Greener grass

I no longer have a job that allows me to blog. I've missed you guys.

But graduation has its perks. I'm glad I went to BYU, and I miss everyone that I met there, but I'm so happy with our new situation.

I learned my name in Arabic today. It's گرستوفر (Christopher) وييست (West). Is that not the coolest thing you've ever seen? It looks a lot like my actual signature (next time someone makes fun of your sloppy handwriting, tell them it's Arabic).

An Iraqi refugee named Refat is teaching me Arabic. Anyone is invited to come. We meet on Saturdays at 10am. I pay him a little for his time, because he has a wife and daughter to take care of, and because he's a refugee from freaking Iraq. Give me a call if you're interested.

I've also helped an organic farmer start his seeds this week, and I'll be helping brother Rasmussen with his corn crop when the weather gets a little warmer. So I'm on my way to becoming a farmer.

Dirt brownies
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Along those lines, my landlord and neighbor Gregg says I'm a real cowboy now. I had just finished filing my taxes (arrgh) when I looked out the window and saw a cow in the neighbor's yard. This is not very unusual in Draper. Our other neighbor has horses. But this neighbor owns dogs, not cows. I recognized the cow as that of my landlord, and I ran outside and called my landlord up on the phone.

"It looks like the grass is greener on the otherside," I said to his voicemail, "because your cow has escaped."

The fugitives
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Gregg had not answered, so I was on my own. I chased the cow around for a while, and opened up the gate to steer him inside. But after I opened the gate, the other cow also escaped.

I chased them around our yard for about ten minutes. They did not want to go back to their already-chewed and trampled grass, they wanted the fresh green mouthfuls our yard had to offer.

They ran away from me like naughty little kids. They really are full of personality. I finally shooed them inside, and that's how I became a real cowboy.

We still have no idea how the first one got out.

If you're not sure what you're going to do when you graduate, or with your life in general, I welcome you to Draper, where you can chase cows, learn Arabic, and play in the dirt.

Lucky Chick and our Farmer

Remember that chick we found on Easter morning? We went to visit the farm he's staying on.
I'm not sure which one he is.

This is where we buy our eggs, honey, and sometimes our leafy greens.
She recycles leaves into compost.
The Llama scares away raccoons.
This is the biggest turkey I've ever seen.
Here's Julie, our farmer.
Anyone is welcome to walk around the farm—just let her know you'd like to come. It's just 3 well-managed acres. I recommend you buy some eggs. She has chicken or duck eggs.
You have to eat three apples today to get the same nutrients that one apple would have given you 50 years ago. This is because agribusinesses have increased yield at the expense of nutrition. Chemical fertilizers make the plants grow, but they don't give them nutrition that healthy soil used to.

Eating is a political act.

Throw your yard away

I always think about this, but didn't know that other people do too:

"Tree roots draw minerals from deep in the soil in order to grow leaves and branches. If you throw away leaves instead of recycling them, you are literally making your soil poorer and poorer every year." From Organic Gardening's Cheryl Long, as quoted in Great Garden Formulas.
I thought that mowing your lawn and throwing away the clippings was the ultimate in waste. We cover our yards with these things that are able to convert solar energy better than any technology we've come up with yet, and we just throw that solar energy away. What a dumb thing to do.

I think I'm going to get a goat.

Thanks R&M B. for lending me this book.

a backward view of our garden

There's something awkward about positioning a laptop low to the ground to take a picture of a patch of dirt—especially since everything is backwards, which makes the computer trickier to aim than a normal camera. (We really need to get our camera fixed.) But I don't care how ridiculous I looked to the upstairs neighbors, because I am so excited about the work we finished that I have to say this:

Ta da! We have a garden.

It's a little one, with a few strawberries and tomatoes, and with my luck, its production from the entire summer will only yield a single salad. But I'm delighted anyway. And it's not just because the plants are in the ground.

On my other blog, I mentioned that I'm horrible at asking for help. I think I have a weird, genetic mutation that makes me think that I'm not interesting or charming enough to be helped. I also mentioned that a certain friend gave me some advice on my thesis. That dear friend decided to give me some more advice that sounded like this: you should let me help you plant your vegetables and clean your house.

Her advice is usually sound, so I took it. We planted the little garden together and then tackled the disaster in my kitchen and family room. Now I have a clean, pretty place to live. And so do my plants. You can see it in this backward, oddly lit, poorly composed picture that I looked like a moron to take.

if he won't buy you flowers...

Let me say this first: my husband does perfect, wonderful, kind things for me every day. He is pretty much the best. We just see flowers differently.

For me, the act of giving flowers is a thoughtful gesture that simultaneously beautifies. For him, the act of cutting a plant off its roots, sticking it in a glass container, and watching it slowly die seems useless. Even so, he bought me this beautiful arrangement a few weeks ago:














Not long after the purchase of this bouquet, he started a cool project which gives him a very good reason—even with his anti-blossom tendencies—to buy more flowers from now on.

He spent many hours drilling. Through wood.




















And plastic.




















To make this:



















It's a composting bin. Go here to learn how to make one yourself.

After letting the paint dry and setting it up in the backyard, we put all sorts of scraps inside: weeds, dead leaves, strawberry tops.

And those lovely (and now, very useful) flowers that had just finished wilting.















Flowers: a beautiful gift, and a useful element of compost. The differing man/woman mindset regarding their utility? Solved.

Why'd the Chicken . . .

We had an Easter miracle on Saturday morning. I came home from the store to find a baby chick in our yard.
I ran inside to tell Kathy, and the chick ran after me. When Kathy came out it ran up to us and started chirping. We fed it soggy oatmeal and put it in a box to protect it from the cat that lives in our garage.
We asked our neighbor if she had chickens. She said she wished she did, and came over to see it. She named it Lucky, because it was lucky to find Kathy and I.

We called our farmer, Julie, at the Clifford family farm. She said her chickens had just had chicks and that lucky would fit right in with them.
She just sent this email:
christopher,
just wanted to let you know lucky is doing fine. if you want to see lucky or look around, feel free. my phone is ___-____ if you call then I can show you lucky. he's in the outside brooder with the other "big boys" He's probably a leghorn and a little older than we thought -I'd say about 3 weeks. thanks- julie
Happy Easter. Make sure to watch this soon.

Edible Pampers

This combines my major (Food Science) with my ideology (environmentalist) and my wants (babies).

Genius.