile mango and lavender chocolate popsicles were great, it was the company of friends that are not seen nearly enough that made this walk memorable.

Monroe Mall (MI). On the days when I am fortunate enough to take the bus to and from work, I typically transfer so that I can walk the length of Monroe Mall from end to end. The morning walk is nice, with a stop in at Four Friends for coffee, but I particularly enjoy the evening walk as it is less rushed and often imbued with the colors of the evening sky.

To Cathy's House and Back (MI). On Thanksgiving, Julie, Abbey and I walked the little more than three miles to my brother Bill's girlfriend Cathy's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Both the walk there on a sunny, 20 degree afternoon and the walk home on a cold, clear night were memorable. The walk made me wish that more days allowed the time for walking from place to place when in one's home town.

Dérive

Those who know me know that I like to walk. I'm not quite sure why I do. If I had to hazard a guess, I would suspect that the act of walking purely has a positive physiological effect on my body, and hence my spirits.

Exercise and deep breaths fire off the dopamine. Without a thought, neurons connect and disconnect. Something totally subconscious happens at the most physical level.

I'm rather addicted to the sensation that comes from a long walk. A couple of hours is good, but walking for days or weeks at a time are certainly better.

It used to be that I liked hiking. Then, I thought that it was being out in the woods that gave me the charge. And while the woods are certainly nice, I've learned that it's not so much a hike in the traditional "drive out to the woods and check out nature" sense that gets me going. It's just the simple act of walking.

Which is good, because of late I've come to not only define myself as a walker, but also as an urbanist. While I grew up in rural-cum-suburban southern New York, my adult years have been spent living close-quartered houses on postage stamp sized lots in a mid-sized, midwestern city. I've grown to love being close to my neighbors (even when they frustrate me), being where I can walk to the store and the letter carrier walks to my front door, and having most modern amenities close enough that I don't spend a huge portion of my waking hours trapped in the confines of a car.

So the two have come together quite a bit during the last ten years of my life, and it's gotten to the point that I don't know which I prefer more... a walk in the woods, or a good trek across town.

When I was up in Glen Arbor, Michigan a few years back, I was digging around in the Cottage Bookshop, an excellent independent bookstore, and I came across Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust. In this book, Solnit looks at walking from many angles... historical, sociological, philosophical, psychological, political, artistic, and so on.

Reading that book as I wandered the beaches of Sleeping Bear Dunes (walking barefoot may be the best form of walking!), I began really thinking hard for the first time about why it is that I like to walk.

Last week, I picked up Psychogeography, by Will Self. Self has me thinking about walking in new and different ways, and has me wondering if I really do understand why I like walking, and if I really understand what I am experiencing as I walk.

Psychogeography is a term that was interjected into modern thought by French situationist Guy Debord. Debord had a fondness for taking long walks as an act of protest, as a way of intentionally reacting to the modern society around him by making whimsical yet deliberate choices not to follow the conventional route from place to place. The dérive was the term he gave to these long walks where he attempted to refine the relationship between external geography and the internal self.

So now, along with Solnit's tremendous amount of information about walking, I have Self's commentary and Debord's half-baked theories rattling about in my head. All this gives a guy a lot to think about as he walks around town.

Last night I took a good long walk with my friend Eric, from Creston through downtown and into Heartside. It was a rainy, uniquely 60 degree January night. The company and the landscape ensured that my walk was interesting, but so did the simple act of wondering about the meaning of the walk itself.

To Your Health!

The change of the years always brings new things. Resolutions, the post-holiday season, and new digits that have to be hardwired into the brain before writing checks.

For us, this new year brought new snow, a new tradition, and friendships both new and renewed. To celebrate this rather arbitrary holiday, Julie, Abbey and I joined ten other friends at a cabin in the Waterloo-Pinckney State Recreation Area. We typically gather with this group earlier in December, but the cabin was booked; so we moved our plans to the New Year's holiday and started what appear will be a new tradition.


As we do most years, we enjoyed a long hike on Monday. The hike Julie, Abbey and I did was a little bit shorter than the others', as little legs needed a shorter loop.

The temps were in the mid thirties and the birds were singing. In fact, some chickadees were even prematurely singing their spring song.

Monday night about an hour or two before midnight, the snow began to fall. This was no ordinary snow, but a real dumping, complete with thunder and lightening. When dawn broke and I ventured out doors in just my Sorels and my bedclothes to take a pee, I found 15 inches of fresh white snow had blanketed the world over night.

Indeed, the new snow was an excuse for the gang to help Abbey make a seven-foot-tall snowman, complete with cookies for eyes and raisins for his teeth.

The whole weekend was relaxing and enjoyed in the company of a dozen, easy-going, nature loving folks. Our friend Andy did an excellent job of reserving the cabin and making sure this event went smoothly. Even while he was visiting his family in Poland earlier this year, he was thinking of his hiking friends in Michigan. That was evident in the kindness he shared by bringing each of us a little 100ml bottle of one of Poland's finest treats for sipping by the campfire on a snowy, late December night.

Na zdrowie!