A Return to Gardening

One of my goals upon a return to a saner lifestyle (I left a fairly time- and travel-intensive big firm practice in D.C. for academia) was to start gardening more and better.

My family is garden-y on both sides. My dad's dad, Orval Childs, was an agri professor at Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia, Arkansas, for decades. (Indeed, one agri building is named after him.) My mom's dad, Gordon Hartrick, was a Georgia Pacific forester and beekeeper, and her mom, Alma Hartrick, was a long-time gardener, canner, biologist, and so on. And the gardens growing up were always wonderful, and my mom's retirement gardens (in northwest Arkansas) are increasingly amazing. Some large number of aunts and uncles are involved, either as a vocation or an avocation, in serious gardening. And we've had nice gardens from time to time, mostly in St. Paul and Austin. Since finishing law school, not so much.

But I've never been really serious beyond just keeping some bedding plants alive. I could muddle along but never paid quite enough attention to really know what was working and what wasn't working. Certainly no Latin names. So I'm hoping to improve on that. Though perhaps not the Latin name part.

All that's a way to lead up to praise for Annie's Garden & Gift Store in Amherst (almost up to Sunderland). I noticed a reference to a seed starting class there this morning and went, almost on a whim. It was a terrific -- and free! -- class, they gave all attendees a 20% off coupon on seeds, and they have a nice selection. I'm certain there are other stores with more, and I'm certain there are places online and in the area with better prices (though perhaps not with the discount), but I was perfectly happy to spend a little more to get to shop in such a nice spot with incredibly helpful people working.

So hopefully this summer we'll have a good salsa garden: tomatoes, tomatillos, habenero chiles, ancho peppers, jalapenos, cilantro, thai chiles. Also basil and sunflowers. (Not all will be started inside; I did pay attention.) And I got very close to everything I'll need to have a lot of stuff (assuming success) for less than $30.

Also assuming success, friends and family can anticipate salsa for Christmas.

P.S. While writing this, KCMP (see earlier posts) played the theme from Shaft. That's good living.

Shows List Updated

I've updated my list of upcoming area shows. I've expanded the geographical reach of it, so that it includes even more shows I almost certainly won't attend.

The pinnacle of my career

I am delighted to report that this site is now the second (of two) results from a Google search for "geeky law professor."

What more could one want in life?*





* Please note that comments are off, and thus that you should consider that a rhetorical question.

Wow, it really is good.

So far there's nothing not to like about KCMP. Great variety, great air staff. It's awesome.

Only complaint: with no ads and all this great music, when am I supposed to pee?

(Okay, I stole that complaint from my friend Wendy.)

KCMP First Song

A great choice: Minneapolis hip-hop group Atmosphere's "Shh...," all about living in the Midwest.

Hooray!

New Web Station

Minnesota Public Radio will launch 89.3 KCMP tomorrow (Monday) morning. It will very likely be a great station. They've picked up a ton of the old folks from Rev-105 (the finest commercial station I've ever heard) and promise to be even better.

They're streaming in WMP (boo) and AAC-plus (yay). The latter is a little tricky to get right now, so if you're planning to listen, find a player now. For OS X, it's VLC. I guess maybe that works for other OSs, too. iTunes support should be coming in the next version.

Anyway: listen. I'll have another post on web radio stations I listen to eventually, but I'm pretty certain this is going to be an instant favorite.

Snowy

Our backyard this morning, probably three hours before it finished snowing:



Hooray for the very kind neighbors with snowblowers! Not one but two of them (including the folks from whom we bought this house) cleared our sidewalk and accessible parts of the driveway. Still left plenty of shoveling, but it sure was nice not having to do the fairly lengthy sidewalk out front. Memo to self: remember to bake muffins on snowy nights so both snowblowers get them.

I've seen some stories about plowing being cut back this year due to budget constraints. If this is the cut-back plowing, I can only imagine that the full-force efforts involve the city government housing a dedicated snow removal worker in every house in the city. ("Q. Who's that guy sleeping on the couch? A. Bob the snow guy. Duh.")

I'm sure some of this is due to the fact that we live on a semi-major road -- lots of people use the road to bypass downtown Florence to get out to Ryan Road and Florence Road and such -- but still, it's only a couple of hours after the snow stopped falling and the road is nearly bare of snow.

P.S. About those muffins: I made the gingerbread muffins from The Quick Recipe from the editors of Cooks Illustrated. We only recently got this cookbook, featuring "quick" (less than an hour generally) recipes, and I was a little skeptical, but so far, it hasn't steered us wrong. The cinammon rolls featured on the cover are almost disturbingly good.

Disc Golf in Northampton

The Gazette had a story in the weekend edition (paid subscription required) about a relatively new disc golf course at the old Northampton State Hospital site (now being redeveloped as "Hospital Hill"). (Very cool, albeit creepy, photos of the buildings here.)

This is great news. I was disappointed when moving here that there weren't any courses nearby that I could find, and indeed, a friend of mine who's been playing for years didn't know about this one -- even though it's apparently been there for a year.

I haven't been there yet, but found these instructions (from Florence):

"Take Florence Rd out of Florence, to stop sign at Burts Pit Rd. Left, go a mile, you may see a couple of baskets in the big fields, go through big S curve parking lot on left, I try to keep the first bulletin board stocked with maps. Hole #1 starts at approximately the second bulletin board. Look for painted tees, signage is currently minimal, use a map or play with someone who knows the 18."

When I started law school I promised myself not to start playing golf, partially to avoid being That Kind of Lawyer, and partially because I think it's incredibly boring. Disc golf (and mini golf, but that's another day) is a sound exception to that policy. It's fun and, once you have a few discs, free.

Today's weather is not so friendly to an outing, but once it warms up, should be fun.