Tree-mend-us-ly, berry good

Okay, that was stupid. But we get bonus points for rescuing our small stand of red oak trees: food!

When we moved in there were 'inner tube' planter beds around the oaks. You know, a circle of border edging filled with plants that would never choose to grow right next to the base of a tree.

As a matter of style, I hold 'inner tube' beds on a par with pink flamingoes and cars on blocks. And it's not so good for the trees.

[I imagine the evolution of the inner tube bed goes something like this: Bubba plants tree and mulches per nursery instructions. Bubba admires his work but notices mulch looks a little plain. Thinks, we should plant somethin' there, and promptly does so, forgetting (or not understanding) that the point of the mulch is to help protect the young tree roots from dryness and competition.]

Anyway when we moved in, the liriope (giant monkey grass) was thriving, but the oaks were mostly leafless and bedraggled. We spent a week prying away the concrete edging with a crowbar, because the liriope had rooted into it, and digging up the liriope. Hombre got the workout of the year doing that.

Things we discovered when we got rid of the liriope: frogs, snakes, lizards, a good-sized softleaf yucca, a thorny mystery vine and about a million huge cockroaches nesting in the jungle. Plus the fact that the liriope was so overgrown that its roots had made an above-ground mat about four inches thick. Eww.

But now we have something so much better. The oaks have leafed out! Even some of the sections that our arborist feared were dead have tender new leaves. He told us that removing the liriope helped save the oaks, that inner tube beds kill trees.

And the mystery vine? Dewberry. Covered in white blossoms. I am counting the days to dewberry-peach pie.

I feel healthier already

I like this blog. Recipes, politics, sustainable food issues. There's a lot to peruse here. Mmmmm...

Smackdown: Exploiting the defenseless!

You be the judge. Which is lower?

This, from today's NYT:

The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups.

Or this?

My 89-year old great-aunt had her bag stolen from her hospital room last week while she was in the room, although she wasn't very alert, having pneumonia and such. This is the latest in a line of pilferings and accidental losses stretching back for months at various care facilities. Past vanished items include earrings and a favorite ring. But last week's thief takes the cake.

To him or her I say, Congratulations. You now own a sweater, bathrobe and great-nephew photos from a patient with a transmissible, antibiotic-resistant staph infection. Use your new treasures in good health and next time, don't steal from someone in an isolation room.

Victory garden update: ladybug love nest

I've already rattled on about the fuel we burn to truck produce around the globe. And how we can support energy independence by growing at least some of our own produce.

So here's the update on the victory garden.

After crazy amounts of rain, our cilantro plants are four feet tall. One got so heavy it fell over. I would cut them down, but they're blooming and I want to save seeds.

Also, the cilantro plants are the ladybug equivalent of Inspiration Point. You can hear the sweet sounds of Marvin Gaye out there. There's incense burning and tiny, empty wine glasses all over the garden bed. You can never have enough ladybugs to eat your aphids and whatnot. So the love nest, overgrown and shaggy as it is, stays. I hope it'll become the ladybug nursery, the wineglasses and Marvin Gaye replaced by tiny legos and Raffi.

The first strawberry: Yes, Rocketboy did try it rolled in sugar. He ate a little, I had some, Hombre had a bite, and then Hurricanehead gnawed it down to the stem. It was a little sweeter than I'd expected, and there are more on the way. Soon we can each have our own!

Lettuce, as always, is growing like crazy. I don't understand why nothing eats it out there. It's a mix of oak leaf and green leaf (I weeded out all the red leaf b/c I think it tastes funky) and we're savoring it before the weather gets hot and it bolts. Yes, I will try to save seeds.

Green onions: I planted about 100 Texas 1015 sweet onion sets in January, and we've got good size green onions now, so I am thinning the herd a little. Sauteed a big one to add to Hombre's crass-yet-beloved mashed potatoes from a box, and they tasted like real food. Perfect with locally grown, grass-fed steaks, salad from the garden, a good Texas blush wine and a clear evening. Patriotism never tasted so good.

Rocketboy's Monday picks

As always, it's time for Rocketboy's recommendations for quality kid living. This week he picks:

• his nose (hee hee).
• the Henry and Mudge series of books by Cynthia Rylant. "They're very fun to read and they're relaxing to read."
• fresh strawberries from the garden, rolled in sugar. If you must try a new food, make sure it's rolled in sugar. It almost guarantees that you will like it.

There's a shocker

Says here that bereaved parents are more likely to become mentally ill than other parents. I'm glad they did the study, seriously, because there are people who need it spelled out that the loss of a child is a big deal. Including people who, professionally speaking, should know that.

Did I tell you about our idiot family therapist? Hombre and I saw this guy for a while to get some disciplinary strategies for kid #1, who was having trouble adjusting to a live baby brother after grappling for so long with loss of the first one.

One week we went in, and the therapist asked how things had been going. The day before had been the anniversary of D's stillbirth. He would have been two. Two! We talked about that with Rocketboy and then went on with our day.

Know what this jackass said? First, he chastised us for being morbid, and then he said,

"Later, when it matters less..." and I don't remember anything he said for the next 50 minutes. When what matters less? The three days I spent in labor with a baby we already knew was dead? The blood oozing from the corner of his mouth when we held him? The effort it took to begin to function in the world again? The timeline of milestones not met that unfurls as the years pass?

Hombre says that Dr. Duh also asked, "What's the significance of that?" in relation to D's birthday, but I don't remember that.

Research shows that bereaved parents have a higher incidence of everything from MS to suicide. You'd think that a psychologist, if he couldn't guess that bereavement is a big long-term deal, would have at least skimmed the literature before counseling clients whose issue was the effect of bereavement on their family..

We never went back. I have a special brand of contempt for people who judge my responses to a loss they can't begin to imagine.

Lord of the fry

I'd just finished vacuuming our fish tank gravel yesterday and was admiring my work when something tiny swam by. Then another. Yikes. Fry?

Mama Platy was as pregnant as before in her breeder tank. Rocketboy found his magnifier, and we looked closely at the wiggly things hiding in the gravel. Fry. Stripy fry. Not platy fry.

One of our zebra danios had a suspicious belly bulge. Pregnant? Quick, to the internet (the current equivalent of the bat cave). Not pregnant. Eggs. Lots of eggs. Which zebra danios will eat. Which explains why they were nibbling at the gravel so much this week. Eww.

We decide to try to rescue the remaining fry, with the understanding that they probably will die. Another tank vacuuming, and we end up with one live fry in a separate "tank" made of a pickle jar and lava rocks.

We use the magnifier to see the fry feeding at the surface. It looks like eyes and a spine, not much else. It's ridiculously cool.

Rocketboy wants to know why the babies can't stay with the parents. I reluctantly explain that the fish will eat the fry. This, predictably, enrages him.

"Those fish are son of a bitches!" he hollers, red in the face. Great. We have a talk about proper language and that some animals do eat their young for various reasons.

"But you don't eat us," he says. I explain that among humans, cannibalism is considered gross.

"What about goats?" I never thought about it. It seems unlikely, but given goats' blindly omnivorous reputation, I hesitate and change the subject.

There's a local fish store nearby that's offered to find homes for any fry that get large enough. Again, I say, does anyone spay fish?

Rocketboy recommends

This week Rocketboy offers three recommendations for kid living:

• a giant pile of mulch in the backyard (for climbing with one's dog and cousins and claiming to be king of said pile, then jumping off and calling it flying),
• a loft of some sort in which to hide and ruminate a la the Great Brain, and
• snuggling.

Next week: Rocketboy will model the poncho another inmate crocheted for him while he was in time-out.

A fish called pregnant

I don't know which is more startling, the big pregnant bulge on our red wag platy or the fact that I assumed (silly me) that aquarium fish lay eggs. Why didn't they tell us before we bought these guys that they're livebearers?

Mama fish is in a tank-within-a-tank that's supposed to keep her from eating her many young when they finally emerge. I read that our zebra danios will eat fry, too, so this could be interesting in a gross-nature-documentary, the-kids-won't-stop-crying kind of way.

The guy at the pet store last night assured me that my fish could get knocked up every month or so and I could have my own little fish farm, with up to 30 fish per litter. Does anyone spay fish?

Snatching teeth from the jaws of victory

I never went to the ER before I had kids. Now I’ve made five trips in six years, including an emergency pit stop at the pediatric dentist on Wednesday.

I’d also never thought much about dentures up until now, except for the godawful time I grabbed a drink from a bathroom glass and didn’t see my great-uncle’s partial resting at the bottom. But now I get to think about dentures as often as I see my 14-month-old smile. As soon as his first-year molars finish coming in, he’ll get his very first false tooth.

We were having such a good day, too. Minimal whining, lots of fun stuff. Short story even shorter: Rocketboy knocked out one of the baby’s front teeth. Nothing malicious, mind you, just the unfortunate combination of impatience and youthful stupidity plus a tile floor. Hurricanehead seems to be making a smooth recovery, and I think Rocketboy will survive the shame and guilt. Now I just need to get my nerves revarnished, and everything will be fine.

Eight million ways to knit

I can do it! I can do a knit stitch. I am now in the process of very slowly making myself an all-knit-stitch scarf. I don't wear hats but I love the way scarves look wrapped over the hair, especially if you take your rollers out first.

I know I said I was going to do something about plastic grocery bags. I was planning to cut them into strips and knit who-knows-what with them. But I've learned that our local food pantry always needs bags.

They can have mine while I move on to my next sustainable craft project: unraveling old sweaters to make something new with the yarn. I've got one of my dad's old wool cardigans from high school. It's too small for him, too big for me, but the yarn is a really cool peacock blue with green flecks. Project ideas, anyone?

Rocketboy recommends

I'm slow out of the gate, mentally, on Mondays. So I'm giving this space to Rocketboy at the start of each week to make his homeschool/leisure/general living recommendations for the six-year-old set.

This week Rocketboy recommends, for fun reading, the Calvin and Hobbes series of books. These are among the books that got him thinking that it might be worthwhile to learn to read, and I know of lots of other little boys who got their start reading these. And if your child has any sense of insurrection or enjoys tweaking authority, these will go down like vanilla ice cream on a hot day.

Rocketboy also recommends playing the piano this week, because "you can make a lot of different music." He's working his way through the Michael Aaron primer and the Usborne Piano Book and loving them.

Bummer of the week: Arlene Sardine, by Chris Raschka. It's the simply told story of how a fish named Arlene becomes, as she wants to, a sardine, meaning she dies in the middle of the book and is cooked in her can. You'll either laugh or recoil. Rocketboy recoiled.

Time for a new skill

My father learned two things in Vietnam: how to kill a man with his bare hands and how to knit. When I was a child, he passed one of these lessons on to me, leaving me to seek out the other when and if I ever became ready. So last night I got myself a how-to-knit book.

I don't like diagrams of anything, especially not things I'm supposed to figure out how to do, but I've decided to try. My friend M knits, and Dad may remember the old knit and purl. I figure when I get the whole mess into a giant knot I can go to one of them for help.

Why knit? Plastic grocery bags. I already sew and needlepoint and could quilt if I wanted to, but none of those offers me a good way to do something useful with those darned bags that pile up in drifts in our bathroom cabinet. Because we recycle and compost, the main things we throw away are diapers, dog crap, and plastic bags.

Yes, I know there are dogsledders in Alaska who compost dog doo. I'm not going to try that in hot, humid Texas. And we've already been over the diaper thing. But the plastic bags maybe I can do something about. Wish me luck.

Parent your way to wealth!!

A big stay-at-home mama hang-up is guilt over not bringing home any bacon. We often think we should spend less time and money on ourselves, not necessarily because we can't afford it, but because we're not generating a paycheck. We feel like a drain on family resources.

Much has been made of the income parents forego by staying home or getting on the mommy or daddy track at work. But a fun reframing device is to look how much you're saving your family by way of the choices you make.

A couple of years ago, to boost my flagging self-esteem, I calculated the dollar value of all the unpaid work I do, just to see what it would cost to completely replace me in case I actually did run away to Mexico. Answer: a lot. The house-cleaning alone would run several thousand dollars a year to farm out. Ironing? Two bucks per shirt. Car detailing? Dog grooming? Landscaping? Diaper service? Grocery delivery? Lord have mercy.

Then we get to the big stuff: child care, education and feeding. Let's calculate feeding because it was such an eye-opener for me. Hurricanehead is still nursing, let's estimate 12 ounces a day. Now of course if I were to quit nursing he would just go to cow milk or soy, but that's not the issue.

The issue is to buy what I'm providing. The local milk bank provides pasteurized breast milk for $3 per ounce. Yes, $3 per ounce. (Not that we could get milk from the bank. It's only for sick and premature babies, but it does give us the market value.) $36 per day for 365 days is $13,000 and change. And that's for a toddler who's slacking off. Wowee. And it's a blip compared to the cost of hiring a live-in nanny and private tutors.

It doesn't have to be nursing or, say, homeschooling (although compared to the cost of a small private school, it's a huge bargain). It could be shuttling your child to practices and lessons instead of hiring the kid taxi service to do it, or being home in the afternoons instead of sending your child to the Y afterschool program. Or whatever you do to make your family work the way you want it to.

My point is that you don't have to get a paycheck with someone else's signature on it to know that you are doing valid and very valuable work. You can always get out your calculator and prove it.

Burnout balm

The good folks at BOR unearthed this little treasure of an essay generator. Never mind the grammatical issues, this sucker is a tonic for those of us grappling with Mama Burnout (a condition resulting from an excess of illness, mud, tantrums, dirty socks, dog barks, smartass backtalk, and whining, compounded by a lack of chocolate). Just put in your self-reference and watch it laud you.

My favorite quotation from my randomly generated Redneck Mother essay:

Did I mention how lovely Redneck Mother is? Society is powered by peer pressure, one of the most powerful forces in the world. As long as peer pressure uses its power for good, Redneck Mother will have its place in society.

And then there's the section that proves beyond doubt the economic value of what I'm doing:

Recent studies indicate that the average wage world wide are driven entirely by Redneck Mother. Perhaps to coin a phrase Redneck Mothereconomics will be the buzz word of the century.

I'll be getting back to the economic value of mothering in a post real soon. But first, I have to take an active role in my burnout recovery and get myself to the salon. Hombre is off today. It's Redneck Mother's day out.

Ack

It occurs to me as I digest my latest round of antibiotics that someone in my household has been sick continuously since I started this blog. Now it's my turn again. Of course we know correlation does not equal causation. The blog itself is not spewing viral particles into our living space. But I do wonder if the keyboard could withstand a dunk in bleach water. Not that I'm desperate enough to try it. Certainly not.